The Middle East undergoes a radical change these days. Tactical alliances are being made overnight around here and then they collapse even rapidly, with certain players taking sides with the forces they would previously oppose. Out of all this we witness new alliances forming, with Qatar, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq on one side and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt on the other. The difficult situation in the region in many respects is linked to the crisis of the identity of the peoples of the Middle East, the crisis of statehood and the failure of the existing integration projects. The turbulence in which the region is submerged can be attributed to struggle of for leadership that leading players are contesting.
The Qatari crisis, orchestrated by the new US administration, the anti-Iranian campaign, the intensification of terrorist attacks across the Muslim states – all this has shown that the last existing pillars of stability in the region are collapsing. At the same time, it seems that the Trump team seams to be pretty contended with this situation, pushing all in on Saudi Arabia only due to the fact that Riyadh has confirmed its readiness to continue investing billions of dollars in American weapons.
Tensions in Doha’s relations with its immediate neighbors were visible long before the recent boycott, but the announcement made by a Qatari news agency about Emir Tamim’s plans to strengthen ties with Tehran must have been the deal breaker for other Persian Gulf monarchies. There can be no doubt that this message was planted there by the hackers employed by American intelligence agencies to revive Washington’s plans to reconstruct the Middle East. However, those operations usually require a smokescreen to divert suspicion from the White House and it had it prepared in advanced. For sure, we are speaking about the notorious Russian hackers that allegedly attempted to affect some allegedly democratic process in the US and Europe. Those allegations have provoked a massive anti-Russian hysteria, in the West. Now it’s highly unlikely that someone will have the courage to accuse Washington of hacking something somewhere. However, if you take a closer look at Donald Trump’s twitts that he wrote to comment the Qatari crisis, you will have no doubt about who is to blame for this recent development. To be pore specific, Trump would note that his Middle East tour was bearing fruit and expressed his hope that the financing of terrorist groups would be stopped.
The declaration of the war on Qatar manifests Saudi Arabia’s failure to establish control over the region, especially over Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. That is why Saudi Arabia is trying to successfully use this conflict in order to restore its ties with Egypt, that have been going south recently.
The Qatari crisis is the reflection of the aggravating confrontation between various competing forces, both political and religious, challenge of control over natural resources, and a sign of the strengthening influence that the geopolitical interests of global players have over the region now.
The development of events and the changes that the whole world and the Arab world in particular are observing nowadays seem extremely dangerous for the Arab world the Islamic Ummah. The reason for this is the growing colonial aspirations of the United States and other Western players. Those aspirations manifest themselves in the use of large number of people from across the world in the aggravation of local conflicts. They have been consistently relying on the divide and conquer strategy in the dealings with the countries of the Arab world, its peoples and the peoples of other Muslim countries.
Western players with America at the top have been able to root up malice and disgust, to sow the seeds of hatred and dispute within every Arab state, affecting the society at every level: family, tribe, religious group, political party. This list can be continued. In particular, the result of fanning this hostility in some countries of the Arab world was the so-called “revolutionary spring”. All plans and strings of conspiracies against the Arab national regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq lead to Washington and Israel, and those who support them.
The whole world knows perfectly well that a number of Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, support international terrorism. They enlist new radicals and train them to get some more cannon fodder for themselves. Mind you, that Riyadh is the breeding ground of Wahhabi radicalism, which is actively used today by ISIS terrorists.
For its part, America worked hard to create a conflict in the Middle East, and also sought to weaken the Arab countries so that they would eventually be forced to ask for Washington’s assistance. The US is trying to drain Arab resources, pushing these countries to war, which, of course, will ultimately lead to the collapse of their economies. The war contributes to the weakening of states economically and militarily, and this is exactly what America and the Western countries are craving for by provoking new conflicts, notes the Iraqi Saut al-Iraq.
Today, the core of the ISIS is moving from Syria and Iraq to the east, towards Iran and other areas, approaching the borders of Turkey, the states of Transcaucasia. There is no doubt that such a push for the new frontiers, that serves Washington’s interests perfectly, is hardly a coincidence. It is not by chance that Erbil’s insists on conducting a referendum on the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan on September 25, which will bring local tensions even higher.
In northern Iraq itself, due to Washington’s silent approval, the tension between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens has recently escalated. On top of it all, the Yezidis, a national minority that suffered terribly from ISIS, has declared its intention to defend their rights.
So Washington’s policy of divide and conquer will for a long time be a decisive factor in the intensification of conflicts in the Middle East, and hence new wars, new purchases of weapons from the US, further enrichment of American oligarchs and new troubles for the population of the Middle East region.
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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