The Arab League conference opened in Kuwait with rifts among its members expected to be a major focus of the annual meeting. Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Nabil Fahmi, alluded to these divisions when he acknowledged that he would not meet with his Qatari counterpart due to the “deep issues” dividing the two nations.
The host of the summit, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Saba, the Emir of Kuwait, sounded a conciliatory note, calling for unity in the Arab world, saying “we will not move towards joint Arab action without our unity and without casting aside our differences.”
He named no country. But he was alluding to worsening disputes among Arab states over the political role of Islamists in the region, and over what many Gulf states regard as interference in their affairs by Shi’ite Muslim Iran, locked in a struggle for regional influence with Sunni rival Saudi Arabia. …
The summit follows an unusual dispute within the Gulf Cooperation Council alliance of Gulf Arab states over Qatari support for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and a spat between Iraq and Saudi Arabia over violence in Iraq’s Anbar province.
With the United States seeming to de-emphasize its traditional alliances in favor of dialogue with Iran and, at least tacitly distancing themselves on the Muslim Brotherhood, Western oriented Arab states are increasingly pivoting away from Washington, eroding American influence in the Middle East. The Saudi dispute with Qatar over the latter’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood is a function of that realignment.
In Confidence Game: Losing American Support, the Gulf States Scramble, appearing in the January, 2014 issue of The Tower magazine, Jonathan Spyer provides an in-depth look at the shifting alliances in the Middle East.
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