▲ View of Doha, the capital of Qatar, from its Islamic Museum [Pixabay].

essay / Sebastián Bruzzone Martínez

I. Introduction. Qatar, emirate of the Persian Gulf.

In ancient times, the territory was inhabited by the Canaanites. From the 7th century A.D., Islam settled in the Qatari peninsula. As in the United Arab Emirates, piracy and attacks on the merchant ships of powers sailing along the coasts of the Persian Gulf were frequent. Qatar was ruled by the Al Khalifa family from Kuwait until 1868, when at the request of the Qatari sheikhs and with financial aid of the British, the Al Thani dynasty was established. In 1871, the Ottoman Empire occupied the country, and the Qatari dynasty recognized Turkish authority. In 1913, Qatar achieved autonomy; three years later, Emir Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani signed a treaty with the United Kingdom to establish a British military protectorate in the region, while maintaining the Emir's absolute monarchy.

In 1968, the United Kingdom withdrew its military force, and the Truce States (United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain) organized the Federation of Emirates of the Persian Gulf. Qatar, like Bahrain, became independent of the Federation in 1971, proclaimed a Constitution provisional, signed a treaty of friendship with the United Kingdom and joined the Arab League and the UN.

The Constitution provisional was replaced by the 2003 Constitution of 150 articles, submitted to referendum and supported by 98% of the voters. It came into force as a fundamental rule on April 9, 2004. It recognizes Islam as the official religion of the State and Sharia law as source of Law (art. 1); the provision of adherence and respect for international treaties, covenants and agreements signed by the Emirate of Qatar (art. 6); the hereditary rule of the Al Thani family (art. 8); executive institutions such as the committee of Ministers and legislative-consultative institutions such as the committee Al Shoura or committee of the Ruling Family. Also included are the possibility of regency through the Trustee Council (arts. 13-16), the institution of the Prime Minister appointed by the Emir (art. 72), the Emir as Head of State and representative of the State in Interior, Foreign and International Relations (arts. 64-66), a sovereign wealth fund (Qatar Investment Company; art. 17), judicial institutions such as the local courts and the Supreme Judicial committee , and its control over the unconstitutionality of laws (137-140)[1], among other aspects.

It also recognizes rights such as private property (art. 27), equality of rights and duties (art. 34), equality of persons before the law without discrimination based on sex, race, language or religion (art. 35), freedom of expression (art. 47), freedom of the press (art. 48), impartiality of justice and effective judicial protection (134-136), among others.

These rights recognized in the Qatari Constitution must be consistent with Islamic law, and thus their application is different from that observed in Europe or the United States. For example, although democracy is recognized as the political system of the State in its article 1, political parties do not exist; and trade unions are prohibited, although the right of association is recognized by the Constitution. Similarly, 80% of the country's population is foreign, with these constitutional rights applying to Qatari citizens, who make up the remaining 20%.

Like the rest of the countries in the region, oil has been a transforming factor in the Qatari Economics . Today, Qatar has a high standard of living and one of the highest GDP per capita in the world[2], and is an attractive destination for foreign investors and luxury tourism. However, in recent years Qatar has been experiencing a diplomatic crisis[3] with its neighboring Persian Gulf countries due to various factors that have condemned the Arab country to regional isolation.

II. The instability of the al thani family

The government of the Emirate of Qatar has suffered great instability due to the internal disputes of the Al Thani family. Peter Salisbury, a Middle East expert at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, spoke of the Al Thanis in an interview for the BBC: "It's a family that initially (before finding oil) ruled a small, insignificant piece of land that was often seen as a small province of Saudi Arabia. But it managed to carve out a position for itself in that region of giants." [4]

In 1972, by means of a coup d'état, Ahmed Al Thani was deposed by his cousin Khalifa Al Thani, with whom Qatar followed an international policy of non-intervention and search for internal peace, and maintained a good relationship with Saudi Arabia. He remained in power until 1995, when his son Hamad Al Thani dethroned him, taking advantage of his absence while he was away in Switzerland. The Saudi government saw this as a bad example for other countries in the region also ruled by family dynasties. Hamad boosted the export of liquefied natural gas and oil, and dismantled an alleged Saudi plan to reinstate his father Khalifa. Countries in the region began to see the "little brother" grow economically and internationally very fast under the new emir and his foreign minister Hamam Al Thani.

The family is structured around Hamad and his wife Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned, who has become an icon of fashion and female prestige of the international nobility, at the level of Rania of Jordan, Kate Middleton or Queen Letizia (precisely the couple is close to the Spanish royal family).

Hamad abdicated to his son Tamim Al Thani in 2013. The latter's ascension was a short-lived breath of hope for the international Arab community. Tamim adopted a very similar international policy position to his father, strengthening rapprochement and economic cooperation with Iran, and increasing tension with Saudi Arabia, which proceeded to close Qatar's only land border. Similarly, according to a WikiLeaks leak in 2009, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan accused Tamim of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, the economic, political, social and even staff rivalry between Qatar's Al Thani and Saudi Arabia's Al Saud goes back decades.

From my point of view, stability and family hierarchy in nations ruled by dynasties is a crucial factor to avoid internal power struggles that consequently have great negative effects for the country's society. Each person has different political, economic and social ideas that take time to implement. Frequent changes without an objective culmination end up being a terribly destabilizing factor. In the international arena, the country's political credibility and rigidity can be undermined when the emir's son carries out a coup d'état while his father is on vacation. Qatar, aware of this, in article 148 of its Constitution sought legislative security and rigidity by prohibiting the amendment of any article within ten years of its coming into force entrance .

In 1976, Qatar claimed sovereignty over the Hawar Islands, controlled by the Bahraini royal family, which became a focus of conflict between the two nations. The same happened with the artificial island of Fasht Ad Dibal, which led the Qatari army to raid the island in 1986. It was abandoned by Qatar in a peace agreement with Bahrain.

III. Alleged support to terrorist groups

This is the main cause why neighboring states have isolated Qatar. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Libya and the Maldives, among others, cut diplomatic and trade relations with Qatar in June 2017 over its alleged funding and support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which it considers a terrorist organization. In 2010, WikiLeaks leaked a diplomatic grade in which the U.S. called Qatar the "worst in the region in subject cooperation to eliminate funding for terrorist groups."

The Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in 1928 with Hassan Al Bana in Egypt, is a political activist and Islamic movement, with principles based on nationalism, social justice and anti-colonialism. However, within the movement there are several currents, some more rigorous than others. The founders of the Muslim Brotherhood see the Education of society as the tool most effective way to reach state power. For this reason, the indoctrinators or evangelists of the movement are the most persecuted by the authorities of the countries which condemn membership of group. It is endowed with a well-defined internal structure, whose head is the supreme guide Murchid, assisted by an executive body, a committee and an assembly.

From 1940, the paramilitary activity of group began clandestinely with Nizzam Al Khas, whose initial intention was to achieve the independence of Egypt and expel the Zionists from Palestine. They carried out attacks such as the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud An Nukrashi. The creation of this special section sentenced final the reputation and violent character of the Muslim Brotherhood, which continued its expansion around the world in the form of Tanzim Al Dawli, its international structure.[5] The Muslim Brotherhood's international structure, the Tanzim Al Dawli, is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Khaled Mashal,[6] former leader of the militant organization Hamas, is in exile in Qatar's capital, Doha, and the Taliban of Afghanistan has a political office. It is important to know that most Qatari citizens are followers of Wahhabism, a puritanical version of Islam that seeks the literal interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah, founded by Mohammad ibn Abd Al Wahhab.

During the political crisis following the Arab Spring in 2011, Qatar supported the Muslim Brotherhood's electoral efforts in North African countries. The Islamist movement saw the revolution as a useful means to gain access to governments, taking advantage of the power vacuum. In Egypt, Mohamed Mursi, linked to the movement, became president in 2013, although he was overthrown by the military. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain negatively rated the support and saw it as a destabilizing Islamist element. In those countries where they were unsuccessful, their members were expelled and many took refuge in Qatar. Meanwhile, in neighboring countries in the region, alarms were raised and every pro-Islamist move by the Qatari government was closely followed.

Similarly, Dutch sources and Human Rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld accused Qatar of financing the Al Nusra Front[7], the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda involved in the war against Al Assad, declared a terrorist organization by the United States and the UN. The Dutch lawyer claimed in 2018 to possess the necessary evidence to prove the flow of Qatari money to Al Nusra through companies based in the country and to hold Qatar judicially responsible before the court in The Hague, for the victims of the war in Syria. It is important to know that, in 2015, Doha obtained the release of 15 Lebanese soldiers, but in exchange for the release of 13 detained terrorists. Other sources claim that Qatar paid 20 million euros for the release of 45 Fijian blue helmets kidnapped by Al Nusra in the Golan Heights.

According to the BBC, in December 2015, Kataeb Hezbollah or Islamic Resistance Movement of Iraq, recognized as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and the United States, among others, kidnapped a group of Qataris who went hunting in Iraq.[8] Among the hunters of the group were two members of the Qatari royal family, the cousin and uncle of Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatari foreign minister since 2016. After 16 months of negotiations, the hijackers demanded a chilling $1 billion from the Qatari ambassador to Iraq to free the hostages. According to Qatar Airways officials, in April 2017 a Qatar Airways plane flew to Baghdad with the money to be delivered to the Iraqi government, which would act as an intermediary between Hezbollah and Qatar. However, the business has never commented on the facts. The official version of the Qatari government is that the terrorists were never paid and the release of the hostages was achieved through a joint diplomatic negotiation between Qatar and Iraq.

Qatar's funding of the armed group Hamas in the Gaza Strip is a real fact. In November 2018, according to Israeli sources, Qatar paid fifteen million dollars in cash as part of a agreement with Israel negotiated by Egypt and the UN, which would cover a total of ninety million dollars split into several payments[9], with the intention of seeking peace and reconciliation between the political parties Fatah and Hamas, considered group terrorist by the United States.

IV. Qatar's relationship with Iran

Qatar has good diplomatic and commercial relations with Iran, mostly Shiite, which is not to the liking of the Quartet (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain), mostly Sunni, especially Saudi Arabia, with whom it maintains an obvious confrontation - subsidiary, not direct - for the predominant political and economic influence in the Persian region. In 2017, in his last visit to Riyadh, Donald Trump asked the countries of the region to isolate Iran because of the military and nuclear tension it is experiencing with the United States. Qatar acts as an intermediary and a turning point between the US and Iran, trying to open the way for dialogue in relation to the sanctions implemented by the American president.

Doha and Tehran have a strong economic relationship around the oil and gas industry, as they share the world's largest gas field, the South Pars-North Dame, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have followed the US lead in their foreign policy agendas vis-à-vis Iran. One of the conditions the Quartet demands of Qatar to lift the economic and diplomatic blockade is the cessation of bilateral relations with Iran, reinstated in 2016, and the establishment of trade conduct with Iran in compliance with U.S.-imposed sanctions.

V. Al Jazeera Television Network

Founded in 1996 by Hamad Al Thani, Al Jazeera has become the most influential digital media in the Middle East. It positioned itself as a promoter of the Arab Spring and was present in the climates of violence in the different countries. As a result, it has been criticized by Qatar's antagonists for its positions close to Islamist movements, for acting as a mouthpiece for the fundamentalist messages of the Muslim Brotherhood and for becoming a vehicle for Qatar's diplomacy. Its closure was one of the requirements requested by the Quartet to Qatar to lift the economic blockade, the transit of people and the opening of airspace.

The United States accuses the network of being the mouthpiece of extremist Islamic groups since the former head of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, began to disseminate his communiqués through it; of being anti-Semitic in nature; and of adopting a position favorable to the armed Hamas group in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In 2003, Saudi Arabia, after several failed attempts to cause the closure of the Qatari television network, decided to create a competing television station, Al Arabiya TV, initiating a disinformation war and vying over which of the two has the most reliable information.

VI. The position of Washington and London

On the one hand, the United States seeks to have a good relationship with Qatar, since there it has the large military base of Al-Udeid, which has an excellent strategic position in the Persian Gulf and more than ten thousand troops. In April 2018, the Qatari emir visited Donald Trump at the White House, who said that the relationship between the two countries "works extremely well" and considers Tamim a "great friend" and "a great gentleman". Tamim Al Thani has stressed that Qatar will not tolerate people who finance terrorism and confirmed that Doha will cooperate with Washington to stop the financing of terrorist groups.

The contradiction is clear: Qatar confirms its commitment to the fight against the financing of terrorist groups, but its track record does not back it up. So far, it has been proven that the small country has helped these groups in one way or another, through political asylum and protection of its members, direct or indirect financing through controversial negotiation techniques, or by promoting political interests that have not been to the liking of its great geopolitical rival, Saudi Arabia.

The United States is the great mediator and impediment to direct confrontation in the tension between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Both countries are members of the United Nations and allies of the United States. Europe and American presidents have been aware that a direct confrontation between the two countries could prove fatal for the region and their commercial interests related to oil and the Strait of Hormuz.

On the other hand, the UK government has remained aloof in taking a position in the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Emir Tamim Al Thani owns 95% of The Shard building, 8% of the London Stock Exchange and Barclays bank, as well as apartments, stocks and shares in companies in the English capital. Qatari investments in the capital of the United Kingdom total around sixty billion dollars.

In 2016, former British Prime Minister David Cameron showed concern about the future when the London mayoralty was held by Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, who has appeared on more than one occasion alongside Sulaiman Gani, an imam who supports the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood.[10] In 2016, former British Prime Minister David Cameron showed concern about the future when the mayoralty of London was held by Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, who has appeared on more than one occasion alongside Sulaiman Gani, an imam who supports the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood.[10

VII. Civil war in Yemen

Since the start of foreign military intervention in Yemen's civil war in 2015, at the request of Yemeni President Rabbu Mansur Al Hadi, Qatar has aligned itself alongside the states of the committee Cooperation for the Arab States of the Gulf (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), backed by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, to create an international coalition to help restore the legitimate power of Al Hadi, who has been under siege since the coup d'état promoted by Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdala Saleh. However, Qatar has been accused of clandestinely supporting the Houthi rebels[11], so the rest of the countries of committee view its actions with great caution.

Today, the Yemeni civil war has become the largest humanitarian crisis since 1945.[12] On August 11, 2019, South Yemeni separatists, backed by the United Arab Emirates, which initially supports al-Hadi's government, seized the port city of Aden, storming the presidential palace and the military instructions . The president, in exile in Riyadh, has called the attack by his allies a coup against the institutions of the legitimate state, and has received direct support from Saudi Arabia. After a few days of tension, the separatists of the Southern Movement left the city.

The Emirates and Saudi Arabia, together with other neighboring states such as Bahrain and Kuwait, of Sunni belief, are seeking to halt the advance of the Houthis, who dominate the capital, Sana'a, and a possible expansion of Shi'ism promoted by Iran through the conflict in Yemen. Likewise, the great geopolitical interest of the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, which connects the Red Sea with the Arabian Sea and is a great alternative to the commercial flow of the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Iran, has an influence. This interest is shared with France and the United States, which seeks to eliminate the presence of ISIS and Al Qaeda from the region.

The day after the capture of Aden, and in the midst of Eid Al-Adha celebrations, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed met in Mecca with Saudi King Salman bin Abdelaziz and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in an apparent effort to downplay the significance of the event, call on the warring parties in the city to safeguard Yemen's interests, and reaffirm regional cooperation and unity of interests between the UAE and Saudi Arabia.[13] The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi has posted on his official Twitter accounts comments and photographs from the meeting in which a positive attitude can be seen on the faces of the leaders.

A contrario sensu, if the partnership and understanding on the Yemen issue between the two countries were total, as they claimed, there would be no need to create an apparently "ideal" image through official communications from the Abu Dhabi government and the publication of images on social networks.

Although the UAE supports the separatists, the latest developments have caused a sense of mistrust, opening the possibility that the southern militias are disregarding Emirati directives and starting to run their own diary in line with their own particular interests. Likewise, foreign sources are beginning to speak of a civil war within a civil war. Meanwhile, Qatar remains close to Iran and cautious about status in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula.