Death Sentence To Indian Navy Veterans: Is Qatar A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing?

India's relations with Qatar, the country that controls Arabic news channel Al Jazeera, are at its nadir. Qatar's latest salvo last week of rewarding death penalty to retired Indian navy officials, who were working with a private company, has enraged India. Qatar has claimed that the eight former navy personnel were sentenced to death on the charges of spying for Israel. The Arabic Kingdom nation has been India's 'nagging ally' since the Narendra Modi led BJP Government came to power and has even used its closeness to Pakistan to vex India. 

Qatar is layered like an onion, the more you peel, the greater it hurts your eye. But a closer look at some of the lesser known incidents, many of which turned contentious between Qatar and other countries including India, can help explain the enigma, writes Levina Neythiri. 

International relations: Qatar and the art of manipulation

In the whimsical realm of Gulf nations, Qatar is a pint-sized land that boasts the world's third-most colossal treasure trove of gas and produces a staggering 77 million tones of liquefied natural gas each year. Its richness, soaked in the earth's natural resources, is primarily being used by the country to weaponize its asset purchase across the world. A 2017 BBC report shocked the U.K as it revealed that Qatar Royal family and the investors backed by it owned more property in London than the office of the Mayor of London and Queen Elizabeth - Oligarchy upending the colonial legacy of the British in their home turf. Today, the U.K's immigration crisis is said to be born out of the shenanigans of its Oligarchs as much as the hollow thought process of the British mind.

Qatar is infamous for not only funding the Taliban but also providing them a base in the capital city of Doha for establishing headquarters during the long drawn U.S. war in Afghanistan. Qatar's state-funded Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece of a news network for all and sundry terror organizations across the world and had hogged the limelight with live statements of Al-Qaida boss including the slain terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

In 2017, Qatar was boycotted by its own brethren the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt, who not only snapped their diplomatic ties but also banned transportation to the country and called it the biggest supporter of terrorism around the world thereby giving a bad name to all the Islamic nations. Then, the state owned Qatar Airlines was parched for business in the middle-east as the big Islamic countries closed their airspace to it. These countries went on to the extent of even banning Al Jazeera for 5 years.

What did Qatar do? Instead of mending its ties and cutting funds to terror organizations, Qatar dragged the UAE and others to the International Court of Justice, accusing them of violating a U.N. anti-discrimination treaty on racial discrimination. The relentless UAE went a step further and expelled Qatari nationals from its soil. The U.N. court too ruled in the favour of the UAE.

But while Qatar has never shied away from openly supporting terrorism and banned organizations, earlier it had also used its value as a strategically located nation in the Arab world to entice the U.S. In the 1990s, Qatar had agreed to enable American forces to station equipment at various locations across their land, allowing the U.S. fighter jets to use their airstrips across many locations in the desert. While Qatar allowed the US to launch its operations in Afghanistan, it was supporting the Taliban on the other hand by giving its leaders a swanky headquarters in Doha and voice via Al Jazeera. To the surprise of the Arab world, the incumbent U.S President Joe Biden has still called Qatar a major Non-NATO ally (MNNA) and recognized its role in assisting the U.S during its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. 

Qatar is also very close to Iran, a nation that plays a proxy war in Gaza and Yemen and is also the key source of tension between the Arab countries. Sheikh Hamad (the former Emir of Qatar) was the first head of state to visit embattled Gaza in 2012, since an international blockade was imposed on the Gaza strip in 2007. All this has made Qatar a natural ally of Pakistan, another notorious supporter of terrorism around the world.

Qatar's chequered ties with India

April 2019: Just a month ahead of India's general elections, an innocuous aviation website (Youm7) published the news of Pakistani fighter pilots being sent for training on the newly purchased Rafales Jets by Qatar. Interestingly, the incident happened a month before Modi Govt was to face elections in 2019. This was the time when the Rafale controversy was stirred up by opposition parties in India. Interestingly, the news died a pronto following the BJP returned to power with a thumping majority and France denying such claims vehemently.

October 2022: Pakistan was the only country to send soldiers to Doha as a protection force for the FiFA World Cup. More than 4,500 infantry troops arrived in Qatar from Pakistan and the deployment was made on the special request of the Qatar government. "The number of troops was demanded by the Qatari authorities keeping in view the Pakistan army's relations with Qatar," a senior Pakistani security official told a Pakistani media. It was around this time that the eight Indian naval officials were picked up by Qatar on suspicion of spying. 

October 2023: Qatar Armed Forces Chief of Staff met Pakistan's Chief of Air Staff at the Pakistan Air Force Headquarters in Islamabad and reiterated their unprecedented brotherly relations. Days later, the news of the death sentence to the Indian navy veterans was out.

Qatar accused Indian origin personals of Spying for Israel

Is Qatar drumming up a situation for the psyops to arm-twist India and denigrate its reputation? Well, Qatar has done it in the past. It uses its state funded media with impunity against India since the country is mindful of India's energy dependence on it -- 42 percent of India's LNG imports are from Qatar.  

Also, Qatar has immaculately timed its death sentencing of Indian personnel with the ongoing middle-east crisis. While most countries in the middle-east have so far been watching the demolition of Hamas from the fence, Qatar is trying to send a message to natural allies India and Israel through the charges it has brought on the former naval officials. Evidently, Pakistan and Turkey too have been most vociferous supporters of Hamas. In such a scenario, like the U.S and others accuse Russia of weaponizing its fuel exports to Europe, the current situation demands that Qatar too be probed for the same.

Did the Indian naval veterans spy for Israel? 

For long the Qatar Navy has been trying to acquire cutting-edge, radar-evading submarines being built in Italy. India's navy veterans were helping Qatar in its endeavor. Dahra Global Technologies and Consulting Services is a company which employed Indian and Oman nationals and provided consulting and other strategic services to Qatar Navy and other international clients. A formal memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed in 2020 between Fincantieri, an Italian shipbuilding business, and Qatar. This agreement covered the building of submarines and was a component of a larger project that also involved the maintenance of Qatar's military fleet and the development of a naval station.

Albeit, Qatar now says that this Memorandum of Understanding has not yet been implemented. Likely under pressure, Fincantieri too is singing the same tune and its spokesperson has said that the company did not have any active MoU for the submarines. But the company has agreed that it was still working on finishing seven surface vessels for Qatar that included four corvettes, one amphibious vessel, and two patrol vessels make up this group of vessels. The deal for this was arranged in 2016 in agreement with the Ministry of Defence in Qatar. But then, secret submarine projects are never revealed in the open and no company will agree in public. 

According to reports by the Qatari media, the submarines Qatar is looking for are a scaled-down version of the ambitious Italian submarine project known as the U212 Near Future Submarine, which was developed in partnership with a German company. Pakistan Navy already uses Italian built midget submarines and it is a foregone conclusion that Qatar Navy will be trained by them.

Qatar-Pakistan: Partners in need

Be it Qatar training Pakistan pilots on its Rafale Jets or Pakistan training Qatar Navy personals, the revelations highlight a tacit understanding between a country that is filthy rich and a poverty-stricken unruly nation -- mercenaries from Pakistan to defend a small country like Qatar with paucity of pilots and soldiers.

Under the given geo-political scenario, Qatar cannot be India's reliable friend and ally - but rather a wolf in a sheep's clothing.

Levina Neythiri

Guest Author The author is a well known strategic affairs expert and a defense analyst.