As Anthony Shadid pointed out in the New York Times a few days ago, the tiny nation of Qatar is becoming pretty influential in the Middle East these days.
For those few people who've followed events in the country, the past eight months of frenzied, high profile activity are just the continuation of a methodical, intentional, and brilliantly planned ascension in word politics. And for those same few people, Shadid's poorly veiled allegations of an Islamist agenda are silly, and unworthy of a reporter with such knowledge and experience.
Yes, Qatar has contacts with groups such as Hamas. Yes, Qatar has sent troops into a neighboring Shi'ite country - Bahrain - at the behest of the Sunniest of all Sunni Muslim states, Saudi Arabia. And yes, Qatar has cultivated ties with Islamists in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt, hosts Islamic TV shows, and gives Islamists a voice through certain programs on Al Jazeera.
Shadid makes much of these connections, as do many of the people he quotes. But there's something missing in his analysis, something he identifies as "murky" but something that is as clear as the glass you can make from the sands of Qatar's deserts. Intention. The "why" of it all.
Qatar is a country of immense wealth, a wealth built on skeletons. Literally. The Qataris owe their massive high per capita income and absurdly lavish lifestyle to natural gas, a fossil fuel. And because they rely on a nonrenewable resource, and because they rely on business, the Qataris want stability.
Qataris want stability so much that they serve as intermediaries between the US and Iran, according to diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, a role that must feel awkward at the best of times and impossible whenever else. In an effort to find stability, Qatar has offered to help talk Hamas into not being so, well, Hamas-like, according to those same cables. In its quest for stability Qatar lets the US keep an air force base in its territory, invites Western universities to set up campuses near Doha, and hosts Israeli officials.
And in a region where secularists have been largely smeared with totalitarian brushes, where Ennahda has won elections in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood represents the vanguard of renewed protests in Egypt, Qatar's seemingly dubious contacts with Islamists look a lot more like a good investment in stability than a sinister plan of attack.
Frankly, we need to get out of this trend of seeing any new power that talks to Islamists as having an Islamist agenda. It's a bit narrow-minded and reactionary. If I talk to Rick Perry, does that mean I want to execute 234 people? And if, as a reporter, I talk to a jihadi, does that mean I support the demise of all things Western?
Of course it doesn't. So why apply that flawed logic to Qatar?
Given the way things are going in the Middle East, we're going to need some people who can talk to Islamists, and that might not be such a horrible thing. The world didn't come to an end after Ennahda won the Tunisian elections, after all.
Oh. And it's pronounced "Gatt'r."
For those few people who've followed events in the country, the past eight months of frenzied, high profile activity are just the continuation of a methodical, intentional, and brilliantly planned ascension in word politics. And for those same few people, Shadid's poorly veiled allegations of an Islamist agenda are silly, and unworthy of a reporter with such knowledge and experience.
Yes, Qatar has contacts with groups such as Hamas. Yes, Qatar has sent troops into a neighboring Shi'ite country - Bahrain - at the behest of the Sunniest of all Sunni Muslim states, Saudi Arabia. And yes, Qatar has cultivated ties with Islamists in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt, hosts Islamic TV shows, and gives Islamists a voice through certain programs on Al Jazeera.
Shadid makes much of these connections, as do many of the people he quotes. But there's something missing in his analysis, something he identifies as "murky" but something that is as clear as the glass you can make from the sands of Qatar's deserts. Intention. The "why" of it all.
Qatar is a country of immense wealth, a wealth built on skeletons. Literally. The Qataris owe their massive high per capita income and absurdly lavish lifestyle to natural gas, a fossil fuel. And because they rely on a nonrenewable resource, and because they rely on business, the Qataris want stability.
Qataris want stability so much that they serve as intermediaries between the US and Iran, according to diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, a role that must feel awkward at the best of times and impossible whenever else. In an effort to find stability, Qatar has offered to help talk Hamas into not being so, well, Hamas-like, according to those same cables. In its quest for stability Qatar lets the US keep an air force base in its territory, invites Western universities to set up campuses near Doha, and hosts Israeli officials.
And in a region where secularists have been largely smeared with totalitarian brushes, where Ennahda has won elections in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood represents the vanguard of renewed protests in Egypt, Qatar's seemingly dubious contacts with Islamists look a lot more like a good investment in stability than a sinister plan of attack.
Frankly, we need to get out of this trend of seeing any new power that talks to Islamists as having an Islamist agenda. It's a bit narrow-minded and reactionary. If I talk to Rick Perry, does that mean I want to execute 234 people? And if, as a reporter, I talk to a jihadi, does that mean I support the demise of all things Western?
Of course it doesn't. So why apply that flawed logic to Qatar?
Given the way things are going in the Middle East, we're going to need some people who can talk to Islamists, and that might not be such a horrible thing. The world didn't come to an end after Ennahda won the Tunisian elections, after all.
Oh. And it's pronounced "Gatt'r."
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