“We wanted to avoid embarrassing Qatar,” exiled Muslim Brotherhood leader Amr Darrag said last week, “Some figureheads of the Freedom and Justice Party [the MB’s electoral arm in Egypt] and the Muslim Brotherhood who have been requested to relocate their headquarters outside of Qatar have agreed.”
That cannot possibly be the whole story. Exiles are usually not so nonchalant about fleeing what they thought was a safe haven. What explains this dramatic move, and what can it tell us about the broader political situation in the Middle East?
The explosive rise of the so-called Islamic State has generated some improbable developments in the last few months. Qatar’s soft expulsion of exiled leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood can certainly be counted among them. U.S. imperialism’s renewed war drive against Syria and Iraq has created a chaotic situation where new regional alliances are being formed and old ones broken.
Similar to the diplomatic push to create a “coalition of the willing” composed of U.S. client regimes and junior imperialist partners prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials have been convening a series of diplomatic meetings to shore up support for their new military campaign. They hope that this will give them political cover and satisfy the requirements of bourgeois “international law”.
The military offensive this summer which led to IS-led fighters seizing control of northern and western Iraq was an unplanned and unwanted shock to all the major political forces present in the region. Thousands have been slaughtered under the tyrannical rule of IS, but humanitarian concerns play no role in the U.S. government’s decision making until it comes time to sell a war to the public. U.S. imperialism is targeting the Islamic State because it correctly understands that IS is no longer a force it can control.
As the managers of the U.S. empire scramble to find an effective strategy to stabilize the situation in their favor, some regional powers are considering an even more sweeping reorganizations of foreign policy. Many of these states are loyal to U.S. imperialism, but that does not mean that U.S. imperialism directly calls all the shots. Client regimes are given political space insofar as their maneuvers do not threaten the fundamental interests of U.S. capitalists.
For the governments in the Middle East that have a hostile relationship with imperialism, this reconfiguration is seen as an opportunity to alleviate their diplomatic isolation and accomplish long-standing strategic goals.
Before the IS offensive
Prior to the IS offensive, there were several relatively well-defined regional blocs composed of states with key overlapping interests. One main alliance was composed of the Gulf Cooperation Council – the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and, most importantly, Saudi Arabia – and the military regime in Egypt.
The GCC-Egypt axis was united by its adamant opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and all governments that have a relationship with it. The countries in these blocs are highly sensitive to any internal instability. The Gulf countries are all monarchies marked by extreme inequality, and in most cases foreign workers subjected to horrible exploitation compose a large proportion of their populations. The current government of Egypt was installed as a result of a military coup against elected President Mohamed Morsi, who is a Muslim Brotherhood member. There has since been a merciless crackdown on the group, involving mass death sentence trials and deadly police repression. The MB is seen by the GCC and Egyptian regimes as an organization that is able to exploit their weaknesses.
The GCC countries, and to a lesser extent Egypt, are traditionally extremely hostile towards Iran, a rival neighboring power. Bahrain hates Iran for its sympathetic position towards the Shia-led democratic uprising in the country against the Sunni absolutist monarchy.
The GCC countries have been major sources of recruits and funding for the armed groups fighting to overthrow the Assad government in Syria. Prior to the lightening IS offensive, this practice was encouraged by many governments in the bloc.
Qatar and Turkey form another key partnership. Both governments began supporting the Muslim Brotherhood with great enthusiasm after the Arab Spring uprisings in 2010-2011, correctly understanding that they were the most organized force capable of taking advantage of the situation. After the coup in Egypt, the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to relocate to Qatar.
The Qatar-Turkey bloc was and is, like the GCC, a key sponsor of the armed opposition in Syria. However, the two alliances often backed rival militias. Qatar and Turkey were perhaps the most enthusiastic of the regional powers in their support of the most hardline Salafist forces in the Syrian civil war, including the Islamic State.
Finally, there is an alliance that is sometimes referred to as the “Resistance Axis” – Iran, Syria and the Lebanese political and military movement Hezbollah. The government of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was sometimes also referred to as a member of the Resistance Axis.
The members of this bloc are united by their common antagonism with western imperialism, especially the U.S. government. Iran is under suffocating sanctions imposed by the west, Syria is ravaged by imperialist-instigated civil war and Hezbollah is locked in protracted conflict with the U.S.-sponsored Israeli regime. The Resistance Axis has deep ties in Iraq and increasingly close ties with the government. The members of this alliance coordinate closely in order to avoid being the next victim of U.S.-sponsored regime change.
The Resistance Axis provides important military and political support to the Palestinian liberation struggle. However, this support and their general opposition to imperialism are not based on working class interests. The Resistance Axis has a bourgeois nationalist political orientation – the dominance of foreign capital threatens domestic capital, so national independence must be preserved.
This bloc has a mixed relationship with Hamas, a resistance movement that is the elected Palestinian leadership and currently governs Gaza. Hamas emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and seeks to build the Palestinian struggle for national liberation on the basis of religious ideology. They are seen as a more sincere force than the western-backed Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank and collaborates with Israel.
Like Qatar and Turkey, Hamas gambled on the continued success of the Muslim Brotherhood following the Arab Spring. In part this was expressed by turning against the Syrian government and instead declaring its support for the anti-Assad rebels. This was a major blow to its relationship with the Resistance Axis, but Hamas has moderated its position since the murderous Israeli assault on Gaza this summer and sought to mend ties.
New strategies for a rapidly changing situation
By backing hardline jihadist forces in Syria, the GCC, Qatar and Turkey took a major risk. While their interests may converge when it comes to the overthrow of the Syrian government, IS and like-minded groups have an independent agenda, which ultimately includes the overthrow of all regional governments and their absorption into a Caliphate. The elites of the Gulf countries are well aware that the fault lines in their societies could be exploited by these types of groups to topple their regimes.
Turkey is somewhat less exposed to this phenomenon because of the relative strength of secular opposition forces in the country, but it is a dire prospect for Qatar and the GCC, especially Saudi Arabia. The Saudi state was constructed on the basis of an alliance between the royal House of Saud and followers of 18th century religious ideologue Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. After the official establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Wahhabis were given control of the religious institutions in the new theocracy, while the House of Saud controlled politics.
However, there is often tension between these two pillars of the regime because of the royal family’s close dealings with the west. IS draws much of its inspiration from Wahhabi ideology, and there is concern that the internal contradictions of the Saudi state could allow IS to spread to that country. Nearly all of the major historical challenges to the rule of the Saudi monarchy have come at the hands of Salafist forces of one variation or another.
From 2012 until April of this year, Prince Bandar bin Sultan was the head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency. From that post, he coordinated the transfer of massive sums of money, equipment and recruits to the Syrian armed opposition, much of which ended up in the hands of IS and ideologically similar groups.
However, the Saudi government has since shifted to a less adventuristic approach to the Syrian civil war. In February, a royal decree was issued declaring a number of armed groups operating in Syria to be terrorist organizations and banned Saudi citizens from traveling to the country to fight. Then, on April 15, Prince Bandar was fired.
In expelling the Muslim Brotherhood leaders, it appears that Qatar is similarly reconsidering its support for IS in light of the new U.S.-led military campaign. It is a sign that Qatar hopes for a thaw in relations with the GCC for the sake of a more coherent group of regional clients supporting U.S. imperialism’s aggression in Iraq and Syria.
If this arrangement were to solidify, it could have several important effects on regional politics. There has been some signs that a thaw in relations between Iran and the GCC. In August, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran made a landmark visit to Saudi Arabia, a highly significant gesture that was the subject of fierce controversy. The thinking goes that because the Iranian government has so much influence in Iraq, any effective military effort against IS would have to include some degree of coordination with Iran.
However, there is strong opposition in both countries to such a move. The Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister was angrily summoned for questioning by skeptical legislators, and Saudi Arabia reportedly threatened to walk out of recent meetings convened by Secretary of State Kerry if Iran was invited. On September 1st, the government of Sudan closed Iranian cultural centers and expelled diplomats from the country, likely under pressure from Saudi Arabia. The escalating demonstrations and armed clashes between the government in Yemen and Houthi rebels, who are perceived as being aligned with Iran, has also made the GCC countries wary of a dramatic change of course.
In Libya, the GCC-Egypt bloc and the Qatar-Turkey bloc have been on opposite sides of what is quickly becoming a full-scale civil war. GCC countries and Egypt are arming the more secular liberal forces that recognize the authority of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives, and have even allegedly carried out airstrikes to support them. Qatar and Turkey are backing the Islamist-led Libyan Dawn coalition, which has reconvened the previously-defunct General National Congress after taking over the capitol city Tripoli. Unity between the U.S. client states in the Middle East could be conducive to a negotiated settlement to this conflict.
In Palestine, the GCC and Egypt prefer the rule of the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, to Hamas. Qatar provides a safe haven for many exiled Hamas leaders. Hamas and Fatah reached an agreement to form a unity government to pave the way for Palestine-wide elections after U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Israel broke down earlier this year because of the Zionists’ intransigence. The most recent Israeli assault on Gaza was aimed at smashing this agreement, but if Hamas and Fatah’s regional allies improve their relations it could facilitate the election of a unified Palestinian leadership.
But taken as a whole, moves towards the creation of a more or less unified bloc of reactionary, pro-imperialist states cannot be considered a positive development. The more tightly client regimes fall in line behind the U.S. war drive, the less political space progressive and nationalist forces in Iraq and Syria will have to assert the independence of their countries.
It is crucially important to mobilize opposition to U.S. imperialism’s bombing campaign and constantly escalating re-deployment of troops. Only self-determination can provide the basis for a resolution to the issues that have brought such intense suffering and injustice to the Middle East in recent years. No new war on Iraq! Hands off Syria!
