The impact of Doha’s defiance and dereliction
In the first part of a landmark series marking the anniversary of the Arab Quartet’s boycott, Joyce Karam reports from Washington on America’s inability to bring its influence to bear on the rogue state
It is in Qatar’s interests to regain the trust of its Arab neighbours by moderating its regional policies MARCELLE WAHBA President, Arab Gulf States Institute
On the one-year anniversary of the Qatar crisis, the conflict between Doha and its Arab neighbours sheds light on two major issues – Washington’s limited influence in pushing for a settlement and the Trump government’s strategic inconsistency.
US regional partners Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with the small Qatari peninsula, which is also a US partner, on June 5 last year.
The four countries, known as the Quartet, imposed the boycott over Qatar’s support for terrorist organisations, close links to Iran and reneging on their commitments to the 2013 Riyadh agreement, including an end to support for “deviant groups”.
While the Quartet has, from the onset of the crisis, pushed for a regional solution rather than an international one, the US has continuously waded in to try to play mediator.
But a US official told The
National that Washington’s hopes for a resolution had dwindled over the past two months.
President Donald Trump had hoped to bring together Gulf leaders in May at Camp David. In April the talks were pushed to September and may no longer address the deadlock in the Qatar crisis. US officials said that Washington postponed the summit because of a busy calendar.
But the Qatar conflict, which took Washington by surprise, is no longer a critical item on the agenda of US-Gulf meetings, having been overshadowed by the Iranian nuclear programme, the war in Yemen and other more pressing bilateral issues such as trade and defence.
“This is not a priority for us or for them,” an Arab diplomat from one of the four Arab nations told The National.
“We told the Americans we can have low-level meetings with Doha as a face-saving measure.”
The issues, said the diplomat, were deeper “and we don’t see a change”.
Resolving the Qatar problem had become marginal and if talks were to take place, they would fall under deputy-ministerial duties, he said.
The four Arab countries continue to stand firm in their decision to boycott Qatar, saying they are willing to re-establish ties with Doha only if it adheres to regional and international agreements, as well as their demands and principles.
The Trump government’s conflicting messages have obscured US attempts to mend the year-long rift. While Mr Trump last summer called Qatar a “funder of terror”, his secretary of state at the time, Rex Tillerson, was praising Doha’s efforts in countering terrorism.
“The US role has been inconsistent from day one,” said Marcelle Wahba, president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and a former US ambassador to the UAE.
Ms Wahba said Mr Trump was focusing on re-energising ties with the Gulf countries with a focus on countering terrorism. Meanwhile, the secretaries of defence and state were trying to protect the US interests in Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, and push for a more united Arab front against Iran.
Mr Tillerson’s frayed relationship with Mr Trump, who fired him in March, undermined Washington’s role in the crisis.
“No one in the Gulf was listening to Tillerson on this issue and all we focused on was the US president’s words and tweets,” Ms Wahba said.
More important, she said, was the regional nature of the conflict and the “competing”
visions of the role of political Islam in the Middle East.
This made it harder for Washington to mediate, as it lay outside the scope of direct US interest. It has to be resolved by the regional players, while “the US can only encourage”, Ms Wahba said.
“They need to find a way to coexist and, in my view, it is in Qatar’s long-term interests to regain the trust of its Arab neighbours by moderating its regional policies.”
Lori Boghardt, a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that US leverage had taken a hit after Washington continuously took different sides in the dispute.
“The US has swung not only from one side to the other in terms of who it supports in the rift, but in terms of how it wants to address the rift and what it wants to see happen,” Ms Boghardt told The National.
The US is encouraging its Gulf partners to follow policies that run counter to their own security interests, she said. This complicates Washington’s efforts to end the rift.
But “there’s been more consistency from the US in recent months in terms of what it wants to see materialise”, Ms Boghardt said, in reference to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Riyadh and his close relationship with Mr Trump.
Mr Pompeo has expressed his desire to see the Gulf dispute eased and eventually resolved, saying that the rift is of benefit to Iran.
Meanwhile, the Trump government has been learning to deal with the new status quo of the continued standoff and last month had all of the GCC members agree on new sanctions against senior figures of the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Hezbollah.
Although US efforts to resolve the Qatar dispute are continuing, Washington’s mediation will continue to be challenged if the Trump government does not settle for a coherent position or come to fully understand the region’s changing dynamics.