Can anyone provide a primer for understanding the current "diplomatic row" occurring between Qatar and several Gulf states? I've got a decent handle on Middle East politics up to 1979 but little past that.
I also know the 20 year rule makes this a difficult question to address. Could someone at least suggest accessible literature on the topic, if it isn't possible to properly answer without violating said rule?
Hmmmm. You're right, the 20-year-rule DOES make this difficult. Journalistic sources I like to frequent have given a pretty good primer on the situation, which is because of very modern circumstances, but in terms of academic sources I think I'd struggle a bit in naming any.
Without breaching the 20-year-rule, I can at least talk about the establishment of Al Jazeera.
In 1995, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani overthrew his father, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani in a coup. Prior to that, the Persian Gulf War had all of the Gulf States backing the USA's operation to punt Iraq out of Kuwait, and Qatar was one such country to cooperate with the USA on defense and military matters right afterward. The new Emir allowed two pretty notable things to happen...he allowed for the USA to construct military bases in Qatar (this would be the seed for USA's current CENTCOM base located at Al Udeid), AND he kickstarted the formation of Al Jazeera News.
Al Jazeera was essentially filling a vacuum in the Middle East at the time; there was state media elsewhere, but nothing like the BBC's Arabic channel which had just ended. Al Jazeera was funded by the Qatari royal family and became a strangely effective arm of the state. It wouldn't really start to rankle other Gulf countries until past the 20 year rule, but even at its inception it was offering (relatively) critical investigative pieces and hosting opinion pieces. This was sort of unacceptable in the other Gulf states. Countries, ESPECIALLY Saudi Arabia, nowadays cite Al Jazeera as a serious problem, given its harsh looks at their regimes (sans Qatar, of course).
The modern day critique that Qatar is 'cozy to Iran' is also very recent, but it's worth noting Qatar is a little bit distinct from the other Gulf countries in terms of history, even if there are many cultural similarities. Qatar's new wealth is founded on the utterly MASSIVE natural gas fields it has...not just oil like Saudi Arabia or the UAE. And the kicker with these fields...Iran shares them, geographically, and the two countries occasionally cooperate on developing them. This wouldn't be an issue in the Shah days, but post-Iranian Revolution? And post-Iran-Iraq War? Well! The Sunni-Shiite Rivalry exacerbated by Iran and Saudi Arabia probably doesn't have to be elaborated to you. This issue has another dimension in that 80% of Qatar's food supply comes from outside its borders...its not self-sufficient in food, and relies on Gulf partners for aid in that regard.
The other historical tidbit I'll bring up is Qatar's relationship with Bahrain. Prior to the British administering Qatar and picking a royal family to lead it, Qatar was a pseudo-client state of Bahrain. This ended in the mid 1800s. However, the development of Bahrain and Qatar divulged dramatically afterward, and I'll illustrate that by pointing out Bahrain is little more than a satellite of Saudi Arabia, and Qatar has been able to prosecute an independent foreign policy since 2011 without much issue. Getting more into the Qatari royal family's mindset on what this MEANS would drift to the Arab Spring, the Bahraini demonstrations, and obviously well-past the 20-year-mark.
I'm basically out of steam. Honestly its hard to connect all of this together and keep it before 1997. Someone might be able to swoop in and be more specific on aspects of Qatari relations I'm not familiar with. Qatar's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood is too recent to dive into, but if someone else wants to give the long, epic, storied history of the Muslim Brotherhood that'd be great! Such would go a way toward explaining current Qatari-Turkish relations.
'Qatar: Small State, Big Politics' by Mehran Kamrava and 'Al Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West' by Hugh Miles are great, accessible books for learning more.
It is difficult, as a lot of the precipitating events can be rooted in what's happened in the past six years (i.e. since the Arab Spring). So looking at the part which is history and going beyond the 1990s, there's two things we can touch on which contribute to understanding today's situation: 1) rivalries between the Gulf states, and 2) the formation of the GCC.
Rivalries between the Gulf States
Historically, many of the Gulf states have rivals against one another. Qatar and Bahrain have had possibly the longest running of these rivalries. The Al Khalifa rulers of Bahrain migrated from Kuwait to Qatar in the 18th century, establishing the port town of Zubara on the peninsula, from where they conquered Bahrain in 1783. Famously (at least in Qatar), the Al Khalifa sidelined some of their key allies following the conquest, beginning something of a feud between the Al Khalifa rulers and Zubara/Bahrain and the Jalahima family (both belonged to the large Bani Utub tribal unit, which the Kuwaiti royalty also traces back to). The leader of the Jalahima, Rahmah ibn Jaber, spent virtually the rest of his life warring with the Al Khalifa on the seas, attempting on at least one occasion to invade Bahrain itself in the 1810s (his plan was thwarted by stormy weather). Rahmah ibn Jaber Al Jalahima, who was described as a pirate by the British, is still seen as a major figure of Qatari history. It is probably no coincidence that the best-selling novel to come out of Qatar, The Corsair by Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud, centres around his exploits.
The British Empire's policy in the region from the early 1800s to the First World War centred around trying to establish peace (or rather, its version of peace) between the rival Arab groups in the Gulf, which was en route to India and considered a frontier of the Empire. To that end the British bombarded Ras Al Khayma (one of today's Emirates), seen as a "pirate" hub, and forced the General Maritime Treaty on the rulers of the "Trucial Coast" plus Bahrain. Bahrain and Qatar's rivalries continued: in 1868, an Al Khalifa army invaded Qatar and sacked the Al Thani's stronghold in Doha. The British intervened, installing their own choice of ruler in Bahrain. Over the course of the 19th century, the Al Khalifa lost control of Zubara on the Qatari coast, which despite British treaties establishing the boundaries between Bahrain and Qatar, they still saw as belonging to them. Charles Belgrave, the British adviser to Bahrain's ruler for 30 years in the 20s-50s, describes in his memoir a trip with the ruler to Zubarah in the late 1920s/early 1930s. There, they were met by Qatari forces who did everything they could to prevent the Bahrainis from landing. In 1938, Qatar's emir built the Zubarah Fort to prevent further Bahraini royal attempts to enter Zubarah.
Bahraini-Qatari rivalries continued to well past the 20-year recent history period - one worth mentioning is the dispute over the Hawar islands (they belong to Bahrain, but are geographically closer to Qatar), which was only settled in 2001 at the International Court of Justice.
The other countries have separate diplomatic histories, and I am less familiar on some of them (particularly Kuwait and the UAE). It is notable that the threat of Saudi occupation and even conquest of its Gulf neighbours was present in the early 20th century (for example, when Bahrain witnessed a political crisis in 1923, ultimately resolved by direct British intervention, Ibn Saud settled himself and his forces along the Qatif coast, a short sea journey from Bahrain; when one powerful tribe abandoned Bahrain during the same crisis, Ibn Saud settled them). This was a real threat, even with the presence of the British empire there: only two years later, in 1925, Ibn Saud conquered the Kingdom of Hejaz, a British-backed kingdom formed during the First World War, with little consequence.
The Formation of the GCC
That's enough about Gulf disunity for now, let's talk a bit about Gulf unity. The Gulf Cooperation Council was formed in 1981, and the Peninsula Shield Force - a joint military unit - in 1984. At first only a trade bloc, the GCC (comprised of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman) was formed in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution to help protect the interests of this bloc. Notably, Bahrain allegedly uncovered an Iranian coup attempt in 1981 which helped to spur the creation of the GCC and PSF. (On that note, there's little research into this coup attempt, which itself is difficult to verify the veracity of; was it a serious Iran-backed attempt, or an operation blown out of proportion?)
The formation of the GCC brought a sense of unity within the Gulf, albeit one which has always raised a few eyes. For all the talk of Gulf unity, they remain economic and political rivals, with often wildly diverging foreign policies.
Saudi Arabia has long been a major regional power, and some of its foreign policy has been determined by the exporting of its branch of Islam (Inside the Kingdom, Robert Lacey, is a great book about how religion and politics and foreign policy developed in Saudi Arabia, hinging it around the 1979 siege of Mecca by a group of extremists).
But here is where we hit the wall of the 20-year-rule, and it's difficult to continue much further. When we look at the massive political and economic influence which Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia hold today, both regionally and globally, many of the roots of that lie in the economic development these countries have encouraged over the past 20-30 years. That development has given Qatar a position of strength well above what might seem possible for such a small country. The same may be said of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has long been a major regional player, and deeply interested in the politics of its neighbours.
As I said, it's a bit difficult to answer your question because a large part of the answer lies in what's happened in the past 6 years. There's also some flaws to my answer - Qatar hasn't been the focus of my own studies, so the ins-and-outs of their politics is not something I've gone into here. But, I hope that helps.