Qatar – where will it end?

Fantasy and truth
Political Islam’s leadership engages in fantasies of the Ottoman legacy translating into a strategic depth enabling AKP Turkey to lead the Sunni Muslim world, represent 900 million oppressed people and thus hold sway in the world.
The truth, though, is that the memories conjured up by the Ottomans in the Sunni Arab world are those of plunder, oppression, violence, belittlement and a rule which it collaborated with British imperialism to rise up against. Moreover, in the Sunni Arab world, another country that has genuine strategic depth, Saudi Arabia, has its own hegemony project.
Saudi Arabia’s strategic depth stems from its petrol and gas, very close relations with the USA and UK, its monopoly over the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam and, in contradistinction to the Ottomans, its being a part of the Arab world.
Furthermore, the Saudi regime is at a critical turning point. Its economic future is put at risk by developments in the energy markets and the social impacts of the economic reforms embarked on by a young, inexperienced leader. Shiite Iran, which has begun to open to the West and is increasing its influence in Syria and Iraq, and monsters spawned by Wahhabist thinking like Al-Qaida and ISIS, threaten its political future. Ever more frequent ISIS attacks in Europe are focusing attention on the ideology of Islamist terrorism and on the Saudis, the source of the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. The Saudi regime thinks that, under these conditions, if it cannot establish hegemony in the Sunni Arab world, it will be unable to protect itself.
 
 
Drive to hegemony
The Saudi regime forever sees the Qatar regime countering it on almost every front in this hegemony drive; as Salman Al-Dossary puts it in Asharq Al-Awsat, he believes Qatar is ‘striving to be a regional power at the expense of the security and stability of the Gulf countries and the region.’ The Saudi Regime feels exceptional disquiet about Qatar’s military-diplomatic relations with Iran and its patronage of such threats to the influence of Wahhabist ideology over the Islamic world as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the accusations of broadcasters like Al Jazeera that the Saudi regime is cooperating with Israel, and its relations with Al-Qaida-like organisations in Syria and North Africa. The final straw that broke the camel’s back was the Qatar regime’s payment of one billion (!) dollars in ransom through the intermediation of Al-Qaida and Iranian militias to free a group of its royal family that was taken hostage while hunting in Iraq (Financial Times, 05/06/2017).
According to Simon Handerson of Foreign Policy, the Saudi regime is potentially creating a casus belli for a major regional war by shutting Qatar’s borders, air space and maritime transit passages. The Emir of Qatar is embroiling Russia in this melee with its claims that its defamatory comments towards the Saudi ruling house are ‘fake news’ and ‘hacking.’ The attacks on the Iranian parliament and in the vicinity of Khomeini’s mausoleum suggest that the Qatar crisis is continuing to escalate.
Its support for political Islam (Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas) and jihadist bands, its endeavour to get on well with both the USA and Iran and its hosting of a giant US military base showed that Qatar, in common with Turkey, was trying to get in on all acts at once and was harbouring leadership aspirations far beyond its stature. These aspirations began to wilt when they ran up against interests that the Saudi regime, having far greater resources and international relations at its disposal in the region, perceived to be vital.
These developments have once more brought AKP Turkey’s foreign policy under the microscope: the AKP regime’s impotence and increasing dangerous loneliness has also come into full view. Now there is panic and paranoia: thoughts like Qatar’s demise will be Turkey’s, too.