Welcome to Qatar, the Leading Sponsor of Terrorism

The main culprit: Qatar’s ruling family

The choice of Qatar as the host of the FIFA World Cup has caused negative reactions in the West. Westerners have never come to terms with the harsh reality that their sacrosanct, untouchable concept of diversity hasn’t crossed the borders of the Levant and it would be surprising if it ever does. Now, what these Westerners tend to forget is that if the persecution of the LGBTQ+ community is abject and condemnable, it cannot outweigh an equally serious issue: the financing of terrorism.

Qatar is a leading sponsor of terrorist groups and this fact alone should have dissuaded FIFA’s officials from choosing that country for its 2022 Cup, just as it should have dissuaded any Western leader from maintaining relations with its royal family.

Aiding and Abetting Al-Qaeda

From the start of the Syrian conflict until 2013, Qatar was the rebels’ leading financial backer, according to the Financial Times, just as it was the largest arms provider. But most of the arms shipments sent to Syria ended up in jihadist camps. It is no coincidence that men from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front set out for Doha in 2012 to attend meetings with Qatar’s officials, if we rely on the Wall Street Journal.

Al-Qaeda was, in fact, Qatar’s first pick on the terrorism ground. Journalist and political writer Kenneth Timmerman knows a great deal about the subject.

In 1998, Timmerman spent some time in London as a contributor to Reader’s Digest to work on an article about Osama bin Laden. During his investigation, he learned that Al-Qaeda was receiving payments directly from the Qatar Embassy in London. The Qatari government had reportedly instructed the embassy staff to hand over suitcases of cash to bin Laden’s agents on a weekly basis. Faced with the rise of the terrorist organization, the emirate was visibly seeking to protect itself.

This is why Doha decided to conclude an agreement with Al-Qaeda, which agreement was renewed in 2003, according to the Sunday Times. The same media quoted an Iraqi government source who said the agreement was renewed once again in March 2005 after a suicide bombing hit a theater in Doha, killing a British professor.

Harboring the Mastermind of 9/11

Qatar’s road towards terrorism didn’t start in 1998 with the funds secretly paid to Al-Qaeda, but a few years earlier, when the United States had just discovered the whereabouts of a man they considered potentially dangerous. His name: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would later be known as the mastermind behind 9/11.

At the time, U.S. intelligence already knew that Sheikh Mohammed was the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, the instigator of the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and that he had participated in the planning of the failed Bojinka plot that involved blowing up eleven American airliners. Bojinka was, so to speak, the forerunner of 9/11.

Melissa Boyle Mahle, a former CIA case officer within the Middle East division, was the one who had tracked down Sheikh Mohammed to Qatar, in 1995. Washington filed a request with the Qatari authorities to start the extradition procedures but to no avail. Warned by a high-ranking figure of the Qatari royal family, Sheikh Mohammed went off the radar. This high-ranking figure was Abdullah bin Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani, former Qatar’s Minister of the Interior.

While on the run after 9/11, Sheikh Mohammed returned to Qatar, where he stayed for two weeks, according to a Saudi intelligence source quoted by The New York Times in a 2003 article. The same newspaper reported that Abdullah bin Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani had sheltered, in all, a good hundred extremists on his lands, including ten members of Al-Qaeda who were on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

Another figure of the Qatari royal family, Abdulkarim Al Thani, supported Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who would become the leader of Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch. Thanks to his protector, Al-Zarqawi had left Qatar with a Qatari passport and a million dollars in cash. Osama bin Laden himself is alleged to have visited Qatar at least twice between 1996 and 2000, at a time when his name was already popping up in U.S. intelligence records.

So, as early as the mid-1990s, Qatar was protecting terrorists in full view of the U.S. government. But it did more than protect them. Jamal al-Fadl, an Al-Qaeda defector who went into exile in the United States in 1996, told the American authorities that Osama bin Laden had confessed to him that the royal family-linked Qatar Charitable Society (now Qatar Charity) was one of the main sources of funding for Al-Qaeda.

Funding Islamist Organizations in Syria

Lots of wealthy Qataris, some of them close to the royal family, sent funds to Syrian jihadists. One of these backers was Abd al-Rahman bin ‘Umayr al-Nu’aymi, whom the United States placed on its list of sponsors of terrorism. Al-Nu’aymi, who used to be president of the Qatar Football Association, transferred at one point two million dollars a month to Al-Qaeda allies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

Al-Nu’aymi was a founding member of the Sheikh Eid bin Mohammed Al Thani Charitable Association, which has ties to Qatar’s royal family. According to the Counter Extremism Project, Nu’aymi also reportedly arranged meetings for the former Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, with Yemeni-based Abd al-Majeed al-Zindani and Hamas cofounder Ahmed Yassin.

Partnering With Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood

Talking about Hamas, its relations with the kingdom date back to at least 2008 when it had received $250 million from Doha during the Gaza war (2008–2009). In 2012, the former Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, had transferred an additional 400 million into the coffers of Hamas to finance the construction of roads and residential complexes in Palestine. In July 2016, the Qatari government came to the rescue of public sector workers in Gaza, an area under Hamas’s control, handing out $30 million to help pay their wages. One of the leaders of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, established his residence in Qatar.

When addressing the issue of the relations between Hamas and Qatar, we must not fail to mention the organization behind the creation of the Palestinian terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which also cashes in on Doha’s largesse. Here, the financial support granted to the brotherhood is more than significant. The royal family shelled out no less than $7.5 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood during the short period of Mohammed Morsi’s mandate as President of Egypt, that is, between June 2012 and July 2013.

Sources

ABC News, Congressional Research Service, Counter Extremism Project #1, #2, Emirates News Agency, Financial Times, Foundation for Defense of Democracies #1, #2, The Hill, The New York Times #1, #2, #3, U.S. Department of the Treasury