The two sides of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’s Qatar rift are far from reconciling as both accuse the other of supporting terrorism, reports Giorgio Cafiero.
By Giorgio Cafiero
Special to Consortium News
The Gulf Crisis between Qatar and its neighbors (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE) is no closer to being settled than when it erupted in May 2017. The differences — including displeasure by the Saudi-led faction with Qatar’s relations with Iran, its pro-Muslim Brotherhood stance and its alleged support of terrorism — have only heated after a controversial new documentary aired by Qatar government-ownedAl Jazeera Arabic last month that accuses Bahrain of coordinating with terrorists.
The 52-minute film, “Playing with Fire,” makes extremely serious accusations about the Bahraini royal family’s alleged ties with Salafist-jihadist terrorists. It claims to expose recordings and communications that prove that the Bahraini kingdom recruited Al-Qaeda terrorists to establish a cell to carry out targeted assassinations of key figures within the country’s Shi’a opposition. According to “Playing with Fire,” King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa authorized the operation, even intervening with Riyadh to release Mohammed Saleh, an Al-Qaeda commander, from a Saudi prison.
Still from “Playing with Fire.”
The documentary alleges that Bahraini intelligence officials and Al-Qaeda coordinated acts of terrorism in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan Baluchistan. According to Al Jazeera’s conclusions, in 2006, Bahraini intelligence officials recruited Hosham Baluchi, the ex-leader of Ansar al-Forghan, whom the Iranians later killed in 2015, for such terror operations in Iran’s restive areas near Pakistan.
Responses
Predictably, the government of Bahrain had harsh words for Qatar and its state-owned pan-Arab network. Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmed said the documentary was merely a “new episode in a series of conspiracies from a rogue state against the Kingdom of Bahrain, and against the stability of the entire region.” Packed with “lies and fallacies against the state Bahrain,” the documentary’s allegations have no basis in fact, asserted Bahrain’s chief diplomat. He went further, doubling down on the narratives that drove Manama and other Arab capitals to begin blockading Qatar in 2017, stating that Doha “has become the biggest threat to the Gulf Cooperation Council.”
Mohamed Mubarak, a Bahraini journalist based in the United Kingdom, spoke to RT and fired back against Al Jazeera Arabic’s documentary. He claimed that in 2006 Bahraini authorities instead captured a group of extremists and that the video footage of Al-Qaeda commander Saleh used in the documentary was fabricated in order to “blackmail” Bahrain’s rulers. Mubarak claimed that “Bahrain is a spearhead in combating terrorism [which has joined] the international coalition in fighting ISIS, either in Syria or Iraq.” For Qatar to level such accusations against Bahrain was “paradoxical and ironic” given Al Jazeera’s history of providing a platform for Al-Qaeda members and sympathizers, Mubarak said.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) also delivered an official response to the documentary. The terrorist group released a statement denying such links with the Bahraini state. The Al-Qaeda franchise asserted that such accusations of a secret agreement between the Al Khalifas and Al-Qaeda operatives illustrated how GCC member-states remain “keen to persuade their master Trump of who is the most loyal of his devoted workers in the war against the mujahideen.”
War of Narratives
There have been accusations for years about the Arabian Peninsula’s monarchies making backdoor deals with Al-Qaeda and other Salafist-jihadist factions, often within the framework of utilizing these Sunni extremists to push back against Iranian/Shi’a influence in the region.
In the Yemeni civil war, numerous media sources, including the Associated Press, have alleged coordination between the Saudi/Emirati-led coalition and AQAP. This reporting from Yemen claimed that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi cut “secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash … hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself.”
There are several pieces of evidence showing that both sides in the GCC dispute were seen by Western intelligence to be supporting terrorist groups in the earlier stages of the Syrian war. A leaked memo, published in October 2016 by WikiLeaks, which was sent as an attachment in an email from Hillary Clinton, said: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region.”
A declassified document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency predicted in August 2012 the rise of the Islamic State and said that the U.S. and European and Gulf Arab allies were supporting the establishment of a salafist principality in eastern Syria, which the document predicted, two years in advance, would give rise to an “Islamic State.” The document said:
“Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts” by Syrian “opposition forces” to “control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar) … there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
Then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard University audience in 2015 that, “Our biggest problem is our allies,” naming Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE. “What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were [Jabhat] al-Nusra and Al-Qaida and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” Biden later went on an apology tour of the region, after complaints from the UAE, and he tried to withdraw his remarks.
The Pariah
Ironically, a main justification for the 26-month blockade of Qatar, imposed by half of the Saudi-led GCC’s member-states and Egypt, has been Doha’s alleged support for Al-Qaeda and other groups, from Islamic State to Lebanese Hezbollah.
Traditional dhows in front of the West Bay skyline as seen from the Corniche, in Doha, Qatar. (StellarD, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In the past, before the ongoing GCC crisis, all Arab Gulf monarchies essentially joined a collective effort to fortress each other from such accusations made by Western politicians, think tanks and media.
Notwithstanding major differences between each GCC member, these six states largely operated as one family in the sense that they defended each other in discourse surrounding such alleged ties between royal families of Arabian sheikdoms and terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, in which all but one of the 19 hijackers came from countries that are currently blockading Qatar (15 Saudis, two Emiratis, and one Egyptian), nearly all in the GCC had to bend over backwards to demonstrate to Washington and other Western governments that Gulf regimes were fully on board with America’s “war on terror.”
In the current era, however, there is mudslinging and finger pointing within the GCC as the war of narratives rages on. Which Gulf states maintain tacit relations with nefarious terror outfits that target the Arab monarchies’ chief ally —the U.S. — and which of these GCC members are truly committed to working with the West in this struggle against extremism?
Until or unless the Gulf dispute is resolved, these questions and their answers will continue to be framed by the blockading states in a way to portray Qatar as the pariah state, while Doha will use its media outlets such as Al Jazeera Arabic to counter such narratives and turn the accusations around against its GCC accusers.
Giorgio Cafiero (@GiorgioCafiero) is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics (@GulfStateAnalyt), a Washington-based geopolitical risk consultancy.
If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
Before commenting please read Robert Parry’s Comment Policy. Allegations unsupported by facts, gross or misleading factual errors and ad hominem attacks, and abusive language toward other commenters or our writers will be removed.
Americans, for some totally unknown reason, are under the illusion that the Arab nations got along in fraternal harmony in previous lives. They didn’t. There was a reason why the Ottoman empire was teetering on the brink before WWI kicked it to the curb.
Americans, for some totally unknown reason, are under the illusion that Arabs have the same values that we do. They don’t. Freedom of speech for example… will generally elicit a querulous look and a What?!? It’s not in their lexicon. That’s why they are perfectly willing to sink Al Jazeera.
Americans, for some totally unknown reason, are under the illusion that the rest of the world has to be just like us. No, they don’t. Nobody seems to notice that once you walk away from “the new world”, the societies are far, far older than the United States. They know how to get along (and how to piss and moan) a whole lot better than we do. Why do we seem to think that we need to make everyone else like us? (Hint: That ain’t gonna happen)
Recall that Osama Bin Laden became an asset of US and British intelligence in the 1979 Afghan war forward. The
Western strategy was to use Muslim fundamentalism against the USSR. How’d that work out?
Cafiero asks the question: “Which Gulf states maintain tacit relations with nefarious terror outfits that target the Arab monarchies’ chief ally – the U.S. – and which of these GCC members are truly committed to working with the West in this struggle against extremism?
Those of us who do not exercise the studied naivete of a Washington-based consultancy understand the “chief ally” of Israel and the GCC Arab monarchies has been “truly committed” to supporting terrorism to achieve its political goals in the MENA region and elsewhere.
The calamitous situation in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region is the direct result of “working with the West”.
The US and its allies assiduously cultivated, indeed weaponized relations with nefarious terror outfits.
As geopolitical analyst Tony Cartalucci has pointed out:
“the US has used terrorism – including use of ISIS specifically – to justify its military presence everywhere from Libya to Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan.
“It was in a leaked 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo that it was revealed the US and its allies sought the creation of a ‘Salafist principality’ in eastern Syria for the specific purpose of ‘isolating’ the Syrian government.
“The 2012 memo would state specifically that:
“‘If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).’
“The DIA memo would also explain who these ‘supporting powers’ are:
“‘The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.’
“Despite Washington’s claims of fighting ISIS in Syria, it wasn’t until Russia’s military intervention in 2015 that saw the terrorist organization’s supply lines from Turkey ravaged and its territory and fighting capacity rolled back.
“Prolonging ISIS’ existence is the continued support it receives from America’s closest allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, and Israel. The US itself has on multiple occasions now directly attacked Syrian forces engaged in combat against ISIS.
“Most recently, the US has deployed long-range artillery in southern Syria specifically to target Syrian forces that have overwhelmed ISIS on the Syrian-Iraqi border and threaten to jeopardize Saudi-Jordanian supply lines that have fed the terror organization’s presence in Syria for years.”
“Considering this, ISIS’ “sudden” appearance […] just in time to justify Washington’s otherwise unjustified and unwanted presence and influence in the nation is more than mere coincidence – it is another example of the United States creating crises in order to provide ‘solutions’ that predictably include its continued existence as a regional hegemon.
“Not unlike a crooked window repair service that breaks windows at night and repairs them for a price by day, the US is sowing tensions, conflict, murder, and mayhem, then posing as the solution – for a steep geopolitical price.”
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/06/philippines-isis-saves-us-foreign.html
Yes, it is the corrupt US government that has been “bending over backwards” to persuade its former citizens that it was “fully on board” with a 9/11 “war on terror” that was in fact US-sponsored terrorism started in the 1950s to sponsor Israel for bribes, and advanced in the 1980s under Reagan/Brzezinski to attack the USSR in Afghanistan to satisfy the looney right wing.
“Those of us who do not exercise the studied naivete of a Washington-based consultancy understand the “chief ally” of Israel and the GCC Arab monarchies has been “truly committed” to supporting terrorism to achieve its political goals in the MENA region and elsewhere.”
Man, now there’s some getting at the truth.