The man in the above photo on the right thinks man on left is a dumb ass.
If the Middle East were one big room, Qatar would be the elephant,
according to a growing number of regional experts who believe the oil
rich emirate is propping up violent jihadists around the globe even as
it poses as a U.S. ally and would-be broker of peace.
Israel has long complained of Qatar's alleged duplicity, accusing it
of meddling, bankrolling Hamas in Gaza, exporting radical Islamic
terrorism through its tight links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al
Nusra. And a German official recently suggested that Qatar may also play
a role in funding Islamic State, the savage extremist group behind the
beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley.
"You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops? The key
word there is Qatar - and how do we deal with these people and states
politically?" German Development Minister Gerd Muller said last week.
In response, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammed al-Attiyah unequivocally denied funding the Islamic State group.
"Qatar does not support extremist groups, including ISIS, in any
way," he said in an emailed statement. "We are repelled by their views,
their violent methods and their ambitions. The vision of extremist
groups for the region is one that we have not, nor will ever, support in
any way."
Indeed, Qatar was one of the first Middle Eastern countries to
condemn Foley's murder, saying it was "a heinous crime that goes against
all Islamic and humanitarian principles, as well as international laws
and conventions."
Qatar hosts a U.S. military base, helped broker U.S.-backed peace
talks between Israel and Hamas, helped free U.S. journalist Peter Theo
Curtis from Al Nusra earlier this week and even played a role in the
U.S. swap of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Guantanamo Bay detainees
earlier this year.
Yet previous statements from U.S. officials indicate that they know Qatar has a multi-faceted role in the region.
“Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally, has for many years openly financed
Hamas, a group that continues to undermine regional stability,”
Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen told
the Center for New American Security on "Confronting New Threats in
Terrorist Financing" in March. “Press reports indicate that the Qatari
government is also supporting extremist groups operating in Syria. To
say the least, this threatens to aggravate an already volatile situation
in a particularly dangerous and unwelcome manner.”
Qatar is a U.S. “frenemy,” according to Jonathan Schanzer, of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies. On one hand, it hosts the biggest
U.S. military base in the Middle East at Al Udeid; invests tens of
billions of dollars in the U.S and across the globe in a bid to make
itself indispensable and acts as the ‘white knight’ intermediary in
hostage negotiations.
On the other hand, Qatar is arming and funding Hamas in Gaza,
brazenly fueling violent Arab uprisings including the brief and bloody
reign in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood and is long alleged to be
arming vicious rebel groups in Libya, Mali, Syria, Iraq, and Tunisia.
“Qatar is trying to cozy up to everyone," Meir Dagan, former head of
Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, warned the U.S. in a 2010 cable
revealed by Wikileaks. "I think that you should remove your bases from
[Qatar]. [The Qataris] owe their security to the presence of the
Americans.”
Noting that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have
all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar, Mort Klein, president of the
Zionist Organization of America, called for Qatar to be designated a
state sponsor of terrorism.
"If we can get that done, then we can stop [the sale of U.S.] defense
equipment and arms to Qatar.," Klein said. "There is an $11 billion
deal to Qatar right now to sell them Apache helicopters, Patriot
missiles, anti-tank rockets and such. This [designation] would enable
both Israeli and Arab victims of Hamas attacks to sue Qatar in the
United States.”
Klein is also working to try to suspend the FAA license for Qatar
government-owned airline Qatar Airways to operate in the United States,
but admits that getting enough U.S. politicians to speak out is a
challenge.
Qatar’s policy of involving itself in so many different spheres on
the world stage might finally be catching up with the tiny Gulf state
that has a native population of just 250,000. The more Qatar seeks the
limelight, the more scrutiny it attracts, and a growing number of
informed observers around the world appear to increasingly believe that
Qatar's two-faced foreign policy posture is being exposed.
“There are simply too many links, this network is too great, for us
to pretend these are isolated instances of misguided individuals
operating independently of government policy; or that this is merely
part of talking to all sides in an argument,” Martin Samuel of Britain’s
Daily Mail noted earlier this year. “Qatar has systematic and
long-standing associations with some extremely dangerous people and
information to support these allegations are established and in the
public domain.”