British national interest in the Gulf: rediscovering a role? 20, May 2014
Posted by thegulfblog.com in The Gulf, UK.Tags: British national interest, British relations in the Gulf, National Interest, Persian Gulf, Raison D'etat
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My article for the journal International Affairs has been published in the May 2014 issue. The abstract is below and the link to the article ($) is here.
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The British government is in the process of re-energizing its relations with the Gulf states. A new Gulf strategy involving a range of activities including more frequent elite bilateral visits and proposals sometimes touted as Britain’s military ‘return to east of Suez’ are two key elements of the overarching strategy. Such polices are designed to fall in line with British national interest as identified by the government-authored 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS), which emphasizes the importance of security, trade, and promoting and expanding British values and influence as perennial British raisons d’etat. In the short term, the Gulf initiatives reflect and compliment these core interests, partly based on Britain’s historical role in the region, but mostly thanks to modern day trade interdependencies and mutually beneficial security-based cooperation. However, there is yet to emerge a coherent understanding of Britain’s longer-term national interest in the region. Instead, government-led, party-political priorities, at the expense of thorough apolitical analysis of long-term interests, appear to be unduly influential on the origins of both the Gulf proposals and the NSS conclusions themselves. Without a clear strategic, neutral grounding, both the Gulf prioritization and the NSS itself are weakened and their longevity undermined.
Qatar tries (but fails) to enter the 20th century 15, May 2014
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Qatar.Tags: kefala system, Qatar, Qatar exit visa, Qatar kefala system, Qatar reforms, sponsor transfer, Worker's rights
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Qatar’s much anticipated announcement on reforming the system that controls and regulates foreign workers (the kefala system) was, in the end, an anticlimax.
Firstly, let us clearly lay out what has changed for those working in Qatar today:
Nothing.
Instead, as Dohanews reported, the proposed reforms announced represent the “first step” in changing the labor laws, which is somewhat curious given that these broad topics have been discussed for much of the last decade. The National Human Rights Committee, after all, was established back in 2002, while periodic announcements as to reports, consultations, reviews, and potential changes have been periodically referred to since the mid-2000s.
Fundamentally, it is no shock that Qatar is considering overhauling its draconian kefala system and that specifically the two key elements of it – exit visas and transfer of sponsorship – were going to have to evolve.
A few new pieces of information about some theoretical future system were mildly interesting, but given that all of this needs to be run through Qatar’s legal and legislative processes, how can anyone have any confidence of what will come out of the other end?
Retaining control
The current plans are almost comically watered-down as it is. Seemingly the Qatari government can hardly bear the concept of not having some ultimate control on workers leaving the country. The exit visa is being retained in the form of some ‘once and for all’ exit visa while ordinary exit visas are to stay but employees now will – theoretically, at some date in the future – have to deal directly with a Qatari government bureaucracy; something I’m sure all workers look forward to.
One genuinely interesting move is that employers will – theoretically, at some date in the future – no longer be liable financially for their employees. As an argument for retaining the exit visa, this argument is odious in and of itself, but with this leg gone, there is nothing but malice-laden greed for those seeking to retain the ability to stop employees leaving the country.
Simply put, this attitude towards workers is just not palatable or commensurate with how a state should be operating in the twenty-first century. The tenor of the relationship and the tone of the law speaks to a bygone age. It is immensely damaging for Qatar to so grimly cling on to such a relic of a law.
Similar to the exit visa issue, it appears that the Government cannot bear to give up control of workers transferring jobs entirely. If you have a fixed term contract and it finishes, you can – at some theoretical date in the future – change jobs with no problem. But if your contract is indefinite, you need to work there for five years before being allowed to change. I wonder how employers will restructure their contracts now?
Penalties: missing the point
Fines have been increased for withholding workers’ passports. This is a part of the basic ‘we have laws against this stuff’ defence, used ad nauseum at the UN last week. Yes, Qatar has laws and now larger fines, but this wholly misses the point: they’re just simply not enforced. Workers have had rights for years in Qatar (in the most basic way) but they are often summarily ignored and even when employees try to ‘use’ these rights, the rights of the employers are flagrantly more powerful.
Lost opportunity
This whole debate is immensely frustrating not least because it was avoidable. I had two immediate thoughts when Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup. Firstly, Qataris don’t have a clue as to the level of scrutiny that they and their country will receive from the international press. Secondly, and linked to the first point, overall 2022 is a good thing because it will force changes in Qatar’s draconian kefala system.
Change was and is inevitable. The working practices here which generally do not befit a modern country can’t remain. This, I think, is the basic reality, but one that Qatar’s government has avoided at all costs.
Instead of taking this opportunity to grasp this difficult, thorny issue, the problem has been left to fester. The international press has been merciless, egregiously rude and ill informed at times, but this was always going to be the case when Qatar left itself so open. What mealy-mouthed changes that Qatar undertakes now will be analysed in great detail, pulled apart and it will appear that Qatar has – as, indeed, it has – been reluctantly bullied into making as few changes as it could get away with.
Instead of using the best practice as evidenced by Shell’s sector-leading example in Doha for its Pearl GTL project and Qatar proudly taking the lead in championing workers’ rights across the region and the world, we have this slow, painful eking out of concessions.
I know perfectly well that the majority of Qataris want the situation to stay as it is. I know that many may feel somewhat overwhelmed by the foreigners in their country, and want some kind of extra control and that any changes would have been unpopular. But the elites have on occasion – rightly, as far as I see it – taken decisions for the betterment of their country that clearly ran against the social current, yet not on this issue.
If Qatar were known for supporting sport, Al Jazeera, mediation, Arab Spring support of varying varieties, and as the hub in the Gulf that guarantees a gold standard of safe, reliable, trustworthy employment practice – and let’s face it, the bar is hardly that high – the rewards on human capital attraction and retention would be immense. Instead, the tortuous process that escalates rancor on both sides will continue as these new proposals wind their way through Qatar’s legal and legislative systems, doubtless shedding credibility and protections as the years go by.
Why an elected Majlis in Qatar will not work 11, May 2014
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Qatar.Tags: Central Municipal Council, democracy, Democracy in Qatar, democracy in the gulf, Kuwait, Kuwaiti parliament, Qatar
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The following Tweet simply and succinctly sums up for me why an elected Majlis in Qatar that actually has any power will not work.
It refers to a story in a local paper here in Doha quoting elected members of Qatar’s toothless ‘Central Municipal Council’ complaining and arguing against a recent hike in the price of diesel fuel. The core of the complaint is that the price hike will effectively be passed on to consumers in one way or another. While there may be some logic to this concern, I am struck by the similarity of this complaint to the exact genre of complaint that has so paralyzed Kuwait’s Parliament in recent decades.
Discussions about democracy in the Gulf unerringly come back to ‘the Kuwaiti example’. In short, though many in the Gulf may admire the relative freedom of action afforded to Kuwaitis and the power of its Parliament, potentially a real check on Emiri authority, few would actually want Kuwait’s system given its lamentable recent experience. As I wrote in 2011, 2012, and 2013 [and I suppose I’m now due to write the same article in 2014], there are fundamental problems at the heart of Kuwait’s democratic style of politics. In short, the issues are:
- A ban on political parties frequently forcing candidates to make their own platform, which are typically so-called ‘service’ platforms i.e. parliamentarians promising to deliver more subsidies and other goodies for their constituents;
- ‘Service’ platforms feed off historical differences in Kuwaiti society: in short, groups enfranchised in recent decades see this as an opportunity for them to get ‘their share’ of Kuwait’s wealth, which has been monopolized by other segments of society who have had far longer access to wealth and power;
- The Prime Minister is appointed and he appoints to the Cabinet. Without the formalized input of the elected Parliamentarians, there is often little ‘buy in’ to the Cabinet and an antagonistic tone is set;
- Before the Arab Spring, Kuwait’s politics was energized by growing youth movements, which were even more catalyzed by the Spring itself, which lent greater impetus to those seeking change and a greater access to wealth;
- The only method available to the Government to keep the show on the road in recent years has been the increasing dispensation of cash. For example, from 2005 to 2013 government wages have risen from $6.7 billion to $17 billion. Though Kuwait’s oil revenues increased during this time period, there have been repeated and increasingly concerned warnings emanating both from within and outwith Kuwait as to the dangers of such levels of spending. The IMF, for example, predict that if the current spending rates are maintained, Kuwait will have exhausted all its oil savings by 2017.
While only some of these factors may be at play in Qatar – there are, for example, no similarly large cleavages in Qatari society as there are in Kuwait – the fundamental issue is the same. Would-be MPs in Qatar, in the absence of political parties, would inevitably fall back on a ‘service’ platform, which as the Kuwait experience has shown all too clearly has a caustic influence on long-term decision making and planning.
How personal politics drive conflict in the Gulf 7, May 2014
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, The Gulf.Tags: Ambassadors, Brotherhood, Gulf region, Ikhwan, Muhammed Bin Zayed, personal politics, Qatar, Saudi relations
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The following article can be found on Steven Cook’s blog over at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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“I love all the countries of the Gulf, and they all love me.” With this less than subtle statement, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the vocal Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood scholar tried to do his part to repair regional relations in the Gulf that have badly frayed in recent weeks. Long-brewing discontent erupted in early March with the unprecedented withdrawal of the Saudi, Emirati, and Bahraini ambassadors from Qatar. Subsequent mediation from Kuwait’s Emir has led the protagonists to the cuspof a modus vivendi, and a vague document has been agreed upon.
But core differences remain. Qatar is alone in the region in providing financial, material, and rhetorical support for popular governance around the Middle East. It can do this because its domestic security is strong and, without internal restrictions to speak of such as a strong Parliament, its elite is unusually unconstrained and capable of pursuing unusual foreign policy tangents such as assiduously supporting the new movements in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Such aid, which has been frequently channeled through Brotherhood connections, resonated favorably across much of the region. This allowed Qatar to play an important role in emerging popular revolts, keeping the autocratic monarchy with no meaningful elections on the right side of wider public opinion, while also laying the foundations for new, potentially close regional relations. Qatar’s Gulf neighbors, however, without as pliant a domestic context and driven by the intention of thwarting new Islamist actors, seek the firm reinstatement of the regional status quo ante.
In November 2013, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah presented Qatar’s new, 33-year-old Emir – a man one-third his age – with a document demanding a total reorientation of Qatar’s foreign policy under the guise of promoting regional security. In the face of conflicting interests between Saudi and Qatar, this was Abdullah’s attempt to cow Qatar and get its renegade regional foreign policy under control; something he had tried but failed to do for decades with Tamim’s father, Hamad. Tamim demurred, but Abdullah was nevertheless led to believe that the Emir had acquiesced to the Saudi leader’s way of thinking. Yet Qatar’s rhetorical support of the Brotherhood continued and Qaradawi stoked ire across the region in early 2014. In January he accused Saudi Arabia’s leaders of not believing in sharia law and he also declared that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has “always been against Islamic rule” prompting its foreign ministry to summon the Qatari ambassador to explain the lack of an official denunciation or apology.
In March of this year, Qatari representatives facilitated the release of thirteen Greek Orthodox nuns held in Syria since in December 2012 with – according to some reports – a ransom of $67 million. From the Saudi perspective this was a clear example of Qatar adversely intervening in the conflict and further fermenting a petri dish in which jihadi groups grow, prosper, and strengthen. Saudi authorities also see Qatar fermenting similar problems in Saudi’s own backyard in Yemen where Doha stands accused of channeling itssupport through the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Al Islah party.
Despite their own material and financial support for suspect groups in such conflicts, Riyadh clearly believes that Qatari actions encourage jihadism, which represents a threat to Saudi security. Given the bitter Saudi experience with domestic terrorism in the mid-2000s and its large, relatively porous borders with Yemen and Iraq, fears are growing in the Saudi elite of the impact or ‘blowback’ of returning, more radicalized, and battle-tested jihadis. This is the reason that the remit of Minister of the Interior Muhammed bin Nayef has recently been extended to cover Syria and Yemen and why the Saudi leadership issued a decree in February making it illegal for their citizens to fight in regional conflicts.
The withdrawal of the ambassadors from Doha had little practical effect. Gulf diplomacy is conducted at a much higher level, but it was a public and unprecedented rebuke. Leaks to the press about the potential Saudi escalation including the cancellation of an impending airline deal by Qatar Airways in Saudi Arabia or potentially closing the land border to Qatar, added to a sense of near naked extortion.
The nature of the mooted compromise agreement that the Kuwaitis hammered out does not augur well for long-term stability. The agreement is thought to demand that Qatar curtails funding for a range of media organizations in the Middle East that are critical of the policies of the Gulf States; expels Brotherhood members currently living in Doha; halts its support of the Brotherhood and the Houthis in Yemen; and stops naturalizing Gulf citizens fleeing states as opposition members or Islamists. Though Qatar has, according to reports, now agreed to implement these statutes, it is difficult to see how Doha could possibly do so without fundamentally shifting its foreign policy, something it is most unlikely to do.
Since the late 1950s Qatar has provided various kinds of support for the Brotherhood. Even without a meaningful religiously based commonality – Qatar being theoretically closer, ironically, to the Saudi interpretation of Islam – Qatar often found Brotherhood members both available and sufficiently qualified to staff its emerging bureaucracies. This filled a basic need, while also allowing the Qataris to diversify away any existing dependency on Saudi Arabia in such matters. The Brothers, who settled in Qatar over the decades, whether notable ideologues like Qaradawi or those with the loosest of affiliation to the group, found Doha to be a safe and secure location. These relationships came into their own during the Arab Spring, when their potential for influence increased, for a time at least. Though the Brotherhood is once more deeply repressed across much of the region and should never be seen as a group in “Qatar’s pocket,” there is an unusually deep connection that has been cultivated over decades.
Qatar enjoys this relationship because neither the Brotherhood nor any similar groups poses a challenge to the country. Indeed, the local Brotherhood branch disbanded itself in 1999. Additionally, Qatari society is so small and close-knit, and the socioeconomic bargain so strong, that the ruling elites feel entirely and understandably comfortable supporting a group that offers an alternative arrangement of government. Saudi Arabia, however, does face a challenge from the Brothers in two ways. Firstly, the Brotherhood offers a competing form of Islamic government, one that was realized for a time in Egypt and that directly challenges Saudi Arabia as the beacon of Islamic governance. Secondly, Saudi Arabia faces politicized Islam as an oppositional force: Discord throughout the Kingdom could be channeled by the Brotherhood and used to confront the royal family. The UAE has similar fears, stemming from the disparities in wealth between Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the northern Emirates. The government also insists that it has rooted out dozens of Brothers who were planning to disrupt the status quo. Equally, the UAE’s de facto leader, Mohammad bin Zayed, is known to have a deep distrust and dislike for the group that directly shapes the state’s policy.
Given that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have recently labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, there is no turning back the clock; their antipathy is now institutionalized state policy. In the aftermath of the ambassadorial withdrawal, dozens of Qataris changed their Twitter profile pictures to photos of the Emir. Qataris – even those who do not support the Brotherhood – were clearly signaling that they would not be bullied into changing their policy. So while Qatar could theoretically change tack and join the bandwagon, such an about-face would be seen as a capitulation and would be received poorly back in Doha. Also, aside from the legacy of the policy toward the Brotherhood in Qatar, if there has been a central theme in the country’s foreign policy in the last twenty-five years it has been one of unambiguously asserting Qatar’s independence from Saudi Arabia. Reasonable accommodation has been made in the past, such as in 2008 when Qatar controlled to a greater degree Al Jazeera coverage of Saudi Arabia to ensure the return of the Saudi ambassador to Doha after a six year absence, but the current proposals seek strategic change. Part of the mooted accord attempting to resolve this latest crisis hints that once more Al Jazeera’s coverage might be on the table and Qaradawi is, for the time being at least, cooperating by toning down his rhetoric. But without precisely the kind of meaningful change that Qatar cannot undertake, relations seem set for an extended cold snap, punctuated by personally-led spurts of anger, potentially peripatetically lurching relations from one mini-crisis to the next.
Al Jazeera mark II 6, May 2014
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Qatar.Tags: Al Arab Al Jadeed, Al-Jazeera, Azmi Bishara, Qatar, Qatar media, Tamim, The New Arab
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It has been known for some time that Qatar has been planning to launch a new news channel based in London. Half of the ‘Al Arab Al Jadeed [The New Arab]’ venture began on 30th March 2014 with the news website, while the expected TV channel is still in the works. Many have puzzled as to why Qatar, which has already spent untold billions on its main broadcaster, Al Jazeera, would sink money into another venture, while other have mocked the decision.
The driving force behind the whole venture is Azmi Bishara. The colorful Doha resident who has seemingly been influential behind the scenes in Doha for some time now and is the head of the Arab Centre for Policy Studies, which is in the process of expanding to become a Masters degree-awarding institution. Under Bishara’s leadership, AL Arab Al Jadeed is thought to provide a counter weight to Al Jazeera Arabic, which unabashedly tows a pro-Muslim Brotherhood line. Despite the mockery, there is a certain logic to this. It strikes me as perfectly sensible for Qatar to attempt to balance out its image as a slavish Ikhwan-supporting state, for that is how it is viewed by some, though the truth is inevitably much more nuanced.
Aside form Al Jazeera, Qatar has long sought to boost its ‘soft power’ – to use the hackneyed phrase – using media. Aside from Al Jazeera, one of the ways that it wanted to boost the Libyan opposition was by establishing Libya al-Ahrar TV station. Qatar is also believed (or rather rumored) to be behind a range of other media ventures elsewhere in the Middle East, such as the Al Jadeed channel in Lebanon. Qatar’s elite clearly feel that as a small country with a minimal ability to project power because it is such a physically small place, using its key resource – cash – to buy asymmetric soft power is a wise investment. This is not such a bad calculation.
As for the more conspiracy minded notions that Emir Tamim is pursuing this Al Arab Al Jadeed venture because his hands are tied when it comes to altering Al Jazeera because it was started by and is somehow still under the ‘protection’ of his father, Hamad bin Khalifah Al Thani, there are more persuasive (and likely) if less entertaining reasons afoot. Firstly, purging Al Jazeera may be too vocal or obvious a sign that Qatar has given in to the Saudi-led tub-thumping, some of which has allegedly demanded that its coverage be altered. Clearly Qatar needs to give some ground, but it wants and needs to do this in as quiet a way as possible. Clearing house at Al Jazeera, though I have argued that it would be a beneficial idea overall, would understandably be an obvious sign of change. Secondly, it is practically impossible to change bureaucracies. They have a profound inertia all of their own. Even in Qatar where the Emir is relatively unconstrained, the leadership has shown over and over again that it prefers to duplicate bureaucracies rather tackle them head-on. Hence the creation of the Supreme Councils over the years to actually make meaningful, effective institutions as opposed trying to reform the old bureaucracies in charge of the same fiefdoms.
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