How Qatar betrayed US and became a non-NATO ally

How Qatar betrayed US and became a major non-NATO ally – Part I — U.S. president Joe Biden (R) meets with the Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, January 31, 2022. Photo: EPA

Benaw Izzat | Exclusive to iKurd.net

The United States intervened militarily in Afghanistan for more than twenty years at a total cost of $14 trillion dollars. A sum that is difficult for the human brain to grasp but perfectly understood by the arms lobby that profited greatly from it.

All the armed forces that have fought in Afghanistan know that war is seasonal and that the fighting season goes from early spring in April to the end of October just before the cold and snow arrive. Yet the Biden administration, pushed by Qatar, decided to abandon Afghanistan in the middle of summer, when the enemy forces were most mobile. The debacle could never have taken place under these conditions during the winter period.

The altitude is lower in Iraqi Kurdistan, but we know how to deal with this weather difference when it comes to combat. Our peshmerga have had good training like the Afghan forces and they would never have given up without fighting.

Why did the Afghan army let this happen?

Taliban fighters enjoy writing threat letters as well as certificates of good conduct. They offered the soldiers to drop their weapons and go home in exchange for small sums of money, around $300 dollars and the guarantee that the recipient will not be bothered. Although it is still very difficult to collect testimonies on the spot, still some officers who have fled abroad admit that there was corruption. Qatar was the only country that knew the details of the diplomatic advances and was technically able to make this kind of manipulation.

The real relationship with Qatar

'Jeux de guerre" a book by Marc Eichinger — ‘Jeux de guerre” a book by Marc Eichinger, 2021. Photo: Handout via Ekurd net

In his memoirs President Obama gives two pieces of information that are worth mentioning. He did not want the war in Libya to drag on and he called Sarkozy and Cameroon to propose a solution. According to Obama the two European heads of state were relieved. A few pages later he confided that the American operation in Libya costed $550 million USD, “barely more than the cost of a day’s operation in Iraq or Afghanistan” and “not a single human loss” on the American side.

In his last book “Jeux de guerre” Marc Eichinger comes back on this episode and on the payment by Qatar of 300 million EUR to the French army to intervene in Libya. He specifies that the British and French armies spent exactly the same amount on the ground.

The author specializing in international corruption has already publicly denounced the Ausra case. All information was given to the FBI. In February 2010 the French company Areva, at the time number one in the European nuclear industry, paid more than $200 million USD to Al Gore by buying a small company specialized in solar energy. It went bankrupt in the process. The counterparty was, among other things, privileged credit commitments with a direct intervention of President Obama (POTUS himself approved moving it ahead – PDF).

How Qatar betrayed US and became a major non-NATO ally — Al Gore, Former Vice-President of the United States of America (1993-2001), 2019. Photo: Creative Commons/La Moncloa – Gobierno de Espana/Flickr.

Marc Eichinger also notes that Al Gore was able to sell his television channel Current TV to Al Jazeera for $500 million USD in January 2013. No one will claim that this is a corrupt operation.

But Al Gore got a very good price and Al Jazeera America will not live two years. Of course, the parallel between Ausra and Current TV is purely coincidental.

The 2022 defense budget of the Biden administration is $715 billion dollars ($811 trillion in 2021). Joe Biden is 79 years old; his Vice President Kamala Harris is non-existent. No country at peace has ever had such a military spending budget. The weight of the arms lobby dictates US foreign policy and nothing else.

On January 31, 2022, Qatar Airways ordered up to 50 large cargo planes and committed to buying up to 50 Boeing 737 Max jets, a huge win for the U.S. aircraft maker over European rival Airbus.

Qatar can buy war material from the USA and gets out its checkbook, that is why it becomes the best non-NATO ally.

Of course, if countries of the former USSR join NATO they will have to increase their arms purchases and the US military lobby can rejoice over the Ukrainian crisis. But none of these countries has the means of Qatar. The US are not threatened but they need a rich ally even if it betrays them regularly.

Mrs. Benaw Izzat – a special reporter and senior writer for iKurd.net.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.