Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Qatar and U.S.: Collusion or Conflict of Interests
By Nicola Nasser**
In his inaugural address on
January 21, U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. and Qatar , and the concentration of U.S. 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 U.S.
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 U.S. Qatar
is also an active participant in the U.S.
The Qatar
–Brotherhood marriage of convenience has created the natural incubator of
Islamist armed fundamentalists against whom the U.S.
The war in the African nation Mali
offers the latest example on how the U.S.
and Qatar
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 (U.N.) 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 U.K. 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 U.S.
diplomat that Qatar was
channeling financial assistance to the al-Qaeda – linked Shabab al-Mujahideen,
which the U.S.
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 U.S. and Qatar – sponsored Syrian
opposition publicly protested the U.S. designation, the silence of Qatar on the
matter could only be interpreted as in support of the protest against the U.S.
decision.
Recently, Qatar
has, for another example, replaced Syria ,
which has been on the U.S.
list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979, as the sponsor of Hamas, whose leadership
relocated from Damascus to Doha ,
which the U.S.
Qatar, in all these examples, seems positioning itself to
be qualified as a mediator, with the U.S. blessing, trying to achieve by the
country’s financial leverage what the U.S. could not achieve militarily, or
could achieve but with a much more expensive cost in money and souls.
In the Mali U.S. 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
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 U.S.
Hence the U.S.
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 U.S.
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 U.S. – Qatar alliance, the Qatari Islamist connection
threatens to embroil the U.S. in more regional strife, or at least to hold the
U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. –
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
U.S. 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 U.S. will prove a minor precedent.
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir
Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
* nassernicola@ymail.com
