Qatar's role in Syria

6 June 2013: Syria Is Now Saudi Arabia's Problem: Riyadh has now taken over Qatar's role as the rebels' primary patron: In one sense, the Saudis can also claim a victory in Qusayr, as they have successfully put various rebel forces under the command of their ally in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Chief of Staff Gen. Salim Idriss.

17 May 2013: How Qatar seized control of the Syrian revolution: In the shell-blasted areas of rebel-held Syria, few appear to be aware of the vast sums that Qatar has contributed – estimated by rebel and diplomatic sources to be about $1bn, but put by people close to the Qatar government at as much as $3bn.

14 April 2013: Indentured Servitude in the Persian Gulf. Despite its title this article exclusively deals with Qatar, where foreign workers are not free to change employer and often face unilateral sinking of their promised wages.

12 April 2013: Muslim Brotherhood Paves Way for Qatar’s Ascent: In the years prior to the Arab uprising, Qatar adhered to a pragmatic diplomacy, building strong relationships with sworn enemies like the US and Iran or Hamas and Israel. In a sense, Doha preceded Turkey in successfully implementing a “zero problems” foreign policy. [..] The presence of the Muslim Brotherhood from a number of Arab countries in Qatar dates back to the 1950s, when many of its members were forced into exile, in particular from Gamal Abdul-Nasser’s Egypt. In 1999, the Qatari branch of the Muslim Brotherhood dissolved itself, with it leader Jassem Sultan declaring in 2003 that the state was adequately fulfilling its religious obligations.

12 October 2012: Qatar is asking Libya to pay it for the support it gave to its insurgents.

Qatar keeps thinking of money. In July 2011, just before the uprising started to escalate one of its royals sold his shares in a Syrian bank: Emails from the “Syria Files” released by WikiLeaks and obtained by Al-Akhbar show that a Qatari royal and founder of the Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB), Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah al-Thani, began to rapidly sell off Syrian International Islamic Bank (SIIB) shares in the final weeks of July 2011