Does Doha want to satisfy Turkey, Iran with its support for Hezbollah?
Observers said that Qatar is trying to satisfy Turkey and Iran through supporting the Lebanese Hezbollah.
The Beirut port explosion, last Tuesday, led to the outbreak of massive protests in the country, during which the demonstrators pointed their finger at Hezbollah, the de facto ruler of the country since the end of the war in 2006.
Qatar wants to demonstrate good intentions towards its two major allies (Turkey and Iran), who guarantee its security as they form together a tripartite alliance that Qatar will benefit from in bridging the gap of being a tiny country.
After the siege imposed on the party in 2011, which aimed to dry up the sources of funding that it used to arm the party, Doha returned once again and extended its hand to a sectarian party which Lebanon did not gain from its rule more than ruin.
A report published by "Fox News" dealt with the Qatari financing strategy for Hezbollah, which has become a threat to the American forces in the Gulf. The report also made clear that the Qatari role went beyond the idea of financing groups classified on terrorist lists, as Qatar became the main incubator for all armed groups in the world. It also the incubator of extremism in the region, according to analysts and international reports.
Incubator of Extremism
Despite the differences that Qatar is trying to show with Hezbollah, these skirmishes fade away under the cover of the generous funding that Qatar has granted to the party for fourteen years, according to the researcher in international relations and Middle Eastern affairs, Muhammad Hamid, who believes that Qatari funding began to Hezbollah after the end of the war with Israel, and doubled in 2008.
While the world is in a stifling financial crisis, Doha was the official sponsor of the process of handing over power to Michel Suleiman, the former Lebanese president, and then in the end the party actually took over the reins of the country, and gave Hezbollah unconditional support."
Hamed continues, in his statement to Hafryat: “These Qatari funds have gradually increased from time to time, and the party’s passing through financial crises, from 2013 to 2016, before the nuclear agreement, and its interference in the Syrian crisis, led to the transformation of financial, treatment and service institutions, and all the institutions whose administrations fall under Hezbollah, to bankrupt institutions. The main reason for this was the loss of the human element and financial resources, which made the attraction to Doha's funds a magic solution, in which the party found its way. After the Gulf, Egyptian boycott that occurred with Doha, Qatar, once again, was the first to sponsor Hezbollah. "
"In my opinion, Hamed added, the dispute that occurred between Hezbollah and Qatar after the Syrian war was purely a formality, and the evidence for that is that the party quickly showed its pragmatism and returned to receive the funds that Qatar generously provided."
" In general, Qatar has been globally known by its funding of armed religious groups, as it funds the Shiite group in Hezbollah, as well as in Iraq, and it does so bcause it uses it, as a kind of spite, as Doha always prefers to be in contact with armed organizations, Sunni or Shiite, and prepares them as negotiating pressure papers in its hand to blackmail states and political regime. The evidence is that it mediated between Hezbollah and armed groups in Syria to release some Lebanese nuns who were detained in Syria at the time of the crisis. "
Post-Siege Retaliation
According to what was stated by "Fox News", the Qatari ambassador to Belgium and NATO, Abdul Rahman bin Muhammad Suleiman Al-Khulaifi, sought to pay 750,000 euros to the private security contractor, Jason G., in exchange for his silence about the Qatari regime's role in supplying the Lebanese Shiite regimes with money and weapons. Jason said in his statements "A member of the royal family allowed the delivery of military equipment to the Hezbollah entity in Lebanon."
Qatari funds for armed groups increased, especially after the boycott that was imposed on it, and the blockade imposed on Hezbollah, especially since 2011, was an attempt to dry up the sources of funding, so it started again to resort to direct funding.
"Qatar has a fondness for financing the armed extremist movements, in both their Sunni and Shiite sides, armed and unarmed, moderate and extremist. This is the Doha strategy drawn up by the security services. Despite Hezbollah’s sectarianism and its brutal practices in Syria, Doha did not find any objection to fund it, but it also paid more than a billion dollars to a Shiite group that detained people from the Qatari ruling family in Iraq, and this indicates that Qatar has become the official sponsor of armed groups in Syria, and anywhere, as it seeks to emerge as a negotiating state, and a savior of humanity from the extremist groups, " Hamid added.
Fighting Over Influence
New leaks regarding Qatar's funds for Hezbollah prompted European politicians to denounce such behavior and demanded an immediate end to it, according to the researcher in Security Studies and Middle East Affairs, and the Executive Director of the "Early Warning Center", Ahmed Al-Baz; "Qatar wants to undermine Saudi Arabia, in any way, and providing support from Doha to Hezbollah can be described as a form of" competition in influence, "even if in a harmful way for what remains of the stability of the Arab countries, including Lebanon."
In a press interviews, Al-Baz said “Saudi Arabia had started years ago to provide in-kind and material support to Lebanon and the Lebanese army in particular. Therefore, Qatar provided support in turn to the counterpart, which is Hezbollah, even if this Qatari support directed to the party would result in further strengthening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the region. "
Qatar wants to demonstrate good intentions towards its major allies (Turkey and Iran), who guarantee its security and together form a tripartite alliance from which Qatar will benefit in bridging the gap of being a tiny country.
“Doha carries out this mission on two tracks; the first is towards Turkey, by providing support to the ideological agent of Ankara represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, where Qatar carries out the mission of care and subsistence, and for the same purpose; it provides support to Hezbollah, the ideological agent of Iran, so that Doha guarantees more ties related to Iran, which is, at the same time, the regional party opposing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ".
Qatar, through its generous funding to Hezbollah, is playing on all fronts; On the one hand, it is implicitly allying with Iran, which is showing a disagreement with it over what is happening in Syria. According to Al-Baz: “When talking about Iranian-Qatari relations, we are talking, in another way, about the largest financiers of Sunni extremism and Shiite extremism. While Qatar provides funding to armed Sunni terrorist organizations, Iran is doing the same task towards Shiite terrorist organizations.