The Qatar blockade is mostly all about Egypt

The Qatar blockade is mostly all about Egypt, writes Marc Champion for Bloomberg. The demands imposed by the “Saudi-led” coalition have more to do with combating the Ikhwan than fighting international terrorism, he says while implying that both are somehow very different. He notes that 26 out of the 59 people placed on the coalition’s wanted list are Egyptian. “Egypt has been dreaming for this moment, where the Saudis and everyone else is applying pressure on Qatar,” according to Mokhtar Awad, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Meanwhile, New York Times’ David Kirkpatricksays that former Al Jazeera English Cairo bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy’s USD 100 mn lawsuit against the network and Qatar is the latest of the “bizarre twists and turns.” He notes that although Fahmy was jailed in Egypt, he takes his native country’s side in its feud with Al Jazeera.