Forgotten Middle-East Update - Qatar

Qatar is the way through which instability is likely to rear its ugly head in the Arabian Gulf.

Due to the embargo imposed by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, Qatar's own economy is under threat. While short-term things are unlikely to change in the small Arabian nation, mid-term to long-term the embargo is likely to negatively impact not only Qatar but the surrounding Arabian Gulf region.

The result of such an embargo has been that Qatar has strengthened relations with both Iran and Turkey, both of which are adversities to the four countries involved in the embargo. Through Qatar's current predicament, Iran and Turkey have been brought closer to the Arabian Gulf than ever before.

As the geopolitics of the Middle-East continue to realign, relations will continue to deteriorate in the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the council itself is likely to be disbanded and recreated under a different name - with Qatar excluded. Such a move is likely to benefit Iraq, which may end up swapping places with Qatar and, for Iraq, instead of being the pro-Iranian outcast, may be brought into a new Gulf Council. Qatar would then be the new pro-Iranian outcast, bringing more open hostility from its neighbours than ever.

Before such hostilities are brought to bear in the Arabian Gulf itself, they are likely to be settled in a preliminary proxy war in Libya. (Such a dress rehearsal is reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's, which was the prelude to the longer, bloodier conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1940's.) As the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have been winding down, countries like Libya are becoming increasingly unstable. This conflict has pitted autocrats against Islamists - which is the classic UAE/Saudi-versus-Qatar rivalry. As violence continues to recede elsewhere, such hostilities are likely to escalate severely in Libya.

The conflict in Libya would either end in a victory for the autocrats - led by Haftar Al-Khalifa - or a less-likely victory for the Islamists. The only way the Islamists would win in Libya would be if another nation got involved, such as Turkey, either through a direct military confrontation or through the funneling of supplies and foreign fighters from its own land - which was used in Syria - into Libya.

After the Libyan civil war is concluded, either way, instability will arrive at the Arabian Gulf. Should Turkey continue to militarily back Qatar and make sure that the Ikhwan philosophy survives in the Middle-East, eventually the Arabs will no longer tolerate Turkish meddling in Qatar, and a war would ensue between previously American allies - namely, Turkey and Saudi Arabia - which would tear the Arabian Gulf to pieces.

Saudi Arabia's Mohammed Bin Salman is facing increasing pressure in his proxy wars in Yemen, Qatar and Iraq (the latter two being economic proxy wars instead of military). Should insufficient progress be made on any of these fronts, the Saudi Crown Prince would have to make a game-changing decision: either more directly fund Al-Qaeda in Yemen to win the war against the Houthis, or militarily occupy Qatar and force regime change. Though former is more likely, Mohammed Bin Salman's own impulsive foreign policy would be wise not to underestimate.

Forgotten Middle-East Update - Yemen and Libya

In Syria, Bashar Al-Assad is consolidating control, while Iranian influence is being rolled back from the Syrian-Israeli border and Trump wants to withdraw - meanwhile in Iraq, anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada As-Sadr has won the largest number of seats in the election and is set to make a coalition government with Haider Al-Abadi's party.

As the known conflicts in Iraq and Syria continue to deescalate, other conflicts are escalating.

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is poised to start an offensive to take port Hodeida from Houthi control, a move which would cripple northern Yemen's already dwindling food supplies. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda continues to thwart the US-anti-terrorist strategy in the country's southeast, while in the north the terror group is flourishing in the absence of effective government. Yemeni President Hadi is only nominally in control of Yemen, while Houthis, Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the Southern Movement control different parts of the country.

In Libya, though the As-Sirraj government and the Libyan National Army headed by Haftar Al-Khalifa have agreed to hold elections, the situation in Libya is exacerbating. Haftar's forces have surrounded the city of Derna - Derna being a city like Iraq's Fallujah: a city that even in the days of the dictator was hard to control.

Meanwhile, the situation in Libya's Tripolitania is made tense by the growing rift between the Sirraj government and the militias in control of various parts of the region. It may be that the coming elections will force any legitimate government out of Tripolitania altogether and propel the militias into effective control, much as the Syrian Opposition has tried to do in Syria's Idlib. But, like Syria's opposition forces, the Libyan Shura councils and militias have links to groups as extreme as Al-Qaeda and ISIS - and, with the Syrian conflict winding down, many Islamists will continue to see Libya as the ultimate destination for establishing Shariah and waging jihad.

If such regional explosion in north-western Libya were not troubling enough, the conflict in the country's south is threatening to create space in which ISIS may rise in Libya for a third time. After being defeated in the cities Derna and Sirte, ISIS has fled to the south of the country and largely fallen silent. But the resentment of African Libyans in the south against their Arab counterparts in the north may be exactly the sort of thing ISIS needs to make a comeback in the country.

Though this in itself may be troubling, more troubling still is that the tribes in southern Libya are linked to other tribes across the region, such as in northern Chad, northeastern Niger and northwestern Sudan. Should ISIS succeed in winning the protection of tribes in the south of Libya, this protection would spread and ignite a regional explosion - one which would mean that ISIS would once again be breaking borders, this time between Libya, Chad and Niger, with assistance from terror groups Boko Haram and Ash-Shabab.

As Iraq and Syria continue to recover from years and years of war, Libya and Yemen continue to worsen. The instability in the region is not gone - it has only shifted.