THE Qatari claim that its news agency was hacked and the controversial statements were put in its leader’s mouth is far more than a security breach and appears to have set Doha against the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, analysts believe.
Doha launched an inquiry and went into damage control after accusing hackers of publishing false remarks attributed to Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani on state media.
The stories quoted him questioning US hostility toward Iran, speaking of “tensions” between Doha and Washington, commenting on Hamas and speculating that President Donald Trump might not remain in power for long.
The remarks were supposedly made at a military graduation ceremony.
Doha denied all the comments and said it was the victim of a “shameful cybercrime”.
Some analysts fear the incident could even trigger a repeat of the situation in 2014, when several Gulf countries recalled their ambassadors from Doha, ostensibly over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Much will depend on whether the issue continues to escalate or is quietly dropped,” Rice University’s Kristian Ulrichsen told AFP.
“The apparent blocking of Al Jazeera’s website and Qatar TV in Saudi Arabia and the UAE is an indication that deeper tensions may indeed be at play,” he said.
Qatar has said it will publish the findings of its investigation into the alleged hacking. But whatever the truth, the incident may point to unresolved fault lines between the Gulf states following events in 2014.
Durham University’s Dr. Christopher Davidson said the incident reflected a “serious fracture between the two different camps in the Gulf”.
“The divisions remain very deep about the vision for the region,” he said.
Several global writers, especially, John Hannah of US-based Foreign Policy in his article breaks down the two-faced nature of Qatar’s relationship with the US.
Indeed, he wrote, Qatar has been the poster child for two-faced friends, consistently seeking to have it both ways when it comes to the United States: On one hand, a reliable host of some of the most important US military facilities in the Middle East, but on the other, perhaps the key backer — politically, financially, militarily, and ideologically via Al Jazeera, the Doha-based state-funded broadcaster — of some of the region’s most radical, destabilizing, and dangerous forces.
“The troubling duality of Qatari policy toward the United States has persisted and even gotten worse in many ways, especially since 2011. At the same time, Qatar’s neighbors — particularly in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — have both grown more alarmed at Qatar’s leading role in sowing regional instability and more open and confident about showcasing their own military partnerships with Washington,” he wrote in the article.
Dubai-based Gulf News in its editorial said Qatar must take measures to stop undermining GCC interests. “While the three summits hosted by Saudi Arabia last Saturday and Sunday, in the presence of United States President Donald Trump and leaders of 57 Muslim countries, agreed that Iran was fueling conflicts and sectarian tension in the region, Sheikh Tamim has been quoted by the Qatari official news agency as saying: “Iran represents a regional and Islamic power that cannot be ignored and it is unwise to face up against it. It is a big power in the stabilization of the region.”
It went on to stay that it was understandable for Gulf media and observers to be unimpressed with the Qatari explanation, citing previous occasions when Doha had flagrantly acted against the interests of the GCC.
Western officials have also accused Qatar of allowing or even encouraging funding of extremists like Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, once known as the Nusra Front.
Before US President Donald Trump addressed the summits in Riyadh, Qatar issued a statement decrying “an orchestrated barrage of opinion pieces by anti-Qatar organizations” criticizing it. One of those pieces, suggesting Qatar in 2006 may have let go a Qatari man who became an Al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, came from David A. Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
“The swift Saudi-Emirati response makes me think they were fishing for a confrontation or this is a convenient pretense ... to address the things already bothering them,” Weinberg said. “Qatar likes to write this off as a campaign based on lies and ulterior motives, but if Qatar didn’t have the sort of problematic record it has, it wouldn’t be the target for this.”
On Thursday, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Al-Thani tried to downplay the political ramifications.
“We are not looking at it as a big deal,” he said.
But Trump’s outreach to Qatar’s regional rivals may yet cause a headache for Doha.
“It appears that Saudi Arabia and the UAE will enjoy special security privileges under the Trump administration and will function as the regional spearhead of US policy priorities,” Ulrichsen said.
“The reality is that the region is on the verge of further escalation,” a Western diplomat in Doha said. “It’s total chaos and no one has vision.”
‘Qatar, Iran met secretly in Baghdad’
ATARI Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al-Thani held a secret meeting last week with Qasim Sulaimani, a senior military officer in the Iranian army and commander of its Quds Force, while he was in Baghdad on an official visit.
“Despite the scarcity of information about the meeting, there were messages in Baghdad that Qatar exited early from the Arab-Islamic consensus, well before the ink of the Riyadh Declaration dried,” Okaz reported.
It alleged that the secret meeting had been arranged by the Iraqi government in return for Doha not demanding $500 million left suspiciously by Qatari officials at Baghdad airport following the release of Qatari hostages held during a hunting trip in southern Iraq.
“Reliable sources said an agreement was reached where Qatar would rebel against the resolutions of the Arab-Islamic-American Summit,” Okaz reported adding that the arrangement was made only 27 hours before the summit.
Iraqi sources have reported “huge developments” in Qatari-Iranian relations about intelligence cooperation between the two countries in the near future which would give Iran a broader scope to carry out its agenda for the region.
Arab and Gulf countries have repeatedly accused Iran of fomenting terrorism and sectarianism in the region and meddling in the domestic affairs of Arab countries. On Thursday, Qatar seemed to end its strange silence on the issue when its foreign minister spoke affirming that “a hostile media campaign against Qatar” was being conducted.
“The campaign was particularly in the United States,” its foreign minister said.
“We will confront it.”
Observers familiar with the Qatar’s dealings with terror groups were not shocked by the Qatari comments, both alleged and official.
The statements show Qatar’s real face and the hatred in their hearts, an editorial in Okaz said.
“Its defense of the Iranian terrorist regime shows the secret Doha-Tehran alliance that intends to strike at Arab and Islamic solidarity.”
“The positions of Qatar go against the positions of Gulf and Arab countries. Although it is a small country, it is always looking for a larger role at all costs, even if it tears at fabric of Gulf, Arab and Islamic solidarity. Qatar has misjudged the situation and entered the hornet’s nest.”
“The silence of Arab countries has ended, and the leaf has completely fallen,” it said.
“Qatar supported Hamas, turned against the legitimate Palestinian [National] Authority, publicly declared its aid to Israel, and could not bear the success of the Riyadh summits. This is the country that is playing with fire,” the Okaz editorial said. — Agencies
