Obama’s Islamic State Blame Game

ABU
DHABI and DOHA — Behind a glittering mall near Doha's city center sits the
quiet restaurant where Hossam used to run his Syrian rebel brigade. At the
battalion's peak in 2012 and 2013, he had 13,000 men under his control near the
eastern city of Deir Ezzor. "Part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), they are loyal
to me," he said over sweet tea and sugary pastries this spring. "I had a good
team to fight."

Hossam,
a middle-aged Syrian expat, owns several restaurants throughout Doha, Qatar,
catering mostly to the country's upper crust. The food is excellent, and at
night the tables are packed with well-dressed Qataris, Westerners, and Arabs. Some of his revenue still goes toward
supporting brigades and civilians with humanitarian goods — blankets, food,
even cigarettes.

He
insists that he has stopped sending money to the battle, for now. His brigade's
funds came, at least in part, from Qatar, he says, under the discretion of then
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah. But the
injection of cash was ad hoc: Dozens of other brigades like his received
initial start-up funding, and only some continued to receive Qatari support as
the months wore on. When the funds ran out in mid-2013, his fighters sought
support elsewhere. "Money plays a big role in the FSA, and on that front, we
didn't have," he explained.

Hossam
is a peripheral figure in a vast Qatari network of Islamist-leaning proxies
that spans former Syrian generals, Taliban insurgents, Somali Islamists, and Sudanese
rebels. He left home in 1996 after more than a decade under pressure from the
Syrian regime for his sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of his friends
were killed in a massacre of the group in Hama province in 1982 by then President
Hafez al-Assad. He finally found refuge here in Qatar and built his business
and contacts slowly. Mostly, he laid low; Doha used to be quite welcoming to
the young President Bashar al-Assad and his elegant wife, who were often
spotted in the high-end fashion boutiques before the revolt broke out in 2011.

When
the Syrian war came and Qatar dropped Assad, Hossam joined an expanding pool of
middlemen whom Doha called upon to carry out its foreign policy of supporting
the Syrian opposition. Because there were no established rebels when the
uprising started, Qatar backed the upstart plans of expats and businessmen who
promised they could rally fighters and guns. Hossam, like many initial rebel
backers, had planned to devote his own savings to supporting the opposition. Qatar's
donations made it possible to think bigger.

In
recent months, Qatar's Rolodex of middlemen like Hossam has proved both a
blessing and a curse for the United States. On one hand, Washington hasn't
shied away from calling on Doha's connections when it needs them: Qatar orchestrated
the prisoner swap that saw U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl freed in exchange for
five Taliban prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. And it ran the negotiations with
al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, that freed American writer Peter
Theo Curtis in August. "Done," Qatari intelligence chief Ghanim Khalifa
al-Kubaisi reportedly texted a contact — adding a thumbs-up emoticon —
after the release was completed.

But
that same Qatari network has also played a major role in destabilizing nearly
every trouble spot in the region and in accelerating the growth of radical and
jihadi factions. The results have ranged from bad to catastrophic in the
countries that are the beneficiaries of Qatari aid: Libya is mired in a war
between proxy-funded militias, Syria's opposition has been overwhelmed by
infighting and overtaken by extremists, and Hamas's intransigence has arguably
helped prolong the Gaza Strip's humanitarian plight.

For
years, U.S. officials have been willing to shrug off Doha's proxy network — or
even take advantage of it from time to time. Qatar's neighbors, however, have
not. Over the past year, fellow Gulf countries Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, and Bahrain have publicly rebuked Qatar for its support of political Islamists
across the region. These countries have threatened to close land borders or suspend Qatar's membership in the regional
Gulf Cooperation Council unless the country backs down. After nearly a year of
pressure, the first sign of a Qatari concession came on Sept. 13,
when seven senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figures left Doha at
the request of the Qatari government.

Both
Qatar and its critics are working to ensure that Washington comes down on their
side of the intra-Gulf dispute. At stake is the future political direction of
the region — and their roles in guiding it.

Late
last week, on Sept. 25, Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept documented
how a Washington, D.C.-based firm retained by the United Arab Emirates made contacts with
journalists that appear to have yielded articles detailing how fundraisers for
groups such as al-Nusra Front and Hamas operate openly in Doha, Qatar's capital.
Foreign Policy also obtained documents from the Camstoll Group, run by
former U.S. Treasury Department official Matthew Epstein. Although some of this
open-source information is referred to in this article, the vast majority of the
reporting comes from months of investigation in the region.

After
several weeks of bad press, Qatar is also going on the offensive. "We don't
fund extremists," Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani told CNN's Christiane Amanpour during his first interview as Qatar's leader
on Sept. 25. Just over a week earlier, Qatar instituted
a new law to regulate charities and prevent them from engaging in politics.
And on Sept. 15, Doha began a new six-month contract with Washington lobbying
firm Portland PR Inc., which may include lobbying Congress and briefing
journalists.

So
far, Washington appears unwilling to confront Qatar directly. Aside from the
U.S. Treasury Department, which last week designated a second Qatari citizen
for supporting al Qaeda in Syria and elsewhere, no senior U.S. administration
officials have publicly called out Doha for its troublesome clients.

The
State Department said that nobody would be available to comment for this
article, but released a fact
sheet on Aug. 26 that describes Qatar as "a valuable partner to the United
States" and credits it with "play[ing] an influential role in the region
through a period of great transformation."

The
question is what the United States is prepared to do about Qatar if it fails to
stem its citizens' support for extremist groups, says Jean-Louis Bruguière, the
former head of the EU and U.S. Treasury Department's joint Terrorist Finance
Tracking Program, now based in Paris. "The U.S. has the tools to monitor state
and state-linked transfers to extremist groups. But intelligence is one thing
and the other is how you react," he told FP by phone. "What kind of political
decision is the U.S. really able to make against states financing terrorism?"

Friends of Qatar

There is no more telling indication of Qatar's
ambitions than the fact that Doha taxi drivers are perpetually lost. With
construction ongoing everywhere — part of a $100 billion infrastructure plan
to prepare for hosting the 2022 World Cup — buildings open and projects come
online so fast that the city's cabbies can't keep up.

On the world stage, Qatar sees its role as no less
grandiose. Beneath the high-chandeliered
ceilings of Doha's five-star hotel lobbies, eager delegations from around the
world make their case for support. Governments, political parties, companies,
and rebel groups scurry in and out nervously, and then wait over hot tea to
have their proposals considered by the relevant Qatari authorities. Which hotel
the visitors stay in indicates their prospects for support. The Four Seasons
and Ritz-Carlton are old favorites; Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has stayed at
the former, the Syrian opposition at the latter. The W Hotel is a posh
newcomer, mostly housing eager European delegations seeking investment or
natural gas. The Sheraton — one of Doha's first hotels — is by now passé;
that's where top Darfuri rebels stayed during negotiations with the Sudanese
government. Everyone wants into the
network, because as one Syrian in Doha put it, "Qatar has money and Qatar can
connect money."

The
winners in this hustle have often been those with the longest ties to this
tiny, gas-rich state — a menagerie of leaders from the global Muslim
Brotherhood. Doha was already becoming an extremist hub by the early 2000s, as
government-funded think tanks and universities popped up filled with Islamist-minded thinkers. The government-funded Al
Jazeera was growing across the
region, offering positive media attention to Brotherhood figures across the
Middle East, and many of the ruling family's top advisors were
Brotherhood-linked expatriates — men like the controversial Egyptian cleric
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who heads the International Union of Muslim
Scholars from Doha.

What
Doha saw in the Muslim Brotherhood was a combination of religiosity and
efficacy that seemed parallel to its own. Moreover, the Qatari ruling family
sought to differentiate itself from competing monarchies Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates (UAE), both of which frown upon political Islam as dangerously
power-seeking. It was pragmatism, argues Salah Eddin Elzein, head of the Al
Jazeera Center for Studies, a think tank associated with the Qatar-owned
satellite network. "Islamists came [to the region] in the 1980s, and Qatar was
trying to ally itself with the forces that it saw as those most likely to be
the dominant forces for the future."

But
the global Muslim Brotherhood isn't Qatar's only — or even its most important
— network. Nor does the royal family subscribe to the Brotherhood's ideals per
se. Often overlooked is a second strand that tows closer to Qatar's official
sympathies: the Salafi movement.

Emerging
in the 1990s, activist Salafists merged the purist ideology of Saudi Arabia's
clerical establishment with the politicized goals of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some of these thinkers would become the first incarnations of al Qaeda, while
others gained a strong foothold in liberated Kuwait, where the first activist Salafi political
party was formed.

It
was in Qatar that the activist Salafists found their benefactor. Over the last
15 years in particular, 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. Clerics have been hosted by ministries and
called to talk for important events. Charities have touted the cause — charities
like the Sheikh Eid bin Mohammad al Thani Charity, regulated by the Qatari
Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, which is "probably
the biggest and most influential activist Salafi-controlled relief organization
in the world," according to a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.

As
early as 2003, the U.S. Congress was made aware that Qatari-based charities
were helping move and launder money linked to al Qaeda, providing employment
and documentation for key figures in the operation. At
the same time, Qatar's global influence was growing: State-backed Qatar Airways
began an aircraft-buying spree in 2007 to fuel its vast expansion, linking the
once far-flung emirate to every corner of the world. And by 2010, Al Jazeera
had evolved into the Arab world's most influential media operation, supported
by a massive annual budget of $650 million.

Just
as the Arab Spring invigorated opposition movements across the Middle East, so
too did it electrify Qatar's network of political clients.

Power projection by proxy

Qatar
was the only Gulf country not to view with trepidation the changes that roiled
the Arab world starting in 2011. Saudi Arabia was shaken by how quickly
Washington dropped its decades-long ally in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. Bahrain
convulsed when its majority Shiite population took to the streets to demand
greater political influence. The UAE joined Qatar in backing NATO strikes in
Libya but was considerably more reticent about the rise of the Muslim
Brotherhood there and in Egypt, fearing the group would invigorate
Islamist-sympathizers among its own population.

Qatar,
meanwhile, placed a long bet that political Islam was the next big thing that would
pay off. "Qatar believes in two things. First, Doha doesn't want the Saudis
to be the major or only player in the Sunni region of the Middle East," says
Kuwaiti political scientist Abdullah al-Shayji. "Second, Qatar wants to
have a role to play as a major power in the region."

Yet
mismatched with its grand ambitions, Qatar's foreign policy faced a key
limitation. The country is home to just under 300,000 nationals, and government
decision-making is concentrated in the hands of just a few officials. Lacking
their own infrastructure, Qatar sought to amplify its impact by working through
its network of Brotherhood and Salafi allies.

"The
Qataris usually work by identifying individuals who they think are
ideologically on the same wavelength," says Andreas Krieg, an assistant
professor at King's College London and an advisor to the Qatar Armed Forces.
"There is no vetting process per se; it's 'these are people we can trust.'"

The
first battlefield test of Qatar's proxy chain was in Libya, where there was a
broad regional consensus — as well as U.S. support — to oust then-leader
Muammar al-Qaddafi. Qatar, together with the UAE, had signed on to Western airstrikes
against the regime. But Doha also wanted to help build up rebel capacity on the
ground.

"They
had to literally go to their address book and say, 'Who do we know in Libya?'"
says Krieg. "This is how they coordinated the Libya operation." Doha lined up a
collection of businessmen, old Brotherhood friends, and ideologically aligned
defectors, plying them with tens of millions of dollars and 20,000 tons of
arms, the Wall Street Journal later
estimated. After a months-long war, the rebels took Tripoli and Qaddafi was
dead. Doha's clients found themselves among the most powerful political brokers
in the new Libya. And long after the NATO strikes had ended, some Qatari-backed
militias continued to receive support, says Bruguière.

Amid the initial euphoria of the Arab Spring, many
expected the nascent summer protests in Syria to quickly topple the Assad
regime. Presidents in Tunisia and Egypt had lasted just weeks before resigning,
after all, and the world had quickly rallied to oust a more persistent Qaddafi.
By August, Washington was calling on Assad to step down as well. Not long
thereafter, Qatar began its Syrian
operation, modeled on the Libyan adventure.

Like
the tendering of a contract, Doha issued a call for bidders to help with the
regime's overthrow. "When we started our battalion [in 2012], the Qataris said,
'Send us a list of your members. Send us a list of what you want — the
salaries and support needs,'" Hossam, the Syrian restaurant owner, remembers.
He and dozens of other would-be rebel leaders submitted a pitch. He doesn't say
how much his brigade received, but says his own fundraising efforts for
humanitarian goods have yielded hundreds of thousands of riyals.

Qatar's
friends abroad were also at work. Throughout 2012 and early 2013, activist
Salafists in Kuwait teamed up with Syrian expatriates to build, fund, and supply extremist brigades
that would eventually become groups such as al-Nusra Front and its close ally,
Ahrar al-Sham. Using social media to tout their cause and a deep Rolodex of
Kuwaiti business contacts, clerics and other prominent Kuwaiti Sunnis raised
hundreds of millions of dollars for their clients. They were able to work
essentially unhindered thanks to Kuwait's lax counterterrorism financing laws and its freedoms of association and speech.

One
such donor was the young Kuwaiti Salafi cleric Hajjaj al-Ajmi, who on Aug. 6
was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a funder of terrorism for
backing al-Nusra Front. Ajmi runs the so-called People's
Commission for the Support of the Syrian Revolution, many of whose campaign posters on Twitter
spoke of charity work — giving food or medicine to the needy and displaced.
But back in June 2012, Qatar's Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs
invited the cleric to speak in the coastal city of Al Khor, 30 miles outside
Doha, where he argued
that humanitarian support alone would never topple the Syrian regime.

"Did
you know that bringing down Damascus would not cost more than $10 million?" he
intoned, wagging his fingers from his chair in front of the old Syrian flag
adopted by revolutionaries. "The priority is the support for the jihadists and
arming them."

In
the months that followed, many of Ajmi's campaigns in Kuwait ran parallel
collections in Qatar. Donations could be
placed through a representative named Mubarak al-Ajji, according to campaign posters, which affirm he is under Ajmi's
"supervision." Ajji's Twitter bio
describes him as loving Sunni jihadists who hate "Shiites and infidels." His
timeline is flush with praise for Osama bin Laden.

One
of Ajmi's Kuwaiti colleagues, a cleric named Mohammad al-Owaihan, also used
Qatar as a base, calling
it his "second country" in a tweet in August. As recently as April, Owaihan
solicited Qataris to help prepare fighters for battle on the Syrian coast. "Our
jihad is a jihad of Money in Syria," one poster read,
offering contact numbers in Kuwait and Qatar.

These
fundraising efforts were well-honed appeals, for example placing donors in
special categories for donations of varying sizes. A "gold" gift was 10,000
Qatari riyals ($2,750), while a "silver" donation came in at 5,000 riyals. When
particularly generous donations arrived, Ajji and others reported them on
Twitter, for example posting photos of jewelry turned over to fund the cause.

Among
the grateful rebel brigades that released videos thanking the Kuwaiti cleric
Owaihan is Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafi group that counted an al Qaeda operative as one of its top commanders until he was
killed this year: "O the kind people of Qatar, O people of the Gulf, your money
has arrived," an October 2013 video
from the brigade proclaims. Ajmi boasted of his proximity to Ahrar al-Sham on
Sept. 9 in a tweet
showing the private online message the group's leader sent him when the Kuwaiti
cleric was designated and sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.

All
of these fundraising activities were orchestrated by individuals — not the
government — as Qatar has noted in its defense in recent weeks. But this is
also exactly the point: By relying on middlemen, Doha not only outsourced the
work but also the liability of meddling. And even where it wasn't involved
directly, Qatar is not unaware of what's going on in its network.

Many
clerics in the activist Salafi movement have, like Ajmi, been outspoken in
their backing of groups like al-Nusra Front in Syria — views that have found a
welcome audience among government-backed organizations in Doha. Saudi cleric
Mohammad al-Arefe, who has called for arming jihadists in Syria and Palestine,
was invited by Qatar's Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs in March 2012
and January 2014 to deliver a Friday sermon and a lecture at Qatar's Grand
Mosque. Kuwaiti Salafist Nabil al-Awadhy — a known fundraiser for groups close to al-Nusra Front — was the
featured lecturer in Qatar at a Ramadan festival on July 4, 2014, hosted by a
charity and aid group closely linked with the government.

Hostage to proxies

Qatar's Arab Spring strategy began to fail in the
same place it was conceived, amid the masses of protesters in Cairo's Tahrir
Square. On July 3, 2013, demonstrators
cheered on the Egyptian military's ouster of Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi,
whose government Qatar had backed to the tune of $5 billion.
Within days, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait welcomed the new military-backed
government with combined pledges of $13 billion in aid. Days later, Saudi
Arabia seized control
of backing the Syrian opposition by
installing its preferred political leadership. By early fall, Libya was also falling into
utter disarray, exemplified by the temporary kidnapping of the country's prime minister in October
2013. Doha, which had just seen the ascension of a new 33-year-old emir, meekly
vowed to focus on internal affairs.

"One
of the things about Qatar's foreign policy is the extent to which it has been a
complete and total failure, almost an uninterrupted series of disasters," says
Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. "Except
it's all by proxy, so nothing bad ever happens to Qatar."

In
both Libya and Syria, Qatar helped fund internationally backed umbrella groups
— but it also channeled support to individuals and militias directly. In Libya,
for example, one of Qatar's main conduits to the rebels, the Doha-based cleric
Ali al-Sallabi, clashed furiously with Mahmoud Jibril, a Western-backed leader
who served as interim prime minister until he resigned in October 2011, warning of "chaos" as various factions battled for control.
Today, that warning seems prescient as Libya is mired in an accelerating battle
between various rival militias split along regional and ideological lines. The
UAE, using U.S.-made jets and operating out of Egypt, has reportedly
undertaken several rounds of airstrikes to roll back Qatari-funded Islamists
since mid-August.

But
it is in Syria where Qatar's network most spectacularly misfired. Competition
between Qatari and Saudi clients has rendered the political opposition
toothless, perceived on the ground as a vassal of foreign powers. Meanwhile
throughout 2012 and 2013, the proliferation of upstart rebel groups bred
competition for funding. Some of Qatar's clients became key brigades — groups
such as Liwa al-Tawhid, whose leader unified rebels in a fractious fight to
control Aleppo. Others like Hossam's, however, simply folded or lingered
weakly, focusing on their own ideals and goals.

In
other words, there was no one winner. Qatar and other international powers
haphazardly backed dozens of different brigades and let them fight it out for
who could secure a greater share of the funding. They had few incentives to
cooperate on operations, let alone strategy. Nor did their various backers have
any incentive to push them together, since this might erode their own influence
over the rebels.

Qatar's
bidding system for support also quickly incentivized corruption, as middlemen
began to exaggerate their abilities and contacts on the ground to donors in
Doha. "Often, groups would submit maybe 3,000 names, but in reality there would
be only 300 or 400 people," says Hossam, the restaurant owner. "The extra money
goes in the wrong way. They would do the same thing with operations. If the
actual needs were $1 million, maybe they say $5 million. Then the other $4
million disappears."

The
disarray helped push fighters increasingly toward some of the groups that
seemed to have a stronger command of their funding and their goals — groups
such as al-Nusra Front and eventually the Islamic State, which split from the al Qaeda affiliate in
early 2014. The last year has seen a string of defections from more
moderate groups into these extremist elements. In December 2013, for example,
former Deir Ezzor Free Syrian Army commander Saddam al-Jamal announced
in a video that he was joining the Islamic State because "as days passed, we
realized that [the FSA] was a project that was funded by foreign countries,
especially Qatar," he said.

It's
unlikely that the Qatari government — or any Gulf state — ever backed the
Islamic State, an organization that today has in its cross-hairs all of the
U.S.-allied monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, and vice versa. But as in
Jamal's case, some of the
individuals who benefited from Qatari funds did go on to join more radical
brigades, taking their experience and arms with them.

"Qatar developed early on relations with
rebel groups that later radicalized and joined the Salafi-jihadi universe,
including Nusra and possibly [the Islamic State]," explains Emile Hokayem, senior
fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies. "The evolving nature of the Syrian rebellion created often unintended
and problematic if at times beneficial entanglements."

Even
as the Syrian opposition gravitated toward the extreme, Qatar argued in late
2012 that the world should worry about radicals later. "I am very much against
excluding anyone at this stage, or bracketing them as terrorists, or bracketing
them as al Qaeda," Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah, then minister of state for
foreign affairs, argued
at a security conference in December of that year.

That
sentiment was reiterated by Emir Tamim in his interview with CNN last week,
arguing that it would be a "big
mistake" to lump together all Islamist-leaning groups in Syria as
extremists. Indeed, in all its recent statements rejecting extremism, Doha has mentioned
the Islamic State but never al-Nusra Front by name.

Elzein,
of the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, defends Qatar's support for Islamists
across the Middle East. He describes the spat between Doha and the other Gulf
monarchies as a competition "between powers for the status quo and for change,
where Qatar sided itself with change in the region."

"Qatar's
foreign policy generated a lot of controversy, but perhaps that was part of its
very nature," he says. "When you try something new in a region known to be very
conservative, it's bound to bring that kind of criticism and misperception."

And
indeed, Qatar is far from the only Gulf country whose role in Syria and elsewhere
has had negative repercussions. Saudi Arabia has also backed individuals and
disparate rebel groups in Syria, and the UAE has sided with specific militias
in Libya. In Egypt, a government strongly backed by both countries has overseen
mass human rights abuses as it cracks down against the Muslim Brotherhood.

But
it's still hard to see what Qatar has changed for the better. Although its
intentions to help the Syrian people were almost certainly genuine, a
combination of haphazard methods and support for ideological proxies helped
push the opposition toward both radicalization and disarray.

Washington and Doha

Qatar
had such freedom to run its network for the last three years because Washington
was looking the other way. In fact, in 2011, the United States gave Doha de
facto free rein to do what it wasn't willing to in the Middle East: intervene.

Libya
was a case in point. When U.S. President Barack Obama's administration began
building a coalition for airstrikes in the spring of 2011, it took an approach later coined
"leading from behind": France and Britain took the lead in implementing the
no-fly zone, while Qatar's and the United Arab Emirates' involvement
demonstrated Arab support. When Doha stepped forward to help organize the
rebels, they were broadly welcomed, former U.S. officials said in interviews
with FP.

The
same was true in Syria. Despite reticence among certain camps of the U.S.
government, particularly those who had worked on Libya, it was still the
least-worst option: Qatar, an ally of the United States, could help provide a
regional solution to a conflict the White House had no interest in getting
entangled in. Washington simply asked Doha not to send anti-aircraft and
anti-tank missiles to the rebels, which it occasionally
did anyway.

On
top of the political convenience was the logistical ease of working with the
Qataris. Doha makes decisions quickly — and is willing to take risks. While
the Saudis moved slowly getting arms into Syria, the Qataris sent planes
to move an estimated 3,500 tons
of military equipment in 2012 and 2013, reportedly with the CIA's backing.
"Their interagency process has about three people in it," said one former U.S.
official.

The
same upsides meant that Washington turned to Doha when it sought to make contact with the Afghan Taliban in 2011 and 2012. The
goal was to help smooth the exit of NATO troops from Afghanistan with a
political solution. In on-and-off contacts,
always made indirectly through the Qataris, the Taliban agreed to negotiate —
but first they wanted an office. In June 2013, they got it: a large villa in
the embassy district of Doha near a crowded traffic circle known as Rainbow
Roundabout.

But
Qatar's advantages soon turned into liabilities. As Doha moved from crisis to
crisis, the Qataris showed little ability to choose reliable proxies or to
control them once resources had been pumped in. "My view is that Qatari
policymaking was a bit amateur. When they got in, they showed no staying
power," the ex-U.S. official said.

In
the Taliban case, Doha proved unable or unwilling to stop the Afghan militants
from audaciously raising their flag over their new Qatari villa — an act of
diplomatic symbolism that infuriated Kabul and scuppered talks before they
began. All that could be salvaged from the process, it became clear a year
later, was a prisoner exchange that traded U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top
Taliban commanders being held in Guantánamo Bay.
Qatar gave its assurances that the five operatives would be under close watch
in Doha — but given the country's history, that doesn't necessarily mean they
won't influence the Afghan battlefield.

In
Syria, meanwhile, it wasn't until the Islamic State gained prominence that
Washington sat up and took notice. In March, David S. Cohen, the Treasury
Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, took the
unprecedented step of calling out the Qataris in public for a "permissive terrorist
financing environment." Such stark criticism, counterterrorism experts say, is
usually left for closed-door conversations. A public airing likely indicated
Doha wasn't responsive to Washington's private requests.

This summer, the conflict
between Israel and Hamas also shone fresh light on Qatar's links to extremists
in Palestine. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has been based in Doha since breaking
with the Syrian regime in 2012, and Qatar has worked to rehabilitate the group
politically and financially ever since. In October of that year, Qatar's emir
visited the Gaza Strip himself, pledging $400 million in aid.

Before
and during the latest Gaza war, fellow Gulf states began to lobby in Washington
to get tough with Qatar. In 2013, the UAE spent $14 million — more than any
other country — on lobbying in Washington, according to data compiled by the
Sunlight Foundation. The Camstoll Group, which has been linked
to recent media coverage, has held a contract since 2012 that disclosure documents indicate can represent fees of up to $400,000
a month. In the first half of 2013, it earned $4.3 million for activities that disclosure documents describe as advising on matters of "illicit financial
activities." (Disclosure: Foreign Policy's PeaceGame program, presented in conjunction with the U.S. Institute of Peace, is underwritten in part by a grant from the UAE Embassy. All FP editorial content, however, is entirely independent.)

Heads have begun to in Washington. In a Sept.
9 hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives, witnesses and congressmen
suggested measures that would dramatically recast the relationship between
Washington and Doha. In testimony, Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for
research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, proposed measures that
could "send shock waves through the Qatari financial system": designating
charities and individuals in Qatar, putting a hold on an $11 billion arms deal,
and even opening an assessment into the cost of moving the U.S. military base
away from the emirate.

"Excellent
ideas," hearing chairman Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) said in reply to the witnesses.
"We ought to take them all and implement as many as we can."

The
U.S. Treasury Department is also stepping up efforts to crack down on al Qaeda
and Islamic State funds; on Sept. 24, it designated several individuals with
links to Qatar. In addition to a Qatari national alleged to have moved funds
from Gulf donors to Afghanistan, the designations include Tariq Bin-Al-Tahar
Bin Al Falih Al-Awni Al-Harzi, who gathered support from Qatar, including by
arranging for the Islamic State "to receive approximately $2 million from a
Qatar-based [Islamic State] financial facilitator, who required that Al-Harzi
use the funds for military operations only," the designation
says.

Doha's
pushback in reply is just the latest iteration of a long-running bidding war
among Gulf states for Washington's favor. Qatar has increased its visibility in
Washington in recent years, holding active contracts with lobbying groups
Patton Boggs, Barbour Griffith and Rogers, and BGR Government Affairs. With its
vast philanthropic arms, it has sponsored everything from student exchange
programs to the congressional charity baseball game. Since the global financial crisis, various
Qatari investment funds have also invested in property in Washington, Chicago, and elsewhere.

Qatar's
money runs even more obliquely as well, through the dozens of consultants,
businessmen, and former officials whom it has hired at one point or another.
Take the Soufan Group, for example, a well-regarded consultancy on
counterterrorism and intelligence. Its founder, Ali Soufan, is also executive director of the Qatar International
Academy for Security Studies (QIASS) in Doha, a government-run center that
offers several-week courses to government and military employees. Several other
Soufan Group employees are also listed
as employees there — an affiliation they
rarely disclose in U.S. media interviews. Reached by telephone, Lila Ghosh,
communications specialist at the group, told FP that the firm did not do any
work on behalf of Qatar within the United States.

QIASS
also appears to have given former Obama White House spokesman Robert Gibbs's new PR
group, the Incite Agency, one of its first jobs. Just weeks after it opened,
Incite handled RSVPs for an event co-hosted by the Soufan Group and QIASS on "countering
violent extremism." The Incite Agency did not return repeated calls from FP
seeking to clarify its relationship with QIASS.

But
the biggest reason that Qatar is likely to remain in good favor with Washington
isn't money or influence, but necessity. As the United States ramps up a
coalition against the Islamic State militants, it will need first and foremost
its air base in Qatar, which is serving as the command center for operations — and then once again, the
cover of Arab support.

With
Syria and Iraq in chaos, both countries are now populated by a range of extremist
actors whom Washington won't want to negotiate with. Doha's up for that job.
Most recently, Qatar was called in to help negotiate the release of 45 U.N.
peacekeepers taken captive by al-Nusra Front — and on Sept. 12 it announced
that it had successfully won the soldiers' release. Qatar insists that a ransom
was not paid; perhaps the network of Doha-based funders gave the government a
certain leverage over the group. Or it just may be that the al Qaeda affiliate
wants something even more valuable.

"I
think what Qatar can give them is legitimacy," suggests Krieg. In al-Nusra
Front's official demands regarding the peacekeeper hostages, for example, it had asked
to be taken off the U.N.
sanctions list. "Nusra wants to be seen as a legitimate partner against [the
Islamic State]; Qatar might be able to offer them a platform in the future," Krieg says.

That's
essentially what Qatar has long offered its friends: a platform, with access to
money, media, and political capital. Washington has so far played along, but
the question is whether the United States is actually getting played.

Mohammed Saber/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Karim Jafaar/AFP

AFP

Friends of Qatar

Just
as the Arab Spring invigorated opposition movements across the Middle East, so
too did it electrify Qatar's network of political clients.

Power projection by proxy

Hostage to proxies

Washington and Doha

"Excellent
ideas," hearing chairman Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) said in reply to the witnesses.
"We ought to take them all and implement as many as we can."

Qatar's
money runs even more obliquely as well, through the dozens of consultants,
businessmen, and former officials whom it has hired at one point or another.
Take the Soufan Group, for example, a well-regarded consultancy on
counterterrorism and intelligence. Its founder, Ali Soufan, is also executive director of the Qatar International
Academy for Security Studies (QIASS) in Doha, a government-funded center that
offers several-week courses to government and military employees. Several other
Soufan Group employees are also listed
as employees there — an affiliation they
rarely disclose in U.S. media interviews. Reached by telephone, Lila Ghosh,
communications specialist at the group, told FP that the firm did not do any
work on behalf of Qatar within the United States.

Mohammed Saber/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Karim Jafaar/AFP

AFP