Qatar and the interconnection of regional crises

To understand what is happening now, you have to understand not just the trajectory of the last three years — from the Riyadh agreements of 2013 and 2014 — or the last 22 years, but at least the last 50 and ideally 200, with all the complicated interactions between rulers, peoples and foreign powers in the Gulf.

ONE of the problems with much commentary on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at the moment — and with much Western policy — is that complex issues are too often seen as separate policy challenges requiring separate treatment. In reality, everything is connected. This has always been true, but it is more important now because the consequences of policy failures or successes in the region are more serious than they have been for decades.

When journalists ask me what I think of the Qatar crisis, I tend to say that to understand what is happening now, you have to understand not just the trajectory of the last three years — from the Riyadh agreements of 2013 and 2014 — or the last 22 years, but at least the last 50 and ideally 200, with all the complicated interactions between rulers, peoples and foreign powers in the Gulf. I also say you cannot dissociate the crisis from Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, or the serious ideological challenges that the Arab Spring did not create but exacerbated.

This is a pivotal moment for the Arab world. The need for deep economic and social reform has been widely recognized, not least in Saudi Arabia. But achieving this will be hard if the level of conflict in the Levant or in Libya remains as it is, if sectarian militias with external state sponsors continue to exploit turmoil to spread their influence, or if transnational Islamist movements — Sunni and Shiite — persuade enough people that their self-interested interpretations of sacred texts to justify blasphemous violence and the undermining of the nation state are correct.

Reform, economic and social progress, and a better future for ordinary people can only be delivered within and by strong states. There has been a lot of nonsense written about the decline of the state, and the irrelevance or injustice of borders. Most of the states in MENA have formed distinct socio-political units for centuries. It is out of this sense of community and allegiance that future prosperity and stability will spring.

When the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt in 2012, it failed to deliver improvements in the daily lives of Egyptians. That was one reason popular support for it declined so fast. In Libya, candidates associated with Islamist groups received very few votes in successive elections.

In Iraq, Shiite Islamists — often associated with Iran — have been largely responsible for inflaming sectarian divisions, which have led to the catastrophes of the fall of Mosul and the horrors associated with Daesh rule. In Gaza, Hamas rule since 2007 has led to a climate of fear, prolonged confrontation with Israel and the unnecessary suffering of many Palestinians.

Any Arab disunity benefits Iran, which profits from disorder beyond its borders, and militant groups that claim they alone have the answer to the problems of this world in the promise of the next. Countries will have different national interests and perspectives, but there are serious choices to be made by regional and external actors.

An agreement with Egypt to help manage crossings into Gaza in a way that benefits ordinary people; restoring proper authority and security in the Sinai, Mosul, Benghazi and Tripoli (without which no amount of reconstruction or political progress will work); an end to backing extremists who seek to undermine stability; blocking Iran’s presence in the Golan, Hauran and Jabal Al-Druze — all these and more are objectives that all serious states should be able to support. And they should be part of a strategy that is not just regional but global.

So we should not treat the Qatar crisis as simply a regional tiff. It is far more than that. It is the surfacing of a fundamental disagreement about the direction not just the Gulf but the wider region should take. It has become clear over the last five years that the Islamist wave is not the precursor of the sort of future most people would regard as hopeful.

It is instead an instrument of ideological and material destruction that threatens security and destroys stability. It has become clear that at the heart of the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya is a catastrophic failure of governance and economic justice.

And it has become clear that Iran sees in the troubles of its Arab neighbors an opportunity to bolster its position at their expense, even if this means eroding the power of central governments that it helped create. This is the case in Iraq, where Iran-backed Shiite militia commanders are now telling Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi that they alone will decide where and with whom they fight — and if he does not like it, he can lump it.

This is a strategic moment. The US, UK, France, Turkey and others have collectively to decide not just on whose side they wish to be. They need to decide how they wish to pursue political engagement in the interests of security, stability, political progress and prosperity, not on a country-by-country basis but on a regional one.

They need to decide if they think Iran is part of the solution or part of the problem. They need to see with greater clarity what kind of goals political Islamists of all sorts really have. They need to see that actions in one country immediately affect others. Regional states need to make their mind up too about where they stand. That is the real significance of recent events in the Gulf.

Sir John Jenkins is Corresponding Director (Middle East) at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), based in Manama, Bahrain. He is also a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Until January 2015, he was the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He was also the Benghazi-based British Special Representative to the National Transitional Council and later ambassador to Libya during the 2011 revolution, ambassador to Iraq, Syria and Burma and consul-general in Jerusalem. In a 35-year career in the British diplomatic service, he also lived and worked in Kuwait, the UAE and Malaysia. He was director for the Middle East and North Africa in the Foreign Office in London from 2007-2009.

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