As the old saying goes… If you want to get the truth, follow the money. Great Britain is starting to figure out that one huge money trail of Islamic terrorism leads directly to a small country off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia – Qatar.
Few outsiders have noticed, but radical Islamists now control Libya’s capital. These militias stormed Tripoli last month, forcing the official government to flee and hastening the country’s collapse into a failed state.
Moreover, the new overlords of Tripoli are allies of Ansar al-Sharia, a brutal jihadist movement suspected of killing America’s then ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and of trying to murder his British counterpart, Sir Dominic Asquith.
Barely three years after Britain helped to free Libya from Col Gaddafi’s tyranny, anti-Western radicals hold sway. How could Britain’s goal of a stable and friendly Libya have been thwarted so completely?
Step forward a fabulously wealthy Gulf state that owns an array of London landmarks and claims to be one of our best friends in the Middle East.
Qatar, the owner of Harrods, has dispatched cargo planes laden with weapons to the victorious Islamist coalition, styling itself “Libya Dawn”.
Western officials have tracked the Qatari arms flights as they land in the city of Misrata, about 100 miles east of Tripoli, where the Islamist militias have their stronghold. Even after the fall of the capital and the removal of Libya’s government, Qatar is “still flying in weapons straight to Misrata airport”, said a senior Western official.
So it is that Qatar buys London property while working against British interests in Libya and arming friends of the jihadists who tried to kill one of our ambassadors. A state that partly owns 1 Hyde Park, London’s most expensive apartment block, and the Shard, the city’s tallest building, is working with people who would gladly destroy Western society.
Shoebat.com has reported extensively on Qatar, enumerating several reasons why it should be officially designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. All of this is knowable by western governments who continue to tout Qatar as an ally. So why don’t they do anything?
Qatar’s investment in Britain is so extensive, and the Foreign Office is so anxious to win its favour, that some question whether UK diplomats will have the resolve to ask robust questions. “If diplomats are focused on winning commercial contracts, there is a danger they will be reluctant to ask tough questions on the funding of unsavoury groups,” said Mr Barclay.
A Foreign Office spokesman insisted there was no such risk, saying: “We encourage further progress to prevent terrorist financing from individuals in the [Gulf] region. We have honest and robust conversations with all our Gulf partners on these issues, including Qatar.”
It’s not just the UK; it’s also the U.S. In particular, as Shoebat.com reported, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is in bed with the Qatari government.
The treasonous denial of reality is not limited to the U.K. and the U.S. The German Chancellor stood shoulder to shoulder with Qatar’s Emir and allowed him to lie as she did so:
On Wednesday, the 34-year-old Emir of Qatar, who was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, took pains to deny the accusation while standing alongside Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. “What is happening in Iraq and Syria is extremism and such organisations are partly financed from abroad, but Qatar has never supported and will never support terrorist organisations,” he said.
The credibility of that denial depends partly on how you define a “terrorist organisation”. Qatar has let Hamas, the armed Palestinian movement, base its political leadership in Doha since 2012. Qatar’s government has funded Hamas and the previous Emir paid an official visit to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in 2012.
The truth is that if you follow the money of terrorism, much of it leads to Qatar and to western leaders who turn a blind eye at the expense of their own countries.
In a word, that’s treason.