October 02, 2014

Digging deeper into Qatar

editor:	Murat Suner

Qatar’s emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani denied accusations that his country funds extremist groups in Syria, while stressing the Persian Gulf state's commitment to the US-led campaign against ISIL, operating in Iraq and Syria.

However, according to Foreign Policy (FP), the emirate of Qatar "has pumped tens of millions of dollars through obscure funding networks to hard-line Syrian rebels and extremist Salafists..."

The FP report points out that a network of Islamist-leaning proxies spans former Syrian generals, Taliban insurgents, Somali Islamists, and Sudanese rebels plays a major role in "destabilizing nearly every trouble spot in the region and in accelerating the growth of radical and jihadi factions."

Over the last 15 years "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." says Elizabeth Dickinson, author of the FP report.

So far the U.S. seems to having playing along while Qatar was offering various violent groups a platform with access to "money, media, and political capital."

The question is whether and how this could change, now that Qatar joined Washington's campaign against ISIL.