Apparently, other Arab countries, Egypt in particular, do not care for the way Qatar conducts its foreign policy. The United States maintains a large military presence in the Doha area, at Al Udeid Air Base and Camp Al Saliyah; the government has also played host to Iranian delegations. (For a detailed account of Qatar’s supposedly problematic associations, see the Washington Institute’s recent policy brief). As Al-Jazeera is a creation of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, the satellite channel has been taking hits as well, such as the following:
Qatar is acting “as a mediator but it is pretending to be a major power, and it is using Al Jazeera for this purpose,” said Amr Choubaki, an Egyptian analyst. “Qatar created Al Jazeera, but now Al Jazeera is creating Qatar. It’s like when you build a robot and eventually lose control of it and it controls you.”
Yikes.
But Qatar’s ‘rogue’ attitude toward diplomacy – namely, forging alliances with countries that the Arab collective considers problematic – is certainly not without precedent. One need only reflect very briefly to think of similar “treasons” … Anwar Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel would probably be at the top of the list. Moreover, Qatar is not the only Arab country hedging its bets as it attempts to navigate a middle ground between Saudi and Iranian influence; today’s Business Week indicates that Oman is charting a similar course. Politics invariably makes for strange bedfellows; the idea that Arab countries’ interests coincide has long since been eroded.
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