10 July world supplement

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Monday, july 10, 2017
DT
Analysis
Insight
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Monday, july 10, 2017
DT
The truth behind Qatar-Saudi crisis
• Tribune Desk
During the nearly four decades of
life of their bloc, the Arab states of
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
have failed to attain their ideal of
political consistency and strategic
unity just like their pattern the European
Union.
Such a failure to achieve goal is
apparently observable as the members’
strategic interests conflict and
their political spats show face every
now and then. Their struggle for
seizing leadership of the bloc remains
standing and their national
economies, which are supposed to
be interwoven as a key feature of an
economic union, remain parted.
In the past few years, the deepest
political gap of the six-nation
Arab bloc was caused by differences
between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
It overshadowed the Arab council’s
all-out potentials, including its political
clout in the regional equations.
The division, additionally, has led to
a polarised GCC, with some member
states such as Bahrain and the UAE
fully supporting Riyadh’s approach
and others like Oman and Kuwait
standing by Qatar that comes against
the unilateral and overbearing policy
of Saudi Arabia.
In past few days, the tensions
set for new escalation as on June
5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the
UAE, along with other countries out
of the bloc, severed diplomatic ties
with Doha by recalling ambassadors
and expelling Qatar’s, and also
suspend air, sea and land transport
with Qatar.
The fresh diplomatic spat called
attention of the political analysts,
pushing them to think that Doha is
now on the course to wholly separate
ways from Riyadh.
What are the drives of the new
crisis inside the GCC?
Doha–Riyadh ideological conflict
Although Saudi Arabia and Qatar
are Sunni states they have different
approaches to the sect. In fact,
each one of them wants to apply
and instill across the Muslim and
Arab nations its own interpretation
of the Islamic branch. The Saudi
leadership propagates the Wahhabi
ideology, which develops a narrow-viewed
version of the Islamic
life style. For example, it separates
men and women in public places
and also implements strict sharia
law, allowing tough judicial rulings.
It furthermore, does not recognise
real rights for other sects of Islam.
On the opposite side, Qatar stands
and supports the Muslim Brotherhood
that spreads almost across the
Arab world, has a broader view of
the religion, seeks more presence
for the women on the public stage,
and shows more respect for the other
sects of Islam like Shia.
Qatar-Saudi territorial disputes
The rifts over territories between
the two members of the Arab
council have a historical record. In
1992, Doha and Riyadh engaged in
armed border clashes. The kingdom
claimed ownership of 23 miles
of the Qatari south-eastern coasts.
The two neighbours temporarily
reached a deal in 1992 to refer to a
December 1965 border agreement
for de-escalation.
Another dispute point is Khafus
border region. Doha and Riyadh
have failed to settle the case since
1965. The area is crucial for the Qataris
since it links them to the UAE,
their largest trade partner. Riyadh’s
seizure of the area makes all of the
Qatari land roads lead to the Saudi
territory, which means Qatar needs
to pass through Saudi lands to access
the UAE.
Relations with Iran
Another issue standing as a polarising
factor inside the body of the
GCC is the failure by the member
states to adopt a unanimous approach
towards Iran. Saudi Arabia,
spearheading a camp against growing
Iranian influence in the region,
seeks to sever relations between
the GCC and Tehran and has recently
stepped up efforts to build
an anti-Iranian alliance of the Muslim
countries. The recent Riyadh
summit that participated by the US
President Donald Trump echoed
the Saudi anti-Tehran measures.
But Qatar, a country that tries to
adopt an independent policy expand
its influence on the regional
and global stage, has taken a friendly
stance towards Iran.
LIBYA
Four Arab states – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain
and Egypt – have sent Qatar a list of 13 demands it must meet
if it wants them to lift their diplomatic and economic sanctions
EGYPT
Gulf
Co-operation
Council: UAE,
Bahrain, Saudi
Arabia, Oman,
Kuwait, Qatar
Source: Associated Press
The openness towards Iran aims
on the one hand at serving Qatar’s
political and economic interests and
on the other hand at putting strains
on Saudi Arabia, an archival of Tehran
in the region. This comes while
Riyadh focuses on prohibiting Qatar’s
rise as a strong regional state
politically and economically that
can pose challenges to the Saudi ideal
of leadership of the Muslim world.
Differences over regional cases
Conflicting regional policies are
among the crisis-making factors in
Qatar-Saudi Arabia relations. The
rivalry, particularly after the 2011
Arab uprisings, surged between the
two sides who want to secure new
areas of influence regionally. The
major rivalry between the two Arab
SYRIA
IRAQ
SAUDI
ARABIA
KUWAIT
UAE
YEMEN
1 Shut down diplomatic posts in
Iran, expel any members of Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard and only
conduct trade with Iran that
complies with U.S. sanctions
2 Close a Turkish military base
3 Sever all ties with “terrorist
organizations” including Muslim
Brotherhood, Islamic State,
Al Qaeda and Hezbollah
IRAN
4 Stop funding any extremist
entities designated as terrorist
groups by four countries and U.S.
5 Hand over all individuals wanted
by four countries for terrorism
6 Shut down broadcaster
Al-Jazeera and its affiliate stations
7 Shut down news outlets that
Qatar funds, including Arabi21
and Middle East Eye
OMAN
states has been over hot regional
cases like Yemen, Syria, Bahrain,
and Egypt.
When Mohamed Morsi, a political
figure from the Muslim Brotherhood,
was elected as the president
of the post-revolution Egypt, Qatar
granted Cairo $2bn in cash aid.
On the opposite side, Saudi Arabia
gave $11bn to the Egyptian military
to remove the first democratically-elected
president of Egypt. Saudi
defeated Qatar in this game el-SISI
ousted Morsi in 2013 after a deadly
military coup.
Riyadh and Qatar have been
competing in Syria, too. Although
the two oil-rich states mobilised
their potentials to remove from
power the Syrian President Basher
al-Assad since 2011, they have
SAUDI
ARABIA
30km
20 miles
BAHRAIN
Doha
QATAR
8 Refuse to naturalise citizens from
four countries and expel those
currently on its territory
9 Provide detailed information
about opposition figures whom
Qatar has funded in four countries
10 Align itself politically,
economically and otherwise with
Gulf Co-operation Council
11 Pay unspecified sum in
compensation to four nations
for damage or costs incurred by
Qatar’s policies in recent years
12 Agree to all demands within 10
days or they will be considered void
13 Consent to be monitored for
compliance with demands, with
monthly reports in first year,
every three months next year,
then annually for 10 years
© GRAPHIC NEWS
been struggling to introduce their
own allied group as the leader of
the anti-Assad opposition camp.
The Saudi pressures removed Moaz
al-Khatib, the Qatari-backed president
of the National Coalition for
Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition
Forces, and replaced him with
Ahmad Jarba.
For conclusion, it can be noted
that despite all efforts to show off
unity, the Arab council’s members
remain divided in their bilateral
and multilateral ties. The divisions
sometimes even lead to efforts to
destabilise the opposite side and
even seek regime change. •
[This is an excerpt of a Libertyfighters
article, which can be found at http://bit.
ly/2sRusn8]
An image grab taken from a propaganda video released by Islamic State (IS) terrorists group, have shown children training for combat and performing executions
Can Islamic State’s indoctrinated kids be
saved from a future of violent jihad?
• Tribune Desk
The blue-eyed boy with the chubby
cheeks still talks about the after-school
movies he used to love
so much. This was three years ago,
when he was just 9 and living on
the outskirts of Raqqa, in northern
Syria. Sometimes, his father would
take him and his little brother to an
outdoor makeshift theatre. The films
varied, but the plot was always the
same: Black-clad members of the
Islamic State militant group (IS) “liberated”
cities from kuffar, or non-believers,
chopping off their heads in
bloody, righteous celebration. There
was no acting involved. The films
showed real events. “I thought,” the
boy recalls, “it would be fun to go to
jihad.” Today, the boy who asked to
be identified only as Mohammed,
lives with his uncle in the Turkish
town of Reyhanli. When we meet on
a cool evening in May in his uncle’s
tidy but crowded home, I am surprised
to hear that the violence in
those videos never frightened him.
“They are kuffar, and it is OK to kill
them,” he explains. Instead, he recalls
feeling “excited” as he watched
the action on screen or when he
spotted IS fighters patrolling the
streets of Raqqa, enforcing the exacting
dress codes and mosque attendance
mandated by their radical
interpretation of Islamic law.
The drift of Mohammed and his
two brothers toward IS worried his
uncle, who asked to be identified
only as Ra’ed, convinced the boys’
father to move with his family out
of Raqqa, the militant group’s main
stronghold in Syria, and into Turkey.
Today, Ra’ed and his own family
share their home with the three
boys- Mohammed, who is now 12,
10-year-old Ibrahim and 16-yearold
Salim and their parents. The
boys are studying in a Unicef-funded
school for Syrian refugees. Hoping
to shift their allegiance away
from violent jihad, Ra’ed bought
them iPads, has them pitch in at
his second-hand clothing shop and
tries to gently challenge their beliefs
about what it means to be a
good Muslim. But even after nine
months away from the jihadi group,
the boys still idolize the soldiers of
the self-styled caliphate. “They are
always yelling at me, ‘Why did you
bring us here?’” Ra’ed says. “It’s going
to take time. A brain is not like a
computer. Once it downloads information,
it cannot easily be erased.”
The propaganda
IS devoted extensive resources to
the indoctrination of children in its
territory, which at its peak, from
mid-2014 through 2015, spanned
roughly a third of Syria and Iraq and
was home to between 6m and 12m
civilians. Swiftly and methodically,
the group forced its curriculum
on schools and lured children to its
training camps with gifts and propaganda
videos. IS also captured the
children of its enemies, from Yazidis
to Christians, and brainwashed
many of them in training camps
before sending them off to battle as
soldiers or suicide bombers. Now, as
US-backed forces in Syria and Iraq
close in on the last IS strongholds,
the world is getting an increasingly
detailed look at the damage wrought
on a generation of youth. The first to
grapple with this damage are those
on the outskirts of IS’s collapsing
territory. Interviews with children
now living in southern Turkey and
northern Iraq who attended IS training
camps and schools, as well as
the therapists and security officials
scrambling to assess them, open a
rare window into the crisis.
In addition to being far behind in
their education, many of these children
are suffering from trauma and
other mental health issues. Some of
them also alarm authorities, and,
in some cases, their families, with
their extremist views and violent
behaviour. Liesbeth van der Heide,
an expert on the rehabilitation and
reintegration of terrorists at the International
Centre for Counter-Terrorism
in the Hague, says IS is a
much graver challenge than other
extremist groups that tried to radicalise
communities.
Slow poisoning education
When IS seized control of Mosul,
Iraq, and announced the establishment
of its caliphate in June
2014, Umar Aljbouri was working
there at a government-run institute
for women and children. The
civil servant continued reporting
to work each day as the militants
asserted their control over Mosul’s
nearly 2m inhabitants, one institution
at a time. Eventually, they shut
down his institute and instructed
Aljbouri to begin reporting to a
local elementary school that was
short of teachers. Though Aljbouri
had never taught, he was afraid to
object and agreed to attend mandatory
IS training courses for teachers.
There, he learned that teachers
and children of all ages were to be
separated by gender, and they were
to adhere to a strict Islamic dress
code. Many subjects that had been
taught, including history and literature,
were scrapped; mathematics,
Arabic and the study of Islam would
remain, but only according to IS’s
curriculum. Eventually, the group’s
office of education distributed IS
course materials and textbooks.
“IS’s curriculum was based on
extremist doctrine,” he says. “It was
inviting children to hate and kill
people from other religions. Even in
mathematics, instead of ‘1 apple + 2
apples = 3 apples,’ they would say,
‘1 bullet + 2 bullets = 3 bullets.’ Parents
were so worried.”The education
overhaul was part of a broader
indoctrination for children that IS
instituted in towns and cities across
its territory.
Mohammed Alhamed, an activist
tracking IS education in Syria,
says the group used schools to ease
children into the organisation. “IS
doesn’t force children to join them.
But they teach them their rules and
everything about jihad and the Islamic
State, and by the time they
are older, they want to join.” While
IS threatened parents who wouldn’t
send their children to school with
fines or lashings, it took a lighter approach
with its pupils. Mohammed,
the boy now in Reyhanli, attended
an IS-run school for two years
at a mosque in Raqqa. He says his
teachers never used corporal punishment
and treated students “really
nice. I liked them, and I liked
Islam. They said if you read the Koran,
you get prizes.”
Courtesy: NEWSWEEK
Rehabilitation
There have been small and sporadic
efforts to identify the young ones in
need of aid, but it is easy for parents
to keep these children in the shadows.
Some families who want help
for their radicalised children are reluctant
to seek it, fearing they will
be investigated and punished by
local security services. Others, like
Ra’ed, think they can manage the
problem on their own. The family
patriarch acknowledges that there
have been some missteps in his efforts
to rehabilitate his nephews.
Once, when Salim first arrived
from Raqqa, Ra’ed brought the teen
to a beach to challenge his deeply
conservative views about women.
Upon seeing women in bikinis, Salim
fumed that he should “behead
them and turn the sea red with their
blood.” When Ra’ed bought Ibrahim
an iPad, the boy instantly downloaded
war games. But he believes he is
slowly winning this war of hearts
and young minds. “They are all getting
better,” he insists. “It’s a different
lifestyle here, and bit by bit, they
are changing.” He is less optimistic,
though, about the children of IS sympathisers,
whom he sees from time
to time around Reyhanli. One recently
visited his second-hand clothing
shop. The boy erupted in rage
when his sister approached Ra’ed to
inquire about a size. “Why are you
talking to a man?” he screamed. “If
you have a question, you ask me,
and I ask him. I swear to God, I will
go back home and have your older
brother cut your head off.”As Ra’ed,
recounts the story, he shakes his
head. “Some of these children are
growing up with jihadist ideas. And
they will be a problem for the future
of the whole world.” •
[This is an excerpt of a Newsweek
article, which can be found at http://bit.
ly/2swCmhI]