The split between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is an incredibly divisive ideological battle, but one you won’t see fought in the other blockading countries like Bahrain and the UAE. That’s because showing sympathy to Qatar has become a literal criminal offensive in those countries.
That’s less true in Yemen, and the Saudi blockade of Qatar is proving an extremely problematic issue within the Hadi government that the Saudis are trying to prop up. Ideologically, they are nowhere near on the same page as the Saudis are on this issue.
Indeed, one of the main Saudi grievances is Qatar not having banned the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, a sore spot for follow blackader Egypt, whose junta ousted a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated elected government. That’s a problem in Yemen, however, where a large chunk of the government is also Muslim Brotherhood aligned.
This naturally makes a lot of them ideologically aligned with Qatar on this split, and more importantly very worried about what happens if this Saudi War to install them as Yemen’s sole government ever successfully ends, potentially setting the stage for another Saudi blockade because of their political affiliations.
Saudi Arabia already has myriad problems in Yemen, and this is just one more, reflective of the reality that President Hadi never had broad political support and mostly had to rely on piecemeal support from the real political factions. Reinstalling him as the feckless ruler of Yemen ultimately means the return of whatever allies of convenience he’s managed to retain throughout the war, and with Saudi Arabia’s growing aggression, those alliances may seem less convenient for many.
Funny, we routinely call Assad Putin or Iran’s puppet just because he is being helped by them but here Hadi is being forced to literally change his political views to appease the Saudis yet he is referred to as the ‘legitimate governing authority of Yemen’. There is no end to our hypocrisy.
It is very common to see hypocrisy in everyday conversations — curtesy of decades of media dominance over our reasonimg, vocabulary and what constitutes fact, truth or lies. With the massive expansion of information sources and the increasing ability of readers to analyze, compare and synthetise — the monopoly of information has been broken. Belated attempts to provide “truth” algorithm and implant them into search dngines has only angered people. The pathetic state of corporate media is only highlighted by such attempts. But we are still bombarded by narratives, not news. And in every narrative one can detect the bias and propaganda. It will take a lots of effort on the part of sociologists and media analysts to examine the impact on our behaviour and political consequences. Of course, no university will fund it. But there will be new academia born out of the ranks of rebels. It may not pay mortgage, but people survived before all types of oppression, this one no exception. It is because the perpertrators of media narratives became too ridiculous, too confident and even unprofessional. They slipped into the bizarre. Making it imperative to seek information using alternative sources.