Gulf diplomatic crisis as countries cut ties with Qatar

[bixaorellana]

"Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terror, in the Gulf Arab region’s most serious diplomatic crisis in years.
...
Yemen’s internationally backed government, which no longer holds its capital and large portions of the country, also cut relations with Qatar, as did the government based in eastern Libya. Later on Monday, the Maldives followed suit.
...
Saudi Arabia said it took the decision to cut diplomatic ties due to Qatar’s 'embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilising the region', including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Islamic State and groups supported by Iran in the kingdom’s restive eastern province of Qatif. Egypt’s foreign ministry accused Qatar of taking an 'antagonist approach' toward Egypt and said 'all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed'.

The tiny island nation of Bahrain blamed Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain” for its decision."

Full story: www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/05/saudi-arabia-and-bahrain-break-diplomatic-ties-with-qatar-over-terrorism

[kerouac2]

This situation has been of particular interest in France since we became extremely close to Qatar under Sarkozy and nothing has really changed since then since Qatar has such huge investments in France. At the same time, France has always been very close to Saudi Arabia for oily reasons and has kept its eyes closed about so many things. It may finally be time to choose sides if this conflict is prolonged. This will be a huge dilemma, and not just for France since all of us don't really care what those people are up to as long as it does not affect us directly in any negative way. At the same time, we're all in favour of cheap petrol and countries that can fork over billions for the products of our defence or luxury goods industries.

Time to pay the piper?

As for which of these countries is the most responsible for supporting terrorism, I will just have to harumph non-committally for the moment.

[bixaorellana]

I'd say that is a well-placed harumph.

This is going to be a giant hit financially for Qatar. As for Saudi Arabia, I thought the highlighted words telling: "As the Qatari stock market tumbled and oil prices rose, it accused its fellow Gulf states of violating its sovereignty."

This paragraph: Qatar is home to the sprawling al-Udeid airbase, which houses the US military’s central command and 10,000 American troops. It was not clear if the decision would affect US military operations.

is followed further in the article by this:

Speaking in Australia, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, played down the seriousness of the diplomatic dispute and said it would not affect counter-terrorism efforts.
“I think what we’re witnessing is a growing list of irritants in the region that have been there for some time, and they’ve bubbled up so that countries have taken action in order to have those differences addressed,” he said.

Gosh, is someone saying the US was caught with its pants down? Gee -- maybe we have an administration no longer automatically respected by other nations?

[fumobici]

This has an odor of an internecine power struggle to me. We take great pains to ignore outrageous human rights abuses and systematic support for terror among our allies of convenience and cry for war and bloody regime change when those we don't go along with do the exact same sorts of things. The hypocrisy is palpable. The KSA's war on Yemen for instance is inhuman and borderline genocidal and we here in the US under Obama sold them horrific cluster bombs that are internationally illegal to bomb Yemenis with. I couldn't believe reading

The tiny island nation of Bahrain blamed Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain” for its decision."

I know someone (of Shiite stock) who was living and working in Bahrain a few years back when there were protests going on and the Shiite community (who are ghettoized within Bahrain and treated as another inferior underclass to exploit) and about the only people spreading violent chaos in Bahrain were the state forces of order. The protesters were remarkably--naively perhaps-- well behaved and the police-military response was brutal.

[bixaorellana]

Sounds horribly closer to the real truth than the nice sanitary news article .

[whatagain]

Must say I wanted to see a thread about it as I will have trouble finding a source that is indépendant enough and reliable enoughto help me form an opinion.

I will confess to throwing most of these guys in the same pot and reading Saudi Arabia complaining about governments financing terrorists leaves me dubitative.

Nouvelle Afrique mat have an interesting article.

I suppose the French media will focus on The PSG : what will happen to soccer if Qatar had less money ?

[kerouac2]

Not to mention the fact that Qatar owns about half of the Champs Elysées.

[bixaorellana]

Jun 6, 2017 7:16:20 GMT whatagain said:

Must say I wanted to see a thread about it as I will have trouble finding a source that is indépendant enough and reliable enoughto help me form an opinion.

Me too!

I imagine there are a couple of people here who over the years have followed the politics of the countries involved. I offer up this overview from the Washington Post in the hope of finding out if it is essentially accurate. The piece looks at the charges against Qatar and its rebuttals, then attempts to address why this is happening now and what is at stake.

www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/06/06/the-persian-gulf-crisis-over-qatar-explained/

Obviously, a good source of insight is Al Jazeera: www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/qatar-diplomatic-crisis-latest-updates-170605105550769.html

[bixaorellana]

I'm sticking this news article into this thread because I feel it fits with the events currently unfolding. If the more politically astute Helper thinks it should be moved, I hope he'll do so.

June 7, 2017
In rare attacks in Tehran, gunmen storm parliament and shrine in assaults claimed by Islamic State <-- click

[kerouac2]

It appears that the whole Qatar crisis was once again provoked by (Russian?) hackers inserting fake news into official websites.

[kerouac2]

The Qatar situation is festering while other events push it from the news. This is not a good thing, since it is the sort of geopolitical event that can blow up in our faces while we’re not paying attention. Since I worked for Saudi Arabia for almost 35 years, for better or worse, I have more than a passing interest in what is happening.

Oversimplified explanation: sibling rivalry. Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have identical lifestyles and follow the Sunnite and Wahabite version of Islam. But Qatar was the little guy, basically ignored by its richer and more powerful neighbour. For the last 20+ years, Qatar decided that it was time to be noticed, and the only way to be noticed was to be different. Saudi Arabia tried to block out the rest of the world for as long as possible, so Qatar created its Al Jazeera satellite networks. While the English language version is almost indistinguishable from channels like CNN International or BBC World, the Arabic language version is another matter entirely. It is a rabble rouser reporting on events in the Arabic world that the other countries would like to hide. Qatar supported the Arab Spring uprisings while the other Gulf countries shuddered in horror, and it also supports the Muslim Brotherhood.

While most of us who know anything about the Muslim Brotherhood do not consider it to be a good thing when we are in favour of more secular regimes, it must be considered in the context of the Gulf monarchies. It is a political movement in a part of the world where the leaders do not want politics to exist. The more secular countries like Egypt and Syria have every reason to try to prevent it from dominating them simply for reasons of lifestyle. However, in the strict Islamic regimes of the Gulf, it would not change the lifestyles at all – it fights corruption and the privileges of the ruling class. Its goal is “Panarabism” and a merging of the Arab countries into one. It is considered a terrorist organisation by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Bahrain, Syria and Russia. So all of these countries have every reason to be unhappy with Qatar (and also Oman, but nobody is talking about them).

To further annoy its “big brother,” Qatar also maintains excellent relations with Iran, an archenemy of the other countries. Some of it is for economic reasons since Qatar and Iran share a huge gas field below the Persian Gulf (most of those countries call it the Arabian Gulf), but a lot of it is just because Qatar wants to distinguish itself from Saudi Arabia.

If these tensions just stayed in this part of the world and we were not addicted to oil, it would not be all that much of a problem. After all we ignore all sorts of tensions in other parts of the world as long as our own lives are not affected. But then we have the Quincy Pact.

I doubt if any of us ever heard a word about it in history class or if we did, we can be excused for sleeping through it, but the Quincy Pact is the root of the American involvement in the situation. In 1945, the United States went behind the backs of the British to make this deal. President Roosevelt contacted King Farouk of Egypt, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. He first request was to get a Jewish homeland established in Palestine, but that was refused instantly. So he fell back on cheap oil. The United States promised to guarantee the vital interests of Saudi Arabia and the “unconditional protection” of the Saud royal family. (Remember the one and only flight allowed out of the United States after 9/11?) The vital interests of the Saudi kingdom were extended to include the entire Arabian peninsula, and that’s the way it has been since then. In exchange, the United States received the monopoly of Saudi oil production through the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) for a minimum of 60 years. Does anybody else remember the price of oil before the first modern crises in the region? For some reason, I do – it was US$2 a barrel for something like 30 years.

Interesting factoid: Certain historians claim that the Quincy Pact never existed and is just a legend.

Whether or not the pact exists, the royal family of Saudi Arabia absolutely despised Barack Obama the moment they saw how quickly he abandoned Hosni Moubarak in Egypt. The Moubarak regime was a completely docile and solid ally of the United States, so if America could drop Egypt like a dirty tissue, who knows what might happen to Saudi Arabia if there is any contestation there in the future? And the beginning of reconciliation between the U.S. and Iran under Obama was the straw that broke the camel’s back (of which there are many) in the Kingdom.

The arrival of Donald Trump has what it takes to make Saudi Arabia great again. Trump made his very first bilateral visit to Saudi Arabia, whereas this is generally reserved for Canada or Mexico, and instantly sold 110 billion dollars worth of weaponry to the Saudis. Trump was probably too busy tweeting to notice that the largest American military installation in the Middle East is in Qatar.

So as things stand at the moment, on one side we have Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and the U.A.E. On the other side are Qatar, supported by Oman, Kuwait, Iran and Turkey. Super Macron is trying to mediate with the help of Oman, but he has probably bit off more than he can chew. Wait and see.

[Kimby]

Thank you for this history lesson, K2.

And didn't I just hear Trump is selling arms to Qatar, too?

[bixaorellana]

Yes -- thank you very much! It's most illuminating in the way that the cynical truth behind what we've been fed as history is always illuminating.

A couple of comments and questions, please ~

Jun 17, 2017 5:11:50 GMT kerouac2 said:

Trump made his very first bilateral visit to Saudi Arabia, whereas this is generally reserved for Canada or the United States, and instantly sold 110 billion dollars worth of weaponry to the Saudis. Trump was probably too busy tweeting to notice that the largest American military installation in the Middle East is in Qatar.

"... generally reserved for Canada or the United States ..." Did you mean to write some other country in that sentence other than the US?


What really struck me about his "instantly" selling all that weaponry is that there couldn't possibly have been anything instant about it. Surely this deal (the creep's favorite word) was in the works for a long time before that visit, possibly before Trump was "elected" president. In tandem with that, LaGatta is correct about the sale to Quatar. (www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-sells-qatar-12-billion-arms-days-after-accusing-it-of-funding-terrorism/) Since military weaponry is not the president's property to sell, we have to wonder how long the artful deals were in play before they became public.

Along with that, we have to wonder who all of Trump's appointees benefit from these deals, and how much their appointments stem from private dealings between the so-called president and those appointees.

[kerouac2]

I fixed my typo just a few minutes ago -- obviously I meant Mexico and not the United States.

[mossie]

I must admit I had never heard of the Qunicey Pact, but seeing what it involved it makes a lot of sense to me of events since. My involvement with that part of the world was in the early '50's, when America was doing its best to elbow us out of there, they wanted all the oil to themselves. Not to mention that their major war aim had been the dismantlement of the hated British Empire, and this was a convenient method.

The main enemy we faced in Egypt was the Moslem Brotherhood, which is a principal player today. They engaged in acts of sabotage and the ambushing of transport with the resultant brutal deaths of the drivers and escorts. Could it be that they were supported by the U.S. ? Several hundred British people died brutal deaths during this period!!

So I trust nobody to tell me the truth

[bixaorellana]

Jun 17, 2017 13:35:09 GMT kerouac2 said:

obviously I meant Mexico

Not obviously to me! It should have been, but quite honestly I never noted that it would be the US's near neighbors to be visited first.

Mossie, I can understand how personal that is for you, but you and I, as citizens of imperialist countries, are forced to ask ourselves how it must feel to have an foreign army in ones homeland.

[mich64]

I spent some time researching the Quincy Pact this afternoon.

I knew nothing of this but some of the things I read made complete sense, for instance the 60 year anniversary was in 2005 and the Saudi Crown Prince visited President Bush at his ranch in Texas that year, it would be interesting to know how many other times or if there were any other times that he visited the Ranch.

One note of interest in my readings was comments quoted by Roosevelt of how after speaking with the Saudi Crown Prince, he learnt more about Palestine in 15 minutes than in all of his life. I can not remember for sure, but I think these are almost the same words I heard Trump say after his trip to Saudi Arabia, it gave me an eerie feeling.

[bixaorellana]

Jun 17, 2017 22:35:38 GMT mich64 said:

the Saudi Crown Prince visited President Bush at his ranch in Texas that year

Mich, this might interest you: www.businessinsider.com/the-bushes--a-wall-street-dynasty-2012-11?op=1&IR=T/#s-son-george-herbert-walker-jr-owned-a-share-in-the-new-york-mets-5

[mich64]

Thank you Bixa, that was very interesting. I had read that Jeb Bush had offered to purchase part of a baseball team a few months ago but decided not to finalize that deal. I remember hearing about Haliburton years ago but thought it had to do more with Dick Cheney. Reading the article I certainly said hmmm quite a bit.

[bixaorellana]

On 23 June, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt subjected Qatar to unprecedented diplomatic and economic sanctions, followed by an aggressive blockade and threats of further action if Qatar fails to meet a list of 13 demands, one of which is to shut down the al-Jazeera network.

www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/01/demand-al-jazeera-closure-shows-how-much-enemies-fear-it

[bjd]

I think shutting down the Al-Jazeera network was one of the principal aims of Saudi Arabia and its buddies from the beginning. I heard that on §France 24 right at the start of the whole thing. Also mentioned was that it was set off by Trump's visit to Saudi. Of course, he was too stupid to know that the States has a huge airbase and 10,000 soldiers stationed in Qatar and it's from there that they fly their planes to Iraq, Syria, etc.