Arab boycott: By the time Qatar decides to bend its knees, it might be too late
It’s been two months and two weeks since the Arab quartet comprising Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt imposed sanctions on Qatar over allegations of supporting and funding terrorist and extremist outfits, refusing to shut down Al Jazeera TV, a mouthpiece to denigrate Qatar’s fellow Gulf Cooperation Council and other Arab countries, and cosying up to Iran.
While initially it looked like a few nudges from Kuwait will help sort matters out in a few days, Qatar has virtually binned the 13-point list of demands put out by the quartet. Preening on its misplaced belief that it can survive on its "unlimited" resources drawn from its gas reserves, it has now dug in its heels and made the entire episode a matter of ego and prestige.
If one steps back into a bit of history and assesses Qatar as a country with an unbiased perspective, one can only feel sorry for it. With the exception of oil wells and brash new glass buildings with little architectural cohesiveness, it has nothing to offer.
It has no past, no ruins or remnants of association with any civilisation, no greenery, no tourism, no industry or production except gas, a tiny population – descendants of hand-to-mouth fishermen since unlike its neighbours it had no wherewithal to indulge in trading enterprises - living in a world of make-believe supported by obscene largesse from houses, marriage subsidies and loan waivers to sinecures to merely oversee the slogging expatriates.
All that it can claim is a past ridden with coups and counter-coups, and is better remembered for producing before the International Court of Justice forged documents to claim the Bahraini islands of the Hawars, for sending military officers to Bahrain as part of the regional combined force who were actually spies, for joining the GCC to quell the insurgency in Yemen and at the same time funding the insurgents, and for controversially bribing its way to landing the rights to the 2022 Fifa World Cup.
But what is the use of having loads of cash, as a nouveau riche would say, and still play the second fiddle to your neighbours? So the new Qatari ruler had this idea to break free and follow an independent foreign policy even if it meant going in a diametrically opposite direction from the six-nation GCC.
So while it already had an American base, in the wake of the embargo, Turkey was quick to persuade it to have a base of its own as well. And together with Iran, Qatar was persuaded to sign new accords and trade agreements, find new aerial and land routes, and generally keep away from the quartet which had been trying to punish it.
It fails to see that financial clout alone does not work in the region where Qatar sits. Maybe it does in some of the down-and-out African countries. The collective financial clout of the remaining five GCC nations and Egypt is far more than Qatar’s and so is their land mass and industrial base (even taking into account they are all barren deserts).
Iran and Turkey have a long political, cultural, literary and artistic history, huge resources, a vast landmass, and gumption to take on Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. If they are cosying up to Qatar, which has a native population of little over 300,000 including some naturalised in the past few decades, it is merely to keep it in good humour for their own purposes.
For Iran, the purpose is to find a foothold in an Arab country so close to the nations with which it has been perennially at loggerheads, for Turkey to expand its military presence in a crucial area, warm up its relations with Iran and sell its goods.
Here is a country which rather laughably aspires to alter the geo-political equations in the Gulf region without realising it has been reduced to the role of a baby playing in the lap of two crafty old foxes.
Iran, in fact, has a history of keeping the Arab nations across the Gulf on the tenterhooks. It has provided arms and training to bring about a regime change in Bahrain, it has taken no action against the elements which attacked and damaged Saudi embassy and consulates in Iran, it has been caught spying in Kuwait and it has refused to vacate three UAE islands for half a century.
Qatar does not seem to be introspecting or taking stock of its overall ability, or the lack of it, to move geo-political mountains. By the time it considers "ghar wapsi", it might be too late.