Desert dairy herd a symbol of Qatari defiance in face of blockade

IF ALL goes according to plan, a plane will land in Qatar later this week and lower its ramp to send 140 German cows blinking into the desert sunlight.

Every two or three days after that there will be more planes and more cows, until 4,000 cattle have arrived in an arid kingdom where there is almost no grass and temperatures regularly reach 114F (46C).

The audacious airlift is the brainchild of Moutaz al-Khayyat, a Syrian businessman based in Doha, and is just one of many initiatives born from crisis after Saudi Arabia and its allies imposed a blockade on Qatar last month.

The tiny emirate is home to only 2.6million people but it imports 90 per cent of its food and has only two days’ worth of fresh water in reserve. So when Saudi Arabia abruptly shut Qatar’s only land border on June 5 there was genuine panic that the nation might go hungry.

But four weeks later, the shelves are full and the Qataris confident they can endure a blockade which the Saudis and their allies, who accuse them of supporting terrorism, announced this week would stay in place indefinitely. Suppliers turned to Turkey and Iran to replace what came from Saudi Arabia.

Mr al-Khayatt hopes his airlifted cows will help Qatar become self-sufficient in milk production. They will be kept in air-conditioned desert hangars.

Yesterday Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, said there would be no immediate progress in healing the rifts, but urged both sides to de-escalate the stand-off.

“Progress can be made,” said Mr Johnson on a visit to Saudi Arabia. “But I’m not going to pretend to you that it is necessarily overnight or this is going to be done in the next couple of days.”