Syria

Qatar Changing Policy on Syria to Avoid Being Marginalized by S. Arabia

13920916000395_PhotoIDoha has adopted a series of decisions to change its strategy on Syria after it lost the main role in leading the war of insurgency against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to the Saudis and after its allied government in Egypt was overthrown in a military coup, a Qatari official said.
“Emiri Diwan Sheikh (who presides over Royal affairs) Abdullah bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Commander of the Emiri Guard Major General Hazza Bin Khalil Al-Shahwani, Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, Foreign Minister Khaled bin Muhammad Al-Atiyeh and First Lady Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, who chairs the Qatar Foundation, held a meeting on December 1 to decide about changing Qatar’s policies on Syria and improve relations between Doha and Damascus,” a Qatari official present in the meeting who called for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue told FNA on Saturday.

“At the meeting, the participants decided to decrease the pressures exerted for devaluating the Syrian Lira and Aljazeera TV channel’s propaganda against Damascus, commit to stopping measures against Syria’s national interests, cut financial and logistic support for the Salafi groups in Syria and find a way to create a base for Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood) group in Syria,” the official added.

The high-ranking Qatari officials also decided to gradually stop aids and support for the secular groups like Jeish al-Hor, cut aids to the armed opposition in Syria and provide aids to the Syrian refugees, he said.

At the end of the meeting, they underlined the necessity for supporting the Geneva II conference on Syria due to be held on January 22 and help to the reconstruction of Syria.

In a relevant development, Hezbollah Leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah said on Tuesday he recently received an envoy from Qatar, the first contact between the two sides since divisions over the crisis in Syria severed their once strong relations.

“There is talk between us … there was a line between us and Qatar which was reopened (recently) but up to a certain limit,” Nasrallah said in an interview with Lebanon’s OTV television.

He did not disclose details about the identity or seniority of the envoy, but when asked by the interviewer if the meeting took place in the past few days Nasrallah said, “Yes, it is true. I cannot hide it.”

Since the start of the Middle East uprisings in early 2011, the region has slipped into a period of uncertainty, with a battle for political influence and legitimacy stretching across state borders. Two rich countries in the Persian Gulf region, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have operated with different and sometimes divergent strategies to shape the political transitions in Egypt and impact violent struggles for power in places like Syria.

Understanding this dramatically changed regional context is important in analyzing the approaches of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Since 2011, the competition for power and influence in the Middle East has been increasingly multipolar and multidimensional. It is multipolar because no single country has become the dominant actor in the region. The fractured nature of regional politics, combined with the complicated internal divisions and still-nascent ideological debates in many transitioning countries, make it nearly impossible for any single country to achieve a dominant, hegemonic position in today’s Middle East.

The regional competition is multidimensional in that countries are using many different aspects of power and influence—including economic assistance and loans, aggressive regional media campaigns and even, in some cases like Libya and Syria, arms shipments and sales—to seek advantage. Unlike previous periods in which military power was a key factor, countries and political forces are now seeking to shape the Middle East’s power dynamics through multiple means.

Since 2011, Qatar has adopted an assertive approach that has largely embraced the political changes in the region and sought to engage a wide range of actors, particularly Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood. It backed calls for political change in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, and it took on a very active role in efforts to remove leaders from power in Libya and Syria.

This approach stands in sharp contrast to that of Saudi Arabia, which was more reserved and generally slower in its response. In Egypt, for example, Saudi Arabia opposed quick political changes, backed former President Hosni Mubarak and criticized countries that supported his removal from office.

The differences between the Qatari and Saudi approaches to the Middle East uprisings in general and with regard to Islamist movements in particular have less to do with ideology than with different capabilities and policy approaches, informed by the two countries’ relative internal advantages and vulnerabilities. Saudi Arabia is much larger than Qatar and faces greater prospects for internal dissent; Qatar has a smaller population and overall government apparatus, so it is capable of making quicker decisions and views itself as less vulnerable to external influences and shocks than Saudi Arabia.

The relations between Riyadh and Doha further deteriorated after Saudi intelligence chief mocked Qatar over its small population.

It drew a stinging rebuke from Doha, underlining tensions between the two Persian Gulf Arab states over clashing foreign policies.

The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a veteran Saudi ambassador to Washington, had said at a meeting last summer that Qatar was “nothing more than 300 people … and a TV channel” and “not a country,” quoting a person familiar with the exchange. The “TV channel” is Doha-based pan-Arab satellite network Al Jazeera.

Qatari Foreign Minister Khaled al-Attiya shot back in a Twitter message that became an instant sensation in the tiny Persian Gulf Arab state.

“One Qatari citizen is worth an entire people and the Qatari people are equal to an entire nation,” he wrote. “This is what we tell our sons, with all respect to the others,” he added.

The Qatari newspaper al-Sharq said the message was retweeted by more than 600 people in the first few hours, after a “hashtag insulting to Qatar (Qatar 300 people and a (TV) channel” spread on social media.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the account belonged to Attiya but declined to make further comment, while Saudi officials were not immediately available.

Qatar has become quieter on the foreign stage since veteran emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani stepped down in favor of his crown prince and son, Sheikh Tamim Khalifa al-Thani, in June.

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