QATAR PONIES UP TO THE TROTH
Defense Secretary James Mattis
and his Qatari counterpart, Defense Minister Khalid al-Attiyah signed a $12 billion arms deal yesterday in
Washington, a move made particularly high-profile because of the
ongoing blockade imposed on Qatar by its Gulf Arab neighbors.
The
agreement is for the purchase of a number of F-15 fighter jets, a sale which
the Pentagon says will ensure that Qatar has “state-of-the-art” defensive
capabilities. Qatar is the
richest nation on the planet in per-capital GDP, but a very small nation to be
spending $12 billion on warplanes.
Over
the past couple of decades, oil-rich Gulf Arab states have used some of their
massive oil revenue to buy US warplanes as sort of prestige pieces to trot out
during parades and the like. Tensions are rising between Qatar and the other
nations, who have their own large fleets of US warplanes.
The
Pentagon has retained close ties with Qatar throughout the regional dispute,
reflecting the fact that Qatar hosts the largest US base in the region. In
addition to the arms deal, the US Navy has sent two
boats into Qatari waters today to join the nation’s fleet for military exercises.
All
of this comes just a day after the Ambassador from the United Arab Emirates suggested the
US should move their base out of Qatar to “pressure” them. That, it seems, is
not under serious consideration from the Pentagon.
BAHRAIN JAILS QATAR SYMPATHIZERS
Following moves to further
criminalize public dissent, the island nation of Bahrain has arrested at least
two people today on charges of being “Qatar sympathizers,” based on public
comments in which the two men were seen as opposed to the Saudi-led blockade on
nearly Qatar.
One
of the two men was identified as Issa Faraj Arhama al-Burshad, a human rights lawyer who filed a lawsuit attempting to challenge the blockade, accusing it
of breaking up families in Bahrain by expelling Qatari citizens. The lawsuit
will not happen, and Burshad has been thrown in jail for even trying to do so.
The
other man was not publicly identified, but was only said to have been a social media user who was accused of making postings
that “opposed the decision of the kingdom” to move against Qatar. Bahrain and
the United Arab Emirates have both threatened to jail anyone expressing
“sympathy” for Qatar.
UN
Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein was critical of the moves
against dissidents on the Qatar issue, saying it was a “clear violation of the
right to freedom of expression or opinion.” That right, clearly, does not exist
as a legal concept in either Bahrain or the UAE.
EL-SISI SAYS BLOCKADE TURKEY
Regional tensions continue to
rise over the split with Qatar yesterday, as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi called on the other nations
participating in the anti-Qatar blockade to agree to expand the siege to include NATO member nation Turkey.
Sisi
is mad at Turkey primarily because Turkey’s President Erdogan has supported
Qatar during the recent siege, and has criticized moves against Qatar as
“un-Islamic,” saying the region should be committed to unity, and not
divisiveness.
Sisi
brought up the matter during an official visit by the King of Bahrain, one of
the other nations participating in the siege. No other nations have yet
commented on the possibility of bringing Turkey into the siege, but there are a
lot of reasons it is unlikely.
Turkey is much larger than Qatar, and
more influential. They are also one of the region’s largest exporters of food,
and the loss of them as a trading partner would be potentially very problematic
for nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with no obvious
replacements.
Moreover,
this would further solidify the ideological divide around which the Qatar split
is truly based. Resentment against Qatari media’s support for pro-democracy
Islamic movements, particularly opposed by Sisi, who in 2013 came to power in a
coup removing an elected Islamist government, is a big part of the anti-Qatar
push, but Turkey’s own ruling party is a conservative Islamic party, and has
backed the Qataris as a result.
Moving
against Turkey would be extremely risky in this regard, as while Sisi hopes it
would oblige Turkey to abandon its support for Qatar, it would in all
likelihood solidify it, and make it increasingly obvious that Qatar is not
isolated.
TILLERSON: CAN'T LABEL MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD TERRORISTS
With a heavy
portion of the Saudi-led push against Qatar related to the nation’s perceived
support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and President Trump’s campaign talk of
banning the Islamist movement coming in line with his eagerness to back
hostility toward Qatar. It’s not an easy move to make, however.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
yesterday admitted that an attempt to label the Muslim Brotherhood, a largely
non-violent political movement with some five million members, a “terrorist organization,” would be hugely “problematic” and risked complicating US policy
around the region.
Tillerson noted that members of the
Muslim Brotherhood are members of parliament in multiple nations, citing Turkey
and Bahrain as specific examples, and adding that those political figures have
renounced violence as a tactic, making moving against them as terrorists a
pretty serious problem.
That’s
broadly the case, even if most members of the Muslim Brotherhood aren’t
politically connected, as the
group has largely sought to establish itself as a democratic Islamist movement
across the Middle East, and in the countries where political dissent
hasn’t been formally criminalized, as in democratic Egypt before the 2013
military coup, they’ve
been quite successful playing to religious conservative voters.
This
isn’t a newfound problem with the move against the Brotherhood. Rather, the CIA
was very publicly warning the Trump Administration about such a move back in
February as well, warning that the movement as a whole has formally rejected violence and has set itself up as a moderate Islamist alternative to al-Qaeda
and ISIS. They cautioned that declaring them terrorists too risked
fueling extremism, and sending the message that Muslims in general are going to
be labeled terrorists by the US irrespective of their actual position and
actions.
The
only reason this has been brought back up is that such a move would be favored
by Saudi Arabia in the move against Qatar, but doing so has the exact same
problems it always did, and many US officials remain very conscious of the
backlash the move would provoke.
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