Britain has become notably more gung-ho about Syria in recent months. The government, and parliament, are split over arming the anti-Assad rebels, but the prime minister David Cameron, his foreign minister William Hague and others are pushing for arming the anti-Assad forces, while placing hope on the proposed Geneva conference for some kind of negotiated resolution of the conflict. Britain played a key role along with France in the EU’s recent decision to allow member states to arm the rebels, though the UK government is saying it won’t take any definitive action until Geneva has taken place. But a clear shift in the UK position has taken place in recent months.
Britain and France have sounded a rather dissonant tone as their allies appear more questioning of the operation to bring Assad down. The UK shift has been matched by a march in the opposition direction by the Obama administration, whose wavering over what to do hardened into plain inaction when the presence of Salafi jihadist groups become more and more the focus of media attention last year. Of other parties backing the effort to bring down the Assad regime, Israel appears more and more comfortable with things remaining as they are – bar Hizbullah getting its hands on any more weaponry, and Saudi Arabia’s position, while publicly all guns (somebody else’s of course) blazing for socking one to its regional nemesis Iran, is more nuanced since the idea of the Syrian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood joining their Egyptian and Tunisian comrades in power has always been unpalatable. The ascendance of fighters tied to the al-Qa’ida network in the rebel movement has only increased Saudi ambivalence about the end-game, and a convergence of opinion formed late last year among Saudi Arabia and its Western allies that Qatar was to blame, yet again, for going too far and arming rebel groups willy-nilly.
Which brings us to Doha. If there is one power in the array of international forces that has not waivered in its desire to bring Assad down it’s this enigmatic, troubling Gulf Arab state. Qatar has been the rock on which the external support for the campaign on the ground has been built – Qatar, whose ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and his wife were close friends of the Assads – as close as Arab rulers get – in the years immediately preceding the Arab uprisings of 2011. An infamously small state whose ruling clique have staked their and their country’s fate on bold political and economic initiatives, Qatar has really stuck its neck out with the ‘Arab Spring’. Thus far it has succeeded and things have turned out its way – Gaddafi (another former friend) was not only defeated by the opposition which Qatar funded, armed and enabled NATO to back but was murdered, removing the threat of any revenge move by loyalists to strike back at the upstart ‘leader of the Arabs’. Its carefully cultivated Islamist friends came to power in Egypt and Tunisia and found themselves on a stronger footing in Yemen and Morocco.
But Syrian hasn’t gone to plan, and while there’s been a lot of muttering in Doha bars and majlises over the past two years about “blowback” from the regime’s incredibly expanding adventures, the time to worry about that may be dawning now, or at least showing its first chinks of light: the time when Assad and his regime survives and the rebel movement splinters and withers. Qatar is a barren sparse peninsula of low-lying desert scrub, dunes and salt flats with one city, Doha, a U.S. airbase (despite Mufti of al-Jazeera Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi’s denials), a famous television network, barely 300,000 Qatari citizens with virtually no political rights and rulers who do what they want. The Emir came to power by removing his ageing and unimaginative father in a soft coup in 1995, a benign fate considering the bloody end a number of his predecessors suffered. There was an immediate attempt with Saudi backing to stage a counter-coup, and rumours of coups have never really stopped since.
So if anyone wants to see the rebels backed further it’s Qatar. When the United States can’t be arm-twisted into doing your bidding, it’s good to have friends in high places in London and Paris who might see things differently. Qatar has invested heavily in its European friendships. Qatar stepped in to provide UK bank Barclays with funds in 2008 when the global financial crisis was kicking in, it owns Harrods, it has a 26 percent stake in Sainbury’s, it owns 1 Hyde Park, Britain’s most expensive property, and its joint owner of London landmark the Shard. Its acquisition of an 11.7 percent stake in Xstrata, enabling the mining group’s merger with commodities trader Glencore, even saw Doha emerge as a defender of British pension funds. The UK government is angling for some $15 billion investment by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in infrastructure projects, and London mayor Boris Johnson was in Doha in April singing the punch-drunk city’s praises. And there have been UK press reports that stocks of gas were on the point of running out in March only for supplies from Qatar to save the day – Qatargas supplies around 20 percent of UK gas needs making the Gulf state critical to Britain’s energy security. With France, it’s little different. The Emir developed close ties with former president Sarkozy, and now his country owns French club Paris St. Germain, three percent of oil giant Total and is looking to invest some $12 billion in more French firms.
Who knows. Doha might perceive that some of the old European powers owe her one and it’s time to start cashing in the chips.
