The State of Qatar has become a real paradox in the Middle East as it is considered a major Western asset while at the same time being a terror-supporting state. As a matter of fact, while Qatar is a strategic U.S. ally, hosting the Al Udeid Air Base, supporting U.S. regional strategy and counterterrorism efforts, as well as being designated as a major non-NATO ally, Doha has a long history of support for various terrorist groups, including Hamas, Jabhat al-Nusra, and Hezbollah. This situation raises a question: how can Qatar be an ally against terrorism if at the same time it supports it? Furthermore, why have there been no strong steps against Doha on behalf of the West, such as the ones taken against other terror-supporting states such as Iran, Cuba, North Korea or the former regimes in Syria and Libya led by Assad and Gheddafi?
The recent developments in the Middle East after Trump’s recent visit are of extreme concern, especially since the US President announced a titanic $1.2 trillion economic commitment with Doha and the will to accept a $400 million luxury aircraft to serve as a present, to serve as new Air Force One and then go to Trump’s personal use, raising major constitutional and ethical issues. Trump also spent words of great appreciation for Qatar, stating that the relations between the two nations are “stronger than ever” and that “America will protect Qatar”.
After the October 7th massacre, Qatar has been presented and enrolled as the main mediator between Hamas and Israel. The new Trump administration strongly renewed the will to see Doha involved in the effort to achieve a “deal” on the end of the war in Gaza.
Unfortunately, very few are willing to acknowledge and publicly admit that Doha is not exactly an impartial mediator, but it is rather pursuing Hamas’ interest which, at this stage, means surviving the war and, eventually, remaining in control of Gaza as the next step.
Qatar has been sheltering the Hamas leadership for many years, and it still does, despite requests and insufficient pressure to have them expelled. The Qataris have been using Hamas as a tool for hegemonic objectives. As explained by Jennifer Teale, a Middle East analyst for the Israel Defense and Security Forum-IDSF:
“By backing Hamas, Qatar solidifies its standing among Arab and Muslim populations who view the group as a resistance movement and perpetuates its relevance on the global stage, enabling terrorist groups that destabilize the region and threaten Israeli security. Its ability to navigate its mediator role without exacerbating violence will indeed determine its future influence”.
Since 2007, sent over $1.8 billion into the Strip and, in 2021, Doha pledged $360 million of yearly support to Gaza, as reported by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Digging deeper into the issue, it is possible to highlight how Qatar has a very long history of supporting Islamist terrorism since the early 2000s, from the Chechens to Al-Qaeda in Syria.
For instance, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a Chechen terrorist leader who fought alongside the infamous Shamil Basayev, found refuge in Qatar in the year 2000. In Doha, Yandarbiyev tried to obtain economic aid to carry out the anti-Russian jihad in the North Caucasus. In October 2002, Yandarbiyev was indicated by Russian intelligence as one of the masterminds of the bloody terrorist attack at the Dubrovka theater in Moscow, thus ending up in the sights of the FSB.
Moscow was aware of the terrorist’s presence in Doha and repeatedly requested his extradition to Qatar, but to no avail. On February 13th, 2004, Yandarbiyev died when an explosive device blew up the SUV he was traveling in. The following day, the Qatari police arrested three Russian citizens working at their embassy and two of them were accused of being FSB agents. A Qatari court sentenced them to life imprisonment for the attack, but following a bitter diplomatic clash between Moscow and Doha the two were extradited to Russia and amnestied.
In 2003, the US Congress was alerted on several charities in Qatar supporting al-Qaeda. Since then, Qatar has been accused of not only providing refuge to terrorism financiers but also of directly funding terrorist groups. Around ten years later, in December 2014, U.S. Congressmen Peter Roskam and Brad Sherman requested that the U.S. place sanctions on Qatar and provide Congress with a full report on their financing ties to Hamas, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, sanctions were never applied.
It is worth remembering that during the year of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership in Egypt, between 2012 and 2013, former Islamist president Mohamed Morsy, who was strongly supported by Qatar, made an alliance with the Iranian regime and provided support to Hamas.
In 2013, Qatar allowed the Taliban to open an office in Doha, with the support of the Obama administration which also tried to present the Muslim Brotherhood as a new Islamic democratic force in the Middle East ready to replace the secular regimes. When the Taliban retook power in 2021, the Taliban’s political leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was flown to Kandahar from Doha by the Qatari Air Force.
In 2017, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates embargoed Qatar. They also cut diplomatic ties and issued a trade embargo until Qatar complied with a list of demands, including shutting down Al-Jazeera and closing ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter had long been active in subversive activities in countries such as Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, and Tunisia.
In February 2018, in an in-depth report for the UK government concerning the diplomatic crisis between Qatar and its Gulf neighboring nations, intelligence specialist Steven Merley highlighted Doha’s role in the financial support for jihadist groups in Syria such as the former Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch at the time) and the “Army of Conquest Coalition”.
Merley also indicated that Qatar had a history of either paying or helping facilitate ransom payments to Al-Nusra and ended the report with one clear recommendation: “The UK should exert maximum pressure on the Qatari government to cease any support to Islamist terror”.
However, Qatar’s support for Islamist terrorism seems to go beyond the Sunni world, as Doha’s money may have reached the Shia axis as well. Something that should not come as a surprise, considering the friendly relations that Doha maintains with the Iranian regime. In fact, in July 2020, a private security contractor who worked for the German security services revealed to the German weekly news outlet Die Zeit that Doha was financing Hezbollah. According to the story, the contractor came across an alleged weapons deal handled by a company in Qatar bound for Hezbollah. Specifically, the money flows came from several rich Qataris and exiled Lebanese people from Doha to Hezbollah. The donations were said to have been processed with the knowledge of influential government officials through a charity organization in Doha.
In addition, Die Zeit also reported that Qatar offered the contractor €750,000 in exchange for maintaining silence about Qatar’s funding of Hezbollah; the offer was allegedly made through Qatar’s Ambassador to Belgium Abdulrahman bin Mohammed Sulaiman al-Khulaifi.
Moreover, Qatar is also a major exporter of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology to the Muslim diaspora in the West, with a cascade of money to the numerous Islamic organizations and associations in Europe, as detailed in the book “Qatar Papers” by Chesnot and Malbrunot. This mechanism aims to expand and maintain hegemony over organized Islam in Europe to influence its internal policies towards Muslims and foreign policies.
It is essential to recall how the Qatari news platform, Al-Jazeera, has been promoting and spreading Hamas narratives and exclusive October 7 propaganda material that included Hamas senior military commanders during the planning of the massacre, a footage of Yahya Sinwar visiting terrorists on the ground, and al-Jazeera reporters visiting Hamas terrorists in the tunnels underneath Gaza.
As reported by MEMRI: “the editorial policy of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera Network is dictated by the Qatari regime in accordance with its interests, and that the network serves as a mouthpiece for Qatar’s ally and protégé, Hamas”.
Moreover, al-Jazeera also came under fire on several occasions for promoting anti-Semitic views, like in May 2019, when it launched a video branded as “Holocaust denial” on Arabic youth channel AJ+, which claimed that Jews exaggerated the scale of the genocide to help establish Israel.
Given that the above is only a very limited part of a much larger picture linking Qatar to Islamist extremism and terrorism, both in the Middle East and in Europe, it is difficult to justify the fact that Doha has never been sanctioned nor included in the blacklist of countries that support terrorism.
The fact that Qatar is a seemingly necessary ally for the United States and a major financier in the West, not only in academia but also in sports and politics, as demonstrated in Europe by Qatargate, implies that Qatar can continue to benefit from extreme tolerance. No one in the West has dared to go beyond a few warnings or reminders to Doha regarding its support for terrorism. As if that were not enough, Qatar has even become the major mediator of a conflict in which it is indirectly involved since saving Hamas is in Doha’s interest.
It is hard to believe that Washington is willing to even criticize Qatar, as the latest developments have shown. Doha is well aware of this and it is putting strong effort in trying to please Trump in every possible way, while at the same time it is pushing its own agenda, and it is no coincidence that Hamas is still standing.
The status elevation that the Trump administration is providing to Qatar, and consequently to the Muslim Brotherhood, puts at serious risk the safety and security of not just Israel, but the of the West as well, and the stability of the Middle East. It would therefore be important to be extremely cautious and verify Qatar’s activity because, regardless of the understanding the need for realpolitik, it is not possible to ignore these very problematic activities.