Washington Post Report: UAE Hacked Qatari Government News Site

The role of UAE in the rift between Qatar and several Arab countries has come forward. As per a Sunday report by The Washington Post UAE arranged the hacking of Qatari government news site. They planted a fabricated story and used it to create the current crisis situation.

In response to this statement, Emirati Embassy in Washington’s statement has been released calling Post report as false and claiming that UAE played no role in the catastrophic situation between Gulf nations and Qatar.

Read also: Laptop ban lifted by the US on Qatar Airways

The report has quoted anonymous US intelligence officials who said that officials of Emirati government discussed the plan on May 23 and after that on the next day the story came up in Qatari News Agency’s website where Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani was complimenting Iran and said that Qatar has healthy relations with Israel. Similar statements were seen on the twitter feed of the news agency.

The claim by the agency is that it got hacked but after these controversial statements Saudi Arab, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt all cut ties with Qatar.

Now the crisis would also affect the US and U.S.-led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State group. All the countries involved in the conflict are US allies. In Qatar, there are around 10,000 U.S. troops. Also in Bahrain U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is present. Now the rift between these countries is not beneficial for the US. The President of USA Donald Trump is in support of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the dispute, publicly backing the argument that Doha is an ally of Islamic militant groups and a disrupting force in the Middle East.

This cold war between nations isn’t a healthy sign. If in a conflict, you need to try and eradicate the root cause instead of ignoring it and cutting ties with it. Communication can solve almost every problem present today.