Qatar crisis

Image courtesy - Saudi foreign ministry

On June 5th 2017 in a sudden move, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Yemen and non arab country Maldives cut all diplomatic ties with the gulf state of Qatar. The move comes under the so called allegation of support to terror groups like Taliban and Al Qaeda in Yemen and Syria. Infact the rivalry goes back to the time when two Sunni Muslim state Qatar & Saudi had opposite views on then Egypt president Morsi. Qatar had supported the democratically elected president Morsi and Saudi had backed military dictatorship during the time of Egypt's spring revolution. The another fact which added to this isolation was Qatar's increasing ties with Iran and Turkey. The Trump administration also had a hand in this crisis in an attempt to isolate those nations who does not fall in line with the US policies and support Iran. This was well understood by U.S. president Donald Trump's tweet as soon the Saudi and other Arab countries made the statement of diplomatic cut off with Qatar.

 

 

Impact of the crisis on Qatar.

The cost of this isolation left Qatar to increase its dependence on Turkey and Iran for food and water supplies to the state.

All Qatari nationals working in the Saudi have been asked to leave the country in 2 weeks times.

 

 

One of the worlds finest national air carrier Qatar airways & finest North African news agency Al-Jazeera operating from Qatar have been asked to shut down their business operation in its subsidiaries in Saudi and its ally's states. 

What does Qatar crisis means for the world?

 

Though Qatar is a small LNG producing state as compared to other gulf countries, any attempt to create a blockade to Qatar exports of LNG  would result in entrance of Japan, India, China & Russia into the game as this countries as have made huge investment in Qatar's LNG and are hugely depended on LNG.

Impact of Qatar crisis on India.



 

       Image courtesy- MEA India    

The two way trade between Qatar and India is around 17 Bn.USD. and it is estimated that if the crisis continues around 6.5 lakh Indians working in Qatar would result in losing jobs and also increase the LNG imports cost to India from Qatar. On the other hand if crisis continues then the dependence of Qatar on Iran would increase for supplies which would benefit India to seek investment for Indian funded Chabhar port in Iran which is considered to be and competitor to Gawadar port in Pakistan and  a part of CPEC project.

 

As of now Kuwait is the negotiator between Qatar and Saudi. And we can only hope for the best results as 6.5 lakh Indians losing jobs is not feasible for indian economy as compared to getting investment for a port in Iran.

 

-Francis Lazar