Issue 831 - 13 June 2008

Terrorist fund-raising case shines light on Qatar’s sensitive role

A Qatari national’s presence on the US list of Specially Designated Global Terrorist Individuals says something about the love lost between Washington and Doha in recent years, and the continued undercurrent of jihadist activity in the region – also shown in the US designation of two Bahrainis, analysed in a separate article below.

There was a time when the US government needed Qatar – and particularly its airbase at Al-Udeid – so keenly that the presence of allegedly substantial Al-Qaeda fund-raising operations in the emirate were politely discussed behind closed doors in Washington and Doha. At the same time, Qatar-based extremists seemed to receive relative freedom from the government to shelter and support militant movements. But with Qatar infuriating the United States and its own religious hard-liners in almost equal measure, there are signs of growing pressure from both sides to rein in the maverick activities still apparent on the peninsula.

This issue has come into view again with the case of Khalifa Mohammed Turki Al-Subaiy, who was detained by the Ministry of Interior after being handed over by the Bahraini government on charges of “financing terrorism, undergoing terrorist training, facilitating the travel of others abroad to receive terrorist training, and for membership in a terrorist organisation.” His activities appear to have been co-ordinated with two Bahraini confederates, now under surveillance or detention in Bahrain and the UAE (see article below).

Al-Subaiy will go on trial in Qatar on charges of supporting terrorism by attending training camps in Pakistan’s North-west Frontier Provinces (NWFP) and “serving as a diplomatic and communications conduit between Al-Qaeda and third parties in the Middle East,” according to the US Treasury. These parties are likely to include Al-Qaeda elements in Iran, where the three-man facilitation and fund-raising cell was said to be active in establishing trans-shipment of fighters, equipment and funding. Bahrain and Qatar have demonstrated tight security co-operation during such episodes as the 2004 assassination of Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yanderbiyev, when Bahraini agents interdicted the Russian assassins in a well-co-ordinated cross-border pursuit, as Moscow’s ‘button men’ sought to leave the region via Manama airport. Likewise, Bahraini securocrats have impressed their Qatari counterparts by physically rendering individuals of interest to Doha within a short period, of hours in some cases.

In addition to satisfying mutual extradition commitments, Al-Subaiy’s prosecution in Qatar should result in a higher chance of conviction due to the strength of Qatar’s criminal justice code. In contrast, Bahraini law has no equivalent of the charge of conspiracy and thus struggles to bring convictions against subjects who plan attacks but have not yet undertaken them.

The record of Qatari militancy

Al-Subaiy presents a relatively rare case of a Qatari militant who has travelled to bona fide jihadist training camps in Pakistan and Iran, and who may well have operated in Afghanistan as well. Very few Qataris have turned up in Coalition custody in either Iraq or Afghanistan. In the former, the last known detention of Qataris came in June 2007, when two Qataris were arrested during a raid on Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) safe houses in Baqubah.

Instead, Qatar has largely functioned as a trans-shipment point for jihadists. US Major General Mark Hertling, commander of Multinational Division North (covering the AQI heartland of northern Iraq), noted in February that “some of [the AQI fighters] we have seen specifically leaving to Syria. Some of them are going back to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.” The prominent mention of Qatar reinforces other indicators that have pointed to extensive use of Doha as a waypoint for jihadists seeking to get from Syria to Saudi Arabia, or to reach Pakistan from their home countries. The main reason for this, GSN’s security service contacts suggest, is the presumed effectiveness of the travel monitoring being undertaken through Dubai airport.

Qatar has traditionally served a role as a landing point for jihadists returning covertly from Afghanistan to the Arabian Peninsula, including many of the thousand or so returnees that fled to Saudi Arabia after the fall of the Taliban in early 2002. US naval flotilla operating in the Gulf reported a number of interceptions of returning fighters who had travelled back through Iran and were seeking to make landfall in Qatar.

Qatar has long been a crossroads for militant leaders and a critical fund-raising node for many Arab-Afghan and Pakistani terrorist entrepreneurs such as Al-Qaeda ‘number two’ Ayman Al-Zawahiri and strategist (now on trial in the USA) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Considerable media coverage has been given to the alleged connections between Sheikh Abdullah Bin Khalid Al-Thani (officially still Qatar’s Interior Minister and son of the 1970-80s Wahhabi interior minister Khalid Bin Hamad) and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. In April 2003, the Los Angeles Times alleged that then Islamic and awfaq affairs minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Khalid (a position he held in the mid-90s) acted as a “patron” to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – who was then, as a fundraising mechanism, employed as project engineer with the Ministry of Electricity and Water, despite being on the US most-wanted list. In his memoirs, former White House counter-terrorism director Richard Clarke described Sheikh Abdullah as having “great sympathy for Osama Bin Laden, great sympathy for terrorist groups, was using his personal money and ministry money to transfer to Al-Qaeda front groups that were allegedly charities.”

New statements of dissent

In May, Qatar once again became a hotly discussed subject on jihadist forums, this time due to its prominent role in mediating between Lebanon’s government and Hizbollah (see GSN view). As the talks were widely perceived to have benefited Hizbollah – a view GSN does not necessarily share – Qatar came in for criticism for its ‘honest broker’ position, which has been notably less hostile to Hizbollah than other Arab states.

A jihadist posting entitled “The plot of Qatar and what is bestowed on Qatar” was begun by a senior member of the Al-Ekhlaas site, a bona fide Al-Qaeda-affiliated forum. This spawned a sprawling discussion hundreds of entries long, accused Qatar of “sitting around a table with the devil and the enemies of Allah” in order to “save the peak of the tourism season”, “to raise high the banner of corruption” and “to open more nests of prostitution.” The post went on to accuse the government of paying for border guards in Lebanon and maintaining “Gulf funds” and other economic interests in Lebanon. There is no overt threat, but rather the poster expresses his expectation that Allah will soon right the wrongs in Qatar.

The posting is just the latest of a barrage of jihadist criticism, and notably mentions Qatar’s Israeli ties. Qatar has flaunted its unique engagement of Tel Aviv by this year hosting Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – potentially the next premier if Ehud Olmert falls due to corruption charges – and Israeli female tennis star (and serving Israeli Defense Forces soldier) Shahar Peer. Previously, Qatar has been criticised for hosting US Central Command (Centcom) and for mediating with other purported enemies of Sunni Islam, such as Yemen’s Al-Houthi rebels. In March, Qatar was highlighted for discussion on a range of credible password-protected militant websites due to the public opening of the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in Doha.

At present, however, there are no explicit indicators of actual terrorist activity in Qatar, and key drivers – a large population of Sunni military-age males and a tradition of contributing militants to jihadist campaigns – are absent in the country. Aside from the 19 March 2005 Doha Players bombing (undertaken by an Egyptian), there have been very few acts of militancy; the peninsula’s only other terrorist acts centred on Al-Udeid air base, including the 6 November 2001 shooting of two US contractors by Qatari citizen Abdullah Mubarak Tashal Al-Hajiri and a little known ramming incident at the main gate in February 2002. If a terrorist threat exists, it is likely to return in this form – a low-sophistication attack, quickly snuffed out, undertaken by a lone shooter or small cell using firearms and rudimentary explosives.