GCC divided over Egypt's aborted democracy

A row has erupted in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain dramatically withdrawing their envoys from Qatar on Wednesday.

The three states accuse Doha of breaching a GCC concord first agreed in November, which guaranteed that member states would not interfere in each other’s internal affairs.

Controversial support for the Muslim Brotherhood has alienated Qatar from its fellow Gulf states in recent months, while disagreements over approaches to crises in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain have heightened tensions.

A statement from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), published in Saudi state media on Wednesday, expanded on the allegations: “Anyone threatening the security and stability of the GCC, whether as groups or individuals, via direct security work or through political influence and not to support hostile media.”

The statement went on to claim that Qatar had “failed to commit” to the principles of the GCC.

Qatar is unusual amongst the Gulf states for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and political Islamism in general. The Qataris backed Morsi heavily during Egypt’s Arab Spring and have found themselves ostracised in the GCC since he lost power last July.

While Saudi Arabia and UAE are now sending billions in emergency aid to shore up the Egyptian economy, Qatar has found itself frozen out of economic opportunities in the new Egypt. A $2 billion loan that Qatar tried to make to the Egyptian treasury was returned untouched in September 2013. The Al-Jazeera TV network, based in Qatar, has found its journalists arrested and facing trial in Cairo over alleged support for “terrorism”, and is banned from broadcasting from the country.

Qatar enjoys a particularly prickly relationship with UAE – who leads the Gulf states in terms of their aggressive opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islamist movements. Last year, UAE security services arrested and allegedly tortured dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters plotting to overthrow the Emirati monarchies. Those arrested included a number of Qatari nationals.

On Monday, a Qatari citizen accused of supporting an Islamist political society in the UAE was jailed for seven years.

Last month a row erupted between the UAE and Qatar over the Islamic scholar and TV preacher, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi – who is a key member of the Muslim Brotherhood and is a resident of Doha. In a sermon broadcast on Qatari state television, the preacher accused the UAE government of being “anti-Islamic”. His words provoked a fierce war of words and an official warning from officials in Abu Dhabi, with Qatar eventually disowning the statement.

“At the heart of the matter is how best to deal with the Islamists,” said Joseph A Kechichian, a Senior Fellow at the King Faisal Centre for Research & Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and an author specialising in the Arabian/Persian Gulf region.

“GCC Summit statements repeatedly underscored that all extremist movements were against the Sharia and hence against the law. Individual countries signed on to these planks, although Qatar has had some reservations.”

“There’s definitely a large problem here,” assessed Michael Stephens, Deputy Director of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar. “This has been brewing for eighteen months but what we’ve seen in the past couple of days is an agreement which Qatar signed up to at the end of last year, which they haven’t kept to.”

Qatar had agreed at the GCC annual summit in Kuwait in December to reduce support for the Muslim Brotherhood – including specific measures to reduce the influence of Al-Qaradawi, to stop support for the Muslim Brotherhood and to stop facilitating the movement of Iranians around the GCC. Saudi Arabia is particularly paranoid about Iranian influence following a recalibration of Western interests in the Gulf, and Bahrain suspects Tehran-funded agitators of fomenting domestic unrest.

Stephens also pointed to personality politics within the GCC. “The new Emir in Qatar is young: other members want to see how far they can put Qatar ‘back in its box’ now he’s in charge.”

The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, took office in June and is 33-years-old – about half the age of the other GCC rulers. He succeeded his father, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who was 61.

“It’s not only support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt – it’s disagreements over Bahrain, over Syria, over the crisis in Yemen,” says Stephens, who speculates that new measures may need to be taken in Doha to convince the GCC that Qatar has “changed tack”.

“Perhaps they should look at moving Al-Qaradawi to Turkey,” he told the Middle East Monitor. “Or find a way to help in Yemen without antagonising the Saudis.”

Qatar has challenged Saudi Arabia for influence in Yemen over the past years, providing massive funding to the Muslim Brotherhood and usurping Saudi, the dominant foreign player within Yemen’s fast-moving internal politics. State media outlets in both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have waged fierce wars of words over who should have more influence there.

Kechichian, from the King Faisal Centre for Research & Islamic Studies, predicts the outlook for political Islam in the Gulf as grim.

“There is a near unanimous view that Islamists crossed the Rubicon when they determined to bring down the conservative Arab Gulf monarchies,” he says.

“Naturally, such a development was perceived as a clear threat to GCC states’ stability and few should be surprised that countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others, have worked to defeat them.”

Qatar has responded by saying that their envoys will remain in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – and expressed “disappointment” at the departure of ambassadors from Doha.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.