Qatar and Turkey put most of their eggs in the Islamist basket.

Qatar and Turkey put most of their eggs in the Islamist basket. (The National).

                                       Qatar’s troubles are rooted in its support for Islamists.

A new geopolitical settlement has emerged in the Middle East since the 2011 Arab uprisings. This realignment remains largely overlooked, even though much of what ails the region today can be better explained through it, instead of the traditional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran or the sectarian tension between Shia and Sunni.

The countries of the region can be divided into two camps: one that seeks to advance its foreign interests through the support of Islamists, and one whose foreign policy is guided by opposition to the rise of Islamists.

Countries in each of the camps are not necessarily aligned with each other so they do not form together on one side. This, understandably, makes it hard for policymakers and observers to view the region.

But it is this realignment that could provide clarity to the United States as it recalibrates its approach in the region. Support or opposition to Islamists informs the foreign policies of the Middle East’s main powers. For some of those countries, it is the single greatest foreign policy driver.

Before 2011, the US used to refer to countries such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt as the moderate states. They had a pragmatic outlook towards the Arab­Israeli conflict, unlike the dogmatic position of countries like Iran and Syria.

After 2011, though, those countries took on deeper roles in their neighbourhood. Events in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria compelled those countries to take specific positions to counter the political and religious waves that swept the region. Any label based on their past policies can no longer properly capture the nature of their role.

Iran, from the other camp, was no longer able to sustain its old position of presenting itself as having a cross­sectarian agenda against Israel, working with Shia and Sunni Islamists to advance the Palestinian cause.

Instead, it was forced to adopt an aggressively narrow policy defined by attempts to maintain or expand its reach through Shia militias.

Qatar and Turkey also put most of their eggs in the Islamist basket. In Syria, they supported some of the most extremist forces in the conflict. They also took the side of Islamists in the Libyan conflict, and backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere.

The pro­Islamist camp is less cohesive than the anti­Islamist side. But this camp supports various incarnations of Islamism in the Middle East, and that is what makes them part of the same problem.

And the different positions each of these camps has towards Islamists help explain conflicts in the region, more than the Saudi­Iran rivalry. The conflicts in Libya and Syria could be explained through the prism of support or opposition to Islamists, as could other conflicts in the region today. Read the full story here.