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| Arabia |
| Qatar's friends-with-everyone approach rankles |
| 2014-10-05 |
| [Washington Post] The U.S. military orchestrates the air war over Iraq and Syria from a hulking command center on the vast al-Udeid Air Base, a Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates... i-owned encampment that is home to 8,000 American military personnel and dozens of Air Force jets. Giant video screens inside the windowless, two-story structure allow troops to track every plane and observe live footage from every drone involved in operations against the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... Twenty miles to the northeast, in the heart of this opulent and fast-growing capital city, the even more gargantuan Grand Mosque has served as a key outpost for al-Qaeda-linked rebels fighting the Syrian regime. From a pulpit under ringed chandeliers, several holy mans have exhorted the faithful to open their wallets in support of Syrian resistance groups. Some of the holy mans have boasted of directing money toward Jabhat al-Nusra ...the current nom de guerre of al-Qaeda in the Levant, which isn't to be confused with al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant... , which the U.S. government has classified as a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda. Although Qatari authorities have moved over the past year to crack down on private donations to Syrian rebels allied with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, the government here shows no signs of diminishing its support for Islamist groups across the Arab world that others in the region have branded as outlaws and terrorists. Qatar's strategy of backing Islamists -- from Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, in the Gazoo Strip, to the Moslem Brüderbund in Egypt, to hard-line Syrian opposition fighters -- while also offering itself as a key U.S. ally in the volatile Middle East is rooted in pragmatism: This gas-rich, finger-shaped peninsula that borders Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... and juts into the Persian Gulf wants to protect itself by being friends with everybody. "We don't do enemies," Qatar's foreign minister, Khalid bin Mohammed al-Attiyah, said in a rare interview. "We talk to everyone. We cannot change geography -- this is for sure -- so whoever is in the vicinity of our geography has to be our close friend." |
| Posted by:Fred |