by VIJAY PRASHAD
Things are not looking good for Qatar under its new emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, age 33. This weekend, a Qatar Airways flight from Doha (Qatar) to Tripoli (Libya) had to be diverted to Alexandria (Egypt) and returned to Doha. Gunmen seized the control tower at Mitiga Airport, whose runways were then closed to this daily flight from Doha. A day before, gunmen entered the Qatar Airways office at the airport and threatened to do what they did the next day. They also said that they planned to run Qatar Airways out of their downtown office in Tripoli Towers.
This is not the first indication of an anti-Qatari backlash in Libya. In mid-June, Qatar Airways suspended flights to Benghazi ‘s Benina Airport when gunmen in that turbulent city prevented its transit. It is said that the gunmen came from the Ezzedine al-Waqwaq, which has said that it resents Qatar’s influence in Libyan politics and society. All this follows the anti-Qatari demonstrations in Tunisia and Libya over what the protestors said was harmony between Qatar and Israel in their Syria policy. The demonstration outside Benghazi’s Tibesti Hotel was particularly feisty. Anger at Qatar’s forward policy in Syria was matched by anger at Qatar’s support for jihadis in Libya (as well as for allegations of land buying by Qatar in Libya).
Qatar had given its blessings and its Riyals to the Muslim Brotherhood and its satellites across North Africa and West Asia. Tunisia’s Ennahda was bankrolled from Doha, whose money allowed the exiled Islamic movement to move from its back alley offices into a downtown building once owned by Tunisie Telecom. Creeping social policies from Ennahda alongside the assassination of two popular leaders (Chokri Belaid and Mohammed Brahmi) have conjured up the Qatari spectre for the Tunisians. In Egypt, the ejection of Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood by the military and a political class that included the Saudi-backed Al-Nour party put Qatar on the back-foot. Qatar’s Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah was sent to meet the Brotherhood’s Khairat el-Shatar in Cairo’s Tora Prison — who refused to see him (and the US and UAE representatives in the delegation). In the previous emir’s reign, al-Attiyah was the deputy in the foreign ministry serving under the old warhorse Sheikh Hamad bin Jassam al-Thani one of the architects of Qatar’s assertive foreign policy during the Arab Spring. But al-Attiyah does not have the gravitas of his predecessor, nor does he have his wiliness. He is in a waiting room in Cairo, symbolic of the paralysis of Qatari foreign policy.
If Qatar’s billions have not sown deep roots in Tunisia and Egypt, things are as bad in Syria. Qatari officials say that they will not end their policy…