Of English idiomatic expressions, one of the commonest in our everyday parlance in Nigeria is: the pot calling the kettle black. To my mind, this expression has best captured amongst key countries of the Arabian Peninsula; if at all the Sheikhdoms can be categorized as countries according to some international relations experts. I once heard Professor Fred Halliday of the London School of Economics said that Saudi Arabia is not a country but a family business. The scholar has talked in the context of brewing instability, western interventionism, escalating conflict between occupied Palestine and Israel and the attendant consequences with the emergence of Islamic Republic of Iran on the scene. Using all measurable yardsticks, Halliday is an esteemed scholar worth his name. I believe Halliday has his own good reasons for categorizing Saudi Arabia as such.
As it is, the fate of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two Arab nations that have locked horns, is inextricably linked. Nobody doubts that the two sheikhdoms are intertwined by their common history, shared values, social orientation, culture and ideology. Above all, geographical contiguity is another factor that makes it impossible for anyone to contemplate putting wedge between the two countries as Donald Trump seeks to do now. Trump seems to think he could achieve divide and conquer policy for American imperialism as he prods the two nations to tear themselves apart for all he cares. That is, if that will eventually push both oil rich countries to utilize a significant percentage of their petrodollars for the purchase of more arms from American death merchants. I am not surprised at all to see Trump taunting the two soul brothers to break their ties through his infamous tweets.
After all, he has just secured $380 billion deal, a proportion of which is humongous $110 billion arms deal, spread over a period of ten years. With this development, we really need to keep our ears very close to the ground. In another couple of weeks we are likely to hear more rounds of visits to the region by either the American Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson or the Defense Secretary, retired United States Marine Corps General James Mattis or other European statesmen to Qatar and other tinier Sheikhdoms. The purpose is mainly to secure more deals on arms, oil and gas concessions to companies in the United States and Europe. Such is the way of the corporate outfits. The movers and shakers of the global order have no compunction whatsoever outside the blind pursuit of naked material interests. Western foreign policy in the Middle East is basically characterized by this act of merry-go-round.
The current disquiet of some Persian Gulf states and Egypt over the behavior of Qatar in the battle for supremacy by some of the wealthier members of the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) is nothing but hot air. Otherwise, how would anybody following events in the Middle East believe Saudi Arabia in its charge that Qatar is the main sponsor of terrorism? Laughable, isn’t it? However, we need to be convinced with better reasons that make Saudi Arabia to scapegoat Qatar. Its unsavory reputation and low performance on its human rights scorecard apart, Saudi Arabia’s heaping of blame on its friend and ally Qatar means only one thing, and, that is, there is need for fresh approach to a bad strategy gone awry.
The other thing going against Saudi Arabia, which is acknowledged by keen observers, is that the country has not an iota of respect for any international convention beyond its own obdurate, often irrational, viewpoint. So far, Saudi Arabia is one authoritarian nation in the world that is holding the trophy of intolerance to dissent, difference and opposition. This of course is the orientation that it seeks to export within and without its borders. Saudi Arabia can glibly afford to open its mouth wide to accuse its friends and allies in the region, not just Qatar, of sponsoring and funding terrorism since it is doing so with the blessing of the masters of the universe. As this theatre of the absurd progresses uninterrupted on the Middle Eastern stage, Saudi Arabia will definitely attract headlines from major global media outlets that are somehow finding it difficult to digest its accusations on Qatar. Is Qatar really the sole sponsor and funder of what the western world conveniently chose to call Islamic terrorism?
Whatever it is, I can tell you that Saudi Arabia is desperate, because it is not having it easy lately in its ill-advised military adventures. The series of setbacks trailing its geostrategic ambitions in the region and in the rest of the Muslim world are until recently exposing its soft underbelly. Even though the modern desert kingdom was created in 1932 as part of the age-old western colonialist ploy to dismember and weaken Islamic territories, the roots of Saudi Arabia went back as far as 1744 when the marriage between Muhammad ibn Saud, the tribal leader of the town of Ad-Diriyyah near Riyadh and Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, was consummated. Before then, Saudi Arabia used to be under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Caliphate. It was deliberately created as a sovereign entity in the earlier part of the 20th century by the dominant western powers of Britain, France and United States. The objective of such imperialist meddling in the Muslim lands was to undermine the powers of the Ottomans, which at the point had already been in decline, and eventually to plant the Zionist state of Israel in Palestine after the Second World War.
The Wahhabi ideology is extended to other parts of the world with the conscious backing of western powers. This ideology was used to repress all other Islamic tendencies in the region and beyond. Wahhabis then took total control of the Hejaz area, including Mecca and Medina. The indispensable influence of fossil fuel to modern civilization has immeasurably made it possible for the Saudi ruling family in conjunction with intolerant puritanical Wahhabi clergy to embark on the gargantuan project of spreading the gospel of its brand of Islam on a global scale. Henceforth, this brand of Islam started making inroads throughout the Muslim world and beyond. Billions of petrol dollars were sunk by the Saudis to build Islamic centers, schools, mosques and charity projects with the intent of promoting Wahhabi Islamic denomination across Muslim and non-Muslim lands throughout the 20th century.
This development was intensified by the threat of Shi’a Islam that made its debut with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Saudi Arabia considers such resurgence as the worst threat to its singular ambition of dominating the Islam of majority Sunnis. And before you know it, the Middle East itself has been reduced to a theatre for contending loyalties between powers and peoples that are sympathetic to either Sunni Islam gravitating towards a new center in Saudi Arabia or Shi’a Islam with its base in Iran, and Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Increasingly, the sinus of future conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and other parts of the world has already been sketched. As a result, Palestinian and Israeli conflict is surreptitiously pushed to the background. New so-called culture war is now brought into the mix to befuddle unreflective minds. Postmodern faith-based identities have induced conflicts between Muslims and Muslims of different orientations, and between Muslims and other faith communities.
Unfortunately for us Muslims, we cannot see through this geopolitical power game being staged by imperialism with the clarity it deserves. Instead of harnessing the prospects of our diversity and differences for positive enhancement of our wellbeing, we have allowed ourselves to be divided by opponents of Islamic faith as we railroaded ourselves into worthless engagements. Muslims are today characterized by mutual disagreements, crisis, conflict and violence. Forces and influences from within and without the house of Islam are responsible for engineering not just this confused state of affairs but playing one Muslim group against another as those the catastrophe pays reap the benefits of our divisions and collective weaknesses. Zbigniew Brzezinski doctrine of containment is being unfurled.
This is the context to appraise Saudi Arabia’s accusations of Qatari’s funding of terror groups. In any case, this is also not the first time we are seeing strained relationships between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The first time was in 2014. It is all about battle for supremacy in the Arab world. Qatar was poised to challenge Saudi Arabia’s leadership bid in the Arab world, or in the Arabian Peninsula to be precise. After the first squabble, the two nations had to proceed from there to mend fences in the face of what they saw as existential threats from other regional hegemons like Iraq, Syria and Iran. With Iran-Iraq war, Saudi Arabia gave its support to Iraq – a fellow Arab nation. But with United States-led coalition against Iraq, Saudi Arabia supported United States. In fact, Saudi Arabia has all alone been supporting Israel against the Palestinian cause. During the Arab Spring while Saudi Arabia opposed popular upheaval across Arab nations, Qatar however lent its support.
On the actual support of the so-called Islamic terrorist groups, both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have their hands drenched in blood. Saudi Arabia is apparently the spiritual and ideological hub of the Islam that ISIS and Al-Qaida profess. In addition, ISIS extremists get huge support from wealthy individuals and groups. It is on record that Saudi Arabia was the home of 17 terrorists involved in the September 9/11 attack on New York twin towers. Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaida, was from Saudi Arabia. ISIS started its terror campaign in Iraq with active connivance of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. As ISIS extended its campaign to Libya and Syria and Egypt, there appeared to be inevitable collusion between the two countries as they openly supplied rival groups with arms, material and finances.
It does not surprise me to see Saudi Arabia branding Qatar as the main supporter of terrorism (a charge leveled against Iran by Saudi Arabia, Israel and United States before now) in the Middle East barely a week after Donald Trump’s visit to the country. And this has happened at a point when Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen is not particularly going as planned, when ISIS is being defeated in both Syria and Iraq, and when there is growing uncertainty on the formation of Arab NATO even with the active support of America. As Saudi Arabia is panicky and therefore looking for reassurances from its Sunni alliances, Qatar is doing everything possible to reassert its sovereignty, to realign itself with entities considered as mortal enemies of the kingdom. At the root of all this is the invisible hand of United State and Israel working to ensure that Muslims remained divided. Trump’s prodding of Saudi Arabia against Qatar and Avigdor Liebermann, Israel Minister of Defense’s suggestion that his country be made to replace Qatar in Saudi Arabia’s strange anti-extremist, anti-terror coalition, is enough an indication that the entire house of Islam is on the verge of imploding. To this end, as the conflagration and violence in the Middle East continues unabated, your guess on the outcome is as good as mine.
Mr Liman is professor of Comparative Literature and Popular Culture at Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria
