Bahrain & Qatar, Connected US Bases, Raise Democratisation Stick In GCC.

*** Pakistan Is Moving Into Position As The Hub Of Al Qaida Operations, With Its Military Establishment Seeking To Ensure Its Own Survival By Creating Room For Pro-Taliban Mullahs In The Political Mainstream, While At The Same Time Co-operating With The US To The Extent That It Must To Avoid Being Bombed; But General Musharraf Will Be Able To Keep Up This Game Only If The US Dilutes Its Own War On Terrorism 

MANAMA - The success of recent parliamentary elections in this island state and a similar process underway in Qatar present the six Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states with a huge challenge, now that the US is expanding its presence in the Middle East. Bahrain and Qatar, which will be connected by a causeway, are for the time being most important bases for the US military. This democratisation comes as a double blow to the hardline faction of the Wahhabi religious establishment in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi royal regime has also received a severe blow from the following developments:

1. Qatar under Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani has recently foiled a coup attempt with American help. The attempt is said to have been instigated by the Saudi royal regime, itself being under unprecedented pressure from the hardline faction of the Wahhabi religious establishment. US security forces are said to have participated in scuttling the coup attempt, dressed in plain clothes and present at checkpoints (see overleaf).

Sources say that if the reports about the coup are accurate, then the Saudi motivation would be to cut the Qatari strategists down to size. They add that many officials in Riyadh feel that, by giving the US expansive base facilities in the emirate, Doha is trying to undercut the kingdom's strategic value for the US. That, in turn, reduces the Saudi government's leverage with the US on a number of regional issues while making it more vulnerable to various pressures emanating from US President Bush's war against terrorism. According to the sources the coup attempt, albeit unsuccessful, was intended to remind Qatar of its own vulnerabilities.

2. Tension in Abu Dhabi has recurred between the Crown Prince, Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and his younger half-brother Shaikh Mohammed Bin Zayed who is the Chief-of-Staff of the UAE Armed Forces. The reason for this is mutual suspicion arising from years of rivalry. Their father, Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who is the ruler of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE, has ordered both to stay calm and make up. But Shaikh Khalifa is said to be still unwilling to forgive Mohammed for having attempted to gather power when his father became seriously ill less than two years ago. It is rumoured that when, at the time, Mohammed asked Shaikh Zayed to empower him to handle the day-to-day affairs of state in the ruler's absence, his father slapped him on the face, reminding all concerned that Shaikh Khalifa was in charge in his capacity as crown prince.

Shaikh Mohammed is the eldest of many sons from Shaikh Zayed's favourite wife Shaikha Fatima. These sons have been worried that they would lose power if Shaikh Khalifa becomes ruler. It is said that Shaikh Khalifa's son Shaikh Sultan, who heads his father's office and plays many other roles, would then become in charge on a day-to-day basis. This could prove to be disastrous for

Shaikh Mohammed and his full-brothers. At this time, the sources say, Saudi Arabia does not want instability in the UAE, which has traditionally been less inclined to challenge its leadership within the GCC than other member states - especially Oman, and more recently Qatar.

Developments in Bahrain, traditionally the GCC state closest to Saudi Arabia, have alarmed the Saudi regime. Like the Qatari ruler, the Bahraini King, Shaikh Hamad Bin Issa Al Khalifa, is increasingly espousing what the Wahhabi hardliners regard as "Western inspired" liberal policies. The Bahraini election of Oct. 24, boycotted by the Shiite Islamist opposition, resulted in a win for moderate Islamists. The Shiite opposition would now find it difficult to influence the political situation without resorting to violence (see Recorder).

In Qatar, the emir has already held elections in recent years, and now there are subtle signals that women's empowerment may be put on the agenda as well. The Emir's wife, Shaikha Moza Bint Nasser Al Misnad, told The Financial Times in an interview on Oct. 17 that gender bias is not an issue in the emirate, noting: "...among the young generation, you don't see polygamy as a problem. It's sharia, you can't prevent it but time will rationalise it". The implications of the statement, disturbing to the strict Wahhabi order, are that (a) thinking had gone into whether polygamy should be prevented in the emirate, and (b) the observation that "time will rationalise" the practise suggests that it is irrational to begin with.

Such trends have made Wahhabi hardliners in the kingdom, as well as members of the royal family, suspicious of US intentions; over the past year, increasingly anti-Saudi trends in the US media have started questioning the fundamentals of the Saudi state, which is based on a covenant between the Wahhabi order and the House of Saud. There are widely held concerns in Riyadh that Washington is quietly building up a network of fledgeling democracies within the GCC, partly because it (a) wants to have reliable long-term base facilities in the area, with democratically oriented societies less likely to act to get rid of these bases on the basis of an authoritarian decision; and (b) believes that by fostering democracy and gradually expanding it across the Middle East, the US will eventually get rid of the political and economic conditions which help breed hundreds of Bin Ladins in the region.

On the military side, the linkages are clear. The three GCC members furthest on the road to democratisation are also the ones who are becoming the main hosts for American military forces in the region. Thus Kuwait has a concentration of US Army units, while Bahrain serves as the local base for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet and Al Udaid Airbase in Qatar is fast becoming the hub for US Air Force units in the Middle East. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been persistent reports that Riyadh has asked the US to draw down its military presence in the kingdom. In late October, Saudi censors banned an edition of the London-based newspaper 'Al Hayat', owned by Prince Khalid Ibn Abdel Aziz, son of Defence Minister Prince Sultan, because it printed an open letter from 67 US intellectuals defending the campaign against terrorism and calling on Saudi intellectuals to denounce "militant jihadism" as un-Islamic.

Initial Saudi resistance to a planned US attack on Iraq led Washington to quickly seek out other options in the region. Meanwhile, Qatar had started building the Al Udaid Air Base on a scale clearly too large for its own needs, and readily made it available to the US. All this further soured Saudi-Qatari relations, already plagued by a border dispute in which a Qatari soldier was killed in 1992. Qataris also suspect that Riyadh supported a 1996 attempted coup to restore the former emir to power. In September, Saudi Arabia recalled their ambassador to Doha because a guest on 'Al Jazeera' TV made a remark against the Saudi royal family. It is within this context that Riyadh is linked to reports of the failed coup in Qatar.

The coup was reportedly attempted on the night of Oct. 13, with at least two members of the Qatari ruling family said to have participated in it, along with Qatari armed forces officers of Yemeni and Pakistani nationality, and individuals belonging to Islamist groups. Their common goal was to oust the regime of Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa in order to end the growing strategic and military relationship with the US. However, Qatari intelligence had allegedly penetrated the group planning the coup. In the operations undertaken to foil the coup, local forces were helped by US troops stationed at Al Udaid, with some reportedly present at checkpoints in plain clothes. More than 140 people were arrested in the aftermath of the attempt.