https://www.bloomberg.com/
Persian Gulf neighbors are estranged over how to confront Islamic radicalism. Resolution would strike a blow for moderation.
Last June, a quartet of staunch U.S. allies in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain — launched a boycott of another key U.S. partner, Qatar. President Donald Trump rushed to take the Saudi side with a tweet accusing Qatar of supporting terrorists, before eventually reversing course and positioning himself as a peacemaker.
Meanwhile, the boycott goes on, with the Trump administration caught in the middle of what Washington conventional wisdom has come to regard as a petty spat between rival desert chieftains.
The clumsy diplomatic balancing act is unlikely to succeed because it ignores what’s really going on: nothing less than a struggle to reshape mainstream Arab political culture, especially regarding Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood.
All five countries oppose ultra-terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State, which seek the destruction of existing Arab and Islamic states.
But that’s not the case when it comes to a network of less extreme groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. These organizations seek to take over, not immediately obliterate, the governing institutions of existing countries. Their revolutionary strategies are essentially Leninist, operating simultaneously above and below legal ground, and generally preferring mass political mobilization over terrorism that can alienate majorities.
Qatar supports Brotherhood groups throughout the region with money and advocacy by its vast media arsenal, which includes Al Jazeera television. Qataris argue that these are not only legitimate political parties but an indispensable alternative to radicalism, since without supposedly “moderate” Islamist groups like the Brotherhood, religious conservatives are more likely to be drawn into the orbit of violent extremists.
The Saudi-led quartet rejects this. To the contrary, they argue, these so-called “moderates” don’t present an acceptable alternative to radicalism but rather pull politically-oriented fundamentalists down a path toward extremism.
The Muslim Brotherhood, they argue, shares key assumptions and long-term ambitions with overtly terrorist groups, including the goal of re-establishing a caliphate. This view holds that Brotherhood ideology is a crucial source of the logic and substance of terrorist creeds, and thus is a cause of deadly political cancer. The quartet accuses Qatar and Turkey of leading a Sunni Islamist camp that competes with both the Arab mainstream and Iran’s Shiite alliance.
Qatar views the less extreme end of the Islamist ideological spectrum as legitimate and necessary, while the quartet sees the entire spectrum as intolerably dangerous.
There are many ironies at work. Some members of the quartet, particularly Saudi Arabia, have their own history of supporting intolerant versions of Islam. And Qatar couches its support of Islamists in terms of liberal values such as democracy and free speech, which it makes no pretense of practicing at home. Moreover, Qatar’s monarchy doesn’t embrace an Islamist ideology for itself. And its media also promote secular, revolutionary and typically leftist pan-Arab nationalism.
Qatar says it’s merely providing a platform for a range of otherwise suppressed Arab voices. Its critics say it’s pandering to demagogic populism of both the far left and ultra-right.
The quartet is essentially seeking to ensure that Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamism is viewed by the Arab mainstream as part of the same extremist fringe as more violent groups like al-Qaeda, and thus should be subjected to similar social stigmas and legal sanctions. Hence, they accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism and cast their boycott as a counter-terrorism initiative.
The U.S. has military bases in countries on both sides, but there’s more at stake than defense commitments.
While Trump initially sided with the quartet, the Pentagon and State Department have been committed to maintaining, and even strengthening, ties with Qatar. The administration now seems to be trying to shore up cooperation with both Qatar and the quartet, and is urging a resolution of the dispute, but without addressing its underlying causes.
Qatar says it’s sticking up for American-style values. The quartet accuses Qatar of being a megaphone, haven and cash machine for terrorism and extremism and, in part because of its enthusiasm for revolutionary groups, a de facto ally of Iran.
Washington has two basic options.
It could let the standoff drag on until the parties decide on their own to resolve it, and only insist that they cooperate just enough to support U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf. This seems to be the current policy.
Or it could seek to mediate a resolution that addresses the political and ideological core of the argument. Otherwise, Qatar’s adversaries are likely to continue the boycott, which they can live with much more easily than Qatar.
In 2013 and 2014, Qatar agreed to curb its advocacy of extremist groups and tone down radicalism in its media, but it never followed through. Working toward a formula for enforcing these existing agreements could be an effective and mutually face-saving formula for key American allies to come back together on reasonable terms while strengthening a moderate center in contemporary Arab politics.