A Wahabi Islamic state which eschews every principle of democracy while actively and openly supporting half a dozen proscribed terrorist organisations, Qatar lies on that fine line which divides America's ‘Axis of evil’ from America’s ‘Major Non-NATO Allies.’
‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer’ is a popular axiom in Western corridors of power. Those who parrot it may think they stand in the tradition of Prince Metternich or Henry Kissinger or maybe Jesus of Nazareth. But they do not. It was Don Corleone who first uttered the phrase and we should remind ourselves that those who enter into such cynical pacts with good intentions are virtually always the first deceived. A policy of acceptance toward the tiny gulf emirate is now rebounding on the West faster than America wishes to acknowledge.
If Qatar’s worldwide civic and diplomatic projects (if we may call the egregious bribery of senior European Union officials ‘diplomacy’), aren’t enough to tell you how delusional we are being, it is written in the very constitution of the feudal Al Thani state that Qatar wishes to become the diplomatic power broker between the democratic West and their own ideological allies.
Over the last twenty years, proscribed terrorist organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, the Al-Nusra Front and ISIS have all sought and received support and succor from Qatar, whose glittering capital, Doha, glitters with the wealth that Europe and the West pour into its coffers.
But it was the 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan which lost the West’s craven appeasement its veil of plausible deniability.
Qatar’s Al Udeid Allied airbase - used jointly by the USA, UK and Australia - was instrumental to the evacuation of 70,000 allied troops from Afghanistan as the country fell to the Taliban. Or at least that was the type of wording used by Qatari PR machine Al Jazeera - omitting that the Taliban are major allies of Qatar.
Early 2022, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani then became the first foreign leader to visit Washington in the wake of COVID-19, and Qatar received acclaim for hosting the US-Afghan embassy in Doha, because it was now too dangerous for US diplomats to set foot in Kabul. It’s not the first time Washington have lost foreign conflicts - but it may be the first time they have kow-towed so insufferably to the victors.
In a speech weirdly evocative of Chamberlain’s ‘Peace in Our Times,’ President Biden lavished Qatar with praise for its help during the surrender of Afghanistan to Al Thani’s own allies and used the Emir’s visit to bestow on Qatar the status of ‘Major Non-NATO Ally.’ Of the three major Non-NATO Allies in the Persian gulf, Qatar immediately stood as the odd one out. Openly hostile to the other two, it was embargoed by Dubai and Kuwait as well as the rest of the Arab League in 2017 for its support of terrorism.
Months later, Biden would have to lend his spluttering support to Israel, following the October 7th attack. Needless to say, Hamas had already taken up residence with America's new buddies in Doha. Perhaps the US should have heeded the 2017 warnings of Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt - but Americans are not the only ones to blame.
The rest of NATO should also have seen how Biden was abusing its collective mandate. Like some broke Holy Roman elector handing out trinkets of the bloc’s diplomatic approval, it was a craven act of appeasement which vindicates every accusation that has been thrown at the bloc, from within and from without, since the end of the Cold War: that NATO has lost its purpose, has become a tool of Western expansion, uses third countries to project itself abroad and is unable in any case to protect its own interests. And all this at the very moment that NATO’s legitimate purpose is being tested with an invasion of Eastern Europe.
For a decade, Qatar has received the hand-wringing approval of successive democratic governments who hope to keep a lid on things for long enough that it will not be on their watch that hopes of reciprocation are replaced by pleas for mercy and expensive foreign interventions to protect the lives which were pawned by our over-abundant diplomacy.
We tell ourselves that we can control the situation - a message bolstered by Al Jazeera. We tell ourselves that it is indeed our decision to keep Qatar close and that we are still the more powerful partner in this faustian pact.
But if NATO still has a role to play in the protection of the West, it must prove that it is not simply a vehicle for its members’ interests to move as one under the pretense of military defence. When a nation like Qatar is brought into the fold not in spite of, but because of their relationship with the enemies of the West, it is up to us to save our credibility - not NATO’s critics.
Stefan Tompson is the founder of Visegrad24, a Warsaw-based social media news company. He has covered conflicts in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Matthew Tyrmand is the founder and head of V24 Investigations, the undercover investigative arm of Visegrad24. He has covered geopolitics in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
