Most of the official news agencies in the Gulf region released a vague report about the latest GCC foreign ministers’ meeting in Riyadh. It was written in the usual style of the Gulf people and couldn’t be understood easily by others.
“The Foreign Ministers conducted a comprehensive review of measures relating to foreign and security policies,” the report stated. “(Participants) agreed to adopt measures that can ensure working as a group and that policies of any individual state should not harm the interests, security or stability of any other member state,” it continued.
“They (foreign ministers) stressed their governments’ agreement to the mechanism to implement the Riyadh accord, the basic principles of which stem from the Gulf Cooperation Council’s core system.”
Of course, no one can understand these words without a local interpreter, and this is the way we talk in the Gulf. Our words are ambiguous and our language mostly depends on signals only understood by smart people who can read between the lines.
Indeed, it’s a difficult language to understand. How can a sentence like “confirmed the importance of implementing commitments” be decoded when we don’t know what the commitment is or what needs to be implemented?
Surely, Kuwait’s positive role was obvious in preventing a collapse of the GCC. Before the Kuwaiti mediation, the GCC was on the verge of reaching an irreconcilable situation as three states angrily withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar. Things, indeed, were going to a point of no return when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were ready for greater measures against Qatar.
To help us get a better understanding of the current dispute, we can try to interpret some of the sentences of the statement released after the meeting but we won’t succeed so much. If we read the phrase “careful implementation,” we can understand that there are specific demands that need to be executed and that there’s an implementing party. However, the rest is vague if we don’t know the accord’s articles. Without knowing those details, we can’t decide if any of the GCC members conducted forbidden activities or reconcilable activities.
The Saudi-Emirati-Bahraini conflict with Qatar is not a secret, and is declared publicly in a way that makes us think it is a very small issue. There are problems that threaten to cause a split within the GCC.
So, the problem lies in the unknown. The dispute between the GCC members is very vast particularly over the events occurring in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya and Tunisia. The unknown disagreements are very deep and touch the states’ sovereignty.
It’s unclear yet whether the “Riyadh agreement” to implement the “Riyadh accord” was a reconciliation or just an attempt to calm the situation. Yet, the leaders in the Gulf countries need to know the importance of the GCC. Yes, it has a greater importance than its trillion-worth investment funds for the rainy days. In times of prosperity, international relations don’t appear as important when the show of power is demonstrated and transformation of disagreements to disputes becomes easy. It’s not certain, however, when the darker periods come and the need for alliances emerges.
The stability of the Gulf countries doesn’t only benefit the area’s residents but the region as a whole. The GCC states were a safe haven that gave a sense of stability amidst the turmoil in the region. These bodies, no matter how weak and calm they might seem, can take the region to a better future, if they agree to work together in the same direction.
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