ABU
DHABI and DOHA — Behind a festive mall nearby Doha’s city core sits the
quiet grill where Hossam used to run his Syrian insurgent brigade. At the
battalion’s arise in 2012 and 2013, he had 13,000 organisation underneath his control nearby the
eastern city of Deir Ezzor. “Part of a Free Syrian Army (FSA), they are loyal
to me,” he pronounced over honeyed tea and sweetened pastries this spring. “I had a good
team to fight.”
Hossam,
a primary Syrian expat, owns several restaurants via Doha, Qatar,
catering mostly to a country’s tip crust. The food is excellent, and at
night a tables are packaged with well-dressed Qataris, Westerners, and Arabs. Some of his income still goes toward
supporting brigades and civilians with charitable products — blankets, food,
even cigarettes.
He
insists that he has stopped promulgation income to a battle, for now. His brigade’s
funds came, during slightest in part, from Qatar, he says, underneath a option of then
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah. But the
injection of income was ad hoc: Dozens of other brigades like his received
initial start-up funding, and customarily some continued to accept Qatari support as
the months wore on. When a supports ran out in mid-2013, his fighters sought
support elsewhere. “Money plays a vast purpose in a FSA, and on that front, we
didn’t have,” he explained.
Hossam
is a marginal figure in a immeasurable Qatari network of Islamist-leaning proxies
that spans former Syrian generals, Taliban insurgents, Somali Islamists, and Sudanese
rebels. He left home in 1996 after some-more than a decade underneath vigour from the
Syrian regime for his magnetism with a Muslim Brotherhood. Many of his friends
were killed in a electrocute of a organisation in Hama operation in 1982 by afterwards President
Hafez al-Assad. He finally found retreat here in Qatar and built his business
and contacts slowly. Mostly, he laid low; Doha used to be utterly welcoming to
the immature President Bashar al-Assad and his superb wife, who were often
spotted in a high-end conform boutiques before a insurgent pennyless out in 2011.
When
the Syrian quarrel came and Qatar forsaken Assad, Hossam assimilated an expanding pool of
middlemen whom Doha called on to lift out a unfamiliar routine of supporting
the Syrian opposition. Because there were no determined rebels when the
uprising started, Qatar corroborated a pretender skeleton of expats and businessmen who
promised they could convene fighters and guns. Hossam, like many initial rebel
backers, had designed to persevere his possess assets to ancillary a opposition. Qatar’s
donations done it probable to consider bigger.
In
recent months, Qatar’s Rolodex of middlemen like Hossam has valid both a
blessing and a abuse for a United States. On one hand, Washington hasn’t
shied divided from pursuit on Doha’s connectors when it needs them: Qatar orchestrated
the restrained barter that saw U.S. infantryman Bowe Bergdahl expelled in sell for
five Taliban prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. And it ran a negotiations with
al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s associate in Syria, that expelled American author Peter
Theo Curtis in August. “Done,” Qatari comprehension arch Ghanim Khalifa
al-Kubaisi reportedly texted a hit — adding a thumbs-up emoticon –
after a recover was completed.
But
that same Qatari network has also played a vital purpose in destabilizing nearly
every difficulty mark in a segment and in accelerating a enlargement of radical and
jihadi factions. The formula have ranged from bad to inauspicious in the
countries that are a beneficiaries of Qatari aid: Libya is mired in a war
between proxy-funded militias, Syria’s antithesis has been impressed by
infighting and overtaken by extremists, and Hamas’s intransigence has arguably
helped lengthen a Gaza Strip’s charitable plight.
For
years, U.S. officials have been peaceful to shrug off Doha’s substitute network — or
even take advantage of it from time to time. Qatar’s neighbors, however, have
not. Over a past year, associate Gulf countries Saudi Arabia, a United Arab
Emirates, and Bahrain have publicly rebuked Qatar for a support of domestic Islamists
across a region. These countries have threatened to tighten land borders or postpone Qatar’s membership in a regional
Gulf Cooperation Council unless a nation backs down. After scarcely a year of
pressure, a initial pointer of a Qatari benefaction came on Sept. 13,
when 7 comparison Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood sum left Doha at
the request of a Qatari government.
Both
Qatar and a critics are operative to safeguard that Washington comes down on their
side of a intra-Gulf dispute. At seductiveness is a destiny domestic instruction of
the segment — and their roles in running it.
Late
last week, on Sept. 25, Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept documented
how a Washington, D.C.-based organisation defended by a United Arab Emirates done contacts with
journalists that seem to have yielded articles detailing how fundraisers for
groups such as al-Nusra Front and Hamas work plainly in Doha, Qatar’s capital.
Foreign Policy also performed papers from a Camstoll Group, run by
former U.S. Treasury Department central Matthew Epstein. Although some of this
open-source information is referred to in this article, a immeasurable infancy of the
reporting comes from months of review in a region.
After
several weeks of bad press, Qatar is also going on a offensive. “We don’t
fund extremists,” Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during his initial pronounce as Qatar’s leader
on Sept. 25. Just over a week earlier, Qatar instituted
a new law to umpire charities and forestall them from enchanting in politics.
And on Sept. 15, Doha began a new six-month agreement with Washington lobbying
firm Portland PR Inc., that competence embody lobbying Congress and briefing
journalists.
So
far, Washington appears reluctant to confront Qatar directly. Aside from the
U.S. Treasury Department, that final week designated a second Qatari citizen
for ancillary al Qaeda in Syria and elsewhere, no comparison U.S. administration
officials have publicly called out Doha for a heavy clients.
The
State Department pronounced that nobody would be accessible to critique for this
article, though expelled a fact
sheet on Aug. 26 that describes Qatar as “a profitable partner to a United
States” and credits it with “play[ing] an successful purpose in a region
through a duration of good transformation.”
The
question is what a United States is prepared to do about Qatar if it fails to
stem a citizens’ support for nonconformist groups, says Jean-Louis Bruguière, the
former conduct of a EU and U.S. Treasury Department’s dilemma Terrorist Finance
Tracking Program, now shaped in Paris. “The U.S. has a collection to guard state
and state-linked transfers to nonconformist groups. But comprehension is one thing
and a other is how we react,” he told FP by phone. “What kind of political
decision is a U.S. unequivocally means to make opposite states financing terrorism?”
Friends of Qatar
There is no some-more revelation denote of Qatar’s
ambitions than a fact that Doha cab drivers are eternally lost. With
construction ongoing everywhere — partial of a $100 billion infrastructure plan
to ready for hosting a 2022 World Cup — buildings open and projects come
online so quick that a city’s cabbies can’t keep up.
On a star stage, Qatar sees a purpose as no less
grandiose. Beneath a high-chandeliered
ceilings of Doha’s five-star hotel lobbies, fervent delegations from around the
world make their box for support. Governments, domestic parties, companies,
and insurgent groups scuttle in and out nervously, and afterwards wait over prohibited tea to
have their proposals deliberate by a applicable Qatari authorities. Which hotel
the visitors stay in indicates their prospects for support. The Four Seasons
and Ritz-Carlton are aged favorites; Hamas personality Khaled Meshaal has stayed at
the former, a Syrian antithesis during a latter. The W Hotel is a posh
newcomer, mostly housing fervent European delegations seeking investment or
natural gas. The Sheraton — one of Doha’s initial hotels — is by now passé;
that’s where tip Darfuri rebels stayed during negotiations with a Sudanese
government. Everyone wants into the
network, given as one Syrian in Doha put it, “Qatar has income and Qatar can
connect money.”
The
winners in this dispatch have mostly been those with a longest ties to this
tiny, gas-rich state — a menagerie of leaders from a tellurian Muslim
Brotherhood. Doha was already apropos an nonconformist heart by a early 2000s, as
government-funded consider tanks and universities popped up filled with Islamist-minded thinkers. The government-funded Al
Jazeera was flourishing opposite the
region, present certain media courtesy to Brotherhood sum opposite the
Middle East, and many of a statute family’s tip advisors were
Brotherhood-linked expatriates — organisation like a argumentative Egyptian cleric
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who heads a International Union of Muslim
Scholars from Doha.
What
Doha saw in a Muslim Brotherhood was a multiple of religiosity and
efficacy that seemed together to a own. Moreover, a Qatari statute family
sought to compute itself from competing monarchies Saudi Arabia and a United
Arab Emirates (UAE), both of that scowl on domestic Islam as dangerously
power-seeking. It was pragmatism, argues Salah Eddin Elzein, conduct of a Al
Jazeera Center for Studies, a consider tank compared with a Qatar-owned
satellite network. “Islamists came [to a region] in a 1980s, and Qatar was
trying to fan itself with a army that it saw as those many expected to be
the widespread army for a future.”
But
the tellurian Muslim Brotherhood isn’t Qatar’s customarily — or even a many important
– network. Nor does a stately family allow to a Brotherhood’s ideals per
se. Often ignored is a second strand that tows closer to Qatar’s official
sympathies: a Salafi movement.
Emerging
in a 1990s, romantic Salafists assimilated a precisionist beliefs of Saudi Arabia’s
clerical investiture with a politicized goals of a Muslim Brotherhood.
Some of these thinkers would turn a initial incarnations of al Qaeda, while
others gained a clever foothold in expelled Kuwait, where a initial romantic Salafi political
party was formed.
It
was in Qatar that a romantic Salafists found their benefactor. Over a last
15 years in particular, Doha has turn a de facto handling heart for a deeply
interconnected village of Salafists vital in Qatar though also in Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Bahrain, and elsewhere. Clerics have been hosted by ministries and
called to pronounce for critical events. Charities have touted a means — charities
like a Sheikh Eid bin Mohammad al Thani Charity, regulated by a Qatari
Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, that is “probably
the biggest and many successful romantic Salafi-controlled service organization
in a world,” according to a recent report by a Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.
As
early as 2003, a U.S. Congress was done wakeful that Qatari-based charities
were assisting pierce and refine income related to al Qaeda, providing employment
and support for pivotal sum in a operation. At
the same time, Qatar’s tellurian change was growing: State-backed Qatar Airways
began an aircraft-buying debauch in 2007 to fuel a immeasurable expansion, fasten the
once far-flung emirate to each dilemma of a world. And by 2010, Al Jazeera
had grown into a Arab world’s many successful media operation, supported
by a massive annual budget of $650 million.
Just
as a Arab Spring invigorated antithesis movements opposite a Middle East, so
too did it electrify Qatar’s network of domestic clients.
Power projection by proxy
Qatar
was a customarily Gulf nation not to perspective with terror a changes that roiled
the Arab star starting in 2011. Saudi Arabia was jarred by how quickly
Washington forsaken a decades-long fan in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. Bahrain
convulsed when a infancy Shiite race took to a streets to demand
greater domestic influence. The UAE assimilated Qatar in subsidy NATO strikes in
Libya though was extremely some-more reticent about a arise of a Muslim
Brotherhood there and in Egypt, fearing a organisation would invigorate
Islamist-sympathizers among a possess population.
Qatar,
meanwhile, placed a prolonged gamble that domestic Islam was a subsequent vast thing that would
pay off. “Qatar believes in dual things. First, Doha doesn’t wish a Saudis
to be a vital or customarily actor in a Sunni segment of a Middle East,” says
Kuwaiti domestic scientist Abdullah al-Shayji. “Second, Qatar wants to
have a purpose to play as a vital energy in a region.“
Yet
mismatched with a grand ambitions, Qatar’s unfamiliar routine faced a key
limitation. The nation is home to usually underneath 300,000 nationals, and government
decision-making is strong in a hands of usually a few officials. Lacking
their possess infrastructure, Qatar sought to amplify a impact by operative through
its network of Brotherhood and Salafi allies.
“The
Qataris customarily work by identifying people who they consider are
ideologically on a same wavelength,” says Andreas Krieg, an assistant
professor during King’s College London and an confidant to a Qatar Armed Forces.
“There is no vetting routine per se; it’s ‘these are people we can trust.’”
The
first terrain exam of Qatar’s substitute sequence was in Libya, where there was a
broad informal accord — as good as U.S. support — to reject then-leader
Muammar al-Qaddafi. Qatar, together with a UAE, had sealed on to Western airstrikes
against a regime. But Doha also wanted to assistance build adult insurgent ability on the
ground.
“They
had to literally go to their residence book and say, ‘Who do we know in Libya?’”
says Krieg. “This is how they concurrent a Libya operation.” Doha lined adult a
collection of businessmen, aged Brotherhood friends, and ideologically aligned
defectors, plying them with tens of millions of dollars and 20,000 tons of
arms, a Wall Street Journal later
estimated. After a months-long war, a rebels took Tripoli and Qaddafi was
dead. Doha’s clients found themselves among a many absolute domestic brokers
in a new Libya. And prolonged after a NATO strikes had ended, some Qatari-backed
militias continued to accept support, says Bruguière.
Amid a initial euphoria of a Arab Spring, many
expected a nascent summer protests in Syria to fast disintegrate a Assad
regime. Presidents in Tunisia and Egypt had lasted usually weeks before resigning,
after all, and a star had fast rallied to reject a some-more determined Qaddafi.
By August, Washington was pursuit on Assad to step down as well. Not long
thereafter, Qatar began a Syrian
operation, modeled on a Libyan adventure.
Like
the tendering of a contract, Doha expelled a call for bidders to assistance with the
regime’s overthrow. “When we started a corps [in 2012], a Qataris said,
‘Send us a list of your members. Send us a list of what we wish — the
salaries and support needs,’” Hossam, a Syrian grill owner, remembers.
He and dozens of other would-be insurgent leaders submitted a pitch. He doesn’t say
how many his brigade received, though says his possess fundraising efforts for
humanitarian products have yielded hundreds of thousands of riyals.
Qatar’s
friends abroad were also during work. Throughout 2012 and early 2013, activist
Salafists in Kuwait teamed adult with Syrian expatriates to build, fund, and supply nonconformist brigades
that would eventually turn groups such as al-Nusra Front and a tighten ally,
Ahrar al-Sham. Using amicable media to surveillance their means and a low Rolodex of
Kuwaiti business contacts, clerics and other distinguished Kuwaiti Sunnis raised
hundreds of millions of dollars for their clients. They were means to work
essentially unhindered interjection to Kuwait’s lax counterterrorism financing laws and a freedoms of organisation and speech.
One
such donor was a immature Kuwaiti Salafi apportion Hajjaj al-Ajmi, who on Aug. 6
was designated by a U.S. Treasury Department as a funder of terrorism for
backing al-Nusra Front. Ajmi runs a supposed People’s
Commission for a Support of a Syrian Revolution, many of whose debate posters on Twitter
spoke of present work — giving food or medicine to a needy and displaced.
But behind in Jun 2012, Qatar’s Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs
invited a apportion to pronounce in a coastal city of Al Khor, 30 miles outside
Doha, where he argued
that charitable support alone would never disintegrate a Syrian regime.
“Did
you know that bringing down Damascus would not cost some-more than $10 million?” he
intoned, wagging his fingers from his chair in front of a aged Syrian flag
adopted by revolutionaries. “The priority is a support for a jihadists and
arming them.”
In
the months that followed, many of Ajmi’s campaigns in Kuwait ran parallel
collections in Qatar. Donations could be
placed by a deputy named Mubarak al-Ajji, according to campaign posters, that attest he is underneath Ajmi’s
“supervision.” Ajji’s Twitter bio
describes him as amatory Sunni jihadists who hatred “Shiites and infidels.” His
timeline is flush with regard for Osama bin Laden.
One
of Ajmi’s Kuwaiti colleagues, a apportion named Mohammad al-Owaihan, also used
Qatar as a base, calling
it his “second country” in a twitter in August. As recently as April, Owaihan
solicited Qataris to assistance ready fighters for dispute on a Syrian coast. “Our
jihad is a jihad of Money in Syria,” one print read,
offering hit numbers in Kuwait and Qatar.
These
fundraising efforts were well-honed appeals, for instance fixation donors in
special categories for donations of varying sizes. A “gold” present was 10,000
Qatari riyals ($2,750), while a “silver” concession came in during 5,000 riyals. When
particularly inexhaustible donations arrived, Ajji and others reported them on
Twitter, for instance posting photos of valuables incited over to account a cause.
Among
the beholden insurgent brigades that expelled videos thanking a Kuwaiti cleric
Owaihan is Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafi organisation that counted an al Qaeda operative as one of a tip commanders until he was
killed this year: “O a kind people of Qatar, O people of a Gulf, your money
has arrived,” an Oct 2013 video
from a brigade proclaims. Ajmi boasted of his vicinity to Ahrar al-Sham on
Sept. 9 in a tweet
showing a private online summary a group’s personality sent him when a Kuwaiti
cleric was designated and authorised by a U.S. Treasury Department.
All
of these fundraising activities were orchestrated by people — not the
government — as Qatar has remarkable in a invulnerability in new weeks. But this is
also accurately a point: By relying on middlemen, Doha not customarily outsourced the
work though also a guilt of meddling. And even where it wasn’t involved
directly, Qatar is not unknowingly of what’s going on in a network.
Many
clerics in a romantic Salafi transformation have, like Ajmi, been outspoken in
their subsidy of groups like al-Nusra Front in Syria — views that have found a
welcome assembly among government-backed organizations in Doha. Saudi cleric
Mohammad al-Arefe, who has called for defending jihadists in Syria and Palestine,
was invited by Qatar’s Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs in Mar 2012
and Jan 2014 to broach a Friday oration and a harangue during Qatar’s Grand
Mosque. Kuwaiti Salafist Nabil al-Awadhy — a known fundraiser for groups tighten to al-Nusra Front — was the
featured techer in Qatar during a Ramadan festival on Jul 4, 2014, hosted by a
charity and assist organisation closely related with a government.
Hostage to proxies
Qatar’s Arab Spring plan began to destroy in the
same place it was conceived, amid a masses of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square. On Jul 3, 2013, demonstrators
cheered on a Egyptian military’s ouster of Islamist personality Mohamed Morsi,
whose supervision Qatar had corroborated to a balance of $5 billion.
Within days, Saudi Arabia, a UAE, and Kuwait welcomed a new military-backed
government with sum pledges of $13 billion in aid. Days later, Saudi
Arabia seized control
of subsidy a Syrian antithesis by
installing a elite domestic leadership. By early fall, Libya was also descending into
utter disarray, exemplified by a temporary kidnapping of a country’s primary apportion in October
2013. Doha, that had usually seen a ascent of a new 33-year-old emir, meekly
vowed to concentration on inner affairs.
“One
of a things about Qatar’s unfamiliar routine is a border to that it has been a
complete and sum failure, roughly an undeviating array of disasters,” says
Hussein Ibish, a comparison associate during a American Task Force on Palestine. “Except
it’s all by proxy, so zero bad ever happens to Qatar.”
In
both Libya and Syria, Qatar helped account internationally corroborated powerful groups
– though it also channeled support to people and militias directly. In Libya,
for example, one of Qatar’s categorical conduits to a rebels, a Doha-based cleric
Ali al-Sallabi, clashed furiously with Mahmoud Jibril, a Western-backed leader
who served as halt primary apportion until he quiescent in Oct 2011, warning of “chaos” as several factions battled for control.
Today, that warning seems prophetic as Libya is mired in an accelerating battle
between several antithesis militias separate along informal and ideological lines. The
UAE, regulating U.S.-made jets and handling out of Egypt, has reportedly
undertaken several rounds of airstrikes to hurl behind Qatari-funded Islamists
since mid-August.
But
it is in Syria where Qatar’s network many spectacularly misfired. Competition
between Qatari and Saudi clients has rendered a domestic opposition
toothless, viewed on a belligerent as a bondman of unfamiliar powers. Meanwhile
throughout 2012 and 2013, a proliferation of pretender insurgent groups bred
competition for funding. Some of Qatar’s clients became pivotal brigades — groups
such as Liwa al-Tawhid, whose personality one rebels in a querulous quarrel to
control Aleppo. Others like Hossam’s, however, simply folded or lingered
weakly, focusing on their possess ideals and goals.
In
other words, there was no one winner. Qatar and other general powers
haphazardly corroborated dozens of opposite brigades and let them quarrel it out for
who could secure a larger share of a funding. They had few incentives to
cooperate on operations, let alone strategy. Nor did their several backers have
any inducement to pull them together, given this competence erode their possess influence
over a rebels.
Qatar’s
bidding complement for support also fast incentivized corruption, as middlemen
began to elaborate their abilities and contacts on a belligerent to donors in
Doha. “Often, groups would contention maybe 3,000 names, though in existence there would
be customarily 300 or 400 people,” says Hossam, a grill owner. “The additional money
goes in a wrong way. They would do a same thing with operations. If the
actual needs were $1 million, maybe they contend $5 million. Then a other $4
million disappears.”
The
disarray helped pull fighters increasingly toward some of a groups that
seemed to have a stronger authority of their appropriation and their goals — groups
such as al-Nusra Front and eventually a Islamic State, that separate from a al Qaeda associate in
early 2014. The final year has seen a fibre of defections from more
moderate groups into these nonconformist elements. In Dec 2013, for example,
former Deir Ezzor Free Syrian Army commander Saddam al-Jamal announced
in a video that he was fasten a Islamic State given “as days passed, we
realized that [the FSA] was a plan that was saved by unfamiliar countries,
especially Qatar,” he said.
It’s
unlikely that a Qatari supervision — or any Gulf state — ever corroborated the
Islamic State, an classification that currently has in a cross-hairs all of the
U.S.-allied monarchies of a Arabian Peninsula, and clamp versa. But as in
Jamal’s case, some of the
individuals who benefited from Qatari supports did go on to join some-more radical
brigades, holding their knowledge and arms with them.
“Qatar grown early on family with
rebel groups that after radicalized and assimilated a Salafi-jihadi universe,
including Nusra and presumably [the Islamic State],” explains Emile Hokayem, senior
fellow for Middle East confidence during a International Institute for Strategic
Studies. “The elaborating inlet of a Syrian rebellion combined mostly unintended
and cryptic if during times beneficial entanglements.”
Even
as a Syrian antithesis gravitated toward a extreme, Qatar argued in late
2012 that a star should worry about radicals later. “I am really many against
excluding anyone during this stage, or bracketing them as terrorists, or bracketing
them as al Qaeda,” Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah, afterwards apportion of state for
foreign affairs, argued
at a confidence discussion in Dec of that year.
That
sentiment was reiterated by Emir Tamim in his pronounce with CNN final week,
arguing that it would be a “big
mistake” to pile together all Islamist-leaning groups in Syria as
extremists. Indeed, in all a new statements rejecting extremism, Doha has mentioned
the Islamic State though never al-Nusra Front by name.
Elzein,
of a Al Jazeera Center for Studies, defends Qatar’s support for Islamists
across a Middle East. He describes a squabble between Doha and a other Gulf
monarchies as a foe “between powers for a standing quo and for change,
where Qatar sided itself with change in a region.”
“Qatar’s
foreign routine generated a lot of controversy, though maybe that was partial of its
very nature,” he says. “When we try something new in a segment famous to be very
conservative, it’s organisation to pierce that kind of critique and misperception.”
And
indeed, Qatar is distant from a customarily Gulf nation whose purpose in Syria and elsewhere
has had disastrous repercussions. Saudi Arabia has also corroborated people and
disparate insurgent groups in Syria, and a UAE has sided with specific militias
in Libya. In Egypt, a supervision strongly corroborated by both countries has overseen
mass tellurian rights abuses as it cracks down opposite a Muslim Brotherhood.
But
it’s still tough to see what Qatar has altered for a better. Although its
intentions to assistance a Syrian people were roughly positively genuine, a
combination of rambling methods and support for ideological proxies helped
push a antithesis toward both radicalization and disarray.
Washington and Doha
Qatar
had such leisure to run a network for a final 3 years given Washington
was looking a other way. In fact, in 2011, a United States gave Doha de
facto giveaway rein to do what it wasn’t peaceful to in a Middle East: intervene.
Libya
was a box in point. When U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration began
building a bloc for airstrikes in a open of 2011, it took an proceed later coined
“leading from behind”: France and Britain took a lead in implementing the
no-fly zone, while Qatar’s and a United Arab Emirates’ involvement
demonstrated Arab support. When Doha stepped brazen to assistance classify the
rebels, they were broadly welcomed, former U.S. officials pronounced in interviews
with FP.
The
same was loyal in Syria. Despite privacy among certain camps of a U.S.
government, quite those who had worked on Libya, it was still the
least-worst option: Qatar, an fan of a United States, could assistance yield a
regional resolution to a dispute a White House had no seductiveness in getting
entangled in. Washington simply asked Doha not to send anti-aircraft and
anti-tank missiles to a rebels, that it occasionally
did anyway.
On
top of a domestic preference was a logistical palliate of operative with the
Qataris. Doha creates decisions fast — and is peaceful to take risks. While
the Saudis changed solemnly removing arms into Syria, a Qataris sent planes
to pierce an estimated 3,500 tons
of infantry apparatus in 2012 and 2013, reportedly with a CIA’s backing.
“Their interagency routine has about 3 people in it,” pronounced one former U.S.
official.
The
same upsides meant that Washington incited to Doha when it sought to make contact with a Afghan Taliban in 2011 and 2012. The
goal was to assistance well-spoken a exit of NATO infantry from Afghanistan with a
political solution. In on-and-off contacts,
always done indirectly by a Qataris, a Taliban concluded to negotiate –
but initial they wanted an office. In Jun 2013, they got it: a vast villa in
the embassy district of Doha nearby a swarming trade round famous as Rainbow
Roundabout.
But
Qatar’s advantages shortly incited into liabilities. As Doha changed from predicament to
crisis, a Qataris showed small ability to select arguable proxies or to
control them once resources had been pumped in. “My perspective is that Qatari
policymaking was a bit amateur. When they got in, they showed no staying
power,” a ex-U.S. central said.
In
the Taliban case, Doha valid incompetent or reluctant to stop a Afghan militants
from audaciously lifting their dwindle over their new Qatari villa — an act of
diplomatic symbolism that murderous Kabul and scuppered talks before they
began. All that could be salvaged from a process, it became transparent a year
later, was a prisoner exchange that traded U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for 5 top
Taliban commanders being reason in Guantánamo Bay.
Qatar gave a assurances that a 5 operatives would be underneath tighten watch
in Doha — though given a country’s history, that doesn’t indispensably meant they
won’t change a Afghan battlefield.
In
Syria, meanwhile, it wasn’t until a Islamic State gained inflection that
Washington sat adult and took notice. In March, David S. Cohen, a Treasury
Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, took the
unprecedented step of calling out a Qataris in open for a “permissive terrorist
financing environment.” Such sheer criticism, counterterrorism experts say, is
usually left for closed-door conversations. A open airing expected indicated
Doha wasn’t manageable to Washington’s private requests.
This summer, a conflict
between Israel and Hamas also shone uninformed light on Qatar’s links to extremists
in Palestine. Hamas personality Khaled Meshaal has been shaped in Doha given breaking
with a Syrian regime in 2012, and Qatar has worked to rehabilitate a group
politically and financially ever since. In Oct of that year, Qatar’s emir
visited a Gaza Strip himself, pledging $400 million in aid.
Before
and during a latest Gaza war, associate Gulf states began to run in Washington
to get tough with Qatar. In 2013, a UAE spent $14 million — some-more than any
other nation — on lobbying in Washington, according to information collected by the
Sunlight Foundation. The Camstoll Group, that has been linked
to new media coverage, has reason a agreement given 2012 that disclosure documents prove can paint fees of adult to $400,000
a month. In a initial half of 2013, it warranted $4.3 million for activities that disclosure documents report as advising on matters of “illicit financial
activities.” (Disclosure: Foreign Policy‘s PeaceGame program, presented in and with a U.S. Institute of Peace, is underwritten in partial by a extend from a UAE Embassy. All FP editorial content, however, is wholly independent.)
Heads have begun to in Washington. In a Sept.
9 conference in a U.S. House of Representatives, witnesses and congressmen
suggested measures that would dramatically recast a attribute between
Washington and Doha. In testimony, Jonathan Schanzer, clamp boss for
research during a Foundation for Defense of Democracies, due measures that
could “send startle waves by a Qatari financial system”: designating
charities and people in Qatar, putting a reason on an $11 billion arms deal,
and even opening an comment into a cost of relocating a U.S. infantry base
away from a emirate.
“Excellent
ideas,” conference authority Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) pronounced in respond to a witnesses.
“We ought to take them all and exercise as many as we can.”
The
U.S. Treasury Department is also stepping adult efforts to moment down on al Qaeda
and Islamic State funds; on Sept. 24, it designated several people with
links to Qatar. In further to a Qatari inhabitant purported to have changed funds
from Gulf donors to Afghanistan, a designations embody Tariq Bin-Al-Tahar
Bin Al Falih Al-Awni Al-Harzi, who collected support from Qatar, including by
arranging for a Islamic State “to accept approximately $2 million from a
Qatar-based [Islamic State] financial facilitator, who compulsory that Al-Harzi
use a supports for infantry operations only,” a designation
says.
Doha’s
pushback in respond is usually a latest iteration of a long-running behest war
among Gulf states for Washington’s favor. Qatar has increasing a prominence in
Washington in new years, holding active contracts with lobbying groups
Patton Boggs, Barbour Griffith and Rogers, and BGR Government Affairs. With its
vast munificent arms, it has sponsored all from tyro exchange
programs to a congressional present ball game. Since a tellurian financial crisis, various
Qatari investment supports have also invested in property in Washington, Chicago, and elsewhere.
Qatar’s
money runs even some-more obliquely as well, by a dozens of consultants,
businessmen, and former officials whom it has hired during one prove or another.
Take a Soufan Group, for example, a well-regarded consultancy on
counterterrorism and intelligence. Its founder, Ali Soufan, is also executive director of a Qatar International
Academy for Security Studies (QIASS) in Doha, a government-funded core that
offers several-week courses to supervision and infantry employees. Several other
Soufan Group employees are also listed
as employees there — an connection they
rarely divulge in U.S. media interviews. Reached by telephone, Lila Ghosh,
communications dilettante during a group, told FP that a organisation did not do any
work on interest of Qatar within a United States.
QIASS
also appears to have given former Obama White House orator Robert Gibbs’s new PR
group, a Incite Agency, one of a initial jobs. Just weeks after it opened,
Incite handled RSVPs for an event co-hosted by a Soufan Group and QIASS on “countering
violent extremism.” The Incite Agency did not lapse steady calls from FP
seeking to explain a attribute with QIASS.
But
the biggest reason that Qatar is expected to sojourn in good preference with Washington
isn’t income or influence, though necessity. As a United States ramps adult a
coalition opposite a Islamic State militants, it will need initial and foremost
its atmosphere bottom in Qatar, that is serving as a authority center for operations — and afterwards once again, the
cover of Arab support.
With
Syria and Iraq in chaos, both countries are now populated by a operation of extremist
actors whom Washington won’t wish to negotiate with. Doha’s adult for that job.
Most recently, Qatar was called in to assistance negotiate a recover of 45 U.N.
peacekeepers taken serf by al-Nusra Front — and on Sept. 12 it announced
that it had successfully won a soldiers’ release. Qatar insists that a ransom
was not paid; maybe a network of Doha-based funders gave a supervision a
certain precedence over a group. Or it usually competence be that a al Qaeda affiliate
wants something even some-more valuable.
“I
think what Qatar can give them is legitimacy,” suggests Krieg. In al-Nusra
Front’s central final per a peacekeeper hostages, for example, it had asked
to be taken off a U.N.
sanctions list. “Nusra wants to be seen as a legitimate partner opposite [the
Islamic State]; Qatar competence be means to offer them a height in a future,” Krieg says.
That’s
essentially what Qatar has prolonged offering a friends: a platform, with entrance to
money, media, and domestic capital. Washington has so distant played along, but
the doubt is either a United States is indeed removing played.
Mohammed Saber/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Karim Jafaar/AFP
AFP