Friday, May 22, 2009

Strains in inter-Arab relations

I of course celebrate any news of conflict or feuds between Arab regimes. Saudi Arabia's relations with its neighbors have been quietly deteriorating: Its relations with Oman have been strained, and now the UAE is expressing criticisms of the Saudi role in the wake of the announcement of the headquarters of the new GCC fund, and the subsequent UAE's withdrawal. Saudi relations with Qatar go up and down and my sources tell me that Prince Salman never wanted to improve the relations unlike Prince Nayif who worries about AlJazeera's role and its promotion of Saudi dissidents during the feud between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And now the Egyptian government's relations with Qatar are very strained although AlJazeera is playing it safe and the Qatari are not interested in allowing AlJazeera the freedoms that it once had. You can tell by the fact that I now only am asked to speak on Aljazeera on American (and Russian--I kid you not) affairs.