The United Arab Emirates foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, shakes hands with his opposite number in Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez, after raising the UAE flag at the opening of the Emirati embassy in Havana on Oct. 5, 2015. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Oct 6 2015 (IPS)

Cuba and the United Arab Emirates agreed to strengthen diplomatic ties and bilateral cooperation during an official visit to this Caribbean island nation by the UAE minister of foreign affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

During his 24-hour stay, Al Nahyan met on Monday Oct. 5 with Cuban authorities, signed two agreements, and inaugurated his country’s embassy in Havana, which he said was a clear sign of the consolidation of the ties established by the two countries in March 2002.

“I am sure that the next few years will witness the prosperity of our ties,” he added during his official meeting with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodríguez, with whom he signed an agreement on air services “between and beyond our territories” which will facilitate the expansion of opportunities for international air transport.

In the meeting, Rodríguez reaffirmed his government’s support for Arab peoples in their struggle to maintain their independence and territorial integrity.

According to official sources, the two foreign ministers concurred that the opening of the UAE embassy is an important step forward in bilateral ties and will permit closer follow-up of questions of mutual interest.

Al Nahyan also met with the first vice president of the councils of state and ministers, Miguel Díaz Canel. The two officials confirmed the good state of bilateral ties and the possibilities for cooperation on the economic, trade and financial fronts, Cuba’s prime-time TV newscast reported.

The foreign ministers of Cuba and the United Arab Emirates, Bruno Rodríguez (left) and Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, during the Oct. 5, 2015 agreement-signing ceremony in Cuba’s ministry of foreign affairs in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Cuba’s minister of foreign trade and investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, signed a credit agreement with the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, to finance a solar energy farm that will generate 10 MW of electricity.

Al Nahyan first visited Havana on Oct. 1-2, 2009 in response to an official invitation from minister Rodríguez. On that occasion they signed two agreements, one on economic, trade and technical cooperation, and another between the two foreign ministries.

“We have great confidence in Cuba’s leaders and in our capacity to carry out these kinds of projects,” Al Nahyan told the local media on that occasion.

United Arab Emirates, a federation made up of seven emirates – Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain – established diplomatic relations with Cuba in March 2002, in an accord signed in Cairo.

The decision to open an embassy in the Cuban capital was reached in a June 2014 cabinet meeting presided over by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE vice president and prime minister, and the ruler of Dubai.

In late February 2015, Al Maktoum received the letters of credentials for the new ambassador of Cuba in the UAE, Enrique Enríquez, during a ceremony in the Al Mushrif Palace in the Emirati capital.

The United Arab Emirates foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed al Nayhan, unveils a plaque commemorating the official opening in Havana of the new UAE embassy, together with his opposite number in Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Later, UAE Assistant Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Ahmed al Jarman and Enríquez discussed the state of bilateral relations and agreed to take immediate concrete steps to expand and strengthen ties in different areas.

Enríquez also met with Cubans living in Abu Dhabi with a view to bolstering relations between them and their home country. They agreed on periodic future gatherings.

In May 2014, the UAE and Cuba signed an open skies agreement to allow the airlines of both countries to operate in each other’s territories, as well as opening the door to new plans for flights between the two countries, the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) reported.

The accord formed part of a strategy to boost trade with other countries, said Saif Mohammed al Suwaidi, director general of the GCAA, who headed a delegation of officials and representatives of national airlines during a two-day visit to Cuba.

The UAE signed similar agreements with other Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, as part of its effort at closer relations with this region, which is of growing interest to the Gulf country.

Talks have also been announced between the UAE and Russia to build a giant airport in Cuba, which would serve as an international airport hub for Latin America, the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper reported in February.

The proposal is being discussed by the Russian government and the Abu Dhabi state investment fund Mubadala, mandated to diversify the emirate’s economy.

In 2013 and 2014, UAE was named the world’s largest official development aid donor in a report released by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2013, the Gulf nation provided five billion dollars in ODA to other countries.

Last year, according to OECD data, the only Gulf country to have a Ministry of International Cooperation and Development spent 1.34 percent of their gross domestic product in development cooperation.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The Shams 1 concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in the United Arab Emirates covers an area the size of 285 football pitches and generates over 100 MW of electricity for the country’s national grid. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
ABU DHABI, Jan 26 2015 (IPS)

With global energy needs projected to increase by 35 percent by 2035, a new report says meeting this demand could increase water withdrawals in the energy sector unless more cost effective renewable energy sources are deployed in power, water and food production.

The report, titled “Renewable Energy in the Water, Energy & Food Nexus” by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), says that integrating renewable energy in the agrifood supply chain alone could help to rein in cost volatility, bolster energy security, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to long-term food sustainability.

The  report, launched at the International Water Summit (Jan. 18-21) in Abu Dhabi, examines how adopting renewables can ease trade-offs by providing less resource-intensive energy services compared with conventional energy technologies. Integrating renewable energy in the agrifood supply chain alone could help to rein in cost volatility, bolster energy security, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to long-term food sustainability

“Globally, an energy system with substantial shares of renewables, in particular solar photovoltaics and wind power, would save significant amounts of water, thereby reducing strains on limited water resources,” said IRENA Director-General Adnan Z. Amin.

Unfortunately, he said, detailed knowledge on the role of renewable energy at the intersection of energy, food and water has so far been limited.

In addition to the water-saving potential of renewable energy, the report also shows that renewable energy-based desalination technologies could play an increasing role in providing clean drinking water for people around the world.

Amin said although renewable desalination may still be relatively expensive, decreasing renewable energy costs, technology advancements and increasing scales of deployment make it a cost-effective and sustainable solution in the long term.

Dr Rabia Ferroukhi, Deputy Director of IRENA’s Knowledge, Policy and Finance division, told IPS that “water, energy and food systems are inextricably linked: water and energy are needed to produce food; water is needed for most power generation; and energy is required to treat and transport water in what is known as ‘the water-energy-food nexus’.”

She said deployment of renewable energy is already showing positive results in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with an over 50 percent cost share of global desalination capacity.

Some 120 kilometres southwest of Abu Dhabi lies the Shams 1 concentrated solar power (CSP) plant, which generates over 100 MW of electricity for the United Arab Emirates national grid.

Shams 1, which was designed and developed by Shams Power Company, a joint venture among Masdar (60 percent), Total (20 percent) and Abengoa Solar (20 percent), accounts for almost 68 percent of the Gulf’s renewable energy capacity and close to 10 percent of the world’s installed CSP capacity.

Abdulaziz Albaidli, Sham’s Plant Manager, told IPS during a visit to the plant that the project reduces the UAE’s carbon emissions, displacing approximately 175,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year.

Located in the middle of the desert and covering an area of 2.5 km² – or 285 football fields – Shams 1 incorporates the latest in parabolic trough technology and features more than 258,000 mirrors mounted on 768 tracking parabolic trough collectors.

By concentrating heat from direct sunlight onto oil-filled pipes, Shams 1 produces steam, which drives a turbine and generates electricity. Shams 1 also features a dry-cooling system that significantly reduces water consumption – a critical advantage in the arid desert.

“This plant has been built to be a hybrid plant which allows us to produce electricity at very high efficiency, as well as allowing us to produce electricity when there is no sun. Also the use of an air-cooled condenser allows us to save two hundred million gallons of water. That is a very important feature in a country where water is scarce,” said.

In addition, he continued, “the electricity we produce is able to provide twenty thousand homes with a steady supply of electricity for refrigeration, air conditioning, lighting and so on.”

Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of Masdar – the majority shareholder in Shams 1 – told delegates at the just concluded Abu Dhabi World Future Energy Summit (Jan. 18-21) that “through Masdar, we are redefining the role our country will play in delivering energy to the world.”

“From precious hydrocarbons exports to commercially viable renewable energy projects,” he said, “we are extending our legacy for future generations.”

Morocco is another country aiming to become a world-class renewable energy producer and is eyeing the chance to export clean electricity to nearby Europe through the water, energy and food nexus.

Its first CSP plant located in the southern desert city of Ouarzazate, which is now operational, is part of a major plan to produce over 2,000 megawatts (MW) at an estimated cost of nine billion dollars with funding from the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank.

Meanwhile, South Africa is taking advantage of a solar-powered dry cooling system to generate power. In collaboration with Spanish-based CSP technology giant Abengoa Solar, the country is installing two plants – Khi Solar One and KaXu Solar One – that will generate up to 17,800 MW of renewable energy by 2030 and reduce its dependence on oil and natural gas.

Dr Linus Mafor, an analyst with the IRENA’s Innovation and Technology Centre, told IPS that there is an encouraging trend across the globe with countries implementing projects that aim to account for the interdependencies and trade-offs among the water, energy and food sectors.

He said that the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) is one of the promoters of the water, energy and food nexus in six Asian countries which are integrating the approach into development processes.  According to Mafor, such initiatives will see more affordable and sustainable renewable energy deployed in water, energy and food production in the near future.

The Austria-based Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) is one of the supporters of the nexus among clean energy, food production and water provision. Its Director-General, Martin Hiller, told IPS that understanding the inter-linkages among water resources, energy production and food security and managing them holistically is critical to global sustainability.

The agrifood industry, he said, accounts for over 80 percent of total freshwater use, 30 percent of total energy demand, and 12 to 30 percent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

REEEP is supporting countries like Kenya, Indonesia, Kenya and Burkina Faso, among others, in developing solar-powered pumps for irrigation, with the aim of improving energy efficiency.

Edited by Phil Harris  

Bondok Hassem (left) gets help to mount a mortar inside Zwara´s squat house. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ZWARA, Libya, Dec 5 2014 (IPS)

It could be a squat house anywhere: music is playing non-stop and there is also a radio station and an art exhibition. However, weapons are also on display among the instruments, and most here wear camouflage uniform.

“The house belonged to a former member of the secret services of [Muammar] Gaddafi so we decided to squat it for the local youth in Zwara [an Amazigh enclave 120 km west of Tripoli, on the border with Tunisia],” Fadel Farhad, an electrician who combines his work with the local militia, tells IPS.It could be a squat house anywhere: music is playing non-stop and there is also a radio station and an art exhibition. However, weapons are also on display among the instruments, and most here wear camouflage uniform.

The centre is called “Tifinagh” after the name given to the Amazigh alphabet. Also called Berbers, the Amazigh are native inhabitants of North Africa.

The arrival of the Arabs in the region in the seventh century was the beginning of a slow yet gradual process of Arabisation which was sharply boosted during the four decades in which Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011) remained in power. Unofficial estimates put the number of Amazighs in this country at around 600,000 – about 10 percent of the total population

Like most of the youngsters at the centre, Farhad knows he can be mobilised at any time. The latest attack on Zwara took place less than a kilometre from here a little over a week ago, when an airstrike hit a warehouse killing two Libyans and six sub-Saharan migrants.

Three years after Gaddafi was toppled, Libya remains in a state of political turmoil that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. There are two governments and two separate parliaments one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, 1,000 km east of the capital.

Several militias are grouped into two paramilitary alliances: Fajr (“Dawn” in Arabic), led by the Misrata brigades controlling Tripoli, and Karama (“Dignity”) commanded by Khalifa Haftar, a Tobruk-based former army general.

“Here in Zwara we rely on around 5000 men grouped into different militias,” Younis, a militia fighter who prefers not to give his full name, tells IPS. “We never wanted this to happen but the problem is that all our enemies are fighting on Tobruk´s side,” adds the 30-year-old by the pickups lining up at the entrance of the building.

Local militiamen gather outside their squat house in the Amazigh enclave of Zwara. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The polarisation of the conflict in Libya has pushed several Amazigh militias to fight sporadically alongside the coalition led by Misrata, which includes Islamist groups among its ranks.

However, the atmosphere in this squat house seems at odds with religious orthodoxy of any kind, with an unlikely fusion between Amazigh traditional music and death metal blasting from two loudspeakers. This is the work of 30-year-old Bondok Hassem, a well-known local musician who is also an Amazigh language teacher as well as one of the commanders of the Tamazgha militia.

“Both Misrata and Tobruk are striving to become the alpha male in this war. We are all fully aware that, whoever wins this war, they will attack us immediately afterwards so we are forced to defend our land by any means necessary,” laments Hassem between sips of boja, the local firewater.

But can it be international partnerships that hamper an already difficult agreement between both sides?

Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and France are backing Tobruk and Misrata relies mainly on Qatar and Turkey. Meanwhile, NATO officials are seemingly torn between wanting to stay out of the war, and watching anxiously as the violence goes out of control. Today, most of the diplomatic missions have left Tripoli, except for those of Italy and Hungary.

A fragile balance

Moussa Harim is among the Amazigh who seem to feel not too uncomfortable siding with the government in Tripoli. Born in Jadu, in the Amazigh stronghold of the Nafusa mountain range – 100 km south of Tripoli – Harim was exiled in France during Gaddafi’s time but he became Deputy Minister of Culture in March 2012.

Although he admits that Islamists pose a real threat, he clarifies that in Misrata there are also people “from all walks of life and very diverse affiliations, communists included.”

It is the geographical location itself which, according to Harim, inexorably pushes the Libyan Amazigh towards Misrata.

“Except for a small enclave in the east, our people live in the west of the country, and a majority of them here, in Tripoli,” the senior official tells IPS.

But there are discordant voices, like that of Fathi Ben Khalifa. A native of Zwara and a political dissident for decades, Ben Khalifa was the president of the World Amazigh Congress between 2011 and 2013.

The Congress is an international organisation based in Paris since 1995 that aims to protect the Amazigh identity. Today Ben Khalifa remains as an executive member of this umbrella organisation for this North African people.

“This is not our war, it’s just a conflict between Arab nationalists and Islamists, none of which will ever recognise our rights,” Ben Khalifa tells IPS over the phone from Morocco. Although the senior political activist defends the right of his people to defend themselves from outside aggressions, he gives a deadline to take a clearer position:

“If Libya´s Constitution – to be released on December 24 – does not grant our legitimate rights, then it will be the time to take up arms,” Ben Khalifa bluntly claims.

At dusk, and after another day marked by exhausting shifts at checkpoints and patrols around the city, the local militiamen cool down after swapping their rifles for a harmonica and a guitar at the squat house. This time they play the songs of Matloub Lounes, a singer from Kabylia, Algeria´s Amazigh stronghold.

“I can´t hardly wait for the war to end. I´ll burn my uniform and get back to my work,” says Anwar Darir, an Amazigh language teacher since 2011. That was the year in which Gaddafi was killed, yet a solution to the conflict among Libyans is still nowhere near.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Food price rises as far back as 2008 are believed to be the partial culprits behind the instability plaguing Arab countries and they have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing food needs through an international strategy of land grabs which are often detrimental to local populations.

Between 2007 and 2008, rises in food prices caused protest movements in Egypt and Morocco. “This has become an important concern for countries in the Arab region which want to meet the growing demands of their populations,” notes Devlin Kuyek, a researcher at GRAIN, a non-profit organisation supporting small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.Arab countries ... have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing food needs through an international strategy of land grabs which are often detrimental to local populations

Arab countries, which appear to have started losing confidence in normal food supply chains, are now relying on acquisitions of farmland around the world. Globally, land deals by foreign countries were estimated at about 80 million ha in 2011, according to figures provided by the World Bank.

The 2008 international food price crisis caused alarm among policy-makers and the public in general about the vulnerability of Arab countries to potential future food supply shocks (such as, for example, in the event of closure of the Straits of Hormuz) as well as the perceived continued sharp increase in international food prices in the long term, explains Sarwat Hussain, Senior Communications Officer at the World Bank.

Increasing food prices are caused by entrenched trends that include population growth combined with high urbanisation rates, depleting freshwater sources, increased demand for raw commodities and biofuels, as well as speculation over farmland.

To face such threats, Arab countries have worked on buying or leasing farm land in foreign countries. “Investment in land often takes the form of long-term leases, as opposed to outright purchases, of land. These leases often range between 25 and 99 years,” says Hussain.

Currently, the United Arab Emirates accounts for around 12 percent of all land deals, followed by Egypt (6 percent) and Saudi Arabia (4 percent), according to GRAIN.

“It is however very difficult to estimate the total value of land grabbed today because most deals remain in the negotiations phase and are, for the most, very obscure ,” adds Hussain.

Land acquisitions are becoming institutionalised as clear strategies are developed by governments, which also rely on the private sector and international organisations, explains Kuyek.

Some governments of member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have adopted explicit policies to encourage their citizens to invest in food production overseas as part of their long-term national food security strategies.

Such policies cover a variety of instruments, including investment subsidies and guarantees, as well as the establishment of sovereign funds focusing exclusively on investments in agriculture overseas.

Countries falling victims of the land acquisition mania range from Western countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Romania to countries in Latin America, Asia or Africa.

Globally, the largest targeted countries are Brazil with 11 percent by land area; Sudan with 10 percent; Madagascar, the Philippines and Ethiopia with 8 percent each; Mozambique with 7 percent; and Indonesia with 6 percent, according to the World Bank.

“The main driving force seems to be biofuels expansion, with exceptions in Sudan and Ethiopia, which are seeing a trend towards growth of food from Middle Eastern and Indian investors,” Hussain points out.

Governments, often through sovereign wealth funds, are negotiating the acquisition or lease of farming land. According to GRAIN, the Ethiopian government has made deals with investors from Saudi Arabia, as well as India and China among others, giving foreign investors control of half of the arable land in its Gambela region.

Powerful Saudi businessmen are pursuing deals in Senegal, Mali and other countries that would give them control over several hundred thousand hectares of the most productive farmlands. -“The [Saudi Arabian] al-Amoudi company has acquired ten thousand hectares in south western Ethiopia to export rice,” notes Kuyek.

Besides food security concerns, it appears that such acquisitions are increasingly perceived by international companies as a useful investment tool allowing for diversification. A number of investment companies and private funds have been acquiring farmland around the globe.  These include Western heavyweights such Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, but also Arab players such as Citadel Capital, an Egyptian private equity fund.

Kuyek explains that large land acquisitions are triggering debates in developing countries and can become electoral issues.  Land grabs can have adverse repercussions on indigenous populations which find themselves evicted from the land they have used over generations for cultivation and irrigation.

“People are concerned by the sale of their local resources,” adds Kuyek.

This has translated into the creation of local groups that are challenging large land sale deals negotiated by their governments. As an example, farmers in Serbia have made formal complaints about the purchase of farmland by an Abu Dhabi company, Al Rawafed Agriculture, according to The National newspaper.

Small opposition groups will nonetheless face increasing difficulty in fighting-off governments and institutions, for which food security has become a matter of political survival.

In contrast to some of their leaders, people across the Arab world prefer President Barack Obama’s efforts to reduce Washington’s military footprint in the Middle East to the approach favoured by neo-conservatives and other U.S. hawks, according to the latest in a series of surveys of Arab public opinion released here Tuesday.

While the popular perception of U.S. policies in the region remains largely negative, the survey, which included six Arab countries and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, found a notable increase in Arab support for Obama compared to three years ago, as well as strong majorities who said that having “good relations with the United States” was important to their country.

Overall, Arab attitudes toward the U.S. are back roughly to where they were in 2009 shortly after Obama took office, according to James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute (AAI) and director of Zogby Research Services, which conducted the poll.

Obama’s accession ended the eight-year reign of President George W. Bush (2001-2009), whose military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and nearly unconditional support for Israel brought U.S. favourability ratings in the region down to the single digits in most countries.

Among other findings, the poll found that Bush evoked the most negative views by far of the last four U.S. presidents in six of the seven countries covered by the survey.

“Overall, my takeaway is an uptick [for Obama and the United States],” Zogby told a forum at the Middle East Institute (MEI) where the survey results and an accompanying analysis, ‘Five Years After the Cairo Speech: How Arabs View President Obama and America’, were released.

The main lesson to be learned from the increase in positive sentiment toward Obama and the U.S., he suggested, was “the less damage you do, the better off you are.”

He cited the fact that Washington’s withdrawal from Iraq and its negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear programme were considered by respondents in all of the countries except Lebanon to be the two “most effective” efforts by the administration to address the challenges it faces in the Arab world.

The survey, which was based on interviews last month of representative samples (800-1,000 in each country) of respondents in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as Palestine, produced a number of notable findings on a variety of other issues, several of which appeared to support Zogby’s observation.

Despite the repeated insistence by a number of Arab leaders – as well as Obama’s hawkish critics here – that the U.S. should do more militarily to oust Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, significant majorities in all surveyed countries opposed any form of U.S. military engagement, including establishing “no-fly zones,” carrying out air strikes, or even supplying more advanced weapons to rebel forces.

Given a menu of six policy options for the U.S. to pursue in the three-year-old civil war in Syria from which they were asked to choose two, majorities ranging from 51 percent (UAE) to 82 percent (Morocco) in all seven countries opted for providing humanitarian relief to refugees.

Seven in ten Moroccan and Lebanese respondents chose “leave Syria alone”, as did 54 percent of Jordanians. The next most-popular option in the remaining countries – but most popular in Egypt – was “pressing the parties” to negotiate a transitional government.

The new survey found virtually no support for direct U.S. military intervention in any country, despite the fact that a just-released poll by the Pew Research Center showed that between six and seven out of ten respondents in Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia hold a “very negative view” of Assad.

Nonetheless, the anti-Assad sentiment “doesn’t translate into Arabs wanting the United States to intervene directly or even provide aid to [the rebels],” said Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here. “If I were an Obama adviser, I would use this poll to say that we [have been] right.”

In another blow to U.S. hawks, especially neo-conservatives who have urged a more muscular policy against Syria and Iran, the new poll found that the civil war in Syria has not displaced the Israel-Palestine conflict as the most pressing concern among Arab publics about U.S. policy.

Asked to choose from seven options that they considered the most important challenges for U.S.-Arab relations, pluralities and majorities ranging from 45 percent (Saudi Arabia) to 76 percent (Morocco) cited Israel-Palestine in six of the seven countries. Only in the UAE was the war in Syria considered by a plurality to be more important.

Remarkably, ending Iran’s nuclear programme was among the least-chosen options, even in Saudi Arabia and the UAE whose governments have been the most hawkish toward Tehran.

Similarly, asked to choose the single greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East among six options, pluralities and majorities in all but the UAE cited the “continuing occupation of Palestinian lands”.

The next most-frequently chosen option was “U.S. interference in the Arab world” – far ahead of the least-chosen option in six of the seven countries, “Iran’s interference in Arab affairs”. The UAE was again the only exception: 16 percent of respondents there cited Iran’s interference; that was still six percent fewer respondents than those who cited “U.S. interference”.

While Iran and its nuclear programme were not seen as particularly threatening by majorities in the seven Arab countries, Tehran’s favourability ratings continued their sharp decline since 2006, when its support for Hezbollah during the war with Israel and defiance of the U.S. gained it strong backing throughout the Arab world.

While a majority in Lebanon (81 percent) and a 50-percent plurality in Palestine view Iran favourably today, fewer than a quarter of respondents in the other five countries said they saw Iran in a generally positive light. Only one percent of Saudi respondents said so.

Muasher suggested two main factors appeared to contribute to the disillusionment; the repression that followed the disputed 2009 presidential elections and, more important, Iran’s backing for Assad in Syria.

One of the new survey’s most notable findings dealt with U.S. policy toward Egypt and the changes of government there over the past three years, according to Zogby. Asked whether the U.S. was “too supportive, not supportive enough, or just right” toward each government, majorities in all countries except Palestine said Washington was “too supportive” of Hosni Mubarak.

Perhaps more surprising, pluralities and majorities in five of the seven countries – including 61 percent in Egypt itself – said Washington was “not supportive enough” of Mohammed Morsi’s presidency.

The exceptions were Lebanon and UAE, which, along with Saudi Arabia, has been the interim government’s biggest financial supporter since the military coup that ousted Morsi. Even in Saudi Arabia, which has led the counter-revolution against Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood across the region, a 44-percent plurality said Washington had not given Morsi enough support.

While Arabs remain highly critical of U.S. policies in the region, there has been an increase in Arab support for Obama in all seven countries since 2011, the year when he ceased insisting on an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank and when the hopes raised by his inauguration and subsequent speech in Cairo in which he pledged improved relations with the Arab world collapsed across the region.

At that time, ten percent or fewer of respondents in each country said they supported Obama’s policies. In 2014, that support increased ten-fold in Egypt (to 34 percent), eight-fold in Jordan (to 25 percent), nearly five-fold in UAE (to 38 percent), about three-fold in Morocco and Saudi Arabia (to 28 percent and 34 percent, respectively).

Favourability ratings for the United States have also improved over the last three years, although they have lagged behind Obama’s, according to the survey.

UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and his Uruguayan opposite number Luis Almagro at an Apr. 28 press conference in Montevideo. Credit: Presidencia de Uruguay

By IPS Correspondents
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 29 2014 (IPS)

The visit by United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to Uruguay, Paraguay and Peru brings to an end 10 days of unusually intense diplomatic activity by the Gulf nation in Latin America.

On Monday Apr. 28, Al Nahyan met with his Uruguayan counterpart Luis Almagro before he was received by President José Mujica. On Tuesday Apr. 29 he continued on his tour to Paraguay and Peru.

The minister is visiting the region as part of the delegation of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE, who visited Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, in that order, from Apr. 20 to 26.

The agenda for dialogue in Uruguay included the opening of an embassy by this South American country in the UAE.

In a press conference with Almagro, Al Nahyan said “I look forward to the opening of a Uruguayan Embassy in Abu Dhabi in the near future. This will serve to increase dialogue between the UAE and Uruguay on a range of issues, and to support an expansion of business links.”

Uruguay is particularly interested in drawing investment from the UAE in the projected deep-water Atlantic port in the eastern department or province of Rocha.

Almagro, who visited the UAE in 2011, said that country had experience in participating in similar port projects in Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Peru.

The foreign ministers also reported a project involving cooperation in horse breeding genetics and renewable energy, although the two countries have not yet signed concrete agreements in these areas.

Al Nahyan stressed the need for an adequate legal framework, which according to Almagro is in the final stage of drafting and will include an agreement to avoid double taxation.

“Our countries also share a strong interest in renewable energy and cooperation on climate change issues,” said Al Nahyan.

He added: “We commend Uruguay for its efforts to spread important messages about climate change to the world and I look forward to welcoming Uruguay’s participation in the Abu Dhabi Ascent meeting, which will support preparations for the 2014 Climate Summit,” to take place Dec. 1-12 in Peru.

The May 4-5 Abu Dhabi Ascent meeting will draw senior U.N. officials, ministers, bankers, and representatives of business and civil society, to promote commitments towards reaching a new global climate treaty in 2015.

The UAE supports Uruguay’s candidacy for a seat on the U.N. Security Council for 2016-2017, Al Nahyan also stated.

In addition, the conversations focused on multilateral relations between the Arab world and Latin America, and particularly sensitive Middle East issues such as the Palestinian question.

Almagro returned Sunday Apr. 27 from an official tour to Jordan, Palestine, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

In his meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the two governments indicated an interest in opening embassies.

In Montevideo, Al Nahyan expressed appreciation for Uruguay’s efforts, which he said formed part of “growing international support for the cause of the Palestinian people.”

Meanwhile, during his tour through four key Latin American countries – Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile – Prime Minister Al Maktoum met with each president and signed agreements in important areas.

With Chile he signed an accord to avoid double taxation on income and wealth of air transport and naval companies.

In Argentina, a memorandum of understanding was reached for the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

With the Brazilian government, Al Maktoum signed an agreement in defence for technology sharing, cooperation in training and instruction, weapons, crisis management and logistical support.

With Mexico, where he began his tour on Apr. 20, Al Maktoum signed a declaration on the conclusion of the negotiations of the Accord for the Reciprocal Promotion and Protection of Investment between the two countries.

The Bahraini Arabic language newspaper al-Wasat reported on Wednesday Apr. 9 that a Cairo court began to consider a case brought by an Egyptian lawyer against Qatar accusing it of being soft on terrorism.

The “terrorism” charge is of course a euphemism for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have designated a “terrorist” organisation and are vowed to dismantle.It’s becoming very clear that dictatorial policies are producing more instability, less security, and greater appeal to terrorism.

The two new partners and the UAE also loathe Qatar for hosting and funding Al-Jazeera satellite TV. The continued incarceration of the Al-Jazeera journalists and dozens of other journalists on trumped up charges is no coincidence.

The court case is symptomatic of the current Saudi-Egyptian relationship in their counter-revolution against the 2011 pro-democracy upheavals that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his fellow autocrats in Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya.

The pro-autocracy partnership between the Egyptian military junta and the Saudi ruling family goes beyond their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and the perceived threat of terrorism. It emanates from the autocrats’ visceral opposition to democracy and human rights, including minority and women’s rights.

What should be most critical to them as they contemplate the future of their coalition of counter-revolutionaries, however, is the growing Western conviction that dictators can no longer provide stability.

The Egyptian Field Marshall and the Saudi potentate also abhor the key demands of the Arab uprisings and reject their peoples’ calls for freedom, dignity, justice, and genuine economic and political reform.

They are equally terrified of the coming end of the authoritarian paradigm, which could bring about their demise or at least force them to share power with their people. The Saudis and their Gulf Arab allies, especially Bahrain and the UAE, are willing to trample on their people’s rights in order to safeguard family tribal rule.

The Saudi-Egyptian partnership is also directed at the Obama administration primarily because of Washington’s diplomatic engagement with Iran.

According to media and Human Rights Watch reports, at least 15,000 secular and Islamist activists are currently being held in Egyptian prisons, without having been charged or convicted. This number includes hundreds of MB leaders and activists and thousands of its supporters.

Many of them, including teenagers, have also been tortured and abused physically and psychologically. These mass arrests and summary trials and convictions of Islamists and liberals alike belie the Saudi-Egyptian claim that theirs is a campaign against terrorism.

A brief history of Egyptian-Saudi relations

Egyptian-Saudi relations in the past 60 years have been erratic, depending on leadership, ideology, and regional and world events. During the Nasser era in the 1950s and ‘60s, relations were very tense because of Saudi fears of Nasser’s Arab nationalist ideology.

The Saudis saw Nasser a nationalist firebrand arousing Arab masses against colonialism and Arab monarchies. He supported national liberation movements and wars of independence against the French in North Africa and the British in the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf.

The Saudi monarchy viewed Nasser’s call for Arab unity “from the roaring ocean to the rebellious Gulf” as a threat to their survival and declared a war on “secular” Arab nationalism and “atheist” Communism.

They perceived Nasser’s war in Yemen against the tribal monarchy as an existential threat at their door and began to fund and arm the royalists in Yemen against the Egyptian military campaign.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the two opposite poles of the “Arab cold war” during the 1950s and ‘60s. Nasser represented emerging Arab republicanism while Saudi Arabia epitomised traditional monarchies. Nasser turned to the Soviet Union; Saudi Arabia turned to the United States.

In the late 1960s, Saudi Arabia declared the proselytisation of its brand of Islam as a cardinal principle of its foreign policy for the purpose of fighting Arab nationalism and Communism.

It’s ironic that Saudi Arabia is currently supporting and funding the military junta in Egypt at a time when the military-turned-civilian presidential shoe-in Sisi is resurrecting the Nasserist brand of politics.

In the next three to five years, the most intriguing analytic question will be whether this partnership would endure and how long the post-2011 generation of Arabs would tolerate a coalition of secular autocracy and a religious theocracy.

Saudi Arabia supported Egyptian President Sadat’s war against Israel in 1973 but broke with him later in that decade after he visited Jerusalem and signed a peace treaty with Israel.

By the early 1980s, however, the two countries re-established close relations because of their common interest in supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and in pushing for the Saudi-articulated Arab Peace Initiative.

The Saudi King viewed President Hosni Mubarak warmly and was dismayed by his fall. He was particularly incensed by Washington’s seeming precipitous abandonment of Mubarak in January 2011.

The Saudi monarchy applauded General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s removal of President Muhammad Morsi and pumped billions of dollars into the Egyptian treasury. They also indicated they would make up any deficit in case U.S. aid to Egypt is halted.

The Saudis have endorsed Sisi’s decision to run for president of Egypt and adopted similar harsh policies against the Muslim Brotherhood and all political dissent. Several factors seem to push Saudi Arabia closer to Egypt.

The Saudis are concerned about their growing loss of influence and prestige in the region, especially their failure in thwarting the interim nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran. Their policy in Syria is in shambles.

Initially, they encouraged jihadists to go to Syria to fight the Assad regime, but now they cannot control the pro-Al-Qaeda radical Salafi jihadists fighting the Damascus tyrant.

The Saudis also failed in transforming the Gulf Cooperation Council into a more unified structure. Other than Bahrain, almost every other state has balked at the Saudi suggestion, viewing it a power grab.

In an absurd form of retaliation against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from that country. The Saudis are engaged in tribal vendettas against their fellow tribal ruling families, which is out of place in a 21^st century globalised and well-connected world.

The oil wealth and the regime’s inspired religious fatwas by establishment clerics have a diminishing impact on the younger generation connected to the global new social media.

Despite the heavy-handed crackdown, protests, demonstrations, and confrontations with the security forces are a daily occurrence in Egypt. It’s becoming very clear that dictatorial policies are producing more instability, less security, and greater appeal to terrorism.

It won’t be long before Western governments conclude that autocracy is bad for their moral sensibilities, destructive for business, and threatening for their presence in the region. The Saudi-Egyptian coalition of autocrats will soon be in the crosshairs.

In order to endure, such a coalition must be based on respect for their peoples, a genuine commitment to human rights, and a serious effort to address the “deficits” of liberty, education, and women’s rights that have afflicted Arab society for decades.

Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.”

Saudi Arabia is now the world's fifth largest arms importer, moving up from the 18th largest in 2004-2008. Credit: Radio Nederland Wereldomroep/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 2014 (IPS)

The Middle East continues to be one of the world’s most lucrative arms markets, with two Gulf nations – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – taking the lead, according to a new study released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

During 2009-2013, 22 percent of arms transfers to the region went to the UAE, 20 percent to Saudi Arabia and 15 percent to Turkey."The Gulf is the Eldorado for Western arms merchants and governments that want to recycle some of the wealth generated from oil." -- Toby C. Jones

The United States accounted for 42 percent of total arms supplies to the region, SIPRI said.

The rising arms purchases are attributed to several factors, including perceived threats from Iran, the growing Sunni-Shia sectarian strife, widespread fears of domestic terrorism, political instability and hefty oil incomes.

“I definitely think it is a mixture of all of those factors,” said Nicole Auger, a military analyst covering Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a U.S.-based defence market research firm.

The Middle East defence market, she told IPS, is growing substantially as a result of civil unrest, international instability – especially between Iran and Gulf States – and higher oil prices.

Toby C. Jones, an associate history professor at Rutgers University, told IPS, “The Gulf is the Eldorado for Western arms merchants and governments that want to recycle some of the wealth generated from oil.”

There is no collection of states on the planet with more money and more enthusiasm for purchasing expensive weapons systems than in the Gulf, he pointed out.

Whatever strategic value these weapons have or do not have, it is important to keep in mind these weapons are mostly useless for “actual” war, which is why the United States continues to keep such a huge military presence in the region, he added.

“There is almost literally nothing else states could possibly buy that allow for recycling some of the Gulf’s cash,” he said.

Weapons sales generate a lot of virtual bang for the buck, said Jones, a former fellow at Princeton University’s Oil, Energy and Middle East Project and author of ‘Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia’.

Iran, which is barred from importing most types of major arms due to U.N. sanctions, received only one percent of the region’s arms imports in 2009-2013, according to SIPRI.

During the same period, the UAE was ranked the world’s fourth largest arms importer and Saudi Arabia the fifth largest (having been the 18th largest in 2004-2008).

Both countries have large outstanding orders for arms or advanced procurement plan, SIPRI said.

The top three arms importers, however, were India, China and Pakistan. And the five largest arms suppliers during 2009-2013 were the United States (29 percent of global arms exports), Russia (27 percent), Germany (seven percent), China (six percent) and France (five percent).

Auger told IPS, “I would pin Iran as the number one driver: its ongoing role in supporting rebel Shiite groups, cultivating political-military proxy allies in Hamas and Hezbollah and more recently its effort to keep Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in power.”

The Middle East’s major interest right now in upgrading or purchasing missile defence networks is almost all in preparation to defend against long-range attacks from Iran.

Also, Iran appears to be the major reason behind the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) trying again to form the U.S.-backed joint military command, she added.

These GCC countries include Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

Auger said internal security would be a close second following the 2011 uprisings, the ongoing unrest in certain nations and the continuing threat of established and emerging Islamic fundamentalist groups.

“This is evident due to the new focus on special operations, electronic surveillance, and cybersecurity equipment,” she said.

The influx of revenue among the energy-exporting nations and the high oil price trend obviously plays a part as well, she added.

Last year’s 10.5-billion-dollar arms deal, one of the largest in the Middle East in recent years, included the sale of 26 F-16 fighter planes to UAE and sophisticated air-launched and air-to-ground missiles to Saudi Arabia.

These missiles were mostly to arm 154 F-15 fighter planes, to be delivered beginning 2015, purchased from the United States in 2010 at a staggering cost of 29.5 billion dollars.

The missiles were meant “to address the threat posed by Iran”, according to a senior U.S. official quoted in a news report.

The arms contract also included 1,000 GBU-35 “bunker busting” bombs to Saudi Arabia and 5,000 to UAE – bombs ideally suited to destroy underground nuclear installations.

But despite the sale of these weapons to Middle Eastern nations, the United States has always maintained it will continue to “guarantee Israel’s qualitative military edge” over Arab nations.

Jones told IPS the Arab Gulf states are politically vulnerable at home and the last three years have been particularly contentious.

While the region has not seen the kind of unrest that shook other parts of the Middle East, except for Bahrain and Kuwait, the regimes in Riyadh and elsewhere are anxious about the possibility there could be a rise in revolutionary fervour.

“They always have been, but these anxieties are more acute in this particular moment. So buying lots of weapons is often connected to domestic policing and counter-revolutionary concerns,” he said.

These weapons will likely never be used in a serious way in a regional conflict, he added.

Jones pointed out the purchasing of weapons, especially long range and complex weapons systems, has little to do with these states’ interest in going to war with Iran or even defending against it. “They have the United States for that,” he said.

But, in buying weapons like these, Gulf regimes claim they are also looking after U.S. energy concerns in a tough neighbourhood.

“These are specious claims, designed to reinforce American anxieties about dangers in the region in order to keep the U.S. military there,” Jones said.

The Arab states need “crisis” to be a permanent condition in order to maximise the West’s and especially Washington’s security commitment – whether crisis is real or not, he added.

Crews of an Egyptian ranger battalion in Jeep YJ light vehicles circa 1992. The soldiers standing are holding Russian-made SA-7 Grail surface-to-air missiles. Credit: public domain

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 2014 (IPS)

Russia, which is at loggerheads with Washington over the spreading political crisis in Ukraine, is threatening to undermine a longstanding military relationship between the United States and one of its traditional allies in the Middle East: Egypt.

A photograph of Russian President Vladimir Putin shaking hands with Egypt’s de facto leader Field Marshal Abdel Fateh Al Sisi was flashed across newspapers and TV screens in the Arab world last month.Although advanced surface-to-air missile systems have a much lower price-tag than larger systems such as combat aircraft, their transfer could have significant military effects.

Sisi, who is planning to run in the country’s presidential elections later this year, was in Moscow to negotiate a hefty two-billion-dollar arms deal with Russia.

“The U.S. government has built the modern Egyptian military over the course of the last three decades,” Dr Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS.

“Egypt would have to turn its military upside-down to switch to Russian weapons at this point,” she noted.

Ironically, if and when the arms deal is signed, the funding will come from money pledged by three strong U.S. allies in the region: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who themselves depend heavily on U.S. weapons for survival.

All three countries pledged more than 12 billion dollars to Egypt last year for two reasons: first, to provide economic support to a bankrupt Sisi regime, which ousted the government of former President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, and second, to counter the U.S. threat to reduce or cut off billions of dollars in military grants and suspend arms supplies to Cairo.

The U.S. had expressed its displeasure at the ouster of Morsi, the head of the first democratically elected government in Egypt.

Despite these tensions, Goldring said the Egyptian military will continue to be dominated by U.S. weapons for the foreseeable future.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), more than 80 percent of Egyptian weapons deliveries (by dollar value) in recent years have been supplied by the United States.

The U.S. government has provided roughly 1.3 billion dollars of military assistance each year since Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979.

“While attention has focused on the dollar value of the agreement, it is more important to focus on the types of [Russian] weapons that are transferred,” said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with the Arms Transfers Programme of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the deal would include air defence systems, MiG-29 or Sukhoi fighter aircraft, combat and transport helicopters and anti-tank missiles.

That Egypt would be looking for such weapons to augment what it gets from the United States is not surprising, he noted. Egypt has since long sought to diversify its arms suppliers in order not to be dependent on Washington.

Wezeman said there have been reports that Egypt is looking for new combat aircraft from another supplier than the United States to replace its ageing Soviet and Chinese models, and that it has looked at options from China, Russia or even surplus fighter planes of French origin from the UAE.

Goldring told IPS the types of weapons transferred will determine the military effects of the sale.

Although advanced surface-to-air missile systems have a much lower price-tag than larger systems such as combat aircraft, their transfer could have significant military effects, she noted.

Before the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Egypt was equipped mostly with Soviet weapons systems.

Goldring said the upgrading of these weapons, obtained from the then-Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, is less likely to be militarily significant.

“This [Russian] sale isn’t just about the potential military effects, it’s also about world politics,” she said.

By funding the Egyptian purchase, the Saudi government shows its preference for the Egyptian military government over the Muslim Brotherhood and former Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi, Goldring noted.

In turn, Russia gets cash from Saudi Arabia for providing the weapons.

The sale could also potentially help Russia further weaken ties between Egypt and the United States, she added.

The Saudis have pledged massive quantities of aid to the military government, beginning with a pledge of five billion dollars just a week after the military took power in July 2013.

The Saudis also organised contributions from the UAE of three billion dollars and four billion dollars from Kuwait, for a total pledge of 12 billion dollars.

Wezeman said the deal, when completed, does not mean that Russia will become the sole or dominant arms supplier to Egypt, taking advantage of the current rift in relations between Egypt and Washington.

He said the United States still plans to resume its large military aid and Egypt is shopping for arms elsewhere too.

Despite the fact that European Union (EU) states had agreed to carefully review their arms exports to Egypt after the violence of last August, they don’t seem to have lost their appetite for selling weapons to Egypt altogether, said Wezeman.

Just last week, it was reported that Egypt was very close to signing a one-billion-euro deal with a French company for four to six new missile-armed corvettes for its navy.

And last year, there were reports Egypt had ordered two submarines from Germany, now under construction (with two more to be ordered this year).

Wezeman said Egypt has also been a longstanding market for Chinese arms and there is no doubt China will work hard to maintain that relationship.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday, citing Qatar’s alleged support for organisations and individuals that threaten “the security and stability of the Gulf states” and for “hostile media.”

This came right on the heels of a U.A.E. court sentencing Qatari doctor Mahmoud al-Jaidah to seven years in prison on Monday, for the crime of aiding a banned opposition group called al-Islah, which the U.A.E. government alleges has operational ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

This was a coordinated move, led by the Saudis, to punish Qatar for supporting Muslim Brotherhood interests around the Middle East (and also for assuming a more prominent role in pan-Arab politics in general), but beyond that it reflects the Saudis’ deep and ongoing concern about an Iranian resurgence in the Gulf.

The North Dome-South Pars Field, straddling Qatari and Iranian waters. Source: Wikipedia

From the Saudi perspective the Qataris have been punching above their proper weight, and making nice with the wrong people.

Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are clearly the public justification for this row; it is no mystery why Saudi Arabia followed up Wednesday’s diplomatic swipe at Qatar with a decision on Friday to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

The Saudis, while they share certain conservative Islamic principles with the Brotherhood, are more than a bit put off by the group’s opposition to dynastic rule. Despite that feature of Brotherhood’s ideology, though, the very dynastic Qatari monarchy has been a strong supporter of Brotherhood-allied movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt (especially), and Syria.

Their rationale for doing so has been two-fold: one, they feel that supporting the Brotherhood abroad should insulate them from the Brotherhood at home, and two, Qatar has been predicting that the Brotherhood would be the main beneficiary of the Arab Spring.

Had they been right in their prediction, Qatar’s regional influence would have been significantly increased as a result, but by the looks of things, they were wrong. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is now outlawed in Egypt, its Ennahda Party in Tunisia has voluntarily agreed to give up power, and it has lost most of its influence within the Syrian opposition.

Last November’s reorganisation of Syrian opposition groups from the Qatar-financed Syrian Islamic Liberation Front to the Saudi-backed Islamic Front can be seen as evidence of the Brotherhood’s, and thus Qatar’s, loss of stature.

A related complaint that these countries have with Qatar is with the country’s Al Jazeera television news network (the “hostile media”).

Al Jazeera has continued to provide media access to Muslim Brotherhood figures in Egypt even as that organization was outlawed by the interim Egyptian government, to the extent that several Al Jazeera journalists are currently on trial in Egypt for aiding the Brotherhood.

These countries are also angry about the fact that Al Jazeera continues to give airtime to Brotherhood-affiliated cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi is actually wanted for extradition to Egypt over his comments about the coup that removed the Brotherhood from power there, and he recently lambasted, on Al Jazeera’s airwaves, the U.A.E., for “fighting everything Islamic.”

The reported pressure being placed on Saudi and Emirati journalists working in Qatar to quit their jobs and return home undoubtedly has something to do with the overall irritation with Qatari media.

However, there is another factor at play here: Qatar’s close – too close for Saudi comfort – ties with Iran (the real “organisation” that threatens Gulf – i.e., Saudi – security), which has to do largely with natural gas. Qatar shares its windfall natural gas reserves with Iran, in what’s known as the North Dome/South Pars Field in the Persian Gulf.

The International Energy Agency estimates that it is the largest natural gas field on the planet. Qatar has been extracting gas from its side of the field considerably faster than Iran has been, for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, the North Dome side of the field (the part in Qatari waters) was discovered in the early 1970s, whereas the South Pars side was only discovered about 20 years later, so Qatar had a lot of time to get a head start on developing the field.

For another thing, the North Dome field is pretty much the only game left in Qatar, whose Dukhan oil field is clearly on the decline. Qatar has a huge incentive, then, to develop as much of the North Dome as they can as fast as they can in order to fund their numerous development projects.

There is a potential conflict here, though. Natural gas, like any other gas, tends to flow toward areas of low pressure. So when one end of a gas field is being drained of its gas faster than the other end, some of the gas in the less exploited end may flow to the more exploited end.

This is fine when an entire field is controlled by one country, but in this case, one can easily envision a scenario in which, several years from now, the Iranian government is accusing Qatar of siphoning off its gas.

What this means is that Qatar has a strong incentive to maintain friendly relations with Iran, and on this they have considerable disagreement with their Saudi neighbors.

To Saudi Arabia, Iran is a potential regional rival and must be countered at every turn; their opposition to easing international sanctions against Iran, for example, is not so much about the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon as it is about fear of Iran escaping from the economic cage in which those sanctions have trapped it.

The proxy war taking place between Saudi and Iranian interests in Syria is the most obvious example of the rivalry between the two nations, and the Saudi move against Qatar can be seen as another front in that proxy war.

Qatar, although it has backed the Syrian opposition, sees things differently where Iran is concerned; in January, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah publicly called for an “inclusive” approach to Iran, which he argued “has a crucial role” in ending the crisis in Syria.

There is enough historic tension between the Qataris and the Saudis for this kind of disagreement over foreign affairs to provide the basis for a wider fracturing of relations.

For its part, Bahrain has every reason to go along with a Saudi diplomatic move against a suspected regional ally of Iran; after all, it was Saudi intervention that saved Bahrain’s ruling al-Khalifa family from a Shiʿa-led rebellion in 2011, a rebellion that Bahrain accuses Iran of fomenting.

Look, though, at the two GCC members that did not pull their ambassadors from Qatar: Kuwait, where the Brotherhood’s Hadas Party is out of favour, but whose relations with Iran are “excellent”; and Oman, where Sultan Qaboos has been critical of the Brotherhood, but who is close enough to Iran to have served as a go-between for back-channel U.S.-Iran negotiations.

If the issue were really Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and not its relationship with Iran, both of these countries may well have joined the others in recalling their ambassadors.

The one country for which this explanation does not make sense is the U.A.E., whose relations with Iran are improving after the two countries recently reached an accord over the disposition of three disputed Gulf islands. In this case, it may really be that Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and especially the Jaidah case and Qaradawi’s criticisms, motivated their action.

Qatar’s failed bet on the Muslim Brotherhood made this the right time for the Saudis to move against them, but Saudi fears about an Iranian resurgence may well have been the real reason for their action.

A woman steps away from tear gas during a riot in Cairo. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Dec 1 2013 (IPS)

“Subsidies from the Arab world are large and reflect Arabs’ love towards the Egyptian people, but we cannot depend on that to build an economy that can compete with other countries,” said economist Dr Alia el Mahdi.

She was explaining the economic situation in Egypt after the current government made repeated requests for financial assistance from Gulf countries.

“Our dependence on them should not exceed temporary assistance, and it should not become the mainstay of the national economy, just to gain a better international credit rating,” she added.

The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s raised its long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings for Egypt on Nov. 15, from “CCC+/C” to “B-/B” with a “stable” rating outlook.

In his short trip to the United Arab Emirates last October, Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi was told by the deputy prime minister of the UAE, Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, that “Arab support for Egypt will not last long, and Egypt should come up with innovative and unconventional solutions.”

El Mahdi, a former dean of the economics and political science faculty at Cairo University, told IPS that “The armed forces should stop funding the national economy and go back to their essential mission, which is maintaining security along the borders.”

She said foreign investment has almost fled from Egypt, as reflected by the small numbers of experts and foreign investors who attend economic conferences and seminars held in Egypt. “If we want to bring them back again, then there is no alternative other than political stability and security,” she said.

“Small industries in Egypt, which represent 87 percent of the volume of industrial plants and 13 percent of industrial production, are suffering badly,” she added.

El-Beblawi’s cabinet had a great opportunity to curb the economic decline that the government of ousted president Mohamed Morsi (2012-2013) exacerbated, “but they didn’t,” el Mahdi said.

“The current state of Egypt’s economy has become a disaster that requires immediate intervention to save it before it’s too late,” said Salah Gouda, head of the Economic Studies Centre in Cairo.

“The monetary reserves decreased from 36 billion dollars in January 2011 to 22 billion dollars by late November 2011,” he said. “Then they descended to 13.6 billion dollars by March 2013, due to a rise in imports as a result of not running at full production capacity.”

The unemployment rate has reached 15 percent, which means there are about 10 million people unemployed in this country of 84 million, Gouda said.

“Everyone was expecting a lot from Beblawi’s cabinet, who took the oath after the Jul. 3 military crackdown against Morsi,” he added. “But all the crises plaguing Egyptians while Morsi was in power still exist – gas shortages, traffic jams, lack of security – even train accidents.

“I can say that interim President Adly Mansour’s first hundred days have resembled the first 100 days of former president Morsi – both are disappointing,” Gouda told IPS.

He said the current regime frittered away public support after the Jun. 30 public uprising, in addition to 12 billion dollars in financial aid from the Gulf countries.

“Despite all this, the government’s performance was weak, with the ministries working merely to make it through the current period without being exposed to legal questions later,” he argued.

The military are now leading Egypt in many fields, especially the economy, standing by the current government to enforce law and security, and addressing any crises that arise. “The military are very keen to keep their prestige,” he added.

Another problem the current regime is facing, Gouda said, was that “after foreign investment fled as a result of the security situation, large numbers of businessmen belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood or supporters of the ousted president decided to withdraw their investments to strike an economic blow to the current system, and they succeeded to some extent.”

Ali Fayez, a former head of the Federation of Egyptian Banks, told IPS “the banking system stopped funding small and big projects, which led to hundreds of businessmen being on the black lists of banks as a result of their inability to pay some instalments.

“European and Gulf subsidies are vitamins and painkillers,” he said. “It would be better if they pumped real investments into Egypt, because the results would be more sustainable than cash payments.”

“Domestic debt has exceeded all safe limits since before the Jan. 25, 2011 revolution, and all the cabinets that have ruled since the fall of Hosni Mubarak [1981-2011] have depended on delaying and rescheduling payments,” Fayez told IPS. “None of the successive governments have tried to face it, and this is seen as a major burden for the coming generations.

“The only difference between the two governments, the Muslim Brotherhood and the current administration, is that the former was relying on aid from Qatar and Turkey while the second is depending on the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,” Fayez said.

A forward osmosis desalination plant at Al Khaluf in Oman. Credit: Starsend/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29 2013 (IPS)

The Arab world is widely perceived as blessed with an embarrassment of riches: an abundance of oil (Saudi Arabia), one of the world’s highest per capita incomes (Qatar), and home to the world’s tallest luxury building (United Arab Emirates).

But it lacks one of the most finite resources necessary for human survival: water.Scientists are now warning of "Peak Salt" - the point at which the Gulf becomes so salty that relying on it for fresh water stops being economically feasible.

“The average Arab citizen has eight times less access to renewable water than the average global citizen, and more than two thirds of surface water resources originate from outside the region,” says the U.N.Development Programme (UNDP) in a new study released this week.

Titled “Water Governance in the Arab Region: Managing Scarcity and Securing the Future,” the report warns that water scarcity in the region is fast reaching “alarming levels, with dire consequences to human development”.

The region accounts for five percent of the world’s more than seven billion people, and 10 percent of its area, but accounts for less than one percent of global water resources.

Its share of annual renewable water resources is also less than one percent, and it receives only 2.1 percent of average annual global precipitation.

Over 87 percent of the region’s terrain is desert and 14 of the world’s 20 most water-stressed countries are in this region, the study notes.

Maude Barlow, a former senior U.N. advisor on water and author of “Blue Future, Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever”, told IPS the Middle East is in “a water crisis.”

Desertification is a sweeping problem in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Iran.

The greatest culprits, she pointed out, are unsustainable agricultural practices that guzzle the last of the area’s groundwater.

“Dams and diversions for heavy irrigation are destroying water sources at an alarming rate,” she warned.

A recent satellite study by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found the region has lost, since 2003 alone, far more groundwater than previously thought – an amount the size of the Dead Sea, said Barlow.

At an international water conference in Abu Dhabi last January, Crown Prince Gen. Sheikh Mohammed bi Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a major oil producer, said: “For us, water is [now] more important than oil.”

Threatened by future scarcities, several Arab countries, including the UAE, have expanded their use of non-conventional water resources including desalination; treated wastewater; rainwater harvesting; cloud seeding; and irrigation drainage water.

Currently, the Arab region leads the world in desalination, with more than half of global capacity.

Desalinated water is expected to expand from 1.8 percent of the region’s water supply to an estimated 8.5 percent by 2025.

Most of the increase is expected to concentrate in high-income, energy-exporting countries, particularly the Gulf countries, because desalination is energy- and capital-intensive, according to the UNDP study.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that water shortages cause social hardships and impede development.

In an implicit reference to the Middle East, he said, “They create tensions in conflict-prone regions. Too often, where we need water we find guns. There is still enough water for all of us – but only so long as we keep it clean, use it more wisely, and share it fairly.”

The UNDP study  notes that major challenges for the water sector in the region include fragmented institutions with unclear and overlapping responsibilities; inadequate capacities; insufficient funding; centralized decision-making; lack of compliance with regulations and ineffective enforcement; and limited public awareness.

Speaking during the launch of the new report in Bahrain, UNDP assistant administrator and director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States, Sima Bahous, said, “The water crises must be dealt with as a matter of priority and urgency.”

And it deserves increased political attention and commitment even amid the challenging political environment of the region today, Bahous said.

Barlow told IPS the Arab region’s oil wealth has allowed some states to mask their water poverty, giving them the false impression they can buy their way of out of the coming crisis.

“Wealthy Arab states of the Persian Gulf such as the UAE, with the highest per capita water footprint in the world, are over-extracting the waters of the Gulf with massive desalination projects, using their scarce water supplies to build cities and irrigate deserts,” Barlow said.

She also noted that 70 percent of the world’s desalination plants are in this area, and scientists are now warning of “Peak Salt” – the point at which the Gulf becomes so salty that relying on it for fresh water stops being economically feasible.

Moreover, she pointed out, most of the area’s wastewater – including that of the wealthy countries – is not properly treated and in some cases, not treated at all.

“As a result, rivers and the Gulf are heavily polluted. With growing water demands, dwindling supplies and pervasive pollution, the Arab world has a serious water problem,” she added. “While I applaud this [UNDP] report and many of its findings, particularly the warnings about climate change and bad agriculture practices, it does not touch on the more sensitive and political issues of water priority and accessibility enough.”

She said promoting privatisation of water services as being more efficient is not only wrong in and of itself – municipalities all over the world are reclaiming their water services after disastrous experiments with privatisation – but would place the decisions about access even more into the very hands of those who hold the power now and who have enough water for all the golf courses and mansions they can build.

“Only a concerted effort to fiercely protect the region’s water as a public trust and human right together with strict laws to prevent over-extraction and pollution and outright water theft will avert the crisis coming to the Arab world,” Barlow said.

The 100-billion-dollar deal for commercial jetliners was announced at the Dubai, UAE airshow, pictured above on Nov. 17, 2013. Credit: Attila Malarik/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2013 (IPS)

The multi-billion-dollar Middle East arms market – bolstered by hefty purchases by oil-blessed Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Qatar – has always been one of the biggest bonanzas to the U.S. defence industry.

But a staggering 100-billion-dollar deal last week for the sale of Boeing’s new 777X commercial jets to three airlines in the UAE and Qatar threatens to outpace U.S. military sales."The size of the market for purely civilian aircraft isn't a significant concern for those of us who worry about the sophisticated military equipment that's being sold around the world." -- Natalie Goldring

William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Centre for International Policy, told IPS U.S. arms sales to the Middle East and Persian Gulf have reached record levels in recent years.

“They have elevated the United States to a position of dominance in the world market, controlling 78 percent, as of 2011,” he said.

And most notable, he pointed out, is a 60-billion-dollar package to Saudi Arabia the U.S. Congress was notified of in 2010.

“It was the biggest arms deal ever concluded by the United States with any country,” said Hartung.

Last week’s multi-billion-dollar deals for commercial airliners may supplant arms sales as the largest source of income from U.S. aerospace deals to the region over the next few years, he predicted. Still, the administration of President Barack Obama has been aggressively pushing U.S. arms sales, so if they decline it won’t be for lack of trying on the part of the administration and U.S. industry, said Hartung.

The 100-billion-dollar deal – for commercial jetliners announced at the Dubai, UAE airshow – was signed by Emirates and Etihad airlines (of UAE) and Qatar Airways, with deliveries slated for 2020.

The total contracts for commercial jet sales to countries in the Middle East were estimated at more than 150 billion dollars, according to one published report.

Boeing, which is based in the United States, said it had orders for 342 planes just on the first day of the airshow.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the Dubai Airshow represents a potential windfall for the Boeing aircraft company.

However, she said, it is important to separate the public relations efforts at air shows from the actual deliveries.

“Companies negotiate for months to reach agreements that they can announce with great fanfare at the beginning of the major international air shows like Dubai,” Goldring said.

But not all orders become contracts, and not all contracts result in deliveries. That means any announcements at air shows are likely to be overstated, she noted.

However, Goldring pointed out, contracts to sell commercial aircraft overseas are an economic boost to manufacturers, stockholders, and the communities in which the aircraft are built.

Such sales avoid the short- and long-term risks of military sales, she added.

Goldring said some have suggested the commercial aircraft market may overshadow the military market.

“The size of the market for purely civilian aircraft isn’t a significant concern for those of us who worry about the sophisticated military equipment that’s being sold around the world,” said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

Other proposed Middle East arms sales include 4.7 billion dollars in military equipment to Iraq; a 1.1-billion-dollar deal for early warning radar to Qatar; a 588-million-dollar package of C-130J airlifters to Libya; and a 200-million-dollar deal to support Kuwait’s fleet of F/A-18 fighters.

In contrast, the other two major arms buyers in the Middle East, namely Egypt and Israel, are not cash customers but receive virtually all of their weapons at no cost, as part of U.S. military aid.

Hartung told IPS the Saudi deal includes fighter planes, attack helicopters, air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles, armoured vehicles, bombs, guns and ammunition – virtually enough to upgrade the entire Saudi armed forces. Boeing, he said, was the biggest beneficiary of the deal.

The only missing items in the Saudi package were combat ships and a large-scale missile defence, which are now in the works.

The rearming of Iraq — drawing from Iraqi oil revenues, not U.S. aid — has also been a large boost to U.S. producers, said Hartung. He said that large U.S. producers are looking to foreign sales to fill in gaps that are occurring as a result of the downward trend in Pentagon weapon spending over the past few years.

“That being said, it’s hard to see how arms sales to the region can continue at this pace — they are certainly saturating the Saudi market, which is far and away the largest in the region,” Hartung said.

However, the funds from a given deal are generally spent out over a five- to 10-year period, so there will be a steady income to U.S. firms from the deals announced in 2010 to the present for some time.

“Even so, while it’s not a certainty, there’s a chance that the recent huge arms deals to the region may be a bit of a bubble,” Hartung warned.

Goldring told IPS the proposed arms sales to Middle East nations haven’t been adequately scrutinised. Even the Israelis, who often worry about sales to potential military adversaries, have apparently chosen to argue for increased military assistance to Israel instead of opposing these sales, she added.

The signing of the Arms Trade Treaty this fall by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was welcome news. Now its time for the United States to live up to those commitments, she noted.

“All proposed military sales should be evaluated to ensure that they’re consistent with the letter and the spirit of the Arms Trade Treaty,” Goldring said.

For example, she said, any weapons sales that are likely to be used for internal repression should be blocked, consistent with the Treaty’s provisions.

Overseas military sales carry many risks. The weapons are often usable for decades, she added.

“That means that when the U.S. government sells weapons to overseas customers, it’s assuming their governments will be stable for that period of time,” she said.

Government instability among weapons recipients increases the risk that U.S. weapons will fall into adversaries hands, and potentially even be used against U.S. forces, Goldring warned. Commercial aircraft sales simply don’t involve the same risks as military sales, she said.

At a conference held at the International Peace Institute (IPI) last week, Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Chief Executive Officer of Masdar, highlighted the important future of renewable energy.

In Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, what was once considered science fiction is now a reality. Masdar City, a planned city powered by renewable energy, serves as a model of what green urban development can be. Masdar aims to be one of the world’s most sustainable cities by providing the highest quality of life with the lowest environmental footprint, he said.

. “Investing in sustainability is a logical step, an activity that makes perfect sense” Dr Al Jaber assured. Moreover, he demonstrated that renewable energy is not only good for the planet, it also can be commercially viable.

The Middle East region, closely associated with oil, has decided to diversify its energy mix. “Abu Dhabi has to be a responsible energy player, not only a oil and gas exporter”, the CEO stated. Developing renewable energy through the world seems to be a win-win scenario as long as oil and gas are becoming more and more expensive and precious.

Even if oil will continue to play a major role in energy resources, each country will have to customize its energy mix approach and introduce clean energy in its consumption. According to Dr. Al Jaber “we don’t have much time, we need to work together” to avoid any future conflict.

As the global population is growing quickly, and considering the impact of climate change, energy should stay very high in the international agenda. History shows that energy has always been interconnected with security and peace. “Energy is the spinal cord of all economies of the world”, he said.

The CEO advocated two ways to avoid global conflicts: diversify energy sources and advance the research on the technological requirements of the renewable energy sector.

“You give the hope that our children will live in a better planet than us”, concluded Terje Rød-Larsen, President of the International Peace Institute. Indeed, clean and green energy seems to be the major step of the sustainable development goals adopted few months ago by the Rio+20 summit.

Dr. Al Jaber holds several board and advisory positions and counsels on issues related to sustainability, climate change and energy for a number of organizations and institutions