The Red Velvet Lawyer

A Hero in Qatar's Successful Resistance to the Blockade On June 5, 2017, four neighboring countries --  Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt -- imposed a blockade of land, sea, and air routes to and from Qatar.  In my book chapter , on Qatar's strategic and successful responses to the blockade, I discussed the role of the Hamad Port.  See Paula Marie Young, The Siege of Qatar:  Creating a BATNA that Strengthened the Tiny Country’s Negotiating Power , QATAR: POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ISSUES (Nova Science Pubs. 2019). In that chapter, I said: Access to alternative ports played a bigger role in Qatari planning. Its new Hamad Port, the largest port in the Middle East, opened for what appears to be a soft-launch in December 2016, with an accelerated opening of other facilities at the port shortly after the siege began. Qatar made a QR 27 billion ($7.3 billion) investment in the site. Port officials reported an intent to expand its capacity throu...

Strategic Impasse that is Unlikely to Change Absent Third-Party Intervention Pushing the Limits: US –  Iranian Brinkmanship in the Gulf Brookings Doha Center October 20, 2019 Intercontinental Hotel, Doha Qatar Three panelists expressed pessimism and pragmatism last week in assessing the current tensions between the US and Iran.  The moderator, Ali Fathollah-Nejad , Visiting Fellow, Brookings Doha Center, began the program by giving a brief summary of recent actions taken by both belligerents. He described President Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of the US from the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) . In 2018, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iran , that among others things, affected Iran's ability to sell and export oil and natural gas. While European countries promised to mitigate the economic impact of these sanctions, their promises fell short.  As a consequence, Iran adopted a “maximum resi...

First Inter-State Communications Ever to be Submitted to a United Nations Treaty Body On August 29, 2019, The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued the following press release : Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination closes ninety-ninth session, adopts decisions on inter-State communications by Qatar against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 29 August 2019  * * * The Committee had continued to deal with inter-State communications submitted by Qatar on 8 March 2018 against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the inter-State communication submitted on 23 April 2018 by the State of Palestine against Israel. Those were the first inter-State communications ever to be submitted to a United Nations treaty body, stressed Ms. Izsák-Ndiaye. The Committee had decided that it had jurisdiction on the communications submitted by Qatar and had declared them adm...

High-Quality Scholarship  about Qatar In May 2019, Nova Science Publishers published Qatar: Political, Economic, and Social Issues (Haitham M. Alkhateeb ed.).  The book covers political, economic, and social issues as the name suggests. Chapters 2 to 6 feature my analysis of the Qatari response to the blockade by four neighboring countries - Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt. The book is available from Amazon in hard copy and from libraries in digital format. The Table of Contents, set out below, shows its broad coverage. Preface Chapter 1. Qatar's Nation Brand: Facing the Regional Challenges (Nawaf Al-Tamimi, PhD, and Azzam Amin, PhD, Journalism Program, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar, and others) Chapter 2. Bustards, Bullies, Billions, and the Blockade: Applying Dispute Resolution Theory to the First Nine Months of the Siege of Qatar (Paula Marie Young, College of Law, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar) Chapter 3. Po...

Tit-for-Tat Legal Strategy As noted below, Qatar brought a complaint before the World Trade Organization alleging that the UAE had violated various international trade treaties by imposing a land, sea, and air blockade on Qatar along with neighboring countries Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt beginning in June 2017. UAE then brought its own complaint .  It alleged Qatar had banned the sale of products imported from the UAE and struck UAE companies from a list of approved participants in infrastructure projects.  This past week saw developments in the second proceeding.  For the complete story from The Peninsula  Qatar , see here .  The following excerpt provides a summary of the developments.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement underlined that the UAE’s decision to withdraw its complaint so soon after initiating this dispute confirms that Qatar has, and continues to, uphold and comply with its obligations unde...

One Way the Blockade Effects  People and not Just Governments I am writing several book chapters for an upcoming book on the blockade of Qatar. In one chapter I described attacks on the media by the countries starting the blockade – Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Bahrain, and Egypt. Among other things, the countries blocked Al Jazeera broadcasts and other media originating from Qatar. I stated that the media blockade serve at least two purposes. It keeps an opposing narrative about Qatar from reaching people in the blockading countries. It also limits access to programming popular with conservative Muslim audiences. In that chapter, I also described the Saudis relationship with sport broadcaster beIn Sports: Saudi Arabia also blocked access to the ubiquitous and highly popular, Qatar-financed, beIN Sports on June 13, 2018. The station has about 5,000 staffers working in 43 countries. The U.A.E blocked access for six weeks before restoring it on July 22, 2018. Police had eje...

The Gulf, the Arabs, and the World  Amid Current Developments On April 28-29, 2018, Al Jazeera held its 12th Forum providing an opportunity for leading scholars and other experts to discuss a variety of topics affecting the Arab world.  The website for the forum,  @aljazeeraform , provides additional information and links to the videos of each session.  You can follow the Twitter coverage at  #AJForum . As I noted in my first post in this series, I am working from my notes, so I apologize in advance if I incorrectly paraphrase the remarks of any speaker. I was also reliant on the quality of the translation services and their audibility. Therefore, I am happy to make any needed edits to this summary. For summaries of the other sessions see: Opening Session Session 2: Iran and the Gulf Session 3: Change in the Region? Session 4: Changing Alliances in the Arab World Session 5: Palestine and the "Deal of the Century" Session 6: The M...