Of North Field and Al Jazeera!!!

On Monday, June 5 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were joined by Egypt and other neighbouring states including the internationally recognized Yemeni government in exile in severing diplomatic relations with Qatar. Saudi Arabia sealed its air, land and sea borders with Qatar. The UAE, Bahrain and Egypt closed both air and sea borders with Qatar and the Arab coalition suspended Qatar’s participation in efforts to restore legitimacy in Yemen. The official reason cited by Saudi authorities was the “serious and systematic violations committed by the authorities in Doha over the past years with the aim of creating strife among Saudi internal ranks, undermining its sovereignty and embracing various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilizing the region.” Specifically, Qatar was accused of supporting and sheltering groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and al-Qaeda, backing the opposition to the royal family in Bahrain and the anti-Saudi Houthi rebels in Yemen.   The role of its media channels in inciting and abetting such activities was highlighted. Qatar was also accused of supporting the activities of the “Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the Qatif province of Saudi Arabia and in the neighboring Kingdom of Bahrain.” While a plethora of reasons have been attributed to the rift between Qatar and the other Gulf nations, of primary importance are two factors, the offshore North Field that provides practically all of Qatar’s gas, which it shares with Iran and the increasing reach of the Al Jazeera network, a confluence which has substantively contributed towards the economic affluence and political leverage that Qatar now enjoys.

A careful reading between the lines reveals, as pointed out by some analysts that the “official narrative” behind the Gulf crisis that attributes Saudi Arabia’s isolation of Qatar to the latter’s funding of terrorist organizations is in actuality a mask that attempts to shield the actualmotive and that the “dispute’s long past and likely lingering future are best explained by natural gas.” The disagreement over natural gas began in 1995 when Qatar was about to make its first shipment of liquid natural gas from the world’s largest reservoir, the offshore North Field that provides for nearly all of Qatar’s gas and is shared with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s primary competitor and adversary in the region. The boost that it provided to Qatar’s finances was akin to the jackpot that Saudi Arabia hit from its massive crude oil fortune. The consequent affluence converted Qatar into not merely“the world’s richest nation, with an annual per-capita income of $130,000, but also the world’s largest LNG exporter.” The emphasis on gas differentiated Qatar from its oil producing neighbours in the Gulf Cooperation Council and provided it with the opportunity to break away from control by Saudi Arabia. In a nutshell, over a period of a couple of decades, Qatar became the natural gas capital of the region. It is alleged that Qatar has spent almost $3bn over the last two years in providing support to the rebels in Syria and that its monetary support for the revolution has turned it into a lethal civil war  that completely eclipses western backing for the opposition. Realizing the geostrategic significance of Syria for its pipelines and the central role that Russia occupies, Qatar agreed to invest $2.7 billion in Russia’s state-run Rosneft Oil, even though it hosts one of the largest US military bases in the region, the US Central Command. In other words, due to its increasing financial and political clout, its neighbours became progressively frustrated and alarmed for till recently, Qatar was regarded as some kind of “a Saudi vassal state,” which began to pursue an autonomous policy that its gas wealth engendered to mold an independent role for itself in the region and beyond.

Despite all the criticisms leveled against it, Middle East experts, by and large, consider Al Jazeera as a “breakthrough for the Arab world.” It has emerged as a pan Arabic network that transcends any single country and provides a platform for free interchange and articulation of political differences. During the so called “Arab Spring,” Al Jazeera’s continuous, on the spot coverage of the 2011 protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square and its rather persistent criticism of the autocratic regimes and support for the protests and protestors came in for considerable praise from its viewers worldwide. Nevertheless, Al Jazeera despite the “global power and reach” it has bequeathed upon Qatar has been embedded in theevolving dispute in the Persian Gulf, in which Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and others accuse it of being a representative for the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist organizations The Arabic-language channel, which also has an English language version, has been a contentious factor since its inception more than a couple of decades back when it was founded by the Qatari royal family, which invested millions of dollars in the venture while proclaiming and emphasizing on its journalistic independence. The fame and outreach of the network has often led to observations that perhaps “Qatar is the only country that is less famous than the television network it funds.” The network has long been “a bone of contention” for the region, even before the Arab Spring, but the current squabble could well be the snapping point with some analysts predicting that, “Al Jazeera’s flame is at risk of being extinguished,” though many more feel that it could be asked to tone down a bit keeping in mind the current mood in the region but would perhaps regain its tenor in the long run and continue to provide tiny Qatar with the political influence that it carries with itself.

Qatar’s foreign policy post 1995 has been marked by the pursuit of independent regional policies. The period has witnessed Qatar’s increasing support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other regional Islamist groups with the Doha based Al Jazeera serving as a platform for articulation of protests by dissenting groups against regional states that has been the tendency even before the Arab uprisings of 2011, during the uprisings and endures till date. While Al Jazeera is the manifestation of Qatar’s growing political autonomy, the North Field is the economic force behind its increasing political ambition and clout. A confluence of the two has encouraged the ‘solitary reaper’ to pursue what some may call rather adventurous policy making….

Priya

12/6/2017

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