Qatar Steps into the Breach

As efforts continue to heal the breach in regional relations in the Middle East, Qatar emerges as an important player on a stage devoid of functional mediating forces, Dominic Moran writes for ISN Security Watch.

Qatar stands in a unique position, bridging the gulf between the regional US-allied bloc led by neighbor Saudi Arabia and Egypt and its regional rivals Syria and Iran.

This bridging position and attendant Qatari influence is fostered through both a close relationship with most state and several key non-state players, including Hizbollah and the exilic Hamas leadership.

Chatham House's Professor Gerd Nonneman told ISN Security Watch, "The [Qatari] role has been one of profiling itself […] and of trying to somehow take the sting out of some of the worst conflicts that might rebound on its own interests."

It is the fact that the emirate is not one of the primary competitors in the wider diplomatic contest for influence or a key mover in the deep destabilization of the regional power structure of recent years that has allowed Qatar to emerge as a trusted mediator in a series of international disputes and conflicts from the Sudan to Lebanon.

Qatari influence is premised, if not solely reliant, on the emirate's ability to provide financial backing for its peace and reconciliation efforts. Qatar is the world's largest liquefied natural gas exporter, with the world's third largest known gas reserves and significant oil deposits.

The importance for international states in building energy ties with the tiny Gulf emirate and its neighbors was emphasized this week with the announcement that eight Latin American leaders will attend the second Arab-South American Summit in Doha on 31 March. 

Major achievement

Qatar had sought for several years to develop an interceding role in regional conflicts, failing in efforts to mediate between Hamas and Israel and Palestinian factions. The reverses had bolstered the impression that Qatar was a well-meaning but lightweight player seeking a role too great for its actual level of influence.

This impression was shattered by the successful Qatari mediation effort in Lebanon which culminated in the Doha Agreement of May 2008, ending a debilitating 18-month political stalemate.

In Lebanon, Qatar was able to parlay its role as a largely neutral and disinterested Arab regional player and Sunni-predominant state, with established relations with the Hizbollah-led March 8 bloc, to lay the basis for a return to power-sharing where the Saudis had demonstrably failed.

The resultant agreement clearly favors the March 8 parties but is in effect little more than a confirmation of the dominant position enjoyed by Hizbollah and allies in the wake of the violence of May 2008.

"Although sometimes they are accused of being pro March 8, pro-Syria, in fact they do try to remain neutral as far as they can," a Doha-based academic, who asked that his identity be protected, told ISN Security Watch

The post agreement calm, while solving none of the underlying factors hampering the development of a stable consociational governance structure in Lebanon, is nonetheless a triumph for Qatari diplomacy.

The inter-factional deal is a confirmation that the wealth of the emirate and the catholic nature of its foreign policy can be transposed into genuine diplomatic clout where competing factions have a clear interest in coming to terms.

Ongoing efforts

Qatar is maintaining or seeking an important role in a number of regional crises, providing philanthropic and other support to the competing Lebanese factions. It has also sought to unilaterally actuate a wider Arab League commitment to solving the Sudan crisis, hosting Justice and Equality Movement ( JEM) and Sudanese government representatives in February for a peace parlay in which an initial agreement to pursue peace negotiations was agreed.

JEM subsequently pulled out of the negotiations, citing the impossibility of coming to terms given the Sudanese government's response to the International Criminal Court decision to charge President Omar al-Bashir with war crimes.

Asked how successful the Qatari mediation effort has been in Sudan, Nonneman said, "Not particularly, yet. They are stretching themselves rather far."

Sudanese religious scholars called on al-Bashir Tuesday not to follow through on his acceptance of a Qatari offer to attend the annual Arab League summit in Doha at month's end, apparently paving the way for the Sudanese leader to back out on his earlier commitment.

Nonneman noted that Qatar is also a key international player in efforts to bring an end to the al-Houthi rebellion in the north of Yemen: "They have obviously not succeeded in settling the whole thing and have occasionally pulled out in frustration but they have gone back," he said. "They're recognized as just about the only player that seems to be able to make any difference."

Suspension

Until the January Gaza conflict, Qatar was the only Gulf state to enjoy open, low-level relations with Israel, hosting an Israeli trade mission and now-Israeli President Shimon Peres in January 2007. Israel has sought Qatari help in the past to negotiate the release of a captured Israeli soldier – a role subsequently assumed by Egypt.

The Gaza conflict led Qatari officials to announce the suspension of ties with Israel.

"Sometimes he [Israeli representative] marketed himself as an ambassador but he was not a formal ambassador he was a trade representative," the academic said. "Truth be told, I do not know think there was a great deal of trade, obviously he was a political figure."

It appears that Qatar will maintain the possibility of a resumption of relations with Israel at some point, thus maintaining the option of acting both as an important discursive conduit between the Gulf states and Israel and as a mediator between Hamas (which trusts Qatar more than current interlocutor Egypt) and Israel and Fatah.

To Nonneman the fact Qatar is maintaining relations with both the US and Israel and its regional rivals "means that they don't get isolated. Also, it means "that while on the one hand they keep great power protection, on the other hand their domestic legitimacy isn't affected."

Strained ties

Ties with neighboring Saudi Arabia and Egypt were badly affected in January by Qatar's hosting of an emergency summit on the Gaza crisis, attended by Hamas' Khalid Meshaal, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia boycotted the summit, which ended with a series of sharply worded statements excoriating the wider Arab state response to the Israeli operation; statements seen in Riyadh and Cairo as direct assaults on their regional role.

"They don't mind ruffling the Saudis' feathers, they don't mind getting the Egyptians annoyed if it can serve the other purposes," Nonneman noted, referring to Qatari diplomatic stances.

The summit led to an open war of words between Qatar and Egypt and the Palestinian Authority with the latter external pageaccusing the emirate of "exploiting the blood of the Palestinians to score political gains."

Notably, the Doha meet also ended with calls for the suspension of the Arab League Peace Initiative (API). The importance of this lies in the fact that the API is a key Saudi foreign policy achievement which has stood the test of time since its initial presentation in 2002, despite significant reversals for Saudi regional interests in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and - most damagingly - Lebanon.

The bilateral Qatari-Saudi relationship has seen some strains over the years. However, efforts continue to heal the rift created by the January conference ahead of this month's Arab League meet in Doha, with the final demarcation of the countries' mutual border cemented in a external pageborder accord last week, signed alongside a series of bilateral deals.

Interestingly, the Doha Debates external pagesurveyfound that 69 percent of Qataris felt that the appellation "cold war" aptly fitted their country's current relations with Saudi Arabia, a concern not shared in their larger neighbor where only 40 percent agreed with this postulation.

"The emir and Saudi King Abdullah are on good personal terms," the academic noted, while pointing to some dissensus in ministerial relations during a recent Kuwait-hosted economic summit. "The problems arise out of the geopolitical context and other elements, particularly within Saudi Arabia but relations otherwise are very good for the most part," he said.

Sources have told ISN Security Watch that the upcoming Arab League summit will likely see Syria and Qatar reverse their January disavowal of the API allowing its reconfirmation.

The limits of influence

While Qatar has played an important and increasing role in peacemaking and conflict management, there remain significant limits to Qatari influence. One of these lies in the opposition of larger players to Qatar playing such a prominent role in regional affairs.

Referring to the January summit in Doha, Nonneman said, "The reaction of Egypt and Saudi is partly explained […] by the fact that Egypt and Saudi Arabia haven't so far been able to prove themselves successful solvers of these [regional] conflicts, whereas the Qataris have on occasion. They are needled by that."

Notably, Qatar has not played a major role in efforts to delimit the impact of the Iraq crisis and in negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program and is unlikely to emerge as a major diplomatic factor in either case.

The presence of the largest US troop concentration in the Gulf in the emirate is a clear reminder of the ongoing reliance of Qatar on the security umbrella afforded by American military power and of relative Qatari impotence in influencing the course of the Iranian-US/Israeli military standoff and related Gulf conventional arms race.

"How much pressure can he [the emir] exert on Washington and Tel Aviv? Very little I would think," the academic said. "If they [Israel/US] really want to strike Iran they can do it and this would spell disaster for Qatar and of course everybody else as well."

Noting that the Arab elites and street can sometimes be dismissive of Qatari interventions, Nonneman said, "In a sense, that does limit some of their impact."

That said "if they really focus on a particular conflict, they allocate their money towards resolving that, or shaping the positions of the various parties, they can then be very successful."

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