Qatar a small country in the Middle East near Saudi Arabia has been accused and implicated on several occasions of financing and supporting various extremist groups all over the world. The government of Qatar has been accused of supporting terrorist groups directly by routing money through various charities and indirectly by allowing and providing these extremist and terror groups a platform to run their propaganda on their state-run media outlet, notably Al Jazeera. Due to Qatar’s unofficial stance on terrorism, many major Middle East countries imposed a blockade on Qatar which forced Qatar to enact and implement various anti-terror and anti-terror financing laws, but they were of no avail as the laws only remained on paper and Qatar continued to support terrorism all over the Middle East and South Asia.
Allegation on “The State of Qatar”
Numerous allegations have been placed on the state of Qatar, for example in 2014 the US Treasury Department placed Qatar in the Jurisdiction of Primary Concern for Money Laundering and Terror Financing. The department found that the financial systems of Qatar were vulnerable to abuse by terrorist financiers and sympathizers or rather supportive of such groups which means that the top echelons of the Qatari government were complicit in terror financing, additionally, Qatar has funded and supported the Nusra Front which is a Jihadist group affiliated to the Al-Qaeda fighting against the government forces of Bashar Al Assad supported by Russia and its allies.
Al Nusra Front Fighters during the Syrian Civil War
In Libya Qatar has been funding the Muslim Brotherhood, In Yemen it has been funding the Houthi rebels which have been staging and launching numerous missile attacks on Saudi and UAE oil fields and keeping the Yemeni Civil war ongoing to assert control over Yemen which has a border with Saudi Arabia and UAE. and more prominently Qatar was accused of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan during the United States 20 long years of War on Terror. In India, Qatar is also accused of funding the extremist group PFI formerly known as SIMI which was openly inciting violence against non-Muslims and claimed that by 2047 they would create an Islamic India
Al Jazeera
The state-run media of Qatar- Al- Jazeera is infamous for being a propaganda wing of the Qatari government and is accused of whitewashing the actions of various Terror outfits including the Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah against the US and its Allies. They regularly air interviews of extremist and terror group leaders who openly incite violence against the West and it allies, which goes on to show that the government of Qatar is on the game and actively supporting terror groups by providing them a platform to showcase their extremist ideologies. When ISIS was at its peak regular beheadings of innocent civilians and soldiers captured by ISIS were aired on live TV by Al Jazeera. AlJazeera serves as a recruitment tool for terror groups indirectly. In 2014 Al Jazeera aired an interview with a Hamas official who praised its group’s rocket attacks on Syria and justified its action against Israel and in 2015 it aired an interview with a Taliban official who said that if the US did not stop interfering in Afghanistan it would carry out attacks on US soil. Al Jazeera is also famous for its biased reporting and inciting communal tensions causing riots including loss of property damage and loss of lives, it particularly targets the Non-Muslim majority in every democratic country in support of Muslims and Muslim extremist groups claiming that because of the oppression of Muslim minority by the non-Muslim majority various extremist groups have risen to fight for their rights and so on.
Due to International pressure from various world powers and Organizations Qatar has taken some steps to prevent Terror Financing and Money laundering but those steps are only on paper and till date it continues to finance various extremist groups and terror outfits through various NGOs and charitable foundations linked to the Qatari Government. Qatar has to date been able to hold out because of it Natural gas reserves which is 11% of the world’s natural gas reserves, In India 40% of our Natural Gas reserves come from Qatar which gives them leverage over many countries but Natural Gas can last for only so long hence it will be difficult to hold out against International pressure if it continues to keep up with its antics.
