Issue 811, 3 August 2007

Diplomacy: Qatar and the UAE’s most effective tool for security

Leaders of the smaller GCC states are increasingly prominent in the foreign visits they make. Such hectic international networking is not just for show: the newer generation of Gulf leaders see it delivering at a number of levels – not least helping to give them the security they crave.

Foreign policy, so often dominated by major powers, is emerging as a new security tool of choice for smaller Gulf states, who are nervous about relations with regional neighbours and anxious to consolidate their standing in the world. While some trust to traditional alliances with the West, the United Arab Emirates – which has emerged as one of the United States’ major regional defence partners – is diversifying its bilateral connections, while Qatar is positioning itself as a diplomatic bridge-builder and point of contact across a range of issues.

It was a sign of the times when France and Libya in late July pointedly thanked Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani for his behind-the-scenes role in negotiations that eventually secured the release of the Bulgarian medics imprisoned in Colonel Muammar Qadhafi’s Jamahiriya (‘State of the Masses’) on charges of infecting children with HIV-contaminated blood – a complex issue that has proved a significant block of the normalisation of Tripoli’s relations with the European Union.

Meanwhile, UAE President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahayan has been touring Syria, Algeria and France – a popular destination of late as leaders get to grips with hyperactive new President Nicolas Sarkozy. Khalifa’s travels may serve to reassert Abu Dhabi’s position on the diplomatic chessboard. His government has been broadening the geographical palette of its international relations, with business interests in mind – for example, cultivating a new partnership with President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), one of Africa’s significant oil producers.

The original Gulf diplomatic pioneer was Kuwait, which in the Cold War era maintained relations with the Soviet Union at a time when its then ostentatiously pro-Western Arabian neighbours would not indulge in any dealings with Moscow. These days, Kuwaiti diplomacy is preoccupied with immediate national interests in relations with the West and the Arab world – such as rapprochement with the Palestinians, under President Mahmoud Abbas.

By contrast, steered by Emir Sheikh Hamad and his cousin Prime Minister Sheikh Hamed Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al-Thani (‘HBJ’), Qatar continues to sustain a highly activist diplomatic agenda that stretches well beyond any obvious national interest, whether in the market for its key export gas or defence partnerships such as those with the US, France and the United Kingdom.

In this context, Doha’s intervention in the Bulgaria/Libya affair was typical, rather than exceptional. Unusually for the Gulf, it may also have involved female participation, with the Emir’s prominent wife Sheikha Mozha Bin Nasser Al-Misnad in mid-July bonding with French presidential wife of Cécilia Sarkozy (GSN 810/8). The French first lady subsequently emerged to play a still not fully understood supporting role in the medics affair.The Libyan case is illuminating. A Tripoli-based source told GSN that Libya was used to dealing with Doha as it used Qatar’s good offices as a back channel to Israel if bilateral issues needed to be resolved – which they did, far from the glare of Qadhafi’s aggressively rejectionist policy.

The leadership’s sustained effort in placing Qatar at the heart of diplomatic events has endowed Doha with an international role out of all proportion to its population or even to its growing economic clout (however much consumers covet its LNG). It is tempting to say that Qatar does diplomacy, as an industry, rather like other small countries have developed themselves as centres of offshore banking, company registration or maritime trade.

The annual Doha Forum on Democracy, Development and Free Trade has played a useful role: each year, the Qataris invite a varied assortment of politicians, intellectuals and media figures. Guests at last April’s event included Jack Straw, then leader of the UK House of Commons and previouskly foreign secretary. Straw is assiduous in cultivating relations with British Muslim community leaders and this spring he was also manager of Gordon Brown’s steamroller campaign to succeed Tony Blair as party leader and prime minister. He is now Britain’s first justice secretary, running constitutional reform in Brown’s new cabinet – and thus a valuable interlocutor for those seeking to maintain a relationship with the post-Blair leadership in London. Similarly, a few years ago, the Qataris invited French parliamentarian Christian Estrosi, a close ally of Sarkozy, who even then was a likely future French president. Doha takes the French connection seriously: Sheikh Hamad made sure he was one of the heads of state to make an official call on Sarkozy after he became president in May (GSN 809/1).

Seat at the top table

The Qataris’ vigorous networking, and relentlessly high media profile of Sheikh Hamad and Hamad Bin Jassim, provokes more than a touch of resentment among its neighbours. The Saudi leadership feels aggrieved by the sometimes irreverent tone of Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel’s coverage of the Kingdom, among a range of other issues. But, for all the carping, other Arab governments selected tiny Qatar as the current two-year occupant of their guaranteed seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Conferences, bilateral visits and diplomatic brokerage – such as HBJ’s contacts with Israel – can be self-engineered by a small country, especially one with the hydrocarbons cash to fund its ambitions. Qatar has played those cards astutely. Securing election to the Security Council represented recognition, however grudging, by other Arab states. This was particularly reassuring to Doha in one key respect. Today’s Qatari leaders have never quite been able to forget past Saudi indulgence of exiled would-be putchist supporters of the former Emir, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Hamad Al-Thani. When it came to the crunch, Doha’s candidacy for the council was not blocked by Riyadh; relations may not be warm but they are at least “correct”.

As the regional giant, Saudi Arabia is a critical factor in all of the smaller Gulf states’ diplomatic considerations. Qatar is not alone in seeking to balance the presence of this powerful neighbour – to say nothing of Iran, across the Gulf – through the activist cultivation of relationships with other international partners.

Khalifa steps out

One of this summer’s most intriguing diplomatic episodes has been UAE President, Sheikh Khalifa’s international tour, which began with two days in Syria, for talks with President Bashar Al-Assad – and, perhaps, some discreet contacts with Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal – followed by visits to Algeria and France. In Paris, Sheikh Khalifa became the third Gulf Co-operation Council head of state to call on Sarkozy since his 16 May inauguration.

Khalifa is also ruler of Abu Dhabi, which among the UAE’S constituent emirates has always maintained particularly close relations with Paris. Abu Dhabi’s influential Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahayan (‘MBZ’), had already called on ‘Sarko’ just a few weeks earlier. During his own long years as crown prince, Khalifa had a decisive voice in key military procurement dealings with the French, notably the wrangle over terms for the acquisition of 300 Leclerc main battle tanks from GIAT.

Less expected was his decision to call on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria, which is an important voice in Arab and African affairs. The UAE has not maintained notably close relations with Algeria – although during his long exile in the 1980s and 90s, Bouteflika was a well-paid advisor to the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahayan (as he was to the former emir of Qatar), and the Algerian president has maintained open channels to Gulf leaders.

The UAEs president’s itinerary attests to the new vigour that Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahayan has injected into Emirati diplomacy since being promoted by his brother to the foreign affairs portfolio in early 2006. In contrast to Qatar, the UAE has been less consistent in pushing itself forward as a diplomatic player, but that may be changing since Khalifa’s accession to national leadership on the death of his father in November 2004.

Zayed had always been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause and he commanded wide respect across the Middle East and in the West. But he did not seek to play a brokering role in third-party situations, and in his final years, of course, health limited his capacity to travel or engage in activist diplomacy. During this latter period, Khalifa was a fixture at encounters with visiting foreign dignitaries and, backstage, he was taking key decisions, especially on military procurement. However, he did not establish himself as an international player in his own right. Nor, after his accession, did he rush to take the front of stage.

Khalifa’s capacity to take a more assertive role now has been facilitated by the change of leadership in Dubai, after the sudden death of the quietly spoken 62-year old Sheikh Maktoum Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum in January 2006. He was succeeded by one of the Gulf’s pre-eminent players, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum (‘MBR’), who moved rapidly to give real content for the first time to Dubai’s hitherto purely titular hold on the premiership of the UAE. In the UAE’s delicate inter-emirate balance, Dubai is now at the centre of federal decision-making, allowing Khalifa to take a more publicly high-profile as head of state without making Abu Dhabi seem too dominant; in this he is ably backed by his brothers, who have a good working relationship with MBR (notably the case for MBZ).

Meanwhile, the post of foreign minister has been significantly bolstered with the promotion of Sheikh Abdullah to a role previously occupied by non-royal officials. One of the most delicate tasks he faces is the pursuit of the border dispute with Saudi Arabia. Apparently consigned to the history books by Sheikh Zayed, Emirati concerns about the delineation of the border through what is now the Shaybah oilfield were revived by Khalifa after he became president.

This dispute, as GSN has observed, remains to be resolved: Saudi Arabia has firmly rebuffed any question of a review that might put in question its hold on most of Shaybah or its essentially symbolic shoreline access to the lower Gulf (thus blocking any direct land access from Qatar to the UAE). The difference with Riyadh over the border line is a disappointment to the Abu Dhabi, but it does not represent a genuine concern. This issue apart, Saudi/UAE relations are good, and that differentiates the context of foreign policy-making in the UAE from that in Qatar.

Sheikh Khalifa is gradually reinforcing his network of diplomatic relationships, but he is not under pressure to emulate the Al-Thanis in efforts to establish his country as a professional diplomatic broker or venue. If back channels are needed, players like MBZ and MBR have all the right contacts. The federal president’s agenda is essentially the cultivation of bilateral relationships.