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Qatar Embargo Shows Signs of Erosion

Jacob Wirtschafter

   DOHA - Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt moved this week to restore mail
   service to Qatar in another sign that the embargo imposed by four Sunni
   Arab states nearly three years ago is starting to crumble.

   The four conservative allies--all opponents of the Arab Spring
   uprisings-- objected to Doha's support for regional opposition groups
   ranging from dissident liberals to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

   These countries also object to Qatar's ongoing diplomatic and trade
   ties with Iran, with which it shares the world's largest gas field.

   The UAE had already resumed services to Qatar on February 9, according
   to the Universal Postal Union, the U.N. agency responsible for
   coordinating global postal services.

   "I warmly welcome the resumption of international postal exchanges
   between these countries via transit through Oman," said UPU director
   general Bishar Hussein, speaking at the organization's headquarters in
   Geneva, Switzerland.

   The Sultanate of Oman and Kuwait declined to join the blockade imposed
   by Saudi Arabia and the UAE in June 2017.

   Oman and Kuwait continue to support mediation efforts to rebuild unity
   in the now fractured Gulf Cooperation Council.

   Yet Qatar remains under a sea, air and land blockade.

   Both outside analysts and the Doha business community widely
   characterize the embargo as a backfiring failure as Qatar presses ahead
   with internal reforms that have strengthened its economy.

   International Monetary Fund forecasters say Qatar's annual growth rate
   in real gross domestic product will slightly outpace both the Emirates
   and Saudi Arabia this year.

   The World Bank cites the country's "ambitious program to improve its
   business regulation" as the reason it awarded Qatar a ranking spot in
   the top 20 global business environment improvers.

   "Fundamentally, the Saudis and the Emiratis miscalculated Qatar's
   ability to quickly reroute supplies and how far their large sums of
   money can go in this day and age," said Harry Verhoeven, an Oxford
   postdoctoral fellow and a former assistant professor at Georgetown
   University's Doha campus.

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