In an interview to Sada el Balad English Website “SEENews”, Irina Tsukerman a human rights and national security attorney based in New York talked about Qatar, its wicked role in spreading terrorism in Egypt and targeting Egypt itself by backing Ethiopia, Libyan terrorists and terrorists in Sinai.
1-Why do you think Qatar and Turkey support Muslim Brotherhood and host many of their leaders?
Qatar and Turkey are playing dangerous but self serving games with the Islamists, including and especially the Muslim Brotherhood.
Qatar is, on the one hand, concerned about a potential for Arab Spring incitement among its tiny population which would lead to the ousting of the monarchy and has made this alliance in part for protection of the private interests of the Al Thani family, without addressing the costs and benefits to anyone else.
On the other hand, Muslim Brotherhood is a well organized movement and machine, and funding it amplifies the voices that echo the Al Thani agenda against its regional rivals.
It is an alliance of convenience; it's very obvious from everything publicly known about the Al Thanis that they do not live a fundamentalist lifestyle of many of their favorite imams, including Youssef Qaradawi preach.
So on top of everything else, it is a tremendous show of hypocrisy that cannot stay unnoticed among the worst of the fanatics, which is why they don't fully trust their "allies" and have also brought in American and Turkish bases, and so forth to protect them from potential uprisings.
For now, the MB is ok with this situation because the sheer amount of funding and support they are getting from the Qataris by far outweighs ideological inconsistencies, but should the flow of money ever falter, MB will either turn on their former counterparts or extort them with threats of doing to them what they are now doing to the members of the Anti Terrorism Quartet.
With Turkey, the situation is likewise not simple. While Erdogan has certainly Islamist ideological leanings, for the first ten years of AKP's rules, he played the game of the "moderate" who merely reflected the will of the openness to religion in opposition to the stringent authoritarian secularist separation of state and religion propagated by Kemalists.
However, due to a balance of corruption and other economic issues, AKP's popularity started to slip and as any demagogue, Erdogan started looking for scapegoats and external causes and grandiose ideas to compensate for the lack of success and continuity in governance.
Alliance with Islamists was the most natural path to go at the time; he would get streed credibility as to his own commitment, identify a new fervent base of support which valued theoretical ideas and ideological precepts above the immediate challenges of national governance, and for that matter, they would not abandon him over election related matters.
Of course all of that eventually backfired, because much of the population grew disgusted with the forced over top ideology, and the numbers ultimately were not sufficient for Erdogan to stay in power; that is why he is balancing his pandering to the Muslim Brotherhood with seemingly paradoxical outreach to extreme nationalists and other groups which otherwise have nothing in common with MB.
For Erdogan, his alliance with MB is first and foremost a way to stay in power and to avoid scrutiny, and also a convenient way to lead the population to buy into his military adventurism, which is, of course again a way to "succeed" without actually being successful where it matters the most - at home.
2- Do you think Donald Trump’s victory for a second term in the US elections is a “disaster” for Qatar?
I disagree completely, Qatar has made an alliance of convenience with Trump, which, of course could change at any moment, but for now the administration which has prioritized the economic appeal of a well funded base in Qatar and Qatari investments in the US above growing security concerns, has allowed free reign to Al Jazeera despite its blatant anti-Americanism and bigotry in Arabic, and appeal to the leftist intersectionalists and the woke in English , and has recently went out of its way to praise Qatar for combating terrorism.
Even though Qatar is one of the leading causes of it, especially given the recent explosive investigation into Qatar's funding for Hezbullah and violation of its own agreement signed with GCC and the US.
Furthermore, Trump has essentially turned over much of the Middle East policy to Qatar's ally Erdogan and is likely to continue overlooking many of the resulting issues in North Africa, Middle East, and even the East Mediterranean.
Trump has taken a radically negative position towards international institutions, and has consistently criticized NATO, which on the one hand, had legitimate points, but on the other hand empowered Erdogan and others to take advantage of the US receding position to wreak havoc, exploit and create pisions and now to try to isolate the US into a corner and away from European and Middle Eastern allies on that issue.
However, where Trump's administration is disadvantageous is on two fronts important to Qatar, which is economic sanctions and increasing cyber response to Iran, another key ally to Qatar on the one hand, and encouraging Qatar's regional rivals to normalize with ISrael, that challenges Qatar's own ability to continue playing a dual role in that regard and to exploit a potential for an exclusive semi sub rosa the relationship with that country.
Furthermore, the result of Trump's push in that regard will continue to minimize the necessity for Qatar's self-ascribed role as a mediator in various local conflicts, including an intermediary with respect to Hamas, which is a problem for Qatar, both due to the loss of prestige as its role is becoming less relevant and due to the fact that Qatar has found an ally in Hamas, and a separation also means loss of leverage and power.
So while Qatar may prefer a Democratic administration over Trump for those reasons, it has thus far been able to avoid strict scrutiny, get away with a lot of meddling and mischief in the US and around the world, and sees Trump's administration as an opportunity to continue doing business as usual albeit with some challenges.
3- The chaos in Libya is an outcome of Turkey & Qatar`s policy for supporting Muslim Brotherhood there,Do you think that was for oil and gas of Libya or to siege Egypt?
Oil and gas are a significant motivation for Turkey, less so for Qatar, which has plenty of natural resources, but other relevant reasons include dragging Egypt into a war of attrition that can weaken and destabilize its military opening it to a variety of domestic threats, destabilizing North Africa, and especially the pro-Western Morocco, strengthening ISlamists and pro-Turkey technocrats in Tunisia, inviting jihadists in Libya and then presenting Turkey as a "stabilizer", and of course spreading its ideology throughout the region through militias, humanitarian and religious outreach, and by expanding physical influence on teh ground.
The countries don't just rely on Islamists to that effect, Islamists are a tool of outreach but not the end goal in themselves.
THey take advantage of other issues - they corrupt the establishment in all of the region through lucrative business deals and by creating dependencies, they exploit tribal issues, they exploit the differences between the urban dwellers and the Libyan tribes and increase inequalities, they exploit the issues of various cities which seek increasing autonomy, and so forth.
And of course they heavily depend on keeping both HoR and the GNC relatively weak so a decisive outcome in Libya is not possible, because they need GNC to be dependent on Turkish support,a nd they certainly do not wish a reunion between the factions. Just as importantly, both for Turkey and for Qatar, Libya also represent\s another conquest in their territorial ambitions.
For Turkey, control of Libya means perpetual ability to hold Europe hostage with the threat of another refugee/migrant crisis in exchange for various political and economic demand.
While the idea of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate is appealing to Erdogan's ideological supporters, Erdogan is a pragmatist and thinks more in terms of the geopolitical advantage access to particular routes will give him and how he can use it to stay in power and to protect himself from other countries,w hile causing them endless security headaches.
And for Qatar, this is also about being to flex its muscle as a regional power broker and influencer, and cracking down on the influence and perceived leadership of its anti Terrorism Quartet rivals.
4- Is the international community not able to punish this criminal countries?
The international community is a misleading term.
In reality it consists of many countries with perse interests, values, and objectives, so expecting a decisive outcome from over 190 distinct actors, many of which often perceive contradictory, conflicting, and multilayered roles is naive at best.
What complicates the matters further is that Qatar and Turkey have managed to make alliances with many members of these communities, and even those who have an issue with one of them such as France with Turkey, are heavily dependent economically on the other partner (Qatar), which makes France's commitment to its own political and economic line and apparent interests complicated and questionable.
We have seen two of the closest historical allies of the US - France and UK - refuse to join forces on something as seemingly obviously necessary as extending the arms embargo on Iran, which most of the aforementioned international community does consider a rogue regime even if they are willing to cut deals with it.
Neither Turkey nor Qatar are officially under sanctions for anything serious, which adds to the confusion on this matter; Turkey's ability to manipulate Europe through appeals ot their immediate interests - avoiding more refugee crises - makes it difficult for them to take decisive action; furthermore, by creating additional number of conflicts everywhere it goes, Turkey splits the focus on any one single issue.
And Qatar is a background actor, which funds all of these misadventures, but somehow manages to stay out of the political fray or at least not capture any attention by hiding behind Ankara.
Until and unless US, which has largely been overlooking all these issues, starts taking decisive action in holding both countries accountable for the various violations and threats they represent, other countries can hardly be expected to take a leading role in that regard.
The vacuum of power left by the US absence from major foreign policy decisionmaking leaves smaller weaker countries scrambling. The proxy actors backing Hafter iN Libya alongside Egypt already have poor relations with Turkey and practically no relations with Qatar.
Perhaps the next step for these countries is to withdraw all investments from both countries, which to some extent would cripple Turkey especially.
5- Why does Qatar criticize Egypt and UAE to have good relations with Israel and on the other hand Doha and Ankara has normal relations with Tel Av-iv?
It is inaccurate to say that Doha an Ankara both have normalized relations with Israel.
Turkey has fully normalized relations, Qatar has a trade office (which hardly represents a full political engagement) and has most recently insinuated into playing what it claims to be a stabilizing role regarding Hamas.
However, to focus on the hypocritical motivations of boht countries they are quite self serving and transparent.
UAE's normalization with Israel cuts down on Israel's economic dependency on Turkey, paves way for normalization with other countries, and opens doors for easy tourism and collaboration in various fields.
Until now, Turkey was one of the very few countries in the region with which Israel had fully normal relations; even with Egypt and JOrdan there has not been the same volume of trade and tourism, plus the relationship with Turkey has been older. Ankara has exploited these factors to its advantage; Israel's normalization with UAE means less dependency, which means Israel is less likely to put up with Turkey's political extremism, including the brazen meddling in its own affairs, and the illegal pursuit of gas in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Qatar is losing out on its ability to be a mediator and being all things to all people, because UAE will now be far more trusted to play that role, and while UAE may not have the credibility to deal with Hamas t he same way Qatar has due to the close relationship between those countries, UAE, ironically, having a more direct relationship with ISrael can actually put more pressure on Israel regarding the Palestinian issue or other matters of concern to the region, and as a full diplomatic partner, it can also pressure ISrael regarding its ambiguous relationship with Qatar which empowers Qatar's ideological outreach to Israelis and threatens the interests of t he anti-Terrorism Quartet. And once Israel fully normalizes with all or most members of the anti-Terrorism Quartet, it will have substantial economic reasons to minimize engagement with Qatar for fear of losing far better and more direct trading and political powers.
Qatar will become increasingly irrelevant, especially since unlike the other countries, it is actively spreadign anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda throughout the world, along with Turkey.
Qatar is afraid of being left behind; it has gotten itself so dependent on extremists that it cannot now fully back away without subjecting the members of the Royal family to derision and disrepect at best and possible assassinations in the more likely scenario.
It has also built its entirely influence strategy not so much on promoting good people to people relations between others and its own tiny population as on buying influence at the expense of other countries and on denigrating them.
As Qatar becomes less of a necessity economically, and as Israel's integration into the region provides better economic opportunities for everyone in the world, Qatar's self-servign campaigns which have done nothing but breed resentment and create social pisions and acrimony everywhere, will become superfluous and Qatar's global hold will naturally begin to slip.
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