by Dr. James M. Dorsey
Qatar appears to have reversed its tacit acquiescence in China’s clampdown, involving the incarceration in reeducation camps of an estimated 1 million predominantly Turkic Uyghur Muslims.
Narendra Modi, photo via Wikimedia Commons, and Xi Jinping, photo via Office of the President of Russia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,299, September 25, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Recent diametrically
opposed responses to the repression of Muslims by China, India, and
other Asian countries highlight deep differences among the Gulf states
that ripple across Asia.
Very different responses were recently on display in Gulf reactions to India’s unilateral withdrawal of Kashmir’s autonomy and Qatar’s reversal of its support of China’s brutal clampdown on Turkic Muslims in its troubled northwestern province of Xinjiang.
The divergence says much about the almost
decade-long, fundamentally different approaches taken by Qatar and its
main detractors, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, toward an emerging, more
illiberal new world order in which minority rights are trampled upon.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are leading a more than
two-year-long economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar in a so far
failed attempt to force the Gulf state to alter its policies.
The feud reflects the Gulf states’ different
efforts to maneuver an environment in which the US has sent mixed
signals about its commitment to Gulf security and China and Russia are
seeking to muscle into US dominance of the region.
In what was perhaps the most surprising indication
of differences in the Gulf, Qatar appeared to reverse its tacit
acquiescence in China’s clampdown, involving the incarceration in
reeducation camps of an estimated 1 million predominantly Turkic Uyghur
Muslims.
Qatar did so by withdrawing
from a letter it initially signed together with dozens of others
countries expressing support for China’s human-rights record despite its clampdown in Xinjiang.
In a letter to the UN Human Rights Council
(UNHRC), Ali Al-Mansouri, Qatar’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva,
advised the council that “taking into account our focus on compromise
and mediation, we believe that co-authorizing the aforementioned letter
would compromise our foreign policy key priorities. In this regard, we
wish to maintain a neutral stance and we offer our mediation and
facilitation services.”
Signatories of the letter included Qatar’s
detractors – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt – as well as
Kuwait and Oman, which, together with the feuding Gulf states, are part
of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
The withdrawal coincided with a US warning that
kowtowing to China’s “desire to erode US military advantages” in the
Middle East by using its “economic leverage and coercion” and
“intellectual property theft and acquisition” could undermine defense
cooperation with the US.
“Many investments are beneficial, but we’re
concerned countries’ economic interests may blind them to the negative
implications of some Chinese investments, including impact on joint
defense cooperation with the United States,” said Michael Mulroy, the US
Defense Department’s top official responsible for the Gulf.
The Qatari move also came against the backdrop of the Gulf state, which is home to the largest US base in the region, being the only country in the greater Middle East to host an expansion rather than a reduction of US facilities and forces. Qatar is believed to have funded the expansion to the tune of $1.8 billion.
The US has withdrawn some of its forces from Syria and is negotiating a US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan with the Taliban.
Nevertheless, Qatar, an enlightened autocracy that has yet to implement at home what it preaches abroad, is unlikely to reap the full soft power benefits in
liberal Western democracies of its withdrawal from the pro-Chinese
letter despite Uyghur and human rights activists welcoming the move.
It is unclear what prompted the Qatari change of
heart, though it did follow an incident last month at Doha’s Hamad
International Airport that drove home the limits of China’s ability to
flex its financial, economic, and political muscles to control the
fallout of its clampdown beyond its borders.
Those limits were evident when Ablikim Yusuf, a
53-year old Uyghur Muslim seeking protection from potential Chinese
persecution, landed at the airport. After initially intending to deport
Yusuf to Beijing at China’s request, Qatar reversed course.
But rather than grant Yusuf asylum under its newly
adopted asylum law, the Gulf’s first, Qatar gave him time to seek
refuge elsewhere. Even that was in sharp contrast to countries like
Egypt and Turkey, which have either deported Uyghurs or entertained the
possibility.
As a result, Qatar’s withdrawal drove one more
wedge into the Muslim world’s almost wall-to-wall refusal to criticize
China for what amounts to the most frontal assault on any faith in
recent history.
Turkey, Qatar’s ally in its dispute with the Gulf states, as well as the Turkic republics of Central Asia, have been walking a tightrope as they attempt to balance relations with China and domestic public criticism of Chinese policy in Xinjiang.
Kazakhstan this month silenced a detained Kazakh rights activist of Uyghur descent by
forcing him to plead guilty to a hate speech charge and abandon his
activism and public criticism of China in exchange for securing his
freedom.
The Qatari withdrawal complicates the Turkish and
Central Asian balancing act and strengthens the position of the US,
which is locked in multiple trade and other disputes with China.
The withdrawal and US criticism of Chinese policy in Xinjiang put Muslim states, increasingly selective about what Muslim causes they take up, in an awkward position.
The UAE, in sharp contrast to Qatar, has not only
maintained its support of China but also, alongside Saudi Arabia and
Bahrain, ignored requests for support on Kashmir by Pakistan, its
longstanding regional Muslim ally.
Adding insult to injury, the three Gulf states are
rewarding Indian PM Narendra Modi for his undermining of Kashmiri
autonomy and imposition of unprecedented, repressive security measures.
Modi is scheduled to travel this week to the UAE to receive the country’s highest civilian honor and then go on to Bahrain for the first-ever visit to that country by a sitting Indian PM.
Meanwhile, Saudi national oil company Aramco
announced a $15 billion investment in an Indian oil company as Modi was
clamping down on Kashmir.
For its part, Qatar has remained largely silent about Kashmir, other than advising its nationals to leave the region.
If the policy divergences in the Gulf say
anything, they suggest that differences among the region’s rivals as
well as in in the greater Middle East are likely to deepen rather than
subside.
A study last year by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
concluded that conflict in the region was fueled by a “dearth of
regional communication channels, dispute resolution mechanisms, and
norms for warfare as well as a surplus of arms imports.”
There is little on the horizon to suggest that this state of affairs is going to change any time soon.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/gulf-states-kashmir-xinjiang/
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