Category: 2. World

Indian security forces have imposed a curfew in Leh, the capital of the Himalayan region of Ladakh, after at least four people were killed in violent clashes between police and protesters demanding statehood for the federal territory.

Dozens were also injured and an office of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) set on fire in the unrest on Wednesday.

The government blamed activist Sonam Wangchuk, who’s been leading protests, of fomenting violence, a claim he denies.

A mountainous desert with a Muslim-Buddhist population, Ladakh lost its semi-autonomy in 2019 when the BJP government split it from the former Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, imposing direct rule on both.

Ladakh has a population of about 300,000 people and borders China and Pakistan. The Leh region – where the violence broke out – is dominated by the Buddhist community, who for decades have demanded a separate region for its people. Meanwhile, the Muslim-majority Kargil district had historically wanted to be integrated with Indian-administered Kashmir.

But since 2019, both communities have joined together in demanding the restoration of statehood for Ladakh, along with greater autonomy which would give them job and land quotas.

It’s not clear what sparked Wednesday’s violence – protests have been taking place intermittently in the region for months, and demands for statehood have gathered greater support. But Wednesday’s violence was the worst seen in several decades.

In a late night statement, India’s federal home ministry blamed Mr Wangchuk, who’d been on hunger strike, for the unrest, alleging he had incited the mob by making provocative statements.

“He continued with the hunger strike and misleading the people through provocative mention of Arab Spring-style protest and references to Gen-Z protests in Nepal.”

It said that protesters had attacked the BJP’s local office, set fire to the building and torched a police vehicle, injuring at least 30 police personnel.

According to news agencies, police fired bullets and tear gas which injured dozens of protesters. Four were critically injured and later died.

“In self-defence, police had to resort to firing in which unfortunately some casualties are reported,” the home ministry statement added.

Mr Wangchuk called off the hunger strike he began on 12 September and appealed for calm, saying violence “only damages our cause”.

He denied having any role in the violence and said that growing frustration among young people is what had driven them onto the streets, with many of them being unemployed for years.

“There was a general feeling that the federal government was not hearing our voices… [But] we had no idea that it would turn out like this,” Padma Stanzin, one of the organisers of the hunger strike, told the BBC, adding that their movement has always been peaceful.

Chhering Dorje Lakrook, who heads the Ladakh Buddhist Association, an influential religious organisation, said the youth of Ladakh are against violence. But they are deeply frustrated because “the government has been delaying the dialogue process repeatedly and unemployment is soaring in the region”.

The government’s decision to set a distant date for the next round of talks, despite people being on a hunger strike, particularly made them angry, he added.

India keeps a large troop presence in Ladakh, which includes disputed border areas with China.

In 2020 a clash in the Galwan valley in Ladakh left at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.

A well-known local activist and engineer who gained national attention for his work on education and climate change, Mr Wangchuk has been at the forefront of the protests demanding statehood for Ladakh.

He and other activists argue that since the change in Ladakh’s status, promises that residents would get more power in local politics have not been met.

Many fear that losing its former special status has left the region vulnerable to outside economic interests and diluted local control over culture, land and resources.

The federal government, however, denies this saying it has held talks with local leaders since 2023, and the dialogue process had yielded “phenomenal results”.

According to the government, it has been actively engaged with Mr Wangchuk and other activists on their demands, but “certain politically-motivated individuals were not happy with the progress” in the talks.

On Wednesday, Ladakh’s Lieutenant Governor Kavinder Gupta, who is the federally appointed officer in charge of the region, said that an investigation into the violence had been initiated.

“For the past two days, attempts have been made to incite people, and the protest held here was compared to those held in Bangladesh and Nepal. This smells of a conspiracy,” he said.

Another round of meetings between protesters and officials is set to take place on Thursday and Friday.

A committee set up by the federal government is also likely to meet leaders from the region on 6 October.

Additional reporting by Auqib Javeed from Srinagar

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Hundreds of thousands of people in southern China were clearing up Thursday after powerful Typhoon Ragasa crashed through Guangdong Province, ripping down trees, destroying fences and blasting signs off buildings.

Ragasa churned into Guangdong, home to tens of millions of people, with winds up to 145 kilometres (90 miles) per hour, on Wednesday after sweeping past Hong Kong and killing at least 14 in Taiwan.

AFP journalists at the impact point around the city of Yangjiang on Thursday saw fallen trees, while road signs and debris were strewn across the streets.

A light rain and breeze still lingered as residents worked to clean up the damage; however, authorities have not reported any storm-related fatalities.

On Hailing — an island administered by Yangjiang —relief workers attempted to clear a huge tree that had fallen across a wide road. Cars drove on muddy tracks to get around the wreckage as the team worked to saw off branches.

A seafood restaurant had sustained heavy damage, its back roof completely collapsed, or in parts flown away entirely.

“The winds were so strong, you could see it completely ripped everything apart,” said restaurant worker Lin Xiaobing, 50.

“There’s no electricity (at home),” she said while helping clear up the mess inside the restaurant, where the floors were covered in water, mud, and debris. “Today, some homes still have electricity and others don’t.”

The island is a popular holiday spot, and many locals rely on the tourism industry to make a living.

“We can’t do business here during the National Day,” she said, referring to China’s annual holiday period centred on October 1 but that lasts until October 8.

“We were planning to do some business this National Day to make up for it,” she added. “But now we may not be able to.”

Taiwan fatalities

Ragasa’s passage in Taiwan killed at least 14 and injured dozens more when a decades-old barrier lake burst in eastern Hualien county, according to regional officials who late Wednesday revised the death toll down from 17 after eliminating duplicate cases.

Authorities initially said 152 people were unaccounted for, but later made contact with more than 100 of them and were still trying to confirm the actual number of missing.

The storm made landfall in mainland China near Hailing Island on Wednesday evening.

By that point, authorities across China had already ordered businesses and schools to shut down in at least 10 cities across the nation’s south, affecting tens of millions of people.

Nearly 2.2 million people in Guangdong were relocated by Wednesday afternoon, but local officials later said several cities in the province started lifting restrictions on schools and businesses.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Ragasa made its second landfall in Beihai, Guangxi, on Thursday morning as a tropical storm.

Chinese authorities earmarked the equivalent of about $49.2 million to support rescue and relief work in regions hit by Typhoon Ragasa, Xinhua news agency said.

Hong Kong battered

Hong Kong authorities said 101 people were treated at public hospitals for injuries sustained during the typhoon as of Wednesday evening, with more than 900 people seeking refuge at 50 temporary shelters across the city.

The Chinese finance hub recorded hundreds of fallen trees and flooding in multiple neighbourhoods.

Many of the city’s tall buildings swayed and rattled in the harsh winds.

About 1,000 flights were affected by Ragasa, the airport authority said Wednesday evening, adding that they expected to return to normal operations within the next two days.

The top typhoon warning was downgraded in Hong Kong on Wednesday afternoon after being in force for 10 hours, 40 minutes — the second-longest on the city’s record.

Hong Kong’s weather service ranked the storm the strongest yet in the northwestern Pacific this year.

HUALIEN, Taiwan — Taiwan’s fire department on Thursday revised down to 14 the death toll from a typhoon this week on its remote east coast, as rescuers continued to search for 33 people still missing amid thick, black mud and scenes of devastation.

The deaths happened after Super Typhoon Ragasa’s outer bands brought heavy rain to Hualien county, causing a barrier lake in the mountains to overflow and unleash a wall of water onto the small town of Guangfu.

Having said the previous day that 17 had died, the fire department adjusted that to 14, saying some casualties had been counted twice.

It put the new number of missing at 33, a figure that had hit 152 on Wednesday, as the government searches for people reported out of contact.

In downtown Guangfu, residents and rescuers, including soldiers, used shovels, buckets and diggers to remove the mud and stones carried by the floodwaters.

“It’s too risky to return home now. We must make sure people are aware of the potential danger, especially the elderly,” said Esther Chen, 26, who was volunteering for relief efforts.

Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai said the deaths, which mostly happened on the first floors of buildings, must be investigated and that authorities must “seize the golden rescue window” to find the missing.

While Guangfu’s train station is back in operation, the main highway has been cut off after the floodwaters swept away the bridge.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te on Wednesday pledged a month of his salary to relief efforts for displaced residents, and was set to visit the disaster zone later on Thursday.

While it has stopped raining, the government has maintained its warnings for the barrier dam in a remote mountain area behind Guangfu.

Agriculture Minister Chen Junne-jih told reporters in Taipei that blowing up the bank holding back the lake with explosives was too dangerous given it could exacerbate the problem with more landslides.

Copenhagen was affected by drones earlier this weekpublished at 07:59 BST

07:59 BST

Image source, Reuters

This is not the first Danish airport closure as a result of
drones this week – Copenhagen airport was forced to close as a result of drones
entering its airspace on Monday.

Authorities said that two to three large drones were spotted
which suspended take-offs and landings for around four hours.

Danish police couldn’t confirm the type or the number of
drones seen around the capital’s airport, but on Tuesday told reporters they
were likely flown by a “capable operator” who wanted to “show off”.

Asked by reporters on Monday if the drones were of Russian
origin, Deputy Police Inspector Jakob Hansen said he could not confirm or deny
this. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Russian involvement could not be ruled out

Later on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky referenced “Russia’s violation” of Nato airspace in
Copenhagen on 22 September, but did not indicate a source for the information.

Around 20,000 passengers were affected by the airport’s
closure.

HANOI, Vietnam — Typhoon Ragasa weakened into a tropical depression early Thursday as it entered northeastern Vietnam, but it is still expected to bring heavy rains across the country’s northern provinces.

By Thursday afternoon, the typhoon’s sustained winds had weakened to a maximum 55 kph (34 mph) and Ragasa was forecast to dissipate eventually while remaining a rain threat for Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia.

Officials in Vietnam warned of possible flash floods, landslides and flooding in low-lying areas.

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính ordered government ministries and local authorities to protect infrastructure like dams and hospitals, secure fishing vessels and coastal assets, and ready evacuation and search and rescue operations. Some flights were canceled or rescheduled, and workers trimmed trees to avoid wind hazards in northern parts of the country.

The Southeast Asian country is also bracing for another storm, which is currently approaching the Philippines from the Pacific. The storm Bualoi, which was named Opong in the Philippines, was forecast to hit eastern and central Philippines on Friday. It had sustained winds of up to 110 kph (68 mph) and higher gusts, government forecasters said.

Vietnam expects it to intensify afterward and officials said it could make landfall near central Vietnam or veer toward the northeast coast.

Ragasa entered Vietnam after flooding streets and homes in the economic hub of Guangdong province and causing deaths in Taiwan and the Philippines earlier in the week.

It quickly weakened Thursday because dry, cold air from the north and its contact with land in China cut off the warm, moist air from the sea that fuels such storms.

In the Guangdong city of Yangjiang, over 10,000 trees were damaged and branches floated in submerged streets. Crews used excavators to clear toppled trees and worked to clear blocked roads, Yangjiang Daily reported.

Nearly half a million households suffered power outages and more than a third of those homes remained without electricity Thursday morning, the newspaper reported.

Streets in the city of Zhuhai turned into rivers and rescuers used inflatable boats to rescue stranded residents. Water inundated the ground floors of homes in older neighborhoods, Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

Communication with people on some islands in Jiangmen city were cut off, Southern Weekly newspaper said.

To the west in Guangxi region, schools and businesses were closed and tourism activities halted in some cities.

More than 2 million people were relocated across Guangdong ahead of Ragasa, which peaked at supertyphoon strength Monday with maximum sustained winds of 265 kph (165 mph) and the world’s strongest cyclone of the year.

For Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, activities halted earlier in the week were gradually returning to normal.

Flights in Hong Kong resumed after some 1,000 had been disrupted, affecting about 140,000 passengers. Businesses reopened Thursday. But some big fallen branches remained scattered on the streets after more than 1,200 trees across the city were topped by the fierce winds. Some 100 injured people were sent to the hospital.

In Taiwan, authorities on Thursday revised the death toll from 17 to 14, citing double-counting. The victims were in eastern Hualien County, where heavy rain caused a barrier lake to overflow, sending water gushing into nearby Guangfu township. Muddy torrents destroyed a bridge, turning the roads in the township into churning rivers that carried vehicles and furniture away. Some people remained out of contact in Hualien, and dozens were injured across the island.

During a visit to the county, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te expressed condolences over the loss of lives, saying the government would do its utmost to help Hualien return to normal life.

In the Philippines, Ragasa left at least 11 dead, including seven fishermen who drowned Monday when their boat overturned in northern Cagayan province. Two fishermen remained missing Thursday.

___

Leung reported from Hong Kong. Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines and Johnson Lai in Taipei, Taiwan contributed to this report.

Ladakh, a high-altitude cold desert region in the Himalayas that has been at the heart of recent India-China tensions, was rocked on Wednesday by violent Gen Z-led protests as youth torched the regional office of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

As protesters, including school students, clashed with the police in Leh, the regional capital, at least four of them were killed and dozens were injured, protest coordinators told Al Jazeera, following additional deployment of the armed forces. Authorities said dozens of security forces were also injured in the clashes.

For the past six years, thousands of people in Ladakh, led by local civic bodies, have taken out peaceful marches and gone on hunger strikes demanding greater constitutional safeguards and statehood from India, which has governed the region federally since 2019. They want the power to elect a local government.

On Wednesday, however, groups of disillusioned youth broke with those peaceful protests, said Sonam Wangchuk, an educator who has been spearheading a series of hunger strikes.

“It was an outburst of youth, a kind of Gen-Z revolution, that brought them on streets,” Wangchuk said in a video statement, referring to recent uprisings in South Asian countries, including in Nepal earlier this month, that led to the overthrow of the government of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.

So, what’s happening in Ladakh? What are their demands? How did the Himalayan region get to this point? And why does the crisis in Ladakh matter so much?

What triggered clashes in Ladakh?

On Wednesday morning, a hunger strike by local Ladakhi activists, led by the Ladakh Apex Body, an amalgam of socio-religious and political organisations, entered its 15th day.

Two activists, aged 62 and 71, had been hospitalised the previous evening after two weeks of hunger strike, leading to a call by organisers for a local shutdown. The protesters were also angry with the Modi government for delaying talks with them.

These issues led the youth to believe that “peace is not working”, Wangchuk said on Wednesday evening in a virtual press meeting, during which he appeared frail.

Then the youth-led groups broke away from the protest site in Leh at the Martyrs’ Memorial Park and moved towards local official buildings and a BJP office, raising slogans, leading to clashes with the police. Four were killed and another remains critical, while dozens were injured.

“This is the bloodiest day in the history of Ladakh. They martyred our young people – the general public who were on the streets to support the demands of the strike,” said Jigmat Paljor, the coordinator of the apex body behind the hunger strikes.

“The people were tired of fake promises for five years by the government, and people were filled with anger,” Paljor told Al Jazeera. Amid the violence, he said, his organisation withdrew the hunger strike, calling for peace.

In a statement, India’s home ministry said that clashes “unruly mob” had left over 30 forces personnel injured — and that “police had to resort to firing” in self defence, leading to “some casualties”.

The government said that “it was clear that the mob was incited by [Wangchuk]”, adding that the educator was “misleading the people through his provocative mention of Arab Spring-style protest and references to Gen Z protests in Nepal.” Wangchuk has been warning that youth sentiments could turn to violence if the government does not pay heed to the demands of peaceful protesters — but insists he has never advocated violence himself.

What do protesters want?

In 2019, the Modi government unilaterally stripped the semi-autonomous status and statehood that Indian-administered Kashmir had previously enjoyed under the Indian constitution.

The state had three regions – the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, the Hindu-majority Jammu, and Ladakh, where Muslims and Buddhists each form about 40 percent of the population.

Then, the Modi government bifurcated the erstwhile state into two territories: Jammu and Kashmir with a legislature, and Ladakh without one. While both are federally governed and neither has the powers of other states in India, Jammu and Kashmir’s legislature at least allows its population to elect local leaders who can represent their concerns and voice them to New Delhi. Ladakh, locals argue, doesn’t even have that.

Kashmir is a disputed region between India, Pakistan and China – the three nuclear-armed neighbours each control a part. India claims all of it, and Pakistan claims all except the part held by China, its ally. Indian-administered Kashmir borders Pakistan on the west, and Ladakh shares a 1,600km (994-mile) border with China on the east.

Since the end of statehood, Ladakhis have found themselves under the rule of bureaucrats. More than 90 percent of the region’s population is listed as Scheduled Tribes. That status has prompted a demand for Ladakh to be included under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which provides autonomous administrative and governance structures to regions where recognised Indigenous communities dominate the population. There are currently 10 regions in India’s northeastern states that are listed under the schedule.

However, the Modi government has so far resisted both statehood and the protections of the Sixth Schedule for Ladakh.

The separation of Jammu and Kashmir from Ladakh has meant that it is harder for Ladakhis to find work in Jammu and Kashmir, where most jobs in the previously unified region were. Since 2019, locals have also accused the Indian government of not putting in place clear policies for hirings to public sector jobs.

“[The young protesters] are unemployed for five years, and Ladakh is not being granted [constitutional] protections,” Wangchuk said on Wednesday. “This is the recipe of social unrest in society: keep youth unemployed and then snatch their democratic rights.”

Ladakh has a 97 percent literacy rate, well above India’s national average of about 80 percent. But a 2023 survey found that 26.5 percent of Ladakh’s graduates are unemployed – double the national average.

On Wednesday, the anger tipped over.

“What’s happening in Ladakh is horrific,” said Siddiq Wahid, an academic and political analyst from Leh. “It is scary to see Ladakh sort of pushed to this edge.”

“In the last six years, Ladakhis have realised the dangers that their identity faces,” he said, adding that the people have been “adamant about the need to retrieve their rights since they were snatched away six years ago”.

“The youth anger is a particularly worrisome angle because they’re impatient. They’ve been waiting for a resolution for years,” said Wahid. “Now, they are frustrated because they don’t see a future for themselves.”

Have there been protests earlier in Ladakh?

Yes. Since the abrogation of the region’s semi-autonomous status and the removal of statehood, several local civic groups have staged protest marches and at times gone on hunger strikes.

Wangchuk, the educator, has led five hunger strikes in the last three years, demanding constitutional protections for Ladakh. He is also the most well-known face of the protests in Ladakh – having a wider reach due to his past sustainability innovations. Wangchuk’s life has also inspired a Bollywood blockbuster movie that has also gained legions of fans in China.

The site of the hunger strike, the Martyrs’ Memorial Park, is also dedicated to three Ladakhis who were killed in August 1989 in a firing incident during protests. At the time, the protests were over anger about perceived Kashmiri dominance in the unified state that Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir belonged to.

The site also honours two other protesters who were killed in January 1981 during an agitation demanding Scheduled Tribe status for Ladakhis.

But Wednesday’s protest marked the deadliest day in Ladakh’s political history.

Sajad Kargili, a civil member of a committee constituted by the Modi government to speak with the protesting activists, said that the violence in Ladakh “highlights the frustration of our youth”.

“The government needs to understand that there are young people here who are angry and not opting to sit on a hunger strike,” Kargili said. “The Modi government should not turn its back on these calls.”

Why Ladakh is so significant

Ladakh sits at India’s Himalayan frontier, bordering China.

The region also connects to vital mountain passes, airfields, and supply routes that are critical for India’s military in the event of a conflict with China. In 2020, the Indian and Chinese forces clashed in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), following a Chinese incursion.

At least 20 Indian forces personnel were killed alongside four Chinese. The confrontation triggered the mobilisation of tens of thousands of troops on both sides, with heavy weaponry and infrastructure being rushed to high-altitude posts.

Since then, Ladakh has remained the nerve centre of India-China border tensions. Multiple rounds of military and diplomatic talks have led to a thaw since late last year.

Now, Wahid, the political analyst, said that the Modi government’s actions in 2019 are returning to haunt India with a new threat in Ladakh – an internal one. Indian authorities, he pointed out, have long had to deal with Kashmir as a “centre of discontent”. Now, they have Ladakh to contend with, too.

There was very little the Gulf state of Qatar could have done against the ballistic missiles Israel fired at it around two weeks ago.

According to media reports, around 10 Israeli fighter planes flew over the Red Sea on September 9 — making sure they were not in any other country’s airspace — before firing missiles in what’s known as an “over the horizon” attack.

This way, ballistic missiles travel into the earth’s upper atmosphere or even outer space before coming back down again. The eventual target of the Israeli missiles were members of the militant Hamas group, meeting to discuss a possible Gaza ceasefire , in an upscale neighborhood in Qatar’s capital, Doha. Six people were killed, although apparently not Israel’s targets.  

Because the missiles flew in unexpectedly, from over the horizon, Qatar could do little to defend itself. As it is, one of Qatar’s most important safeguards against Israel has nothing to do with sophisticated missile defense systems. Israel’s biggest ally, the US, has its largest regional base in the country and recently granted Qatar the status of a “major non-NATO ally.” 

But this doesn’t appear to have been enough to stop Israel from carrying out its first known attack on a Gulf Arab state. And it’s also a move the US would potentially have had to have known about.

US seen as unreliable

“The Israeli strike … shakes Gulf assumptions about their ties to the US and will bring them closer together,” Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, wrote shortly after the attack. “These oil monarchies are too much alike … such a direct strike on their sovereignty and perceived safety is anathema to them all.”

As a result, “Gulf rulers are pressing ahead with the pursuit of greater strategic autonomy and are increasingly determined to hedge against the risks of depending on the US,” Sanam Vakil, director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program, confirmed in an op-ed in UK newspaper, The Guardian, this month. 

All of this is why, over the past week or so, there’s been growing talk of the formation of an “Islamic NATO,” a defense alliance of Islamic and Arab states that could work similarly to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.

At an emergency summit organized by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation last week, Egyptian officials suggested a NATO-style, joint task force for Arab nations. In a speech at the summit, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani also called for a collective approach to regional security. And the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — said they would activate a provision in a joint defense agreement, first signed in 2000, that said an attack on one member state was an attack on all.

The phrasing is similar to that used in Article 5 of the NATO pact. 

After the initial emergency summit, Gulf states’ defense ministers held another meeting in Doha and agreed to enhance intelligence-sharing and aerial situation reports, and to fast track a new regional system for ballistic missile warnings. Plans were also announced for joint military exercises.

The same week, Saudi Arabia announced it was entering into a “strategic mutual defense agreement” with Pakistan. The two countries declared “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both.” 

Is this the start of ‘Islamic NATO’?

It may sound like some kind of “Islamic NATO” is forming to counter Israel, but the reality is a little different, observers told DW.

“A NATO-style alliance is unrealistic because it would tie Gulf states to wars they do not consider vital to their own interests. No ruler in the Gulf wants to be pulled into a confrontation with Israel on Egypt’s behalf, for example,” Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, said.

However things are changing after the Doha attack, observers say.

“Security in the Gulf has long been based on a tributary logic, [where] basically you pay someone else to take care of your protection,” Krieg continued. “That mentality is beginning to shift after the attack on Doha,” he acknowledges, “but only slowly.”

What the world may see instead of an “Islamic NATO” is the so-called “6+2 format,” explains Cinzia Bianco, an expert on the Gulf states at the European Council on Foreign Relations, or ECFR. The phrase, “6+2,” refers to the six GCC states and Turkey and Egypt.

Bianco believes that such a format is likely being discussed on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week.

“It’s not really about an Article 5 kind of arrangement though,” she told DW — Gulf states’ commitment to one another’s defense isn’t as solid as that of NATO members. “It’s more likely to be about collectivizing security and defense postures and, perhaps most importantly, sends a message of deterrence to Israel,” she told DW.

Military help from elsewhere

The “6+2” makes more sense than an “Islamic NATO,” Krieg continues. Turkey is actually “the most credible non-Western partner for the Gulf, with troops already stationed in Qatar since 2017 and real capability to move quickly in crises,” Krieg argues. “Egypt is more complicated though. It has military mass but its reliability is questioned in some Gulf capitals.”

And even if a “6+2” format is on the cards, it will happen slowly and quietly, both Krieg and Bianco note.

“Most of the serious changes will happen behind the scenes,” Krieg predicts. “We will see public communiques, summits and joint exercises. But the important work like sharing radar data, integrating early-warning systems, or granting basing rights will remain discreet.”

It’s also possible that the Gulf states, who have largely been dependent on the US, could try to expand defense ties with other countries. 

“Certainly there are other actors, like Russia and China, who are willing to replace the US,” Sinem Cengiz, a researcher at Qatar University’s Gulf Studies Center, told DW. “But it is unlikely that any external actor will replace the US overnight.”

There’s no way the Gulf states would want that anyway, Bianco adds. They remain reliant on US military technology. For example, after the Doha attack, Qatar sought reassurances from the US that they were still their partners.

“An important side note here is also that the US actually has never been openly against this kind of regionalization of defense,” Bianco points out. “They’ve actually always encouraged a single ballistic missile defense architecture for Gulf countries.”

In fact, more military integration in the Gulf could mean more US, because American systems are the backbone of regional defense, Krieg explains.

“But the political meaning has shifted,” he concludes. “Washington is no longer seen as the ultimate guarantor of security, but as a partner whose support is conditional and transactional. Gulf leaders are adjusting to the idea that the US has interests, rather than allies and are seeking a Gulf-led security pole, a middle ground between Iran and Israel.”

Patience of Arab states is ‘running out’: Fawaz Gerges

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Edited by: M. Sass