Qatar: Most Powerful Country on Earth? WTF?

Long War: Throughout the Mideast and North Africa the shape of the Long War is being molded by the tiny Gulf kingdom of Qatar. A few examples: Since the Arab Spring exploded across the region a few years ago the Muslim Brotherhood has become the dominate political force. Most important Brotherhood leaders now reside in Qatar and the organization seems to have been pretty much co-opted by Qatari Intelligence, giving it the ability to pull strings throughout the Arab world. The good guys in the Libyan War were financed and at least partially led by Qatar. The Syrian War has seen even greater influence from Qatar. Egypt is heavily dependent on Qatari financing and its leaders are beholden to the tiny kingdom. The Taliban peace talks are being held in Qatar. Al Jazerra, the news agency owned by Qatar, pretty much sets the tone for news coverage in the Muslim world. In instance after instance a common thread runs throughout most big LW battlefields, Qatar is running the show for the good guys.

One more example: In Tunisia we have seen a recent descent into chaos. But all of a sudden the hard line Islamic interior minister, Ali Larayedeh, is being elevated to a leadership position. Yes, Larayedh is a hardliner who will impose Shariah law on Tunisia but he is also a savage fighter against Al-Qaeda. This has Qatari fingerprints all over it. Qatar always makes this move: hard line Islamic leaders are put in charge of civilian, military, or militia-type organizations but these good bad guys are savage enemies of the real bad guys. This is the bargain, no democracy, no freedom of the press, but no Al-Qaeda and I think in the long run no socialism.

In the early years of the Cold War we saw the CIA almost completely in charge of the global conflict and the policy back then was to promote anti-communist, pro-free market dictators, without American troops dying on distant battlefields. This policy worked. Maybe you and I wish pie-in-the-sky, dreamy, idealistic democracy would have worked back then, maybe the CIA's hard-nosed but successful policy was a sad commentary on the state of mankind's moral development. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. But it %$#& worked. The &^%$* Soviet Union was destroyed. Ten thousand Soviet nuclear warheads no longer threaten to destroy the planet.

So let's abandon our dreamy philosophical nonsense and ask the main question of the day: How closely linked are Qatari Intelligence and the CIA? Consider what just happened today. The Free Syrian Army attacked and liberated an old and non-functioning Syrian nuclear reactor, which at one time was being used to make nuclear weapons for Assad. Today the old nuclear reactor has no strategic value, it is just a pile of junk, but it has big propaganda value in the US because this reactor was destroyed by Israel many years ago in an air raid. It looks like the Free Syrian Army is finishing up a job started by the Israelis. This news story will really only resonate in the US. It looks like CIA fingerprints are behind Qatari fingerprints. I know this sounds nebulous, but analyzing intelligence agencies is a game of shadows and I am seeing shadows within shadows that look pretty $#@% good to me.