Qatar Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdul Rehman Al Thani, has come to Islamabad. What he and his entourage will be discussing perhaps will never be made public. But one thing is for sure all is not well in the Middle East and Qatar is feeling the heat of pressure being exerted by four states that is Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Egypt.
Pakistan has tried to remain neutral in the whole situation. Saudi Arabia, however, put Pakistan in a difficult scenario as it asked Pakistan to finally decide which party it was fully supporting. Remember what Bush had said after the 9/11 attack that either you are with us or against us. Albeit, all the challenges that Qatar is facing, it decided to come forward and hold talks regarding this conflict and to gain Pakistan's support, which may be very difficult. Even finding the middle road is difficult as even though we are a nuclear power but we do not have any economic power to assert ourselves especially on rich countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE.
Subsequently, the failure brought as a result of talks held in Doha had Qatar alarmed and decided to proceed in forming affable terms. Rex Tillerson, 69th United States Secretary of State and former energy executive, being utterly aware of the importance of the resource rich Middle Eastern states, tried to bridge this months' old acrimonious dispute among the regional allies. He planned this four-day trip to sort the issues out among Qatar and its isolators, but it went in vain, as none of the anti-Qatar countries were willing to cooperate.
Qatar crisis is being discussed in all the world's top capitals. The accusations of funding terrorism and extremism had Qatar trapped in a very bitter gulf conflict. The rift between Qatar and the anti-Qatar countries is widening by every passing day. These four countries have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and announced air, sea and land blockade. Qatar faces isolation as few states like Turkey and Iran have announced their support to it.
All the ages old grudges that these countries have dwelled upon and this new accusation made by US President Donald Trump in Riyadh supporting Qatar's ties with ISIS and other terrorist organizations has resulted in this huge dissention. Even Tillerson's efforts to resolve issues were unnerved. Either it be Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for accusing Qatar of supporting or strengthening the violation causing shi'ite forces in their countries or UAE and Egypt for raising an allegation of illegally financing extremist Islamic organizations, none from among these is ready to sit together and talk their problems out.
After Donald Trump's accusation, the four countries under the guided leadership of Saudi Arabia severed all the links and ended all the relationships with Qatar. Middle East is a very rich region and it directly and indirectly helps in stabilizing the world order, a conflict among the Middle Eastern states could easily result in destabilizing the world order, thus it was mandatory for world's peace and prosperity to bring these fighting countries together. Qatar hosts largest military base of USA. Rex Tillerson after his visit said Qatar was the very first country to sign a memorandum on tracking the flow of terrorist financing.
This memorandum helped Qatar in earning a positive name as it was seen that Qatar is finally making efforts to come on good terms with its regional neighbours. Complete details of the memorandum weren't exposed but on this occasion US mentioned about its motive being only to stop and eradicate any mark of terrorism as their main motto in interfering is only "War against Terror". Rex Tillerson further mentioned that for the world order to work out in an absolutely justified manner is by optimistically treating and understanding each other as much as possible. He told in an interview that in order to get rid of terrorism and extremism we all need to cooperate as much as possible especially the Middle Eastern states.
Even after trying for long, nothing was achieved, as all the anti-Qatar countries stood firm on their grounds and neglected any ideas of collaboration. It is believed that all the accusations held some ground, as Qatar failed to provide any specific testimony in their defense and these allegations are too much to just forget under a simple memorandum, all these countries claimed that they'd rather not communicate. The claims once made by a Syrian expert that Qatar has neverdirectly funded Al-Qaeda or IS but funded an Al-Qaeda's funded organization Ahrar al-Sham have everyone scared. They even never shared what they want to do in future regarding this conflict as they aren't ready to talk about it, even after being aware of their decision's upcoming consequences.
Conflicts, a simple yet an immensely strong word. This word is enough to cause disruptions amongst families, societies or countries, as had been seen in past. Conflicts force people to act viciously and brutally. That is what anti-Qatar countries are doing right now. The shuttle diplomacy of Rex Tillerson seemed to bring nothing and these countries are not ready to bridge the rising gulf on any grounds. It is predicted that if this divide is not taken care of, then the future might bring a lot more worse.
The writer is a student at Kinnaird College for Women University
The writeup appeared in The Nation
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