In a shattered Middle East, fractured by civil wars, political rivalries and the Covid-19 pandemic, a glimmer of hope arose, Monday, January 4, from the emirate of Kuwait, at the end of the Gulf Persian. In a televised address at the end of the afternoon, the minister of foreign affairs of this petromonarchy, Sheikh Ahmed Nasser Al-Sabah, announced “The reopening of airspace as well as land and sea borders between Saudi Arabia and Qatar as of this evening ”.
Expected for several weeks, the result of a mediation mission carried out jointly by Kuwait and the United States, this declaration de facto put an end to the semi-blockade imposed for three and a half years on Qatar by its Gulf neighbors. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, joined by Egypt, cut off all trade and political relations with Doha in June 2017, in retaliation for the peninsula’s refusal to align with their positioning diplomatic anti-Iran and anti-Muslim Brotherhood.
Relations had been broken since 2017 in retaliation for Doha’s refusal to align with anti-Iran stance
Qualified for “Troublemaker”, “agent of Tehran” and even “Support for terrorism”, Qatar found itself in near quarantine, banished from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the club of petromonarchs of the Arabian Peninsula. This crisis, of unprecedented gravity, which was not far from degenerating into armed clashes, increased the destabilization of the region, already battered by the rise in tensions between Iran and the United States.
But a new page now opens. The Emir of Qatar, Tamim Al-Thani, was scheduled to participate in person at the GCC summit on Tuesday in AlUla, a grandiose tourist site in northern Saudi Arabia. The lifting of retaliatory measures from Riyadh, which had locked its land border with the small gas emirate and banned Qatar Airways aircraft from its airspace, convinced Sheikh Tamim to visit the kingdom, a first since schism of June 2017.
“Restoring cohesion”
In exchange for this major concession, Qatar agreed to freeze all legal proceedings launched against its neighbors, in particular at the International Court of Justice. The parties also agreed to put a damper on the media guerrilla war they have waged for more than three years through their respective channels and social networks. By means of this arrangement, which surely contains other clauses, kept secret for the moment, the CCG hoped to celebrate in AlUla its rediscovered unity, at least in appearance.
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