Paris: Fault Line in the Inter-Arab Conflict

The Trump administration’s startling announcement last week that it was withdrawing from UNESCO came as the executive board of the UN body was entering the final rounds of the election of the organization’s new director-general. But while the U.S. decision prompted a sharp rebuke by many American foreign policy experts (Richard Haass called it the latest manifestation of Trump’s “Withdrawal Doctrine”) it had little impact on the hot race to succeed Bulgaria’s Irina Bokova at the helm of the UN’s world heritage body. A far more important geopolitical factor in the election, that culminated in the victory of France’s former Minister of Culture Audrey Azoulay, was the fratricidal face-off pitting Saudi Arabia and its allies, including Egypt, against the small but politically ambitious state of Qatar. While the 45-year-old Azoulay was highly regarded by her cabinet colleagues for her detailed knowledge of cultural issues and impressed diplomats with her poise and drive, the most striking aspect of the election was the total inability of the Arab group to unify behind a single candidate. Qatar and Egypt both fielded strong candidates, but the shouting match between them degenerated into an unseemly geopolitical brawl. In a telling sign of the severity of tensions, when the final vote count was announced in the cavernous meeting hall of UNESCO, a member of the Egyptian delegation howled, “Down with Qatar; long live France!” Arab diplomats and business leaders based in Paris watched with grave concern the weeks-long, multi-million-dollar political, media, and lobbying war between the two sides of the Gulf crisis as it unfurled. Most analysts saw Qatar as having the upper hand, despite the unsparing support of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi for the Egyptian candidate. Doha seemed to be able to reap the benefits of a decade-long strategy to become the dominant Arab player on the French chessboard. Two bestsellers by respected French journalists: "The French Republic of Qatar" by Bérengère Bonte and "Our Beloved Emirs" by Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, have shone light on the way Qatar achieved that objective by spending dozens of billions of dollars on its purchase of Paris’s top soccer club, historic landmarks, and luxury hotels; its takeover of large shares of top-performing French companies, and its cozy relationship with senior figures from across the French political spectrum. Long before the splat between Qatar and Egypt at UNESCO, Paris was the scene of a political-economic clash between former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim and Saudi businessman Sheikh Mohamed Al-Jaber. Both sheikhs are savvy billionaire businessmen; Forbes puts the wealth of Hamad bin Jassim at over 8 billion dollars and ranks Mohamed Al-Jaber as Saudi Arabia’s third fortune. Earlier this week, at the prestigious Maison des Polytechniciens at the heart of Paris, on the sidelines of an event for French and Arab entrepreneurs hosted by the French-Arab Chamber of Commerce, its soft-spoken Secretary-General Saleh Al-Tayar described a decade-long, no-holds-barred fight between the two business rivals from the Gulf over the most coveted prizes in the world of luxury hotels. Al-Tayar, a Saudi lawyer, a thirty-year veteran of Arab power-play in the French capital who has tried hard to reconcile the divergent interests of Arab nations in France said Qatar finally won that battle by undoing a 2008 deal between the Saudi magnate and the American fund Starwood Capital which would have given the Saudi Al-Jaber control of a dozen luxury hotels for a total of 1.5 billion euros. Through the help of a Lebanese middleman called Salim Khoury, who was at the time working for Al-Jaber, the Qataris ended up in possession of a dozen top-rated luxury hotels in Paris, Cannes, and Nice, Al-Tayar mentioned. To understand the importance of this establishment real estate diplomacy, at the very heart of bin Jassim’s well designed influence-cum-investment plan for Qatar visibility, one has to recall this was the time President Sarkozy offered a tax waiver that in the words of one French politician has turned Paris into a tax haven for Qatari leaders. A measure that was kept while Hollande’s presidency realigned with Saudi Arabia along its Egyptian ally and is deemed to be now undone under Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to sanitize the back stage of France’s relationship with the Gulf. Besides, these hotel moves were not absent with dynastic gambling either. In a shrewd move, Hamad bin Jassim decided not to include the iconic Le Crillon in the deal for his country, and instead left it to be subsequently purchased by Prince Mutaib, the son of the late Saudi King Abdullah, widely seen at the time as a likely successor to his ailing father, Al Tayar said. Fate did not favor Hamad, however: King Abdullah did not change the line of succession before his demise, and in 2013 Hamad bin Jassim himself fell from grace and took the path of self-exile in London. The Guardian reported that if the ongoing legal challenges to remove Sheikh Hamad’s diplomatic immunity succeeded, he could be drawn into a series of high-profile investigations into the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar and the controversial billion-pound bailout of Barclays. But these internal rivalries are just as much a clash of personalities as a deep-rooted battle for political influence. That explains why even the removal of Hamad bin Jassim from power did not lower the tensions between Doha and Riyadh. For years, the Gulf neighbors’ rivalry to gain influence in France through the economy and its establishment remains intense, and Riyadh is working hard to regain much of the ground it had lost to Doha in the past decade, although the results are far from clear. From the clash over luxury hotels to the fratricidal fight during the UNESCO election, Paris is increasingly finding itself on a major fault line in the Arab world, and is fearful of the impact of the next tremor caused by inter-Arab tensions on the French economy and the country’s waning influence in the Arab world. Recognizing the need for a major clean-up of French ties to the Gulf states after years of laissez-faire policies adopted by his two predecessors, President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to clamp down on “indulgent” practices of the past. He has told his ministers to scrap the controversial tax-exemption status accorded to Qatar in 2008. While the need for a French policy review towards the Gulf is urgent, there is no doubt that changing course would be replete with risks to French interests and potential embarrassments for French politicians of different persuasions. Let us at least hope that the location of Paris atop a major fault line of the Arab world does not adversely affect UNESCO at a time when the organization has an opportunity to embark on a rejuvenated path to greater reform and efficiency.  About the author: Joel Ruet is Chairman of The Bridge Tank in Paris, France.