Abu Samra border deserted after frontier shut

Qatar's normally bustling desert border with Saudi Arabia at Abu Samra was quiet on Monday, with a few dozen frustrated travellers bemoaning a rift between Gulf powers that has frozen movement across Qatar's only land border.

A week after the frontier was shut by the Saudis, soldiers in an armoured pick-up truck looked out over a barbed-wire fence at sprawling empty dustland separating Qatar from Saudi Arabia.Indian migrants who work at the border in green uniforms lay on inspection platforms sheltering from the sun.Normally, thousands of passengers and hundreds of trucks from Saudi Arabia pass through the crossing each day, bringing fruit and vegetables, as well as construction materials for various projects.With the Saudis closing the land border, dozens of truck drivers were stranded on the Qatari side. One Sri Lankan driver asked Qatari border guards if he could drive into Saudi Arabia if he agreed to leave his cargo, a tanker full of helium, behind in Qatar."We can do nothing," the border guard told him. "Saudi has shut the border. There is no way to pass."Staff said the closing of the frontier had divided families. Last week, a Qatari woman was forced to hand over her two-year-old son to her Saudi husband across the border after the Saudi authorities said she could not enter, Sultan Qahtani, a Qatari police major, told Reuters in his office."Qataris were affected because they were unable to see their relatives in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. One of my relatives told me he was unable to travel to Saudi to attend the funeral of a poet," he said."I pray to God that the Saudi border will be opened to preserve ties of kinship between Qataris and other GCC nationals. We must concentrate on these families who are apart now," he said, referring to the Gulf Co-operation Council, founded in 1981, which includes Qatar and its neighbours. Prominent Arabian tribes have lived for decades on both sides of the border.The land border is also used by a large number of Saudis on weekends as they visit Qatar in thousands. A few miles from the border, a vast sea-front complex with an aqua park and white-washed villas is being built for such tourists.