📰 Supreme Court stays implementation of 3 controversial farm laws
Court forms expert panel to hear apprehensions raised by farmers against the laws
•The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the implementation of three controversial farm laws, calling its order “extraordinary” and a “victory for fair play”.
•The laws are: The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act and The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act.
•The stay on their implementation means the Centre cannot, for the time being, proceed with any executive actions to enforce the laws.
•The court formed a four-member committee of experts “to listen to the grievances of the farmers on the farm laws and the views of the government and make recommendations”.
•At one point in the 11-page order, a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad A. Bobde said the formation of an expert committee “may create a congenial atmosphere and improve the trust and confidence of the farmers”.
•The stay, the court said, “may assuage the hurt feelings of the farmers” and make them confident enough to scythe their way to the negotiating table in good faith.
•In a concluding paragraph of the order, the court said the farmers’ bodies would “perceive” the “extraordinary” stay as an achievement of their peaceful protest “at least for the present”. It may convince these organisations to “encourage” their members to go home to their livelihoods, and thus, protect their lives and health and that of others too.
•The court said several rounds of negotiations between the Centre and farmers had produced no results, even as senior citizens, women and children among the protesters were exposed to serious health hazards posed by the cold and COVID-19. It noted that deaths, not due to violence, but either of illness or by way of suicide, had occurred already. The court lauded the peaceful nature of the protests and stated that it did not want to stifle it.
•However, it noted Attorney General K.K. Venugopal’s “support” of a “specific averment” by the Indian Kisan Union that an organisation, Sikhs for Justice, banned for anti-India secessionist movement, is financing the agitation.
Reports of ‘Khalistanis’
•In his turn, Mr. Venugopal orally remarked in the hearing that there were reports that “Khalistanis” had infiltrated the protests.
•The hearing on Tuesday took place in the absence of four senior lawyers, including senior advocate Dushyant Dave and advocate Prashant Bhushan, who had said they represent a bulk of the protesting farmers’ organisations.
•The four had on Monday sought time to consult their clients and get back the next day with their views on the court’s proposal to form an expert committee. Late Monday night, certain farmers’ bodies issued a statement declining to go before any such committee.
•Senior advocate Harish Salve, who appeared for a party supporting the farm laws, said the four lawyers did not log into the virtual hearing on Tuesday.
•Chief Justice Bobde was, however, unperturbed by either the lawyers’ absence or statement by farmers on Monday night.
•“There are as many opinions here as there are farmers. Let the organisations talk to the committee. You can either resolve the problem or you can agitate indefinitely without any purpose,” he said.
•The court order made it clear that farmers’ bodies “shall” participate in the discussions of the committee.
•“The representatives of all the farmers’ bodies, whether they are holding a protest or not and whether they support or oppose the laws shall participate in the deliberations of the committee and put forth their view points,” it directed.
Committee members
•The committee consists of Bhupinder Singh Mann, National President, Bhartiya Kisan Union and All India Kisan Coordination Committee; Dr. Parmod Kumar Joshi, agricultural economist, Director for South Asia, International Food Policy Research Institute; Ashok Gulati, agricultural economist and former chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices; and Anil Ghanwat, President, Shetkari Sanghatana.
•The order explained that both the government and farmers should take the court’s effort to form a committee in the “right spirit” and consider it an attempt to reach a “fair, equitable and just solution to problems”.
•“There is no power on earth which can prevent us from forming the independent committee. We want to solve the problem. We want to understand the ground situation. This is not politics. You have to cooperate,” Chief Justice Bobde told the farmers’ side during the hearing.
•He said the implementation of the laws have been stayed to facilitate negotiations with the committee.
•“This is not an empty suspension of the laws... All people who want to genuinely resolve the problem should go to the committee... We are willing to suspend the law, but not indefinitely and without any activity on the ground. We don't want inactivity. We want to hear you tell the committee which part of the law needs to be changed, etc. You can go one by one and tell the committee what your problems are,” he stated.
•The committee has to start work in 10 days and submit a report to the court in two months. The government would take care of their expenses.
•The court directed that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system in existence before the enactment of the farm laws should be maintained until further orders. In addition, the farmers’ landholdings should be protected.
•“That is, no farmer shall be dispossessed or deprived of his title as a result of any action taken under the farm laws,” it ordered.
•The three farm laws have been projected by the government as major reforms in the agriculture sector to remove middlemen and allow farmers to sell anywhere in the country. The government projected the laws as an antidote to lowering demands caused by the pandemic.
•However, protesting farmers consider the laws as a key to an exploitative regime that would ultimately lead to the loss of their lands.
‘Basic misapprehension’
•Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said farmers have fallen prey to the “basic misapprehension” that the laws would lead to loss of agricultural land. “The law is only for voluntary contract farming of crops. Agricultural land will remain immune,” he submitted.
•Advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, for some farmers, retorted, “But all farmers have is their land to pay in case of any damages”.
•Senior advocate P. Wilson, for a section of farmers from Tamil Nadu, welcomed the stay.
•But the court recorded the submissions made by several sections of farmers who, on the other hand, supported the laws. Some even said they were aggrieved by the stay.
•Senior advocate V. Chitambaresh, for the Bhartiya Kisan Sangh, said they were happy with the farm laws.
•Advocate Sridhar Potaraju, for the Consortium of Indian Farmers Association, which represents 15 farmers’ unions across 15 States, said they would be “badly affected” by the stay as their produce would rot.
•Advocate A.P. Singh, for the Bhartiya Kisan Union [BHANU], agreed to “dissuade” senior citizens, women and children from leaving the protest sites.
•Advocate Ajay Choudhary, for Kisan Maha Panchayat, submitted that the farmers protesting at the Rajasthan border were willing to appear before the expert committee.
Let alone entry, women are prohibited even from partaking the prasadam at the Hanuman shrine in Kadapa
•The restrictions on entry of women into the Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala and the controversies surrounding the tradition have been making headlines for years now. But not many know that a similar practice is in vogue in the little-known Hanuman shrine in Kadapa district .
•The Sanjeevaraya Swamy temple at Thippayapalle in Pullampeta mandal is another ‘men-only’ shrine. By tradition, the men from the village perform the daily rituals and manage the temple affairs. Let alone entry into the temple premises, women are prohibited even from partaking the prasadam.
What folklore says
•Since decades, the residents of the cattle-rich village have been eking out their living by selling milk and butter in the nearby towns. A popular folklore has it that a strange disease had broken out in the village, affecting the livestock. A sage had installed a huge boulder etched with sacred text (Beejaksharalu) in the village and asked the village to let the sick cows rub their bodies against it. As the suggestion worked wonders, the villagers got the boulder consecrated in a temple and the villagers have been worshipping the consecrated stone as Lord Hanuman since then. The cows are made to pass through the shrine.
Sankranti rituals
•The temple gets abuzz during the Sankranti festival every year as only males from the village prepare ‘pongali’ and offer it to the Lord on the weekend ahead of the Sankranti. This year too, male members from the 70 houses in the village gathered at the shrine and prepared ‘pongali’ with rice, jaggery and pulses which was offered to the deity. The ‘prasadam’ was then distributed among the male members of the village.
•“The residents of Thippayapalle make it a point to visit their village on this special occasion every year irrespective of the places they have settled down,” says B. Ramanatham, a resident of the village .
•Another legend has it that the village was shifted from its previous place as Goddess Kothapuri Yellamma, the village deity, got irritated with the sound of the churning of milk.
•Apart from keeping the traditions alive, the village elders say, the sprawling grazing fields abutting the Seshachalam forest is also a key to the impressive cattle wealth,
•In the recent decades, the temple has got a welcome arch and a compound wall. However, the consecrated stone at the heart of the shrine remains the same with no barriers, where only only men and cows are allowed.
📰 Imposing a compromise: On courts and laws
Courts should stay within their domain while ruling on laws
•The Supreme Court’s interim order in the ongoing contestation between large sections of the farmers and the Centre over the new farm laws may be motivated by a laudable intention to break the deadlock in negotiations. However, it is difficult to shake off the impression that the Court is seeking to impose a compromise on the farmers’ unions. One portion of the order stays the three laws, seeks to maintain the Minimum Support Price as before and prevents possible dispossession of farmers of their land under the new laws. The stated reason is that the stay would “assuage the hurt feelings of the farmers” and encourage them to go to the negotiating table. However, it is somewhat disconcerting that the stay of legislation is effected solely as an instrument to facilitate the Court’s arrangement rather than on the basis of any identified legal or constitutional infirmities in the laws. The order forming a four-member committee may indeed help relieve the current tension and allay the government’s fears that the Republic Day celebrations may be disrupted, but it is not clear if it would help the reaching of an amicable settlement as the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, the umbrella body spearheading the protests, has refused to appear before the panel. The Court’s approach raises the question whether it should traverse beyond its adjudicative role and pass judicial orders of significant import on the basis of sanguine hope and mediational zeal.
•The Court did make its position amply clear during the hearing, with the Chief Justice of India, S.A. Bobde, faulting the Centre for its failure to break the deadlock arising out of the weeks-long protest by thousands of farmers in the vicinity of Delhi, demanding nothing short of an outright repeal of the laws. It is only in the wake of the government’s perceived failure that the Court has chosen to intervene, but it is unfortunate that it is not in the form of adjudicating key questions such as the constitutionality of the laws, but by handing over the role of thrashing out the issues involved to a four-member panel. It is not clear how the four members on the committee were chosen, and there is already some well-founded criticism that some of them have already voiced their support for the farm laws in question. The Court wants the panel to give its recommendations on hearing the views of all stakeholders. Here, the exercise could turn tricky. How will the Court deal with a possible recommendation that the laws be amended? It would be strange and even questionable if the Court directed Parliament to bring the laws in line with the committee’s views. While a negotiated settlement is always preferable, it is equally important that judicial power is not seen as being used to dilute the import of the protest or de-legitimise farmer unions that stay away from the proceedings of the panel or interfere with the powers of Parliament to legislate.
📰 Strained ties: On Puducherry standoff
Courts should stay within their domain while ruling on laws
•The Supreme Court’s interim order in the ongoing contestation between large sections of the farmers and the Centre over the new farm laws may be motivated by a laudable intention to break the deadlock in negotiations. However, it is difficult to shake off the impression that the Court is seeking to impose a compromise on the farmers’ unions. One portion of the order stays the three laws, seeks to maintain the Minimum Support Price as before and prevents possible dispossession of farmers of their land under the new laws. The stated reason is that the stay would “assuage the hurt feelings of the farmers” and encourage them to go to the negotiating table. However, it is somewhat disconcerting that the stay of legislation is effected solely as an instrument to facilitate the Court’s arrangement rather than on the basis of any identified legal or constitutional infirmities in the laws. The order forming a four-member committee may indeed help relieve the current tension and allay the government’s fears that the Republic Day celebrations may be disrupted, but it is not clear if it would help the reaching of an amicable settlement as the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, the umbrella body spearheading the protests, has refused to appear before the panel. The Court’s approach raises the question whether it should traverse beyond its adjudicative role and pass judicial orders of significant import on the basis of sanguine hope and mediational zeal.
•The Court did make its position amply clear during the hearing, with the Chief Justice of India, S.A. Bobde, faulting the Centre for its failure to break the deadlock arising out of the weeks-long protest by thousands of farmers in the vicinity of Delhi, demanding nothing short of an outright repeal of the laws. It is only in the wake of the government’s perceived failure that the Court has chosen to intervene, but it is unfortunate that it is not in the form of adjudicating key questions such as the constitutionality of the laws, but by handing over the role of thrashing out the issues involved to a four-member panel. It is not clear how the four members on the committee were chosen, and there is already some well-founded criticism that some of them have already voiced their support for the farm laws in question. The Court wants the panel to give its recommendations on hearing the views of all stakeholders. Here, the exercise could turn tricky. How will the Court deal with a possible recommendation that the laws be amended? It would be strange and even questionable if the Court directed Parliament to bring the laws in line with the committee’s views. While a negotiated settlement is always preferable, it is equally important that judicial power is not seen as being used to dilute the import of the protest or de-legitimise farmer unions that stay away from the proceedings of the panel or interfere with the powers of Parliament to legislate.
📰 Reclaiming SAARC from the ashes of 2020
Despite the despondency, the rationale for its existence is intact, and India can use it as a stage for its global ambitions
•Thirty-six years after it first began, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), appears to be all but dead in the water. The year 2020 marked the sixth year since the leaders of the eight nations that make up SAARC were able to meet. Further evidence of its perilous position, if any was needed, came on the SAARC charter day on December 8, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it clear that India’s position on cross-border terrorism from Pakistan that led New Delhi to refuse to attend the SAARC summit in 2016 in Islamabad, is still in place. This indicates that the grouping, which cannot convene unless all leaders agree to meet, is unlikely to do so in the near future.
The shadows over the meets
•Over the past year, India-Pakistan issues have impacted other meetings of SAARC as well, making it easier for member countries, as well as international agencies to deal with South Asia as a fragmented group rather than a collective, working with each country in separate silos or in smaller configurations. However, the events of 2020, particularly the novel coronavirus pandemic and China’s aggressions at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) shone a new spotlight on this mechanism, and should make the Modi government review its position and reverse that trend.
•India’s problems with Pakistan on terrorism, territorial claims and on its role in blocking SAARC initiatives on connectivity and trade are well known. Even so, India’s refusal to allow Pakistan to host the SAARC summit because of those problems is akin to giving Pakistan a ‘veto’ over the entire SAARC process. The insistence is particularly puzzling given that Mr. Modi and his cabinet ministers continued to attend Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meetings along with their Pakistani counterparts, including the SCO Heads of Government meeting in November where New Delhi even invited Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan (he deputed another official).
•While China’s incursions in Ladakh and the Galwan killings constituted the larger concern in the year, India did not decline to attend meetings with the Chinese leadership at the SCO, the Russia-India-China trilateral, the G-20 and others. No concerns over territorial claims stopped the Modi government from engaging with Nepal either, despite Mr. K.P. Sharma Oli’s decision to change Nepal’s map and Constitution to include Indian territories. In a year when the pandemic has forced most multilateral summits to go online, it is inexplicable that India cannot attend a virtual SAARC summit hosted by Pakistan, which would allow the South Asian process to move forward.
Pandemic-caused challenges
•Second, reviving SAARC is crucial to countering the common challenges brought about by the pandemic. To begin with, studies have shown that South Asia’s experience of the pandemic has been unique from other regions of the world, and this needs to be studied further in a comprehensive manner (Pandemic Preparedness and Response to COVID-19 in South Asian Countries) in order to counter future pandemics. Such an approach is also necessary for the distribution and further trials needed for vaccines, as well as developing cold storage chains for the vast market that South Asia represents.
•The pandemic’s impact on South Asian economies is another area that calls for coordination. Apart from the overall GDP slowdown, global job cuts which will lead to an estimated 22% fall in revenue for migrant labour and expatriates from South Asian countries, there is an expected loss of about 10.77 million jobs and $52.32 billion in GDP in the tourism sector alone from the impact of COVID-19. World Bank reports that have estimated the losses have all suggested that South Asian countries work as a collective to set standards for labour from the region, and also to promoting a more intra-regional, transnational approach towards tourism, citing successful examples including the ‘East Africa Single Joint Visa’ system, or similar joint tourism initiatives like in the Mekong region or the Caribbean islands.
A time for regional initiatives
•In the longer term, there will be a shift in priorities towards health security, food security, and job security, that will also benefit from an “all-of” South Asia approach. The impact of COVID-19 will be seen in broader, global trends: a growing distaste for ‘globalisation’ of trade, travel and migration all of which were seen to have helped the pandemic spread from China, as well as a growing preference for nativism, self-dependence and localising supply chains. While it will be impossible for countries to cut themselves off from the global market entirely, regional initiatives will become the “Goldilocks option” (not too hot and not too cold), or the happy medium between globalisation and hyper-nationalism. It would be important to note therefore, that as the world is divided between regional trade arrangements such as new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA (North America), the Southern Common Market, or MERCOSUR for its Spanish initials (South America), the European Union (Europe), the African Continental Free Trade Area, or AfCFTA (Africa), the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC (Gulf) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP (South East Asia and Australasia including China), India’s only regional trading agreement at present is the South Asian Free Trade Area, or SAFTA (with SAARC countries).
China’s quest
•In dealing with the challenge from China too, both at India’s borders and in its neighbourhood, a unified South Asian platform remains India’s most potent countermeasure. At the border, it is clear that tensions with Pakistan and Nepal amplify the threat perception from China, while other SAARC members (minus Bhutan), all of whom are Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partners of China will be hard placed to help individually. Significantly, from 2005-14, China actually wanted to join SAARC. Officials recall that every SAARC summit during that decade period saw a discussion on whether China could be upgraded to member status (from observer status). On each occasion, it was fought back by India and most other countries in the grouping, with the logic that despite sharing boundaries with three South Asian countries, China is not South Asian.
•Despite the rebuff, China has continued to push its way into South Asia, as several statistical indicators for investment, trade, tourism and South Asian student preferences for universities (Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Foreign Policy In Transition Under Modi; Is India still the neighbourhood’s education hub?). In the past year, the Chinese government, and its Communist Party of China party arms such as the United Front Work Department, or the UFWD have used the opportunities presented by the pandemic to push ahead with this quest. Apart from sending medicines, personal protective equipment kits, and promising vaccines to most SAARC countries as part of its “Health Silk Road” initiative, China’s vice minister has held three separate meetings with combinations of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and discussed economic issues and Sinovac vaccine availability with them. Experts suggest that it is only a matter of time before Beijing holds a meeting of all SAARC countries (minus India and Bhutan), for they are all part of the BRI, and even that they will be invited to join RCEP, which India declined.
India’s steps, more bilateral
•In contrast, India stepped up its health and economic diplomacy in the region, but apart from one SAARC meeting convened by Mr. Modi in March, these have been bilateral initiatives, not a combined effort for South Asia. These are some of the reasons that led all SAARC leaders other than Mr. Modi to urgently call for the revival of SAARC during their charter day messages.
•Despite the despondency, the rationale for its existence remains intact: while history and political grievances may be perceived differently, geography is reality. Seen through Beijing’s prism, India’s SAARC neighbourhood may be a means to contain India, with the People’s Liberation Army strategies against India over the LAC at present, or in conjunction with Pakistan or Nepal at other disputed fronts in the future. New Delhi must find its own prism with which to view its South Asian neighbourhood as it should be: a unit that has a common future, and as a force-multiplier for India’s ambitions on the global stage.
📰 The debilitating side-effect of a flawed vaccine trial
A failure to investigate the conduct of the recent Covaxin phase-3 trial can affect the course of other studies under way
•More than a decade since the human clinical trial of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine — it was controversial and carried out without proper consent on nearly 23,500 girls in the 10-14 age group in Vadodara, Gujarat and Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh — and eight years after the Supreme Court of India slammed the government for slipping into “deep slumber” in addressing the “menace” of illegal clinical trials carried out in India by multinational countries, nothing much seems to have changed.
•The phase-3 clinical trial of Bharat Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, by a private hospital in the Bhopal-based Peoples College of Medical Sciences & Research Centre appears to suffer from serious violations and as a result, closely resembles the HPV vaccine trial. The HPV vaccine trial was carried out by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), a non-governmental organisation, in collaboration with the governments of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Incidentally, the ICMR, tasked with promulgating research ethics guidelines, is the co-sponsor of the Covaxin trial.
•The informed consent process, the cornerstone of ethics in clinical trials, was grossly violated during the HPV trial in Andhra Pradesh; consent forms of nearly 2,800 child participants were signed by a hostel warden or headmaster and not the parents.
Many missteps
•During a press conference on January 10 and even earlier to other media outlets, the Covaxin trial participants alleged that they were ignorant of what they were signing up for. If true, it amounts to the consent nowhere close to being a truly informed one. According to them, no efforts were apparently taken to explain and inform them of the pros and cons of taking part in the trial, nor were they told that they would either get a vaccine candidate or a placebo. Instead, they were misled by the trial site to think they were getting a COVID-19 vaccine for free. The participants were not made aware of their rights to free medical care in case of any adverse events. They were not given any time or option to discuss with the family before signing the consent form, either. As documents show, at least in a few instances, the consent was taken after vaccination, which amounts to a serious violation. They also alleged that they were not given a copy of the consent form and other documents to prove their participation.
•Following the October 2013 Supreme Court order, the Indian regulator had in 2019 made mandatory an audio-video recording of the informed consent process of each vulnerable individual participant before conducting clinical trials. And a written consent from the participant had to necessarily be taken before the audio-video recording of the informed consent process. Since many of the 700-odd participants are illiterate, an impartial witness should have been present during the entire informed consent process to append his/her signatures to the consent form. There is no evidence that this was followed, based on what the participants said during the press conference.
•In the Covaxin trial in Bhopal, over a dozen of the 700 adults from three-four communities living close to the hospital have told the media that they were lured with monetary benefits of ₹750. Luring people to participate in clinical trials by offering money is unethical.
•However, the company in a press release states that a decision was taken to reimburse all participants at the rate of ₹750 for each study visit. The company claims the reimbursement amount was approved by every institutional ethics committee at the study sites, and is not an inducement.
•While reimbursement for actuals, such as lost wages and cost of transportation to the trial site, is permissible, it amounts to inducement when a payment of ₹750 is openly announced; during the press conference, the participants highlighted the payment announcement. It is unclear if the institutional ethics committee even approved street announcements to be made inviting people to the trial. Whether a site can advertise and even the content of such promotional material need prior approval from the institutional ethics committee.
Follow-up and care
•While free medical care in case of any adverse event is a right of each trial participant, there have been at least a few documented instances of violation. In other cases, the participants, unaware that they were part of a clinical trial and hence entitled to free medical attention, had sought care from private practitioners. With at least some participants not possessing their own mobile phones, medical follow-up over phone, even if there was one, was not actually possible.
•If the HPV vaccine trial was investigated by a Parliamentary Standing Committee, such an independent investigation becomes all the more necessary as the ICMR is the co-sponsor of the trial.
•One of the participants at the Peoples College of Medical Sciences & Research Centre died on December 21. While Bharat Biotech claims that all due processes were followed following this development, it is unclear why no information about the death of the trial participant, who belongs to a tribe, was made public by the Indian regulator. In the case of serious adverse events following injection with AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine in a trial outside India, the information was made public, and the trial was halted at all sites while an investigation was under way. The Serum Institute was also ordered to halt the trial by the Indian regulator pending investigation.
Act quickly
•Only a thorough and impartial probe will restore confidence in clinical trials. All the more as a couple of COVID-19 trials have already progressed to the phase-3 trial stage and few more are in the early stages of testing. With two vaccines already approved for restricted use and the virus spread slowing down, recruiting participants will prove to be all the more challenging. The conduct of a highly unethical trial, if not thoroughly and quickly investigated, can adversely impact the conduct of these studies already under way.
📰 In ancient Al-Ula, forging a new future
The Arab Quartet’s reconciliation with Qatar could lead to new regional alignments
•On January 5, the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) met at the ancient town of Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia to end the bitter discord that three of its members — Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, along with Egypt — have had with their partner, Qatar.
•On June 5, 2017, the Arab Quartet, as they styled themselves, subjected Qatar to an onerous diplomatic boycott and a total land, sea and air embargo. They accused Qatar of destabilising the region with its support for Islamist groups. They then presented Qatar with 13 demands including severing ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, diluting relations with Turkey and Iran, and shutting down the Al Jazeera network, in order to normalise ties. Viewing these demands as an encroachment on its sovereignty, Qatar rejected them. This led to the boycott which was accompanied by shrill invective against Qatar on national media, which included threats of violence and even regime change. Now, three and a half years later, the boycott has ended.
Background to the boycott
•Ten years ago, the Arab Spring uprisings across West Asia had thrown up popular demands for reform — an end to authoritarian rule and the restoration of Arab “dignity” through freedom and democracy. Four leaders fell under these pressures, which also gave rise to two new developments: one, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated parties came to power in Egypt and Tunisia; and, two, Saudi Arabia decided to divert demands for domestic reform by highlighting a threat from Iran. Asserting that Iran had hegemonic designs across the region, the Kingdom shaped opposition to Iran on sectarian basis and confronted it in theatres of its influence – Syria and later Yemen.
•The Brotherhood, with its grassroots mobilisation and a political platform that marries Islamic principles with Western-style democracy, poses a serious challenge to the existing monarchical order that provides no scope for popular participation. Hence, Saudi Arabia and the UAE watched with horror the Brotherhood’s electoral successes, culminating in Mohammed Morsi being elected President in Egypt in 2012. Fearing that a successful Brotherhood administration would become a model for their countries as well, the two GCC allies supported the Egyptian army’s coup against Morsi in July 2013.
Qatar and the Brotherhood
•Qatar, a GCC member, has over several years been a maverick in GCC counsels. Besides supporting its independent television channel, Al Jazeera, that often criticises regional leaders, it is a major supporter of the Brotherhood. Though explained as an expression of its independent foreign policy, the reason goes deeper: the former Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and his son, Sheikh Tamim, the present ruler, aspire to play a major role in regional affairs, overcoming with their wealth the disadvantage of Qatar’s small size.
•In pursuing their regional role, they have been sensitive to U.S. interests. Thus, after the events of 9/11, when the U.S. was convinced of the need for wide-ranging reform in the region, it believed that the Brotherhood, with its blend of Islam and democracy, could achieve change. Hence, Qatar’s backing for the Brotherhood from the early 2000s and later, specifically of Morsi, was in line with U.S. interests.
•U.S. President Donald Trump’s visceral hostility towards Iran and total support for Saudi Arabia gave the quartet the opportunity to change Qatar’s ways: through the boycott of June 2017, they sought to pressurise their partner into submission. This approach failed: with its huge resources, Qatar could weather the financial assault, while the backing of Turkey, Iran and two GCC partners, Kuwait and Oman, ensured that the movement of goods and people was maintained.
•Turkey, led by an Islamist party, became Qatar’s strategic partner, and even challenged Saudi regional leadership on doctrinal and political bases. Recently, when the UAE and Bahrain “normalised” ties with Israel, both Qatar and Turkey affirmed their support for Hamas, the Islamist party in power in Gaza. The two countries are also partners in Libya, ranged against the group backed by Egypt and the UAE in the ongoing civil conflict.
Possible re-alignments
•The most likely reason for the reconciliation at Al-Ula is the incoming Biden presidency in the U.S.: it is expected that, besides reviving the nuclear agreement with Iran and easing sanctions, Joe Biden could focus on Saudi Arabia’s dismal human rights record and the war in Yemen. Hence, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was anxious to project his conciliatory approach to the incoming administration by patching up with Qatar.
•The reconciliation has evoked no enthusiasm from the other sponsors of the boycott. The UAE and Egypt feel particularly threatened by the Brotherhood; they sent low-level delegations to Al-Ula and their media comment has been tepid. Both have made clear, as has Bahrain, that future ties with Qatar will depend on its conduct. No one, however, believes that Qatar will dilute its backing for the Brotherhood, delink itself from Turkey, or even tone down commentary on Al Jazeera.
•The UAE has its own reasons for hostility towards Qatar. It has far greater concerns relating to the threat from the Brotherhood than other GCC members due to the influence of its domestic Brotherhood-affiliated Al Islah party. Again, its leaders are also keen to emerge as major players in regional affairs on the back of close links with the U.S. They therefore see Qatar as a rival hindering their aspirations.
•The Al-Ula conclave could herald some major shifts in regional alignments. There could be a nascent Saudi-UAE competition, with the UAE ingratiating itself with the U.S. and supporting its interests in diverse theatres – Yemen, the Horn of Africa and the western Indian Ocean. Turkey and Qatar, possibly with Iran, could then seize the opportunity to re-engage with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, thus shaping an alternative regional coalition that would perhaps be closer to Russia and China than to the U.S. As Mr. Biden takes charge in the U.S., the Al-Ula conclave could trigger the emergence of a new regional order in West Asia.
