Qatar Has Big Spot On Stage
the right time.”
Qatar’s help in the Afghan airlift won plaudits from President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and both Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III visited the Qatari capital, Doha, last month, where they dined with the country’s 41-yearold monarch, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
“Many countries have stepped up to help the evacuation and relocation efforts in Afghanistan, but no country has done more than Qatar,” Mr. Blinken said in Doha. “The partnership between Qatar and the United States has never been stronger.”
Standing beside him, Qatar’s foreign minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, called the United States “our most important ally.”
The sunny moment, before a bank of American and Qatari flags, marked a sharp turnaround in bilateral relations from the previous administration, which had initially supported a blockade against Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt. Those countries, backed by President Donald J. Trump, accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and interfering in the internal affairs of other Arab states, accusations that Qatar denied. The blockade ended early this year, before Mr. Biden’s inauguration.
Now it is Qatar’s good relations with outliers like the Taliban and Iran — relations that contributed to the accusations of supporting terrorism — that have made it invaluable as a go-between, allowing Qatar to promote what it calls “preventive diplomacy.”
“Sometimes, a small size allows you actually to play exactly that role, because you are not intimidating anyone,” said Qatar’s assistant foreign minister, Lolwah Al-Khater. She added, “We are not going to wage a war against anyone.”
Qatar, which has about 300,000 citizens, shares a huge natural gas field with Iran, giving its people a per-capita income of more than $90,000 per year, one of the world’s highest, according to the C.I.A. World Factbook. It has used that money to promote its view of the region — one that includes political Islamists — through Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite network it owns, and to field the bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
Along the way, it has maintained ties with a range of Islamist groups, including the Palestinian militants Hamas in Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Taliban in Afghanistan. These ties have proved useful to the West, which has used them to negotiate hostage releases in countries like Syria.
The Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban setting a timetable for the American withdrawal was signed in Doha last year. And since the American embassy in Kabul was evacuated in August, the United States has moved its Afghan diplomatic operations to Doha.
“There is no doubt that they have played their cards well,” said Mr. Stephens, the Gulf politics expert. “They feel that this has placed them as being a useful ally to the West and also as an interlocutor on wider regional issues, and that is what they always wanted.”