GCC Railway: a train across a fractured Gulf?
The repeatedly delayed rail network could boost regional trade and ease mobility.
Limited progress has been made since a 1,350-mile-long rail network stretching across Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries was announced more than 15 years ago.
Repeatedly delayed, the megaproject is now expected to be partially completed in 2023, linking Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman, Saudi newspaper Al-Jazirah reported. Although the report specified Bahrain and Kuwait would be added to the network two years later, Qatar, part of the original proposal, is not mentioned.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a blockade on Qatar in June 2017, accusing the emirate of backing Islamist radicals and Iran. Doha denies the charges.
“The prospect of one single railway network that integrates all six of the GCC states seems uncertain,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, told Al-Monitor. Once a symbol of unity, the ambitious project could pay the price of a political crisis that has weakened regional cohesion.
