Unreasonable demands will not make Doha capitulate. Saudi alliance must get real
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is absolutely correct in observing that some of the demands the Arab states have made on Qatar to resolve the ongoing crisis, will be difficult to meet. The Saudi-led grouping which has sanctioned Qatar, has called on Doha to close a Turkish military base and evict the state-funded television channel, Al Jazeera. These are two of the 13 conditions it has placed for the standoff to end. If the Arab nations are indeed keen on resolving the issue, they must give up making unreasonable propositions and concentrate on the achievables that are satisfactory to them and also provide a face-saver for Qatar to wriggle out of the crisis. No sovereign state can accept the demands that Saudi Arabia and its friends have made. If Riyadh sticks to the most difficult of the conditions to be met, there will be no dialogue and no communication which can break the deadlock. After all, the call for Qatar to shut down the Turkish military base on its soil is akin to undermining its sovereign decision-making right. There are other nations in the world that maintain a foreign state's military base. The correct approach is to determine if the Turkish presence in Qatar has posed a security threat to the region. As of now, there is pretty little to confirm that. It appears for the moment that the Saudi demand is driven more by its hostility to Turkey than by a sense of objectivity. Similar is the case with Qatar's links with Iran; Saudi Arabia simply cannot digest the fact that an Arab nation should have warm relations with Tehran. On its part, Qatar can offer hints that it is willing to discuss with an open mind some of the more reasonable conditions put forth. There is no doubt that terrorism is a major case of worry in the region. It can of course be argued that those who are now raising an alarm on the issue and seeking to put Qatar in the dock, themselves have the dubious track record of being fountainheads of terror. But this apart, Qatar cannot brush aside the concerns. It is good that Doha is studying the various conditions that can be considered favourably, but even here the Saudi-led alliance will have to demonstrate more patience and less belligerence.
No country likes to take a position at the point of another nation's sword, and Qatar is certainly not going to do so. This is even more so when it has powerful support from Iran and Turkey. Moreover, even the United States has not taken a stand against Qatar. Indeed, in saying that the Saudi demands are difficult to meet, Tillerson has indicated that Washington, DC, will not take sides in the dispute. This should disappoint the Saudis who, until very recently, were gloating after US President Donald Trump's surprisingly warm words for Saudi Arabia during his visit there, and his veiled attack on Iran. Trump even called the Saudis to join hands with the US in combating terrorism. But the Trump Administration, despite criticism that its foreign policy remains hazy and unpredictable, knows well the hazards of taking sides in this particular matter. It understands that Qatar will be even more firmly placed into the Iran camp if it is harshly treated. This will have an impact on the Arab-US alliance too.