Brian M Downing
The Persian Gulf principality of Qatar, despite its small population and size, has used its spectacular oil and gas wealth to become an important actor both in the Persian Gulf and throughout the Middle East. It has avoided becoming a client-state to the US, Saudi Arabia, or Iran and in fact has maintained reasonably good relations with all three – no mean feat in the increasingly polarized region. Qatar has gone on to play critical, though largely behind-the-scenes, roles in the Libyan Revolution, post-Mubarak Egypt, and the ongoing Syrian conflict.
A key to Qatar’s ascendance is an important partnership with the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist organization with significant popular support in the Middle East, including Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, and Syria. This partnership allows the small principality to thwart Saudi efforts to establish hegemony in the Arab world and to limit American and western influence there as well. Qatar growing influence poses a vexing dilemma for US policy makers, who oppose Saudi-backed autocracies and the Muslim Brotherhood as well.
Background
Many once powerful states in the Middle East are in turmoil or even breaking apart. Syria has been in civil war for two years and may never return to its prewar stature. Iraq is near civil war and its Kurdish north is all but independent. Egypt is trying to find a new political order and bracing for domestic violence. Iran has been weakened by sanctions and is entering a challenging period of change. Author Karen Elliott House points to an uncertain future for Saudi Arabia as its ruling dynasty faces generational conflict, within the family and in society at large.
Qatar has no military to speak of but its immense hydrocarbon wealth enables it to exert significant influence. Gulf expert Toby Matthiessen notes that the principality has thus far avoided the internal conflicts that plague the region. Its 15% Shia population is reasonably content. Indeed, several prominent Qatari families are Shia. CIA figures put Qatar’s median age at 32.4 years – well above the level of many Arab countries facing youthful democratic bulges with high, and perhaps unrealistic, expectations. Qatar’s ruling emir recently handed the throne to his 33-year-old son, despite being only 61 himself – a mere youth by the geriatric standards of Saudi Arabia.
Politically stable and blessed by oil and gas deposits, Qatar has avoided upheaval and steered its own path in a complicated and dangerous part of the world. It has refused to climb aboard the Saudi bandwagon against Iran and domestic Shia populations deemed fifth columns, as have Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.
Analysis
Qatar maintains cordial relations with all three major powers in the Gulf. It hosts the headquarters of the US Central Command (Centcom), continues good relations with Saudi Arabia despite differences, past and present, and enjoys cordial relations with those powers’ chief foe in the region – Iran. Qatar is thus positioned to moderate tensions which might otherwise get out of control and bring disproportionate ruin on a small place in a rough neighborhood.
The principality has also used its nonaligned status to mediate conflicts in Lebanon and begin to do so for Afghanistan as well. And of course it uses its hydrocarbon wealth to invest in foreign countries in a manner that attracts allies and expands influence.
Qatar is playing the upheavals in the Arab world with considerable dexterity, which attracts the ire of neighbors but the interest of analysts. The Qatari leadership in Doha, according to regional expert Mehran Kamrava, judges that the old authoritarian regimes are headed for the dustbin of history. The miscellany of generals, sons of generals, and family dynasts are incapable of reforming themselves. Qatar’s famed media outlet, Al Jazeera, has shown Arab youth a world of opportunity and openness, and it is no overstatement to say that it encouraged demonstrations and uprisings in Libya and Egypt. Qatar delivered aid and construction projects to Egypt after Mubarak’s ouster and weapons to rebel groups in Libya during the uprising there. It is also a prominent backer of Syrian rebel groups.
Qatar wants to prevent Saudi hegemony from Egypt to the Gulf. In this effort, Doha has an important partner in the transnational Muslim Brotherhood – a Saudi nemesis owing to its opposition to monarchy and unwelcome expression of that principle inside the Kingdom. Doha sees the Brotherhood as a moderate Islamist force with substantial popular support that can counter more extreme forms of Islamism such as Wahhabism and Salafism. Both of those sects have spread throughout the Middle East with the help of Saudi money.
Ties with the Muslim Brotherhood gives Qatar critical partnerships with the governments of Turkey, Tunisia, and until recently, Egypt. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was virtually annihilated in the early 1980s by Hafez al-Assad’s security forces but it has rebuilt itself to become an important financial backer of the Free Syrian Army which is seeking to drive Assad’s son, Bashar, and his regime from power.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia are allied against the Assad government but are backing different military and political groupings. The two countries’ rivalry is an important reason for the Syrian opposition’s inability to even feign unity at international conferences. Competition for influence and the FSA’s flagging fortunes led Qatar to break with the wishes of foreign backers, including the US, and provide the rebels with FN-6s – a Chinese antiaircraft missile similar to the vaunted American Stinger.
The Egyptian military’s ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood last July was in part the result of the Brotherhood’s overreaching policies but it was also the result of Saudi diplomacy and subterfuge. Riyadh withheld financial support for several months, causing public descent, then disbursed it once Morsi was deposed. Tellingly, Morsi’s ouster was decried on Al Jazeera but lauded on its Saudi rival, Al Arabiya. The conflict between Qatar and Saudi Arabia takes place on the airwaves too.
Conclusions
A small principality largely unheard of a few years ago has become a major player in a vital part of the world. Qatar is an important benefactor of Muslim Brotherhood organizations from Tunisia to Syria, which it uses to expand its influence and limit that of Saudi Arabia. Though supportive of reform and representative government, it has thus far refrained from pursuing them at home, preferring its own benevolent patriarchy. Qatar’s support for reform abroad may one day have consequences inside the principality.
Qatari-Saudi competition for influence presents difficulties for American foreign policy. Washington sees Saudi-backed authoritarian governments as unviable, Muslim Brotherhood governments as unpalatable, and the US has neither the appetite nor the resources to enter a bidding competition with two petro-states. Washington’s influence in the Middle East is on the decline, though fortunately its own oil and gas production is on the move.
Copyright 2013
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.