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2 China under pressure over
Saudi rise By Peter Lee
China
is doing its utmost to avoid contagion from the
Arab revolutions. At the same time it is trying to
anticipate developments in the Middle East and get
on the right side of history - instead of
impotently mourning strongmen it couldn't save and
military interventions it couldn't prevent - by
championing the Palestinian peace process.
However, Beijing's Middle
East initiatives may be scuppered by its two
biggest energy suppliers - and mortal enemies -
Iran and Saudi Arabia.
In
mid-March, China dispatched its special envoy for
Middle East affairs, Wu Sike, on a swing through
Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Qatar. Wu's
stated aim was to highlight the central
importance of the Palestinian
peace process to security in the Middle East. His
theme: change is perhaps pregnant with
opportunity.
His interlocutors appear to
have listened politely. It's difficult to say for
sure, since his visit was virtually ignored by the
regional press. Chinese media dutifully reported
his earnest statements about how the Palestinian
question could not be marginalized, even in the
current turmoil.
As the Arab nations nervously
listened for the sound of the next democratic
domino - or interventionist bomb - to crash on
their heads, Wu's views do not seem to have
excited any conspicuous response.
China has no credibility as a
democratic reformer or clout as a military power
in the Middle East; it seems to be trying to carve
out a role for itself as a regional facilitator,
one with good relations with all the key players,
from Egypt to Israel to Saudi Arabia to Iran.
China's emphasis on the
Palestinian peace process is, to some extent,
founded on wishful thinking: the People's Republic
of China government attempting to shift the
framing from the uncomfortable "freedom-loving
people assembling in a big square to overthrow
authoritarian masters".
As
paraphrased in a Xinhua article, Wu stated in a
March 25 interview, "A partial reason for the
unrest was the dissatisfaction of the people of
the region with the Middle East policies of their
governments. Therefore, if the Palestine problem
is resolved, it would be beneficial for the
resolution of other problems." [1]
A
similar, hopeful view was outlined in an op-ed by
Zhu Weilie, head of the Middle East Department of
the Shanghai Foreign Languages Institute. He
asserted that the Chinese cooperative approach
contrasted favorably with the "clash of
civilizations" narrative that put the West at odds
with Islam. [2]
Taken as a whole, this
indicates that China has decided to view the
overthrow of the Hosni Mubarak regime not as a
reaction against corrupt authoritarianism; instead
it takes the more comforting position that changes
in Egypt are a repudiation of failed US Middle
East peace policies and its strategy of using
Egypt as a bulwark against Palestinian
aspirations.
Conspicuous progress in the
Palestinian peace process post-Mubarak could be
viewed as a validation of China's views and, one
would imagine, a source of some internal
reassurance to the anxious Chinese leadership.
The
context for China's interest in the Palestinian
issue is that the matter of Palestinian statehood
will probably be the next big drama that roils the
Middle East.
Mahmoud Abbas has stated that
Palestine will unilaterally declare statehood in
September unless significant progress occurs in
negotiations with Israel. It appears likely it
will gain recognition from a not inconsiderable
number of Western and developing world states.
Israel's Defense Minister
Ehud Barak stated that Israel faces a "diplomatic
tsunami" if Palestine declares statehood. [3]
China apparently hopes to
surf that diplomatic tsunami. If Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persists in his usual
policy of defiance, China enjoys the favorable
contrast between its conciliatory policies and
Israel's intransigence, inevitably abetted by the
United States.
If Israel is stampeded to
pre-empt the Palestinian move by announcing its
own peace process - a group of security and
business heavyweights forwarded a plan to
Netanyahu that would fix some key concessions up
front instead of withholding them for the
conclusion of negotiations - China can claim some
credit for being on the side of the good guys. [4]
Beyond lip service to
constant principle of Palestinian
self-determination, Wu explicitly endorsed
reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority on the West Bank, a development that was
strongly opposed both by Mubarak's Egypt and by
the Israeli government.
Wu
went to considerable lengths to sweeten this
bitter pill for the Israelis, stating, "These new
changes will possibly create greater pressures on
Israel; only if the Middle East questions are
resolved, will Israel be fundamentally relieved of
these pressures." [5]
However, the Middle East is
hard on dreamers and optimists and diplomats that
stake their hopes on Netanyahu's willingness to
make peace with the Palestinians.
There are bigger forces afoot
in the region, and China is caught between them.
As the various popular
revolutions stagger toward their equivocal
denouements, China has to deal with the fallout:
the Arab counter-revolution and the league of
conservative states led by Saudi Arabia that has
adopted anti-Iranism as its organizing principle.
While the West focuses on the
tragicomic spectacle of the Libyan intervention,
the two great powers in the region, Iran and Saudi
Arabia are moving towards confrontation.
Saudi
Arabia's ruling family is not supportive of
Egypt's desire to move beyond its role under
Mubarak as America's most reliable client to
normalize relations with Iran, and assert its
regional clout as a great Muslim nation and a
political paragon to the democracy-starved
citizens of the Arab world.
Saudi Arabia believes that Egypt, and the
Arab League it dominates, can and deserves to be
pushed aside.
Riyadh
feels a sense of urgency since it must confront
the contingency that Iran might be accepted as a
legitimate Middle Eastern state, and the regional
consensus to contain it through sanctions and
military encirclement might waver.
The
kingdom also needs to inoculate itself against the
possibility that the US response to unrest within
Saudi Arabia will be as ambivalent and
destabilizing as its at first fitful and then open
support of the forces seeking to remove Mubarak in
Egypt.
The Saudi response has been
to ratchet up the hostility to reframe the
instability in the Middle East as a matter of
Iranian subversion, not popular discontent,
thereby shifting the focus away from Egypt and
North Africa and back to the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia has asserted its
freedom of action by reclassifying the United
States as more than an asset but something less
than an ally in its front-line struggle against
the Iranian threat.
Two days after US Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates visited Bahrain on March
14 to urge conciliation with the demonstrators,
the Obama administration was blind-sided as the
Peninsula Shield Force was sent across the Fahd
Causeway to backstop Bahraini security forces in a
pervasive and violent crackdown on demonstrators
and activists.
US-Saudi relations are now
"strained" and Gates was obliged to visit Riyadh
again to persuade King Abdullah of American
reliability and the attractions of concluding the
largest US arms deal in history - a $60 billion
package of F-15 fighter jets, bunker busting
bombs, and a variety of missiles suitable for
blasting Iran.
At
the same time, Saudi Arabia has made the case for
the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) - a
Saudi-dominated collection of Persian Gulf
sheikdoms - as the successor to the widely derided
Arab League as the premier leadership grouping in
the Middle East.
The
GCC recently met to condemn alleged Iranian
meddling.
How much Iranian meddling is
going on - and how important it might be as
popular demonstrations shake Middle East
autocracies to their foundations - is open to
debate.
Iran has continually flayed the
Saudi government in official and press statements
for its role in the crackdown in Bahrain on the
largely Shi'ite demonstrators. Kuwait claims to
have cracked an Iranian spy ring and has sentenced
two Iranians and one Kuwaiti to death, withdrawn
its ambassador to Tehran, and promised the
expulsion of several Iranian diplomats.
The April 3 backgrounder
given to Arab Times, a Kuwaiti newspaper, is a
clear indication that the GCC has gone all-in on
the Iranian threat.
Persian
conspiracy seen to target GCC countries
‘Bahraini crisis just a spark'
KUWAIT CITY, April 3: The
Iranian plan includes dangerous plots against
the Gulf nations, not just Bahrain. Kuwait, in
particular, is one of the targets and the spy
network is only a tip of the iceberg, because
the main objective is for the Iranian Naval
Forces to invade some islands in the country and
other Gulf nations under the pretext of
protecting Shiites in Bahrain, say security
sources in the Gulf.
Sources disclosed the
Bahraini and Kuwaiti foreign ministers revealed
the conspiracy uncovered by the security
departments in both countries in the
recently-concluded meeting of the GCC foreign
ministers in Riyadh. After hearing the report,
the GCC foreign ministers presented
recommendations, which will be implemented soon,
because the GCC nations are keen on revealing
the truth to the international community. [6]
Bridge-burning is definitely on the
agenda.
[An integrated
and strongly-written] letter will be delivered
to Tehran by the Qatari foreign minister or his
Omani counterpart, without disclosing details of
the trip ... the letter will contain an explicit
and direct call for an end to the ridiculous
game on the security and stability of the GCC
countries - a situation which can no longer be
denied by the Iranian leadership and
authorities, considering the clear pieces of
evidence in the hands of the GCC.
The
diplomat confirmed there are efforts to inform
Tehran on the deportation of some Iranian
diplomats from the six GCC countries, especially
Bahrain and Kuwait. The number of diplomatic
representatives in the cities of Arab nations
will also be reduced after the GCC authorities
found out that many Iranian intelligence agents
are using diplomatic cover and immunity to
engage in unscrupulous activities; thereby
posing grave security threats to the countries,
so there is no option but to expel them, he
asserted.
Bahrain has emerged as the
key proving ground for the anti-Iran doctrine.
The
GCC countries are attempting to overturn the
accepted narrative: that Bahrain has a Shi'ite
majority that has been unfairly disenfranchised
and which is now attempting to gain expanded
political rights through popular agitation.
The
GCC framing is that Shi'ite are not the majority,
that in fact they are a minority attempting to
seize power on behalf of their Iranian masters.
The determination of the GCC
to deny the Shi'ite majority - and the legitimacy
of the demonstrations - is clear from the Arab
Times backgrounder.
The arcane and conveniently
murky issue of Bahraini demographics - there
hasn't been an official census since 1941 since
the results would inevitably embarrass the
emirate's ruling Sunni minority - is being thrown
into the fray.
Sources went on
to say the world powers have taken into
consideration the real demographic situation in
Bahrain, particularly the fact that the Shi'ites
are not the majority, contrary to the claims of
Iran and others involved in the conspiracy.
These world powers have also realized that what
is happening is not a sectarian conflict,
considering the attempt to manipulate the
demographic scale to deprive the majority of
their political rights. They have discovered
there is no truth in such claims and the
naturalization issue was based on the law, not
politics; hence, no one can interfere in the
process, sources added.
Justin
Gengler, PhD candidate at the University of
Michigan, who administered the first-ever mass
political survey of Bahrain in 2009, provides a
unique and authoritative statistical profile of
the local demographics.
According to Gengler, the
Shi'ite share of the population probably peaked at
65 to 70% in the mid-1980s. Since then, there has
been a concerted effort by the government to
dilute Shi'ite numbers by an aggressive program to
naturalize Sunnis.
Also, it was alleged that, in
order to boost Sunni turnout in the 2002
parliamentary elections, the Bahraini government
naturalized a large number of Sunnis residing in
the Saudi town of Dammam, on the coast facing the
island and, for their convenience, erected a
polling booth on the King Fahd Causeway!
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