Gulf feuds provide backdrop to Arab summit


Issue 966 - 20 Mar 2014 | 5 minute read

What a difference a year makes. On 26 March 2013, the annual summit of the League of Arab States took place in Doha, where then emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani symbolically installed the Syrian opposition in Damascus’ seat (GSN 944/3). The summit, well attended by the Gulf leadership, was seen as a strategic success for Qatar, a sign of its regional leadership and of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)’s centrality to post-2011 Arab politics. Events in the region since have shattered any illusion of regional cohesion. Syria’s seat will again be empty, the opposition too disorganised to claim it, the war still raging. The overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected president (GSN 951/1) and attempts to crush the Muslim Brotherhood have split the GCC, with Qatar on one side, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain on the other (GSN 965/1).

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