Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, the Maldives, Mauritania, Senegal, Djibouti, the Comoros, Jordan, Libya, and Yemen blocked off Qatar planes and ships. This is now known as the Gulf Crisis. The reason for the blockade was because Qatar has been accused of supporting terrorism. The Gulf Cooperation, also known as the GCC is an organization including the states within the Arabian Peninsula. They discusses economic, security, and cultural cooperation. The GCC recently met in Saudi Arabia but many people were surprised to find out that the group did not talk about the Gulf Crisis. The foreign ministry spokesperson for Qatar publicly ridiculed he GCC on Twitter for not solving this issue. What was discussed at the GCC summit was the Saudi journalist who was brutally murdered a couple months ago, the Khashoggi case, and the war in Yemen. The GCC sounds very similar to the European Union because it is a group of states from a certain region that discuss problems within that region. I think there are a lot of political, economic, and military problems in the middle east that the summit needed to address, but if there are problems that they are not able to discuss there should be more than one meeting per year. I agree with the states that blocked off Qatar because shows the international community that they do not support terrorism. It makes it more likely for the states involved to be allied with major powers, such as the United States, who do no support terrorism. Being allies with countries in the Middle East to end terrorism would be a major international breakthrough because the United States has been fighting to end terrorism in the Middle East for decades. Hopefully this blockade will be a message to Qatar to stop supporting terrorism so they can play an important role in Middle East conflicts but if they continue down this road they might be exiled from the GCC forever.
