Bahrain Center: Qatar targets GCC countries

CAIRO – 8 January 2018: Abdulla bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, chairman of the Bahrain Center for Strategic and International Studies, accused the Qatari regime of targeting the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) by destabilizing and inciting sectarianism in many Arab countries.

This was during a conference entitled “Qatar: Patron of Anarchy and Crisis in the Middle East" held in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, on Monday to discuss possible ways of combating Qatar’s plans in the Middle East.

Al-Khalifa added that Qatar is considered as an extended crisis in the Middle East, as it has been allocating its media and financial resources to create crises in the Arab states.

He added that Bahrain recently revealed new evidence about Qatar’s policy to support terrorism in many other Arab countries.

Editor-in-Chief of al-Watan newspaper in Bahrain, Yousuf al-bin Khalil, stated that Qatar has intervened in Bahrain’s internal affairs, including its intelligence sector, to cause chaos and incite media reactions against its institutions. He also claimed that Qatar works in coordination with Iran with an aim of destroying Arab states.

He remarked that seven months after the boycott, Qatar, the biggest sponsor for terrorism in the Middle East, still refuses the Arab Quartet’s demands to stop financing terrorism, as well as suspend the news outlet Al-Jazeera.

Qatar is determined to spread terrorism and chaos across the world. It conspires to destroy Arab countries through its continuous support of terrorist groups in the region, and now it is turning the compass to European countries.

Therefore, the Arab world’s biggest powers – Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting Islamist militants and Iran, which is known for supporting terrorist groups, as well as backing militant groups and broadcasting their ideology through its state-owned satellite channel, Al-Jazeera.

Qatar also funds terrorist organizations in the region through charitable societies, as well as supporting terrorist groups in Africa, with the aim of spreading chaos through the region, the Qatari opposition revealed.

On June 5, 2017, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic ties with Qatar. Saudi Arabia subsequently ordered Qatari citizens in the kingdom to leave within 14 days. On June 18, Saudi Arabia shut the Salwa crossing, following the deadline. In August, King Salman of Saudi Arabia decided to allow Qatari pilgrims to access the country through the Salwa crossing, but the crossing was later shut again.

In 2014, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE withdrew their ambassadors in Qatar, after they failed to stop Qatar from interfering in the GCC countries’ internal affairs, according to a statement issued by the three countries.