Here comes Qatar

Suddenly, the tiny Gulf emirate is the Middle East’s superpower

In late October, Syrian state television aired a 17-minute documentary unmasking what it said was the real force behind the country’s seven-month-old revolt: the tiny Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. ‘The name of Qatar surfaces once a disaster or conflict breaks out in the Arab and Muslim world,’ the programme begins. ‘Qatar intervenes in major and minor issues, seeking to wield influence by backing rebel and extremist movements as well as armed Islamic groups.’ Along with sowing ‘sedition’ everywhere from Egypt and Tunisia to Sudan and Yemen, Qatar had been ‘financing and arming the rebel movements in eastern Libya.’ Now the super-rich Gulf nation was ‘defaming’ Syria, as part of an aggressive scheme to create a ‘new Middle East’.

Such extravagant claims might be written off as the ravings of an increasingly desperate leadership in Damascus. After all, this is a regime that has accused Al Jazeera, Qatar’s government-backed news network, of fabricating the Syrian uprising by building vast ‘cinematic replicas’ of Syrian cities in the Qatari desert.