Category: Gulf

Last weekend I had my first visit to Qatar. I went to participate in a two-day conference there, that was co-organized by UNESCO and the office of Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned to mark World Press Freedom Day.
Sheikha Mozah is a most remarkable woman. She would be in any society– but she certainly stands out in the socially very conservative states on the Arab coast of the Gulf.
She’s the second of three wives of Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and she’s used that position to play a huge role in the life of her country and– increasingly– globally, too.
Her dad, Nasser Abdullah al-Missned, was reportedly quite a bit of an Arab nationalist. Definitely a modernizer– which in the context of Qatar’s deeply Wahhabi-influenced society is/was really something. (I’m not sure if he’s still alive?) I gather he– and she– had to spend quite a but of time outside Qatar when she was growing up.
Her husband, Sheikh Hamed, deposed his father in 1995 during what’s described as a “bloodless coup.” That was at the time when US military planners were looking for an alternative to Saudi Arabia to base their troops. Soon after the “coup”, Qatar started hosting one big US base; it now has two. A large proportion of the forward operations of US CENTCOM are run out of Al-Udeid base. I think that includes the rear-base “piloting” of many of the killer drones used in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But Sheikh Hamed and his wife have, if you like, “balanced” the support they’ve given to the US military by also supporting the fiercely independent Al-Jazeera news operation that has, imho, transformed the global information environment by breaking the monopoly the “west” once had on the gathering and transmittal of breaking news.
That is no small achievement. Other laudable contributions the present regime in Qatar has made to international life have included:

1. Their pursuit of very constructive peacemaking initiatives in Lebanon, Darfur, and elsewhere.
2. The support they have given– at the global level– to furthering the realization of such goals as press freedoms, freedom of expression, and democratization.
3. The generous and often visionary aid they have given to distressed communities in Palestine and elsewhere.

However…. Well, all these things are laudable and very helpful at the global level. But I am still troubled by several aspects of the political/social climate within Qatar itself. There is, of course, the hosting of the big US military presence. But there is also a domestic climate of notable press and political un-freedom that’s in stark contrast to the liberal and modernizing profile Qatar presents– and with some good reason– internationally…
Also, as in all the Arab Gulf states, there is the near-total reliance of the nationals on always vulnerable term-contract migrant labor to do just about all the real jobs– apart from the decisionmaking jobs and the internal-security jobs– that get done in Qatari society.
That gives the place an unmistakeably apartheid-y feel. Even though all the migrant workers I encountered in my short time there were pleasant and very competent, a couple pf the migrant service-workers responded to my friendly enquiries with some complaints about the terms of their employment. There are scores of thousands of professional-level migrant workers there, too. (Interestingly, Iraqi expats seem largely to have displaced Egyptian expats in many of these positions over the past few years. Some people told me the loss of those opportunities for– and remittances from– Egyptian migrant workers is one reason for the Egyptian government’s current displeasure with Doha.)
I think I understand a good part of the challenge that Qatar and the other small states of the Gulf face. They want to develop their own countries as much and as rapidly as they can. They have the capital needed to do amazing kinds of development. But they don’t have the native manpower; so they import it.
At least, in Qatar, the regime (Sheikh plus Sheikha) seem deeply committed to developing their own human resource-base as rapidly and effectively as they can. They also– unlike most other states in the Gulf– seem committed to doing this while also working on developing a modern, specifically Arabic-cultured and pan-Arab scientific and information infrastructure.
Very interesting.
In pursuit of this latter goal, Sheikha Mozah went to Baghdad on Thursday, to discuss several initiatives she’s been working on, in conjunction with UNESCO, to try to rebuild Iraq’s once-proud educational system at all levels.
Look at her in the center of the picture there, being rushed into one of her meetings in cargo pants, a flak jacket and hard hat.
She is one gutsy and dedicated woman!
Back on January 14, she led a peaceful march in central Doha calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

This is truly a hysterically funny (or tragic) joke. The ruling authorities in Qatar, ever eager to be taken seriously as “intellectual power-houses” in the Gulf region, are holding their 8th annual “Doha Forum on Democracy, Development, and Free Trade.”
And guess who they invited to Doha to speak on these weighty topics? No less an expert than the Foreign Minister of the government that is systematically trying to quash democracy and development in Gaza by the systematic strangling of the Gaza Strip’s free trade.
Do the Qataris have any sense of realism and of the meaning of words?
Or do they merely have a too-highly developed sense of irony? (I doubt that this is the explanation.)
For what it’s worth, Qatar itself is no great exemplar of the ideals and practices of democracy.
And nor is Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni any kind of intellectual power-house.
In her address to the forum she parroted the same, quite contentless and mendacious kind of rhetoric about the struggle in the Middle East being between “moderates” and “extremists” that the US occupation authorities test-drove in Iraq about 18 months ago, to little good effect.
AP’s Barbara Surk reports that,

Livni told delegates at a democracy and trade conference in Qatar that Israel and Arab states are mired in the same struggle with extremists who “refuse to recognize our democratic rights.”

Quite idiotic. She’s talking to Qataris about “democratic rights”? And that, while her government continues to stamp down on the democratic rights of the Palestinians? How could anyone sit there and listen to her with a straight face?

Jim Lobe suggests that the Pentagon’s release last Tuesday of a fear-inducing report (backed up by audio and video) of Iranian patrol boats allegedly threatening US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf may have been part of a sophisticated ploy by the military (as opposed to civilian) leaders there to force the administration to conclude an “incidents at sea” agreement with the Iranian navy. Such an agreement would most likely include the kind of hot-line agreement I have been arguing for for a long time, but would probably also go further than that in defining procedures to de-escalate any tensions that may arise from the close operations of these two navies in the Gulf and in particular in their narrow entry channel, the strategically vital Straits of Hormuz.
I blogged here yesterday about the seriousness of the “scare video” incident, the need for urgent and full congressional investigations into who released the misleading video footage on Tuesday and why, and the need to prevent further unintended escalations through the establishment of a secure hotline between the two navies.
Lobe writes:

I wonder whether this was the Pentagon’s equivalent of the intelligence community’s NIE on Iran’s nuclear program.
… [T]he timing of the Pentagon’s decision to publicize what really an apparently not-particularly-threatening incident involving Revolutionary Guard speedboats is particularly intriguing as I suspect there have been more serious incidents in the recent past. [HC comment: there have been.] Frustrated until now in their efforts to get the White House to authorize negotiations over a new agreement, could it be that [Centcom chief Adm William] Fallon (who worked very hard to improve military ties — sometimes over the objections of Donald Rumsfeld — with China as the commander of the Ninth Fleet), Cosgriff, and other Pentagon and Navy officials decided to dramatize the danger just as Bush was embarking on his trip, anticipating that the president would get an earful from his Gulf state hosts about their fears that a naval confrontation could quickly escalate into a real war in which they would suffer significant collateral damage?

An interesting hypothesis, to be sure. Also, if this was indeed the back-story, then the fact that Secdef Gates backed up the seriousness of the brass’s warnings about this event could also mean he supports their campaign to win an “incidents at sea” agreement.
Lobe also very helpfully links to this September column by the always well-informed David Ignatius, who wrote:

America’s top military commanders in the Gulf favor an “incidents at sea” agreement with Iran that would reduce the danger of a confrontation… An unexpected opportunity for discussion occurred last weekend, when Central Command’s naval chief, Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, appeared on a panel with the brother of the commander of the Revolutionary Guard. This chance encounter at a Geneva meeting of the International Institute for Strategic Studies should be pursued.
The United States and Iran are playing a game of “chicken” in the Middle East. A collision would be ruinous for both. Each side needs to be careful to avoid miscalculation and to act in ways that avert a crackup.

If the Lobe version of this incident is correct, then I would judge that issuing the very misleading, if not actually mendacious, “scare video” on Tuesday was still an extremely unwise and inflammatory thing for these guys– or anyone else in the Pentagon– to do. Not least because the US presidential campaign is now in full swing, and any hints that Iranian naval forces might be preparing a showdown with the massive US naval presence in the Gulf can clearly be expected to be demagogued to the hilt by the candidates– especially those on the Republican side.
This McClatchy report (hat-tip Juan Cole) from a GOP debate in South Carolina gives us a taste of how the GOP hopefuls dealt with the issue. Only the admirable Ron Paul retained some sense of good sense and dignity. He referred directly to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and said, “I would certainly urge a lot more caution than I’m hearing here tonight.” Candidate Mitt Romney then “cracked that Paul should stop reading Iranian propaganda.” (Ho, ho, ho. Why am I not amused?)
Well, the crucial goal I see in all this is still the establishment of a much more robust deconfliction regime in the crowded naval arena of the Gulf. Certainly including a hot-line agreement but also, yes, a broader “incidents at sea” agreement would be good, too. I don’t know how broad an agreement can be reached there in the absence of much broader political discussions between Washington and Tehran over the whole range of their current disagreements. But surely, at the very least, they could agree to establish a secure, dedicated channel of communication that is not subject to the same kind of external intrusion/intervention that their existing channels are.
As to the prospect of congressional investigations– yes, I still think these would be excellent. But they should focus as much on the urgent need for a hotline and other deconfliction mechanisms going forward as on investigating the still very murky past history of the compiling, authorizing, and issuance of the scare video.

Another important point about Iran today. Remember how so much of the spin about the Annapolis meeting focused on the fact that this was a big sign that the Gulf Arab states had now “bought” the whole US-Israeli narrative about how Iran was now the main threat in the region?
Well, it so happens that the six conservative Arab Gulf rulers whose states are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are holding one of their regular summit meetings– in Doha, Qatar– and who should their main invited guest be? You guessed: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, invited to the GCC summit for the first time ever.
That report from Reuters and AP tells us that

Ahmadinejad, who was escorted to the red-carpet welcome at the meeting by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, invited the other leaders to Tehran to discuss his proposal, which includes unspecified cooperation in the nuclear field and the training of Gulf scientists in Iran.
Ahmadinejad suggested a number of initiatives, including canceling requirements for visas to travel between the countries, establishing joint oil and gas projects, and cooperating on environmental protection and technology…

No takers on the proposal yet, it seems. But it does make all the neocon/Israeli schemes of building a united US-Israeli-Arab coalition against Iran seem just a little hallucinatory.

I’ve just been writing a sidebar text on “Outcomes in Iraq and the Gulf” for my new book. The book is about the big-picture, slightly longer-term global fallout from the US’s ongoing debacle in Iraq, so that’s why in Chapter 1 Iraq and the Gulf get only a sidebar.
Anyway, I was thinking in particular about the possible range of outcomes that the US’s notable overstretch-and-later-defeat in Iraq might have on the geopolitics of the Gulf region. And the more I think about it, the more likely it seems to me that the outcome for the US’s until-now strategically dominant position in the Gulf will be analogous to the outcome that ensued there (albeit in a long-drawn-out way) from Britain’s notable similar (strategic) defeat in Egypt, in 1956.
Regarding Britain, until 1956 it seemed generally uncontested by any other significant world powers that Britain would keep a sizeable naval presence “east of Suez”, including its bases in Hong Kong, Aden, etc; and also that it would keep its position as the dominant naval power in the strategically vital Persian/Arabian Gulf.
In 1956, Anthony Eden notably overplayed Britain’s hand and joined with France and Israel in the tripartite invasion of Egypt’s Suez region. Those invasion/occupation forces were not driven out of Suez (and Sinai and Gaza) primarily through by the national liberation actions of the local people. But they were forced to withdraw completely from those areas under US pressure, in the broader global context of the US muscling into many third-world areas to displace the previous European colonial hegemons (and also, in the context of the US placing huge pressures on the Soviet Union to withdraw the troops it had sent into Hungary against the locally-based uprising there.)
Be that as it may… Eden’s participation in the Suez affair marked the beginning of the end for Britain’s ability to maintain its own robust naval presence east of Suez. Over the 14 years that followed Britain was able to conclude political arrangements with the local leaders of the city-states along the southern coast of the Gulf who had previously supported Britain’s naval presence there: these “emirs” were given “national independence” over their city-states, and thus we saw the emergence of the “states” of Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and for the seven even smaller local emirs, who banded together in something called the United Arab Emirates…
The US Navy was meanwhile increasing its abilities to maintain a strong naval presence in the Gulf; and essentially what happened was that as the exhausted crews of the Royal Navy steamed home, the bigger ships of the US Navy glided into the waters they had left.
That all took quite some time to happen, though. 14 years to be precise. The Gulf’s littoral (coastline) states had very little say in the matter.
So now, what might be the range of things that we see in the Gulf in the years after the exhausted US ground forces exit from Iraq?
I’d like to underline here something I think I should start stressing a bit more, namely that the longer the US government delays its withdrawal from Iraq, the worse– from the point of view of “the US national interest”, as it has traditionally been conceived, though not necessarily from the viewpoint of the actual, longterm interests of the US citizenry– will be the general strategic terms on which it is able to undertake this withdrawal.
That is, after all, the nature of quagmires, imbroglios, and imperial overstretch in general.
So I think we should all look rather seriously at the idea that the UN should plan to build and deploy a maritime policing capacity for the Gulf, and that that may well be the very best outcome. It seems highly anomalous that the US– which is half way around the world from this Gulf– should arrogate to itself the “right” to police the whole Gulf area. The only other current even near-contender for this role is Iran, which is overwhelmingly the most strategically weighty of the littoral states. Actually, though, looking at my copy of The Military Balance, I see that the Iranian Navy looks fairly puny. It has three Kilo-class submarines, three frigates, three corvettes, and few much smaller vessels…
More to the point, though, there would be numerous significant states, both in and far beyond the Gulf, that would strongly distrust Iran’s commitment to running a fair and safe maritime security regime in the whole Gulf. Hence, my suggestion that we should think of building the UN’s capacity to do this job.
I’ll just note here– as I noted in the sidebar I wrote this morning– that the littoral states of the Gulf, as well as everyone else around the world who is connected to the world oil market, all have a shared interest in the Gulf and its approaches being well policed. The Gulf states need to export their oil and to import the many other necessities of daily life on which they have become dependent– and the oil-importing countries need those sea-lanes open, too. So from one point of view, thinking of the UN having the maritime policing responsibility seems like an obvious solution.
On the other hand, the UN has never done anything like this before. So the capacity would have to be built up over a number of years. Who could contribute? All the littoral states should have some good contribution, according to their capacities. Beyond there, South Africa has quite a lot of experience in this field. So do a number of European and Asian powers.
(I just saw this piece in Asia Times in 2004, in which Eric Koo was suggesting a very similar UN maritime-policing role in South East Asia. He was wrong, though, I think to describe the UN as “a centralized, neutral body with considerable naval capabilities”. Neutral– arguably so. But centralized? Having considerable naval capabilities? I don’t think so!)
I also saw this entry on Maritime Security Regimes in Wikipedia. The author gives a little bit of good basic background. But s/he concludes, “the dearth of literature on Maritime Security Regimes, particularly maritime policing, International Agreements and Interstate Maritime Cooperation suggests more research is required.”
Indeed.

A great post on the Bahraini blog Chan’ad Bahraini about the big demonstration there last Saturday in favor of “Constitutional Reform First!”
50,000 or so people from a national population of 400,000 is no mean feat. (Plus, in all these proportion-of-population assessments you have to remember that–in societies where many people are still young children– very few of those youngsters get hauled along to participate… Except in the Israeli-settler demonstrations.)
“Chan’ad” (it’s the name of a local fish) describes himself as an Asian born in Bahrain. He evidently speaks and writes Arabic, and seems well-clued-in.
Saturday’s demonstration was organized by the Shiite-Islamist group, Al-Wefaq (the agreement). In that post I linked to above you can see some great pictures of it, apparently taken by Chan’ad.
In this post from last Wednesday, Chan’ad writes very interestingly about Wefaq and about the relative political quiescence of all the other supposedly “oppositionist” organizations in Bahraini society:

Not only is Al Wefaq the most popular political society on the island, but these days it is also the most active one. If you have been following recent activities you may have noted that Wefaq has provided support (logistic or moral) to the causes of the BahrainOnline detainees, State Security torture victims, the BCHR discrimination report, constitutional reform, and even for the protection of the Tubli Bay mangroves.
I commend Al Wefaq for supporting these important causes, and I also credit the Wefaq high order for recognizing the political value that this gives them. However I can’t give my full support to the party because Al Wefaq is an Islamist group, and I disagree with them in principle. But it leads to the question… where is everyone else??!! Are there no other political players to compete with Al Wefaq? In particular, I’m thinking about the National Democratic Action Society (NDA), since it is the largest political society without a religion driven agenda. Their presence in supporting all the grassroots human rights and social causes is miniscule compared to that of Wefaq.
Yes, they usually issue a statement in support of something… and sometimes they even hold a seminar… but their physical presence is rarely seen on the street. Whenever there is a protest for something you can be sure to see Wefaq leaders Ali Salman or Dr Abduljalil Sengase (of recent controversy) on the scene. But the only time I have ever seen another group make their presence known at one of these events was during the Victims of Torture demonstration last June, in which a small troupe of NDA supporters wore yellow headbands and held a banner with the party name at the bottom. But since then, nothing.
I’d like to see more political societies take an interest in these events, sponsor/co-sponsor them or encourage their supporters to show up, and to make their presence known when they get there. Not only is it morally right to support some of these causes, but it is also in the interests of the party. And come 2006, this will provide more choice for a voter concerned about human rights and social issues…

Chan’ad also gives serious attention to another key aspect of rights-abuse situation in all Gulf emirates and many other Middle eastern societies as well: the issue of immigrant workers. See this from Sunday, and this from Monday.
Btw, chapeau to Head Heeb Jonathan for sending me to Chan’ad.