Britain will be caught up in the Arabs’ cold war
The blockade of Qatar could undermine our efforts to thwart Islamists planning attacks on the UK
When the Queen visits Royal Ascot next week, she will be attending an event that enjoys the sponsorship of a country that stands accused of funding the radical Islamist creed held responsible for the recent wave of terror attacks against Britain.
The commercial brains running Ascot racecourse no doubt believed they were following a well-established path when, in 2014, they agreed a five-year partnership deal with a company owned by the Qatari royal family.
As the world’s biggest supplier of liquefied natural gas, the Qataris have money to burn, and have used their vast energy wealth to acquire a number of Britain’s most iconic assets, such as Harrods, Canary Wharf, the Shard, the Olympic village and the new Chelsea Barracks development. A recent study undertaken by The Daily Telegraph revealed that the Qataris now own three times more property in the capital than the Queen.
The Ascot deal meant that, in return for Qatari largesse, the Queen was personally required to grant permission for this most regal of sporting occasions to abandon 300 years of tradition and allow sponsorship branding at key vantage points around the racecourse.
Now, following the widespread boycott that has been implemented against Qatar by its Arab rivals, Her Majesty may well come to regret her decision when she negotiates a few diplomatic hurdles of her own. Representatives of the Qatari royal family and other Gulf-based racing dynasties, such as Dubai’s ruling al-maktoum family, are expected to be present in the royal enclosure.
Indeed, with the diplomatic crisis over Qatar deepening by the day, questions will inevitably be raised about its continued sponsorship of Ascot, as well as other high-profile racing venues such as Goodwood, where Glorious Goodwood now goes by the rather more prosaic title of the Qatar Goodwood Festival.
The range and reach of Qatar’s investment in UK Plc certainly brings home some of the potential ramifications of the increasingly bitter diplomatic spat that has erupted in the Arab world over claims that Qatar funds Islamist terror groups, as well as its friendly ties with Iran, the Shia superpower regarded as a key enemy by many of the region’s Sunni Arab leaders. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt are among a clutch of pro-western Arab states that have initiated a wholesale diplomatic and trade embargo against Qatar in retaliation, saying it supports Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah.
The rift means that Qatar, located on a small peninsula in the Gulf, finds itself subjected to a blockade by land, sea and air. Apart from causing severe disruption to its gas exports – which could well have a direct impact on British imports – the boycott has had a devastating and immediate effect on the Qatari economy, to the extent that plans were yesterday being drawn up to airlift 4,000 cows to the sheikhdom.
The Qataris have appealed to Boris Johnson to intervene with the Saudis to stop the boycott, but it will take more than Mr Johnson’s not inconsiderable skills to resolve this crisis.
Feelings in the Gulf, where the Qataris have subjected their neighbours to decades of ridicule and political meddling, are running high, so much so that one senior Gulf official told me during a visit I made to the region this week that the boycott was the start of a new “cold war” against the Qataris. That war could last for many years and would only end when the Qataris agreed to stop funding terror groups and end their diplomatic flirtation with Iran.
Certainly, viewed from the perspective of other Gulf states, the Qataris only have themselves to blame for their predicament. For too long they have indulged in double standards. On the one hand they host the al-udeid military command centre, where a 10,000-strong US military contingent oversee the war against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
On the other they are accused of funding and harbouring groups with close affiliations to Isil. The Gulf states have now produced a list of nearly 50 Islamist extremists that have ties with Qatar.
In addition, the Qataris fund media outlets like the Al-jazeera television station, as well as a number of London-based Middle Eastern websites, which are accused of seeking to undermine the stability of Arab powers like Saudi and Egypt.
The problem for the West is that, while our Arab allies may well be within their rights to take Qatar to task for years of unwarranted provocation, the rift could undermine our own efforts to destroy Isil and its Islamist sympathisers.
These are the groups that encourage extremists to carry out the kind of terrorist attacks we have recently experienced in Britain. And if they are allowed to flourish, then the authorities, both here and abroad, will have a great deal more to worry about than some awkward social encounters in Ascot’s royal enclosure.