Qatar-Brotherhood marriage of convenience has created the natural incubator
of Islamist armed fundamentalists against whom the US, since September 11,
2001, has been leading what is labeled as the "global war on terrorism,"
notes Nicola Nasser.
2013-01-25
In his inaugural address on January 21, US President Barak Obama made the
historic announcement that "a decade of war is ending" and declared his
country's determination to "show the courage to try and resolve our
differences with other nations peacefully," but his message will remain
words that have yet to be translated into deeds and has yet to reach some of
the US closest allies in the Middle East who are still beating the drums of
war, like Israel against Iran and Qatar against Syria.
In view of the level of "coordination" and "cooperation" since bilateral
diplomatic relations were established in 1972 between the US and Qatar, and
the concentration of US military power on this tiny peninsula, it seems
impossible that Qatar could move independently apart, in parallel with, away
or on a collision course with the US strategic and regional plans.
According to the US State department's online fact sheet, "bilateral
relations are strong," both countries are "coordinating" diplomatically and
"cooperating" on regional security, have a "defense pact," "Qatar hosts
CENTCOM Forward Headquarters," and supports NATO and US regional "military
operations. Qatar is also an active participant in the US - led efforts to
set up an integrated missile defense network in the Gulf region. Moreover,
it hosts the US Combined Air Operations Center and three American military
bases namely Al Udeid Air Base, Assaliyah Army Base and Doha International
Air Base, which are manned by approximately 5,000 US forces.
Qatar, which is bound by such a most intimate and closest alliance with the
United States, has recently developed into the major sponsor of Islamist
political movements. Qatar appears now to be the major sponsor of the
international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, which, reportedly,
disbanded in Qatar in 1999 because it stopped to view the ruling family as
an adversary.
The Qatar -Brotherhood marriage of convenience has created the natural
incubator of Islamist armed fundamentalists against whom the US, since
September 11, 2001, has been leading what is labeled as the "global war on
terrorism."
The war in the African nation Mali offers the latest example on how the US
and Qatar, seemingly, go on two separate ways. Whereas US Secretary of
Defense, Leon Panetta, was in London on January 18 "commending" the French
"leadership of the international effort" in Mali to which his country was
pledging logistical, transportation and intelligence support, Qatar appeared
to risk its special ties with France, which peaked during the NATO - led war
on Libya, and to distrust the US and French judgment.
On January 15, Qatari Prime and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem
al-Thani, told reporters he did not believe "power will solve the problem,"
advised instead that this problem be "discussed" among the "neighboring
countries, the African Union and the (UN) Security Council," and joined the
Doha - based ideologue for the Muslim Brotherhood and their Qatari sponsors,
Yusuf Abdullah al - Qaradawi -- the head of the International Union of
Muslim Scholars who was refused entry visa to UK in 2008 and to France last
year - in calling for "dialogue," "reconciliation" and "peaceful solution"
instead of "military intervention."
In a relatively older example, according to WikiLeaks, Somalia's former
president in 2009, Sharif Ahmed, told a US diplomat that Qatar was
channeling financial assistance to the al-Qaeda - linked Shabab
al-Mujahideen, which the US listed as "terrorist."
In Syria, for another example, the Brotherhood is the leading "fighting"
force against the ruling regime and in alliance with and a culprit in the
atrocities of the terrorist bombings of the al-Qaeda - linked Al-Nusra
Front, designated by the United States as a terrorist organization last
December; while the Brotherhood - led and US and Qatar - sponsored Syrian
opposition publicly protested the US designation, the silence of Qatar on
the matter could only be interpreted as in support of the protest against
the US decision.
Recently, Qatar has, for another example, replaced Syria, which has been on
the US list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979, as the sponsor of
Hamas, whose leadership relocated from Damascus to Doha, which the US lists
as a "terrorist" group, and which publicly admits being the Palestinian
branch of the Brotherhood.
Qatar, in all these examples, seems positioning itself to be qualified as a
mediator, with the US blessing, trying to achieve by the country's financial
leverage what the US could not achieve militarily, or could achieve but with
a much more expensive cost in money and souls.
In the Mali case, the Qatari PM Sheikh Hamad went on record to declare this
ambition: "We will be a part of the solution, (but) not the sole mediator,"
he said. The US blessing could not be more explicit than President Obama's
approval of opening the Afghani Taliban office in Doha "to facilitate" a
"negotiated peace in Afghanistan," according to the Qatari Foreign Ministry
on January 16.
However, a unilateral Qatari mediation failed in Yemen, a Qatar - led Arab
mediation in Syria has similarly proved a failure two years on the Syrian
crisis, the "Doha Declaration" to reconcile Palestinian rival factions is
still a paper achievement, the Qatari mediation in Sudan's Darfur crisis has
yet to deliver, the Qatari "mediation" in Libya was condemned as
intervention in the country's internal affairs by the most prominent among
the post - Gaddafi leaders, and in post - "Arab Spring" Egypt Qatar dropped
its early mediation efforts to align itself publicly to the ruling
Brotherhood. But in spite of these failures, Qatar's "mediation" efforts
were successful in serving the strategy of its US "ally."
Hence the US blessing. The Soufan Group's intelligence analysts on last
December 10 concluded that "Qatar continues to prove itself to be a pivotal
US ally, . Qatar is often able to implement shared US-Qatari objectives that
Washington is unable or unwilling to undertake itself."
The first term Obama administration, under the pressure of "fiscal
austerity," blessed the Qatari funding of arming anti - Gaddafi Islamists in
Libya, closed its eyes to Qatar's shipment of Gaddafi's military arsenal to
Syrian and non - Syrian Islamists fighting the regime in Syria, "understood"
the visit of Qatar's Emir to Gaza last October as "a humanitarian mission,"
and recently approved to arm the Qatar - backed and Brotherhood - led Egypt
with 20 F-16 fighter jets and 200 M1A1 Abrams tanks.
This contradiction raises the question about whether this is a US - Qatari
mutual collusion or it is really a conflict of interests; the Obama
administration during his second term has to draw the line which would give
an explicit answer.
Seemingly nowadays, Doha and Washington do not see eye to eye on Islamic and
Islamist movements, but on the battle grounds of the "war on terror" both
capitals could hardly argue that in practice their active roles are not
coordinated and do not complement each other.
Drawing on the historical experience of an Iranian similar "religious"
approach, but on a rival "Shiite" sectarian basis, this Qatari "Sunni"
Islamist" connection will inevitably fuel sectarian polarization in the
region, regional instability, violence and civil wars.
Given the US - Qatar alliance, the Qatari Islamist connection threatens to
embroil the US in more regional strife, or at least to hold the US
responsible for the resulting strife, and would sustain a deep - seated
regional anti - Americanism, which in turn has become another incubator of
extremism and terrorism and which is exacerbated by the past "decade of
war," which President Obama in his inaugural address promised to "end."
Traditionally, Qatar, which stands in the eye of the storm in the very
critical geopolitical volatile Gulf region, the theatre of three major wars
during the last three decades, did its best to maintain a critical and
fragile balance between the two major powers which determine its survival,
namely the decades - old US military presence in the Gulf and the rising
regional power of Iran.
In 1992 it signed a comprehensive bilateral defense pact with the United
States and in 2010 it signed a military defense agreement with Iran, which
explains its warming up to closer ties with the Iran - supported Islamic
anti - Israel resistance movements of the Hezbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in
the Israeli - occupied Palestinian territories and explains as well Qatar's
"honey moon" with Iran's ally in Syria.
However, since the eruption of the bloody Syrian crisis two years ago, the
Qatari opening up to regional pro - Iran state and non-state powers was
exposed as merely a tactical maneuver to lure such powers away from Iran. In
the Syrian and Hezbullah cases, the failure of this tactic has led Qatar to
embark on a collision course with both Syria and Iran, which are backed by
Russia and China, and is leading the country to a U-turn shift away from its
long maintained regional balancing act, a shift that Doha seems unaware of
its threat to its very survival under the pressure of the international and
regional conflicting interests as bloodily exposed in the Syrian crisis.
During the rise of the massive Pan-Arab, nationalist, socialist and
democratic movements in the Arab world early in the second half of the
twentieth century, the conservative authoritarian Arab monarchies adopted
the Brotherhood, other Islamists and Islamic political ideology and used
them against those movements to survive as allies of the United States,
which in turn used both, spearheaded by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, against the
former Soviet Union and the communist ideology, to their detriment after the
collapse of the bipolar world order.
However history seems to repeat itself as the US - backed Arab monarchies,
spearheaded by Qatar, are resorting to their old tactic of exploiting the
Islamist ideology to undermine and preempt an Arab anti - authoritarian
revolution for the rule of law, civil society, democratic institutions and
social and economic justice in Arab countries on the periphery of their US
protected bastion in the Arabian peninsula, but they seem unaware they are
opening a Pandora's box that would unleash a backlash in comparison to which
al - Qaeda's fall back on the US will prove a minor precedent.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of
the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
