Close ties with the Taliban: what role does Qatar play in Afghanistan?

Qatar maintains close ties with the Taliban, but also talks to their opponents. The small desert state has become an important player in the Afghanistan crisis – there are several reasons.

“We want good relations with our neighbors, with the countries in the region and in the world,” said Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen recently. “Afghanistan needs cooperation.” However, there is already a country with which the Taliban maintain close contacts – Qatar, the small, wealthy golf emirate that will also host the soccer World Cup next year.

Taliban officials temporarily in exile in Qatar

As early as 2013, the Taliban were allowed to open a political office in a villa in the capital Doha. At times around 100 Taliban officials are said to have been in exile in Qatar. The office became a great propaganda success for the Afghan Islamists – the Gulf emirate had given them a unique international stage.

In this office, the world was able to see the Taliban representatives negotiating for the first time, said the Qatari political expert Ashraf Siddiqi, and they were then so completely different than expected, namely quite polite and educated.

Cooperation also with the USA

But the Qatari ruling house not only cooperates with the Taliban, but also with their opponents. The United States, for example, is allowed to operate its largest military base in the region in the emirate. With a lot of commitment, Qatar has now also helped to get Afghans who fled the Taliban out of the country.

According to a spokeswoman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, around 60,000 people from Afghanistan are said to have passed the Qatar hub on their way to security in the past few weeks.

Qatar has sent technicians to Kabul to help get the civil airport in the Afghan capital back into operation and it continues to support evacuation operations. After the airport went back into operation, the first civil flight started in Kabul on Thursday. It was a Qatar Airways passenger plane that was flying to Doha with around one hundred people on board, including 15 German nationals.

Qatar did not recognize the first Taliban rule

The Taliban office that opened in Doha in 2013 does not automatically reflect the great sympathy of the Qatari ruling house for the Afghan Islamists. The Taliban were not allowed to call the office “Representation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” or to fly their flag there. Qatar also failed to recognize the first Taliban rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

The office was set up in consultation with the USA. In 2012, the New York Times reported that US government officials welcomed the proposed office opening as “the single most important step” in peacebuilding efforts in Afghanistan.

Qatar sees itself as a mediator

Qatar has close ties to Islamist movements like Hamas and supported the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt until 2013. At the same time, an Israeli commercial agency was opened in the emirate a quarter of a century ago, when this was still completely unpopular in the Arab world.

Qatar sees itself as a mediator and wants to talk to everyone. Western governments also appreciate this. For the tiny desert state, this intermediary role is a kind of life insurance.

Desert state in a region of unrest

It is an approach that, according to Gulf State expert Michael Stephens, Qatar has been following since Saddam Hussain attacked Kuwait in 1990. At that time, one understood in Doha, said Stephens in 2014 to the ARD studio Cairohow unsafe it is for a small state in a troubled region. Just because you keep quiet doesn’t necessarily mean you are sure. This has inspired Qatar to the new politics with which one wants to bring the country into international conversation, said Stephens.

Moderating influence on the Taliban?

Some observers even hope that Qatar will exercise a moderating influence on the Taliban. In early September, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani called on the Taliban to respect women’s rights “without undoing what had been achieved so far”.

So far, however, there is nothing to suggest that such demands would actually affect the Taliban.