REPORT

The Case Against Qatar

The tiny, gas-rich emirate has pumped tens of millions of dollars through
obscure funding networks to hard-line Syrian rebels and extremist Salafists,
building a foreign policy that punches above its weight. After years of
acquiescing -- even taking advantage of its ally's meddling -- Washington may
finally be punching back.
BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON
SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

AL QAEDA
FOREIGN AID
FINANCE
TALIBAN
SYRIA
ABU DHABI and DOHA Behind a glittering mall near Doha's city center sits the
quiet restaurant where Hossam used to run his Syrian rebel brigade. At the
battalion's peak in 2012 and 2013, he had 13,000 men under his control near the
eastern city of Deir Ezzor. "Part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), they are loyal to
me," he said over sweet tea and sugary pastries this spring. "I had a good team to
fight."
Hossam, a middle-aged Syrian expat, owns several restaurants throughout Doha,
Qatar, catering mostly to the country's upper crust. The food is excellent, and at
night the tables are packed with well-dressed Qataris, Westerners, and Arabs. Some
of his revenue still goes toward supporting brigades and civilians with humanitarian
goods -- blankets, food, even cigarettes.
He insists that he has stopped sending money to the battle, for now. His brigade's
funds came, at least in part, from Qatar, he says, under the discretion of then
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah. But the
injection of cash was ad hoc: Dozens of other brigades like his received initial start-
up funding, and only some continued to receive Qatari support as the months wore on.
When the funds ran out in mid-2013, his fighters sought support elsewhere. "Money
plays a big role in the FSA, and on that front, we didn't have," he explained.
Hossam is a peripheral figure in a vast Qatari network of Islamist-leaning proxies
that spans former Syrian generals, Taliban insurgents, Somali Islamists, and
Sudanese rebels. He left home in 1996 after more than a decade under pressure
from the Syrian regime for his sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of his
friends were killed in a massacre of the group in Hama province in 1982 by then
President Hafez al-Assad. He finally found refuge here in Qatar and built his
business and contacts slowly. Mostly, he laid low; Doha used to be quite welcoming to
the young President Bashar al-Assad and his elegant wife, who were often spotted in
the high-end fashion boutiques before the revolt broke out in 2011.
When the Syrian war came and Qatar dropped Assad, Hossam joined an expanding
pool of middlemen whom Doha called upon to carry out its foreign policy of supporting
the Syrian opposition. Because there were no established rebels when the uprising
started, Qatar backed the upstart plans of expats and businessmen who promised
they could rally fighters and guns. Hossam, like many initial rebel backers, had
planned to devote his own savings to supporting the opposition. Qatar's donations
made it possible to think bigger.
In recent months, Qatar's Rolodex of middlemen like Hossam has proved both a
blessing and a curse for the United States. On one hand, Washington hasn't shied
away from calling on Doha's connections when it needs them: Qatar orchestrated the
prisoner swap that saw U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl freed in exchange for five Taliban
prisoners in Guantnamo Bay. And it ran the negotiations with al-Nusra Front, al
Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, that freed American writer Peter Theo Curtis in August.
"Done," Qatari intelligence chief Ghanim Khalifa al-Kubaisi reportedly texted a
contact -- adding a thumbs-up emoticon -- after the release was completed.
But that same Qatari network has also played a major role in destabilizing nearly
every trouble spot in the region and in accelerating the growth of radical and jihadi
factions. The results have ranged from bad to catastrophic in the countries that are
the beneficiaries of Qatari aid: Libya is mired in a war between proxy-funded
militias, Syria's opposition has been overwhelmed by infighting and overtaken by
extremists, and Hamas's intransigence has arguably helped prolong the Gaza Strip's
humanitarian plight.
For years, U.S. officials have been willing to shrug off Doha's proxy network -- or
even take advantage of it from time to time. Qatar's neighbors, however, have not.
Over the past year, fellow Gulf countries Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, and Bahrain have publicly rebuked Qatar for its support of political
Islamists across the region.
Over the past year, fellow Gulf countries Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
and Bahrain have publicly rebuked Qatar for its support of political Islamists across
the region. These countries have threatened to close land borders or suspend
Qatar's membership in the regional Gulf Cooperation Council unless the country backs
down. After nearly a year of pressure, the first sign of a Qatari concession came on
Sept. 13, when seven senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figures left Doha at the
request of the Qatari government.
Both Qatar and its critics are working to ensure that Washington comes down on
their side of the intra-Gulf dispute. At stake is the future political direction of the
region -- and their roles in guiding it.
Late last week, on Sept. 25, Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept documented how a
Washington, D.C.-based firm retained by the United Arab Emirates made contacts
with journalists that appear to have yielded articles detailing how fundraisers for
groups such as al-Nusra Front and Hamas operate openly in Doha, Qatar's
capital. Foreign Policy also obtained documents from the Camstoll Group, run by
former U.S. Treasury Department official Matthew Epstein. Although some of this
open-source information is referred to in this article, the vast majority of the
reporting comes from months of investigation in the region.
After several weeks of bad press, Qatar is also going on the offensive. "We don't
fund extremists," Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani told CNN's Christiane
Amanpour during his first interview as Qatar's leader on Sept. 25. Just over a week
earlier, Qatar instituted a new law to regulate charities and prevent them from
engaging in politics. And on Sept. 15, Doha began a new six-month contract with
Washington lobbying firm Portland PR Inc., which may include lobbying Congress and
briefing journalists.
So far, Washington appears unwilling to confront Qatar directly. Aside from the U.S.
Treasury Department, which last week designated a second Qatari citizen for
supporting al Qaeda in Syria and elsewhere, no senior U.S. administration officials
have publicly called out Doha for its troublesome clients.
The State Department said that nobody would be available to comment for this
article, but released a fact sheet on Aug. 26 that describes Qatar as "a valuable
partner to the United States" and credits it with "play[ing] an influential role in the
region through a period of great transformation."
The question is what the United States is prepared to do about Qatar if it fails to
stem its citizens' support for extremist groups, says Jean-Louis Bruguire, the
former head of the EU and U.S. Treasury Department's joint Terrorist Finance
Tracking Program, now based in Paris. "The U.S. has the tools to monitor state and
state-linked transfers to extremist groups. But intelligence is one thing and the
other is how you react," he told FP by phone. "What kind of political decision is the
U.S. really able to make against states financing terrorism?"
Friends of Qatar
There is no more telling indication of Qatar's ambitions than the fact that Doha taxi
drivers are perpetually lost. With construction ongoing everywhere -- part of a $100
billion infrastructure plan to prepare for hosting the 2022 World Cup -- buildings
open and projects come online so fast that the city's cabbies can't keep up.
On the world stage, Qatar sees its role as no less grandiose. Beneath the high-
chandeliered ceilings of Doha's five-star hotel lobbies, eager delegations from
around the world make their case for support. Governments, political parties,
companies, and rebel groups scurry in and out nervously, and then wait over hot tea to
have their proposals considered by the relevant Qatari authorities. Which hotel the
visitors stay in indicates their prospects for support. The Four Seasons and Ritz-
Carlton are old favorites; Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has stayed at the former,
the Syrian opposition at the latter. The W Hotel is a posh newcomer, mostly housing
eager European delegations seeking investment or natural gas. The Sheraton -- one of
Doha's first hotels -- is by now pass; that's where top Darfuri rebels stayed during
negotiations with the Sudanese government. Everyone wants into the network,
because as one Syrian in Doha put it, "Qatar has money and Qatar can connect
money."
The winners in this hustle have often been those with the longest ties to this tiny,
gas-rich state -- a menagerie of leaders from the global Muslim Brotherhood. Doha
was already becoming an extremist hub by the early 2000s, as government-funded
think tanks and universities popped upfilled with Islamist-minded thinkers. The
government-funded Al Jazeera was growing across the region, offering positive media
attention to Brotherhood figures across the Middle East, and many of the ruling
family's top advisors were Brotherhood-linked expatriates -- men like the
controversial Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who heads the International Union
of Muslim Scholars from Doha.
What Doha saw in the Muslim Brotherhood was a combination of religiosity and
efficacy that seemed parallel to its own. Moreover, the Qatari ruling family sought to
differentiate itself from competing monarchies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), both of which frown upon political Islam as dangerously power-
seeking. It was pragmatism, argues Salah Eddin Elzein, head of the Al Jazeera Center
for Studies, a think tank associated with the Qatar-owned satellite network.
"Islamists came [to the region] in the 1980s, and Qatar was trying to ally itself with
the forces that it saw as those most likely to be the dominant forces for the future."
But the global Muslim Brotherhood isn't Qatar's only -- or even its most important --
network. Nor does the royal family subscribe to the Brotherhood's ideals per se.
Often overlooked is a second strand that tows closer to Qatar's official sympathies:
the Salafi movement.
Emerging in the 1990s, activist Salafists merged the purist ideology of Saudi
Arabia's clerical establishment with the politicized goals of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some of these thinkers would become the first incarnations of al Qaeda, while others
gained a strong foothold in liberated Kuwait, where the first activist Salafi political
party was formed.
It was in Qatar that the activist Salafists found their benefactor. Over the last 15
years in particular, Doha has become a de facto operating hub for a deeply
interconnected community of Salafists living in Qatar but also in Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Bahrain, and elsewhere. Clerics have been hosted by ministries and called to
talk for important events. Charities have touted the cause -- charities like the
Sheikh Eid bin Mohammad al Thani Charity, regulated by the Qatari Ministry of Labor
and Social Affairs, which is "probably the biggest and most influential activist Salafi-
controlled relief organization in the world," according to a recent reportby the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
As early as 2003, the U.S. Congress was made aware that Qatari-based charities
were helping move and launder money linked to al Qaeda, providing employment and
documentation for key figures in the operation. At the same time, Qatar's global
influence was growing: State-backed Qatar Airways began an aircraft-buying spree in
2007 to fuel its vast expansion, linking the once far-flung emirate to every corner of
the world. And by 2010, Al Jazeera had evolved into the Arab world's most influential
media operation, supported by a massive annual budget of $650 million.
Just as the Arab Spring invigorated opposition movements across the Middle East, so
too did it electrify Qatar's network of political clients.
Power projection by proxy

Qatar was the only Gulf country not to view with trepidation the changes that roiled
the Arab world starting in 2011. Saudi Arabia was shaken by how quickly Washington
dropped its decades-long ally in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. Bahrain convulsed when its
majority Shiite population took to the streets to demand greater political influence.
The UAE joined Qatar in backing NATO strikes in Libya but was considerably more
reticent about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood there and in Egypt, fearing the
group would invigorate Islamist-sympathizers among its own population.
Qatar, meanwhile, placed a long bet that political Islam was the next big thing that
would pay off. "Qatar believes in two things. First, Doha doesn't want the Saudis to
be the major or only player in the Sunni region of the Middle East," says Kuwaiti
political scientist Abdullah al-Shayji. "Second, Qatar wants to have a role to play as a
major power in the region."
Yet mismatched with its grand ambitions, Qatar's foreign policy faced a key
limitation. The country is home to just under 300,000 nationals, and government
decision-making is concentrated in the hands of just a few officials. Lacking their own
infrastructure, Qatar sought to amplify its impact by working through its network of
Brotherhood and Salafi allies.
"The Qataris usually work by identifying individuals who they think are ideologically
on the same wavelength," says Andreas Krieg, an assistant professor at King's College
London and an advisor to the Qatar Armed Forces. "There is no vetting process per
se; it's 'these are people we can trust.'"
The first battlefield test of Qatar's proxy chain was in Libya, where there was a
broad regional consensus -- as well as U.S. support -- to oust then-leader Muammar
al-Qaddafi. Qatar, together with the UAE, had signed on to Western airstrikes
against the regime. But Doha also wanted to help build up rebel capacity on the
ground.
"They had to literally go to their address book and say, 'Who do we know in Libya?'"
says Krieg. "This is how they coordinated the Libya operation." Doha lined up a
collection of businessmen, old Brotherhood friends, and ideologically aligned
defectors, plying them with tens of millions of dollars and 20,000 tons of arms,
the Wall Street Journal later estimated. After a months-long war, the rebels took
Tripoli and Qaddafi was dead. Doha's clients found themselves among the most
powerful political brokers in the new Libya. And long after the NATO strikes had
ended, some Qatari-backed militias continued to receive support, says Bruguire.
Amid the initial euphoria of the Arab Spring, many expected the nascent summer
protests in Syria to quickly topple the Assad regime. Presidents in Tunisia and Egypt
had lasted just weeks before resigning, after all, and the world had quickly rallied to
oust a more persistent Qaddafi. By August, Washington was calling on Assad to step
down as well. Not long thereafter, Qatar began its Syrian operation, modelled on the
Libyan adventure.
Like the tendering of a contract, Doha issued a call for bidders to help with the
regime's overthrow. "When we started our battalion [in 2012], the Qataris said,
'Send us a list of your members. Send us a list of what you want -- the salaries and
support needs,'" Hossam, the Syrian restaurant owner, remembers. He and dozens of
other would-be rebel leaders submitted a pitch. He doesn't say how much his brigade
received, but says his own fundraising efforts for humanitarian goods have yielded
hundreds of thousands of riyals.
Qatar's friends abroad were also at work. Throughout 2012 and early 2013, activist
Salafists in Kuwait teamed up with Syrian expatriates to build, fund, and supply
extremist brigades that would eventually become groups such as al-Nusra Front and
its close ally, Ahrar al-Sham.
Using social media to tout their cause and a deep Rolodex of Kuwaiti business
contacts, clerics and other prominent Kuwaiti Sunnisraised hundreds of millions of
dollars for their clients.
Using social media to tout their cause and a deep Rolodex of Kuwaiti business
contacts, clerics and other prominent Kuwaiti Sunnis raised hundreds of millions of
dollars for their clients. They were able to work essentially unhindered thanks to
Kuwait's lax counterterrorism financing laws and its freedoms of association and
speech.
One such donor was the young Kuwaiti Salafi cleric Hajjaj al-Ajmi, who on Aug. 6 was
designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a funder of terrorism for backing al-
Nusra Front. Ajmi runs the so-called People's Commission for the Support of the
Syrian Revolution, many of whose campaign posters on Twitter spoke of charity work
-- giving food or medicine to the needy and displaced. But back in June 2012, Qatar's
Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs invited the cleric to speak in the coastal
city of Al Khor, 30 miles outside Doha, where he argued that humanitarian support
alone would never topple the Syrian regime.
"Did you know that bringing down Damascus would not cost more than $10 million?" he
intoned, wagging his fingers from his chair in front of the old Syrian flag adopted by
revolutionaries. "The priority is the support for the 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 through a representative named
Mubarak al-Ajji, according to campaign posters, which affirm he is under Ajmi's
"supervision." Ajji's Twitter bio describes him as loving Sunni jihadists who hate
"Shiites and infidels." His timeline is flush with praise for Osama bin Laden.
One of Ajmi's Kuwaiti colleagues, a cleric named Mohammad al-Owaihan, also used
Qatar as a base, calling it his "second country" in a tweet in August. As recently as
April, Owaihan solicited Qataris to help prepare fighters for battle on the Syrian
coast. "Our jihad is a jihad of Money in Syria," one poster read, offering contact
numbers in Kuwait and Qatar.
These fundraising efforts were well-honed appeals, for example placing donors in
special categories for donations of varying sizes. A "gold" gift was 10,000 Qatari
riyals ($2,750), while a "silver" donation came in at 5,000 riyals. When particularly
generous donations arrived, Ajji and others reported them on Twitter, for example
posting photos of jewelry turned over to fund the cause.
Among the grateful rebel brigades that released videos thanking the Kuwaiti cleric
Owaihan is Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafi group that counted an al Qaeda operative as one
of its top commanders until he was killed this year: "O the kind people of Qatar, O
people of the Gulf, your money has arrived," an October 2013 video from the brigade
proclaims. Ajmi boasted of his proximity to Ahrar al-Sham on Sept. 9 in
a tweet showing the private online message the group's leader sent him when the
Kuwaiti cleric was designated and sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.
All of these fundraising activities were orchestrated by individuals -- not the
government -- as Qatar has noted in its defense in recent weeks. But this is also
exactly the point: By relying on middlemen, Doha not only outsourced the work but
also the liability of meddling. And even where it wasn't involved directly, Qatar is not
unaware of what's going on in its network.
Many clerics in the activist Salafi movement have, like Ajmi, been outspoken in their
backing of groups like al-Nusra Front in Syria -- views that have found a welcome
audience among government-backed organizations in Doha. Saudi cleric Mohammad al-
Arefe, who has called for arming jihadists in Syria and Palestine, was invited by
Qatar's Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs in March 2012 and January
2014 to deliver a Friday sermon and a lecture at Qatar's Grand Mosque. Kuwaiti
Salafist Nabil al-Awadhy -- a known fundraiser for groups close to al-Nusra Front --
was the featured lecturer in Qatar at a Ramadan festival on July 4, 2014, hosted by a
charity and aid group closely linked with the government.
Hostage to proxies
Qatar's Arab Spring strategy began to fail in the same place it was conceived, amid
the masses of protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square. On July 3, 2013, demonstrators
cheered on the Egyptian military's ouster of Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi, whose
government Qatar had backed to the tune of $5 billion. Within days, Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, and Kuwait welcomed the new military-backed government with combined
pledges of $13 billion in aid. Days later, Saudi Arabia seized control of backing the
Syrian opposition by installing its preferred political leadership. By early fall, Libya
was also falling into utter disarray, exemplified by the temporary kidnapping of the
country's prime minister in October 2013. Doha, which had just seen the ascension of
a new 33-year-old emir, meekly vowed to focus on internal affairs.
"One of the things about Qatar's foreign policy is the extent to which it has been a
complete and total failure, almost an uninterrupted series of disasters," says Hussein
Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. "Except it's all by
proxy, so nothing bad ever happens to Qatar."
In both Libya and Syria, Qatar helped fund internationally backed umbrella groups --
but it also channelled support to individuals and militias directly. In Libya, for
example, one of Qatar's main conduits to the rebels, the Doha-based cleric Ali al-
Sallabi, clashed furiously with Mahmoud Jibril, a Western-backed leader who served
as interim prime minister until he resigned in October 2011, warning of "chaos" as
various factions battled for control. Today, that warning seems prescient as Libya is
mired in an accelerating battle between various rival militias split along regional and
ideological lines. The UAE, using U.S.-made jets and operating out of Egypt,
has reportedly undertaken several rounds of airstrikes to roll back Qatari-funded
Islamists since mid-August.
But it is in Syria where Qatar's network most spectacularly misfired. Competition
between Qatari and Saudi clients has rendered the political opposition toothless,
perceived on the ground as a vassal of foreign powers. Meanwhile throughout 2012
and 2013, the proliferation of upstart rebel groups bred competition for funding.
Some of Qatar's clients became key brigades -- groups such as Liwa al-Tawhid, whose
leader unified rebels in a fractious fight to control Aleppo. Others like Hossam's,
however, simply folded or lingered weakly, focusing on their own ideals and goals.
In other words, there was no one winner.
Qatar and other international powers haphazardly backed dozens of different
brigades and let them fight it out for who could secure a greater share of the
funding.
Qatar and other international powers haphazardly backed dozens of different
brigades and let them fight it out for who could secure a greater share of the
funding. They had few incentives to cooperate on operations, let alone strategy. Nor
did their various backers have any incentive to push them together, since this might
erode their own influence over the rebels.
Qatar's bidding system for support also quickly incentivized corruption, as middlemen
began to exaggerate their abilities and contacts on the ground to donors in Doha.
"Often, groups would submit maybe 3,000 names, but in reality there would be only
300 or 400 people," says Hossam, the restaurant owner. "The extra money goes in
the wrong way. They would do the same thing with operations. If the actual needs
were $1 million, maybe they say $5 million. Then the other $4 million disappears."
The disarray helped push fighters increasingly toward some of the groups that
seemed to have a stronger command of their funding and their goals -- groups such as
al-Nusra Front and eventually the Islamic State, which split from the al Qaeda
affiliate in early 2014. The last year has seen a string of defections from more
moderate groups into these extremist elements. In December 2013, for example,
former Deir Ezzor Free Syrian Army commander Saddam al-Jamal announced in a
video that he was joining the Islamic State because "as days passed, we realized that
[the FSA] was a project that was funded by foreign countries, especially Qatar," he
said.
It's unlikely that the Qatari government -- or any Gulf state -- ever backed the
Islamic State, an organization that today has in its cross-hairs all of the U.S.-allied
monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, and vice versa. But as in Jamal's case, some of
the individuals who benefited from Qatari funds did go on to join more radical
brigades, taking their experience and arms with them.
"Qatar developed early on relations with rebel groups that later radicalized and
joined the Salafi-jihadi universe, including Nusra and possibly [the Islamic State],"
explains Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International
Institute for Strategic Studies. "The evolving nature of the Syrian rebellion created
often unintended and problematic if at times beneficial entanglements."
Even as the Syrian opposition gravitated toward the extreme, Qatar argued in late
2012 that the world should worry about radicals later. "I am very much against
excluding anyone at this stage, or bracketing them as terrorists, or bracketing them
as al Qaeda," Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah, then minister of state for foreign
affairs, argued at a security conference in December of that year.
That sentiment was reiterated by Emir Tamim in his interview with CNN last week,
arguing that it would be a "big mistake" to lump together all Islamist-leaning groups in
Syria as extremists. Indeed, in all its recent statements rejecting extremism, Doha
has mentioned the Islamic State but never al-Nusra Front by name.
Elzein, of the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, defends Qatar's support for Islamists
across the Middle East. He describes the spat between Doha and the other Gulf
monarchies as a competition "between powers for the status quo and for change,
where Qatar sided itself with change in the region."
"Qatar's foreign policy generated a lot of controversy, but perhaps that was part of
its very nature," he says. "When you try something new in a region known to be very
conservative, it's bound to bring that kind of criticism and misperception."
And indeed, Qatar is far from the only Gulf country whose role in Syria and
elsewhere has had negative repercussions. Saudi Arabia has also backed individuals
and disparate rebel groups in Syria, and the UAE has sided with specific militias in
Libya. In Egypt, a government strongly backed by both countries has overseen mass
human rights abuses as it cracks down against the Muslim Brotherhood.
But it's still hard to see what Qatar has changed for the better. Although its
intentions to help the Syrian people were almost certainly genuine, a combination of
haphazard methods and support for ideological proxies helped push the opposition
toward both radicalization and disarray.
Washington and Doha

Qatar had such freedom to run its network for the last three years because
Washington was looking the other way. In fact, in 2011, the United States gave Doha
de facto free rein to do what it wasn't willing to in the Middle East: intervene.
Libya was a case in point. When U.S. President Barack Obama's administration began
building a coalition for airstrikes in the spring of 2011, it took an approach later
coined "leading from behind": France and Britain took the lead in implementing the
no-fly zone, while Qatar's and the United Arab Emirates' involvement demonstrated
Arab support. When Doha stepped forward to help organize the rebels, they were
broadly welcomed, former U.S. officials said in interviews with FP.
The same was true in Syria. Despite reticence among certain camps of the U.S.
government, particularly those who had worked on Libya, it was still the least-worst
option: Qatar, an ally of the United States, could help provide a regional solution to a
conflict the White House had no interest in getting entangled in. Washington simply
asked Doha not to send anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to the rebels, which
it occasionally did anyway.
On top of the political convenience was the logistical ease of working with the
Qataris. Doha makes decisions quickly -- and is willing to take risks. While the Saudis
moved slowly getting arms into Syria, the Qataris sent planes to move an
estimated 3,500 tons of military equipment in 2012 and 2013, reportedly with the
CIA's backing. "Their interagency process has about three people in it," said one
former U.S. official.
The same upsides meant that Washington turned to Doha when it sought to make
contact with the Afghan Taliban in 2011 and 2012. The goal was to help smooth the
exit of NATO troops from Afghanistan with a political solution. In on-and-off
contacts, always made indirectly through the Qataris, the Taliban agreed to
negotiate -- but first they wanted an office. In June 2013, they got it: a large villa in
the embassy district of Doha near a crowded traffic circle known as Rainbow
Roundabout.
But Qatar's advantages soon turned into liabilities. As Doha moved from crisis to
crisis, the Qataris showed little ability to choose reliable proxies or to control them
once resources had been pumped in. "My view is that Qatari policymaking was a bit
amateur. When they got in, they showed no staying power," the ex-U.S. official said.
In the Taliban case, Doha proved unable or unwilling to stop the Afghan militants
from audaciously raising their flag over their new Qatari villa -- an act of diplomatic
symbolism that infuriated Kabul and scuppered talks before they began. All that
could be salvaged from the process, it became clear a year later, was a prisoner
exchange that traded U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top Taliban commanders being
held in Guantnamo Bay. Qatar gave its assurances that the five operatives would be
under close watch in Doha -- but given the country's history, that doesn't necessarily
mean they won't influence the Afghan battlefield.
In Syria, meanwhile, it wasn't until the Islamic State gained prominence that
Washington sat up and took notice. In March, David S. Cohen, the Treasury
Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, took the
unprecedented step of calling out the Qataris in public for a "permissive terrorist
financing environment." Such stark criticism, counterterrorism experts say, is usually
left for closed-door conversations. A public airing likely indicated Doha wasn't
responsive to Washington's private requests.
This summer, the conflict between Israel and Hamas also shone fresh light on
Qatar's links to extremists in Palestine. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has been
based in Doha since breaking with the Syrian regime in 2012, and Qatar has worked
to rehabilitate the group politically and financially ever since. In October of that
year, Qatar's emir visited the Gaza Strip himself, pledging $400 million in aid.
Before and during the latest Gaza war, fellow Gulf states began to lobby in
Washington to get tough with Qatar. In 2013, the UAE spent $14 million -- more than
any other country -- on lobbying in Washington, according to data compiled by the
Sunlight Foundation. The Camstoll Group, which has been linked to recent media
coverage, has held a contract since 2012 that disclosure documents indicate can
represent fees of up to $400,000 a month. In the first half of 2013, it earned $4.3
million for activities that disclosure documents describe as advising on matters of
"illicit financial activities." (Disclosure: Foreign Policy's PeaceGame program,
presented in conjunction with the U.S. Institute of Peace, is underwritten in part by
a grant from the UAE Embassy. All FP editorial content, however, is entirely
independent.)
Heads have begun to in Washington. In a Sept. 9 hearing in the U.S. House of
Representatives, witnesses and congressmen suggested measures that would
dramatically recast the relationship between Washington and Doha. In testimony,
Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, proposed measures that could "send shock waves through the Qatari
financial system": designating charities and individuals in Qatar, putting a hold on an
$11 billion arms deal, and even opening an assessment into the cost of moving the U.S.
military base away from the emirate.
"Excellent ideas," hearing chairman Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) said in reply to the
witnesses. "We ought to take them all and implement as many as we can."
The U.S. Treasury Department is also stepping up efforts to crack down on al Qaeda
and Islamic State funds; on Sept. 24, it designated several individuals with links to
Qatar. In addition to a Qatari national alleged to have moved funds from Gulf donors
to Afghanistan, the designations include Tariq Bin-Al-Tahar Bin Al Falih Al-Awni Al-
Harzi, who gathered support from Qatar, including by arranging for the Islamic
State "to receive approximately $2 million from a Qatar-based [Islamic State]
financial facilitator, who required that Al-Harzi use the funds for military operations
only," the designation says.
Doha's pushback in reply is just the latest iteration of a long-running bidding war
among Gulf states for Washington's favor. Qatar has increased its visibility in
Washington in recent years, holding active contracts with lobbying groups Patton
Boggs, Barbour Griffith and Rogers, and BGR Government Affairs. With its vast
philanthropic arms, it has sponsored everything from student exchange programs to
the congressional charity baseball game. Since the global financial crisis, various
Qatari investment funds have also invested in property in Washington, Chicago, and
elsewhere.
Qatar's money runs even more obliquely as well, through the dozens of
consultants, businessmen, and former officials whom it has hired at one point or
another.
Qatar's money runs even more obliquely as well, through the dozens of consultants,
businessmen, and former officials whom it has hired at one point or another. Take the
Soufan Group, for example, a well-regarded consultancy on counterterrorism and
intelligence. Its founder, Ali Soufan, is also executive director of the Qatar
International Academy for Security Studies (QIASS) in Doha, a government-funded
center that offers several-week courses to government and military employees.
Several other Soufan Group employees are also listed as employees there -- an
affiliation they rarely disclose in U.S. media interviews. Reached by telephone, Lila
Ghosh, communications specialist at the group, told FP that the firm did not do any
work on behalf of Qatar within the United States.
QIASS also appears to have given former Obama White House spokesman Robert
Gibbs's new PR group, the Incite Agency, one of its first jobs. Just weeks after it
opened, Incite handled RSVPs for an event co-hosted by the Soufan Group and
QIASS on "countering violent extremism." The Incite Agency did not return
repeated calls from FP seeking to clarify its relationship with QIASS.
But the biggest reason that Qatar is likely to remain in good favor with Washington
isn't money or influence, but necessity. As the United States ramps up a coalition
against the Islamic State militants, it will need first and foremost its air base in
Qatar, which is serving as the command center for operations -- and then once again,
the cover of Arab support.
With Syria and Iraq in chaos, both countries are now populated by a range of
extremist actors whom Washington won't want to negotiate with. Doha's up for that
job. Most recently, Qatar was called in to help negotiate the release of 45 U.N.
peacekeepers taken captive by al-Nusra Front -- and on Sept. 12 it announced that it
had successfully won the soldiers' release. Qatar insists that a ransom was not paid;
perhaps the network of Doha-based funders gave the government a certain leverage
over the group. Or it just may be that the al Qaeda affiliate wants something even
more valuable.
"I think what Qatar can give them is legitimacy," suggests Krieg. In al-Nusra Front's
official demands regarding the peacekeeper hostages, for example, it had asked to
be taken off the U.N. sanctions list. "Nusra wants to be seen as a legitimate partner
against [the Islamic State]; Qatar might be able to offer them a platform in the
future," Krieg says.
That's essentially what Qatar has long offered its friends: a platform, with access to
money, media, and political capital. Washington has so far played along, but the
question is whether the United States is actually getting played.
Mohammed Saber/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Karim Jafaar/AFP