New Delhi: Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani Sunday met Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, Afghanistan’s acting prime minister, in Kabul in the highest-level foreign visit to the country since the Taliban returned to power last month.
The tiny gas-rich country of Qatar has acted as a key fulcrum between the US and Taliban in the past few years, which significantly boosted its diplomatic credentials.
Not only did it host the talks between the US and the Taliban in Doha that paved the way for American forces to exit Afghanistan, but also played a key role in the massive US-led evacuation effort following the Taliban takeover.
“No-one has been able to do any major evacuation process out of Afghanistan without having a Qatari involved in some way or another,” explained Dina Esfandiary, a senior adviser at think tank International Crisis Group, to the BBC.
Qatar’s efforts received praise from US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Washington also officially shut down its embassy in Kabul and moved it to Doha.
As a result, Qatar, which is spread over an area of just 11,586 sq km, has been able to punch above its weight in Afghanistan and the larger Middle Eastern region.
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A tiny but wealthy country
With a population of 29 lakh — which is less than the city of Jaipur in Rajasthan — Qatar is a peninsula that extends into the Persian Gulf and is located near major petroleum deposits.
It also shares a border with Saudi Arabia and the island country of Bahrain lies some 40 km northwest of Qatar. Home to a large number of expatriates and immigrants, the native population comprises only 11 per cent (almost 4 lakh) of the total population.
It had been a protectorate under Britain, following the Ottoman rule, until its independence in 1971. The current Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, took over from his father in 2013.
Once one of the poorest countries in the Gulf, Qatar has risen to power primarily because of its oil wealth. Sharing one of the world’s largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas with Iran has led to Qatari residents enjoying a high standard of living.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the gas field shared with Iran has given its people one of the world’s highest per-capita income in the world, at over $90,000 per year.
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Neutral location for US & Taliban
Qatar was seen as a neutral location for negotiation by both the US and Taliban since the early 2010s. This, despite hosting the largest American military base in the Middle East, since 2006.
Qatar also maintained contact with the Taliban during its 1996-2001 rule but — unlike Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Pakistan — never established diplomatic ties.
Since 2011, Qatar has been the host of discussions on the peace efforts between the US and the Taliban initiated by former US president Barack Obama to end the war in Afghanistan.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, now the Deputy Prime Minister of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, had lived in Doha for the past three years.
In 2013, with the permission of the US, Qatar set up a political office for the Taliban in Doha, which paved the way for peace talks. It also helped the US secure the release of American Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from Taliban custody in 2015, in exchange for five Taliban prisoners.
“Qatar has been at the centre of this diplomatic engagement for a really long time, and that can only happen because there’s been a decent engagement with all sides,” Royal United Services Institute research fellow Tobias Borck told France24.
Qatar is, however, not the only intermediary between the US and the Taliban. According to a Bloomberg column, Qatar is aligned with the Taliban’s political faction led by Baradar while Pakistan backs the group’s military wing, headed by the likes of Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of former supreme leader Mullah Omar, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the dreaded Haqqani Network, a Sunni Islamist militant organisation.
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On ‘tightrope’ with Iran, links to terror groups
Since the Iran-Iraq War in 1980-1988, Qatar has been cordial with Iran, with which it shares a large natural gas field but the relationship has been on a tightrope.
As pointed out by Carnegie Endowment, an international think tank, Qatar’s “careful diplomacy” has been difficult due to the American ‘maximum pressure’ agenda. The ‘maximum pressure’ agenda refers to former president Donald Trump’s campaign against Iran after it pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018.
Doha’s friendliness with Tehran as well as its ties with a range of Islamist groups like Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Taliban in Afghanistan, has also been a point of contention among its regional neighbours.
In 2017, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt cut trade and diplomatic relations with Qatar and denied the country access to their airspace as punishment for its alleged support of terrorism.
Qatar denied it and said the embargo imposed by its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council members — an intergovernmental union in the Middle East — aimed to undermine its sovereignty. In January this year, the US helped lift the blockade on Qatar.
Football and media
Qatar has also consolidated its soft power on the global stage by investing in sports, particularly football. It is all set to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup — a first for an Arab nation.
Last month, the country made waves when it signed Argentinian football legend Lionel Messi to play for the French club Paris Saint-Germain, which it owns.
Messi left his club Barcelona and joined two other high-ranking footballers, Italian goalkeeper and Euro 2020 winner Gianluigi Donnarumma from AC Milan and former Real Madrid defender Sergio Ramos, in the club on 11 August.
This is expected to make Paris Saint-Germain, owned by the Emir of Qatar since 2011, a strong contender to win the Champions League, an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations, in May 2022.
Qatar also funds international news channel, Al Jazeera, based in Doha, which rivals BBC World and CNN International. According to the BBC, the channel has helped raise Qatar’s media profile but like most domestic media in Qatar, it sidesteps criticism of the state and government.
(Edited by Rachel John)
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