Christopher Davidson - After the Sheikhs - The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

There is some evidence that the governments of both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have also been relaxing their stance on Israel. Up until 2009 there was an Israeli ‘commercial interest section’ based in Doha, [753] 96. Fromherz, Allen J., Qatar: A Modern History (London: IB Tauris, 2012), p. 23. and in 2010 it was reported that the Qatar Investment Authority and the Saudi Olayan Group had partnered with Credit Suisse and Israel’s IDB Holdings in order to form a new fund to ‘opportunistically pursue credit investments in emerging markets’. With each partner putting in $250 million, the $1 billion fund is one of the largest new funds created since the 2008 credit crunch. Although the resulting media coverage noted that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were still technically part of an Israel boycott group, analysts were quoted as stating that ‘the Arab boycott is mainly on paper’ and that ‘there is a flow of Israeli know-how and products to the Arab world’. [754] 97. Gulf News , 13 August 2010. Interestingly, it appears that Qatar’s relaxations on Israel have now also extended to education. According to documents leaked to Al-Arab newspaper in summer 2011, documents and course material supplied to trainee Arabic teachers in the emirate were written in both Arabic and Hebrew and seemingly sourced from the Israeli Ministry for Education. When questioned on this matter, the distributors simply argued that ‘there had been a mistake’. [755] 98. Al-Arab , 12 June 2011.

With regards to security ties, as with Bahrain an open channel of communication now exists between Qatar and the Israeli security services. In late 2010 a large delegation of senior Israeli policemen was in the emirate, ostensibly taking part in an Interpol assembly, with the head of the Israeli police’s investigations and intelligence branch being among them. Remarkably, it was reported by Agence France Presse that the Israeli delegation also met with Dubai’s chief of police ‘by chance’ and that ‘there was no apparent tension… despite the dispute between their countries’. [756] 99. Agence France Press, 15 November 2010. Thus far there is little firm evidence of growing security ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, or at least there have been no blatant admissions as with Bahrain and Qatar. Nevertheless, for the past few years there have been frequent and powerful rumours circulating that the two powers are co-operating, mostly as a result of Saudi Arabia’s stance on Iran and the existence of a mutual enemy. [757] 100. In summer 2010, for example, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported that Israeli military aircraft had landed at a Saudi airbase close to the city of Tabuk in the northwest of the kingdom. Moreover, it was claimed in the Israeli press that Israel was investigating the usefulness of Tabuk as a possible base for striking Iran, and that a senior member of the Saudi ruling family was coordinating the operation. A commercial passenger travelling through the airport was even quoted as saying that all air traffic was closed down without explanation during the alleged Israeli landings, but that all stranded passengers were compensated financially and housed in luxury hotels.

Despite a range of current shared threats, perceived or otherwise, and despite the invasion of Kuwait remaining fresh in the minds of many Gulf nationals, the Gulf monarchies nevertheless seem further away than ever before from enjoying basic co-operation and collective security. Although, as discussed in the following chapter, there have been a number of recent actions that have been branded as ‘collective action’ in the wake of the Arab Spring, in practise these have been effectively unilateral or bilateral efforts on the part of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to head off regime collapse in their most precarious neighbours. Indeed, while formal councils and various mechanisms now exist on paper, there is still no effective body to bind together these largely similar states into a meaningful alliance. In the short term this means the Gulf monarchies remain highly vulnerable to foreign aggression and petty disputes between themselves, and in the long term means that their dependency on external security guarantees and the resulting exposure to its associated pathologies will remain high.

The Co-operation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, better known as the ‘Gulf Co-operation Council’ is the organisation many had expected to present a ‘united front’ for the Gulf monarchies. Founded in 1981 in Abu Dhabi, the Council’s creation was spurred by the Iran-Iraq War and, in particular, Kuwaiti concerns of collateral damage or attack from its warring neighbours. On an economic level the Council was supposed to foster joint ventures between the monarchies, remove barriers to trade, and establish a common GCC currency by 2010. While there has been some limited success in establishing a GCC customs union, more serious economic integration has remained elusive, as a number of disputes have prevented stronger ties. In particular, Oman announced in 2006 that it would be unable to meet the requirements of the common currency, while in 2009 the UAE announced its complete withdrawal from the project, seemingly as retaliation to the GCC’s announcement that its central bank would be located in Riyadh, not Abu Dhabi. Within days of the UAE’s secession thousands of its truck drivers were left stranded at the border with Saudi Arabia. Described in a leaked US diplomatic cable as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ the problem was publicly blamed on a new, unexpected Saudi fingerprinting system, [758] 101. Wikileaks, US Embassy Abu Dhabi, 16 June 2009. but most analysts agreed that it was a tit-for-tat response to the UAE’s currency stance. Moreover, although a GCC common market was launched in 2008, some Gulf monarchies have continued to sign bilateral free trade agreements with other states. Bahrain, which has developed an extensive FTA with the US, has been viewed by Saudi Arabia and other GCC members as having bypassed the GCC’s common market.

On a military level, the GCC was intended to provide collective security for all members via its Peninsula Shield Force. Founded in 1984, the force was supposed to comprise 10,000 soldiers representing all six monarchies. However, even after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 the force only had 5,000 servicemen, and because it had played no active role in the conflict it was temporarily disbanded, with participating units being returned to their respective national armies. [759] 102. Cordesman, Anthony H. and Obaid, Nawaf, National Security in Saudi Arabia: Threats, Responses, and Challenges (Westport: Praeger Security International, 2005), p. 138. In recent years there have been claims that the force has grown to 40,000, [760] 103. Asharq Al-Awsat , 29 March 2011. but it is unclear how many how many soldiers are actually based at its headquarters in Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid Military City, while its command and control structure remains ambiguous. The force’s existence has also been continually undermined by security disputes and even clashes between the Gulf monarchies. Even in the twenty-first century there is much evidence that nineteenth- and twentieth-century border problems and other old grievances remain unresolved. Between Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, for example, there continues to exist a bitter dispute over their frontiers. Dating back to the earliest Wahhabi attacks on Abu Dhabi’s territory, a 1950s standoff over the Buraimi Oasis, and a contested border settlement in the 1970s, the subject remains highly controversial. Several institutions in Abu Dhabi today continue to produce maps that show the emirate’s territory still including land that was ceded to Saudi Arabia years ago, and in March 2010 it was widely reported that a naval clash took place in disputed waters. According to The Daily Telegraph ’s UAE-based reporter, a UAE vessel had opened fire on a Saudi vessel that had allegedly strayed into UAE territory. The Saudi vessel surrendered, but its sailors were taken to Abu Dhabi and held in custody for over a week before being deported. Although a spokesperson for the UAE’s Ministry for Defence confirmed that the incident took place he was unable to provide any details. However, a Gulf-based diplomat stated that ‘…it looks as though attempts were made to keep this quiet, which is predictable given the important relationship between the two countries… But it does remind us of the simmering rows that there are in this part of the Gulf’. [761] 104. The Daily Telegraph , 26 March 2010.