Qatar’s folly in aligning itself with dangerous extremists cannot be allowed to continue. The efforts of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to bring Qatar to its senses have been met with vagueness and confusion from the Qatari side, but these matters are too important to be allowed to drift.

Qatar cannot be allowed to continue to act as a source of funding for extremism in the region, while also offering these dangerous groups political and media platforms with which to spread their message of chaos and destruction.

So Qatar now faces a moment of decision. Its fellow GCC members have given it a clear set of requirements accompanied by a 10-day deadline by which Qatar needs to comply. The 13 points have been listed out by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE and presented to Qatar by Kuwait, which is trying to mediate in this serious crisis. The list of demands includes the policy requirements that have been at the heart of the crisis, as well as some oversight requirements that will allow the GCC to know that Qatar is sticking to what it promises — should it agree to the 13 points. This is necessary, given Qatar’s record of making agreements and then back-tracking and ignoring them.

The GCC demands and the 10-day deadline are a way to get Qatar to respond in a manner that shows it wants to solve the problem. To date, Qatar’s answers to the GCC’s concerns have been flimsy and have given the impression that it is trying to avoid the issues with which it has been presented.

The GCC members have also made it clear that if Qatar persists in its conduct and does not reaffirm its previous commitment to the GCC policies, then its departure from the group is very likely. Such an event when combined with the economic sanctions already being applied would create substantial economic misery, social tension and political isolation for Qatar. No state has ever left the GCC before, and no GCC state has had ever had such rigorous economic sanctions imposed on it. The folly of the Qatari leadership in pursuing this course can only cause grave problems to its own people, in addition to the dangers to the region of encouraging extremism. The frustrations of Qatar’s fellow GCC members is clear as they have not got any useful response as they sought to get the Qataris to find a way forward.