An old gas feud flares up, Mideast may be shaken
Acrisis enveloped the Gulf earlier this week as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, joined by Egypt and a clutch of other Saudi sympathisers like the Maldives and Libya, severed relations with Qatar, including air and sea links. This had been long brewing, rooted in ancient tribal rivalries and 19th century battles as intervening European powers and the Ottomans jockeyed over trading and pearl-gathering centres on the southern Gulf coast.
Contemporary Saudi anger stems from Qatar shipping its first load of LNG to a destination outside the Gulf in 1995. Having little oil wealth unlike Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Qatar presciently sought to tap into the global gas market. The UAE’s limited gas is sour and thus not competitively exportable, while the Saudis felt no need to explore for more oil and gas beyond the existing finds. With low global demand for gas, both countries pumped gas into oil fields to boost production. Demand for gas globally shot up after 1995 as countries realised the need for cleaner energy, which led to the economic rise of Qatar.
The second geopolitical factor affecting Qatar is that the world’s largest gas field, discovered in 1971 and extending from north of Qatar to the Iranian coast, under the Gulf waters, is shared by both. Qatari exploitation has been quicker than by Iran. Due to this Qatar imposed a moratorium on increasing gas production in 2005. The GCC neighbours saw it as Qatar bending to Iranian pressure and ignoring their gas demand due to rapid population and infrastructure growth.
When the current Emir’s father Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa overthrew his father in a bloodless coup in 1995 there was an attempted counter-coup on behalf of the deposed ruler the following year. Qatar saw a Saudi-UAE hand behind it as the deposed Emir got asylum in Abu Dhabi.
The present imbroglio has more recent provenance. The TV channel Al Jazeera, which is owned by Qatar’s ruling family though proclaimed as independent, has been needling autocratic Arab rulers as well as espousing populist causes in the Islamic world for decades. It almost singlehandedly fanned the Arab Spring fire starting with Tunisia in December 2011. Qatar began fashioning itself as an enlightened emirate, with gradually enhanced political freedoms and relatively livelier media. The previous Emir’s consort abandoned her hijab and appeared in public with her face exposed. Qatar’s ruling family even embraced India’s legendary painter M.F. Husain while he was self-exiled in Dubai, escaping the wrath of the Hindutva brigade back home. This model rankled more conservative and illiberal neighbours.
Accompanying faux liberalism at home has been political activism abroad in pursuit of emerging or lost causes in the Islamic world. Qatar supported the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt that succeeded the military dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak. The Saudis were arrayed against them. Saudis were dismayed by US President Barack Obama’s hands-off approach to allow democratic forces to play out and fill the vacuum left by the departing autocrats.
However, Syria and ISIS created the real rift in the GCC as President Obama rebalanced America’s Gulf policy. He unshackled Iran by endorsing the P5+1-Iran nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions. The US rewrote its traditional dependence on Israel, Egypt, Turkey and the GCC to stabilise Gulf and West Asia. The US seemed to accept that the only force that could contain ISIS was Iran, working with its Shia allies like Iraq, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus and Hezbollah. In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, King Salman ceded to his favourite son Mohammad the running of the kingdom’s foreign and national security policies. Thus the Saudis and Emiratis, with Qataris in tow, were pitted against Iran and its allies, backed by Russian military intervention, across a strategic arc along the Saudi periphery, from Syria in the west to Bahrain in the Gulf and Yemen on their eastern flank. The Qataris apparently had their own agenda, not wishing to offend Iran excessively.
The Obama doctrine was successful to the extent that ISIS was rolled back but the Assad regime also regained vigour. But Donald Trump as President has upended, among other Obama policies, his West Asia-Gulf rebalance. The Riyadh summit on May 20-21,
The fact that the trigger was a telephone call by Qatar’s Emir to newly-reelected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani indicates that the Saudis see relations with Iran as a zero-sum game
Mr Trump’s first presidential visit abroad, resurrected a Sunni alliance to oppose Iran and ISIS. Qatar was present but chose to express dissent, later posted on a Qatari government website. The region thus split along Shia-Sunni lines rather than those for and against terrorism, symbolised by the ISIS “caliphate”.
Clearly, the aim is to force Qatar to abandon Iran and contain its activist and independent role abroad. The US underplayed the development although triggered by Mr Trump’s backslapping with Saudis. The assumption is that the US has no plans immediately to shift its massive military facilities from Qatar. A question remains on how Iran may react.
India as usual primarily sees the issue through the narrow prism of its expatriate workers, who number over 600,000, and gas supplies. There is also concern about any actual disruption or hostilities which can affect oil supplies and fuel prices. The fact that the trigger was a telephone call by Qatar’s Emir to newly-reelected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani indicates that the Saudis see relations with Iran as a zero-sum game. This is dangerous and shortsighted. Mr Obama’s unwelcome advice to them that they must learn to live with Tehran has been abandoned after assessing Mr Trump’s anti-Iran bias.
Mr Trump, like a bull in a china shop, has left broken glass in his wake. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to West Asia, his mission to befriend all and offend none has got a lot more difficult. He needs a more measured approach, and make his visit contingent on how the current imbroglio develops.
The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry. He tweets at @ambkcsingh