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By Joel Simon
Qatari negotiators in Doha believed they had reached an agreement. It was late October, and they had been mediating for weeks between Hamas representatives and the Israeli government to secure the release of some 230 hostages held by Palestinian militants on October 7. Hamas had freed four hostages (an Israeli-American mother and daughter and two Israeli women) thanks to deals negotiated through Qatar and Egypt. The Qataris had pointed out that while there may be no particular quid pro quo, Hamas could simply hope that the release of the hostages would facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza and cause a pause in the Israeli army’s invasion.
On October 25th, Hamas agreed to a deal to free fifty people, but Israeli officials had one more demand: the names of those who would be released. Hamas balked, claiming that, because the hostages were held by various factions, they did not have a complete record ready to hand over; to assemble one would require a days-long halt in the fighting. The Israelis interpreted this as a stalling tactic. Two days later, the deal collapsed. Within hours, the Israeli military launched its full-scale ground invasion of Gaza, which has been accompanied by a relentless aerial bombardment and intermittent communications blackouts, causing terrible suffering for Palestinian civilians. According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than eleven thousand Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war.
On Wednesday, Hamas and Israeli officials were reported to be once again close to a deal. The agreement, which was being brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the U.S., would involve the release of fifty hostages in exchange for around the same number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, and a ceasefire for several days. Qatar has been a particularly useful intermediary with Hamas because of its long-standing support for Gaza, for which it has provided what some estimates suggest is more than a billion U.S. dollars’ worth of aid since 2014. Qatari money has been used to help pay for fuel and government workers in Gaza, including the salaries of doctors and teachers. Qatar has also hosted an overseas political office for Hamas in Doha since 2012—a decision for which it has faced criticism from Israel and from some U.S. lawmakers, but which it defends as having been made at the request of American officials, who hoped to establish a channel of communication. Today, that channel is integral—in addition to Israelis, Hamas’s hostages include American, Thai, French, and British citizens; officials from those countries have all travelled to Doha in recent days, in the hopes of freeing their nationals.
In the decades since 9/11, hostage-taking has an increasingly vital component of fashionable warfare. At the same time, governments, including those of Iran, Russia, China, and Venezuela, have arrested foreign nationals on trumped-up charges. (In the U. S. , both types of instances are filed with the same government and treated as hostage-taking instances. )Qatari officials compare their role to that of Swiss diplomats. For decades, the Swiss have been worried. In foreign hostage negotiations, however, in the existing geopolitical landscape, the Qataris occupy a more useful position.
In the Middle East, Qatar has presented itself as neutral, hosting a major U.S. military base while also maintaining open lines of communication and, in some cases, direct relationships with the groups that the troops were fighting against. Qatar is also a major supplier of energy to the U.S., yet it maintains close ties with Iran, with whom it shares a major natural-gas field. This has allowed it to successfully intervene in cases where hostages have been held in Iran and Afghanistan. But recently Qatar has also begun to operate outside its usual sphere of influence. In 2021, it played an important role in winning the safe return of the American journalist Danny Fenster from Myanmar. And, in October, Qatari officials helped negotiate the return of several Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia.
But Qatar’s role has been free of controversy. Qatar’s initial mediation efforts focused on a wave of kidnappings by Islamists in Iraq at the start of the insurgency unleashed in reaction to the U. S. -led invasion. Two French journalists, Georges Malbru and Christian Ches, were on their way from Baghdad to Najaf in August 2004 when they were kidnapped by an organization calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq. Four months later, they were released in exchange for a multimillion-dollar ransom, according to a report by The Times of London. Malbru claims that a senior Qatari official later showed him that the ransom had been paid, but that the exact amount had not yet been indicated. France and Qatar have denied paying any ransom.
Although Malbrunot was grateful to Qatar for whatever role it played in securing his freedom, he went on to spend years investigating the country’s role in financing political Islam around the world. In a 2019 book, “Qatar Papers,” Malbrunot and Chesnot allege, based on secret documents, that Qatar was indirectly helping to finance Islamist groups—including those engaged in hostage-taking—while earning the gratitude of European governments for winning the release of their hostages. “It’s part of their diplomacy of being friends with anybody,” Malbrunot told me, during an interview I conducted while researching a book on hostage policy. Though the country’s officials say that they are guided by humanitarian principles and a desire to reduce conflict and promote stability, they have clearly used their leverage to gain influence and visibility, a posture which they believe enhances their security in a volatile region. “That’s the double game, the gray zone,” Malbrunot said.
Qatar’s practices have also angered Middle Eastern governments. In 2017, a Qatari falcon hunting organization captured through members of an Iranian-backed Shiite defense force in southern Iraq was freed, after tortuous negotiations that resulted in Qatar moving millions of dollars in cargo. to Iraq. Shortly after the agreement, a coalition of Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, introduced a regional blockade against Qatar over a long list of grievances, adding the accusation that the country is investing in Islamist outfits in Syria and Iraq. has explained that his payment to Iraq went to the Iraqi government. )
The question of the extent to which Qatar continues to play the “double game” has become more urgent as the U. S. strategy for taking hostages in negotiations has evolved. In 2000, the United States has adhered to a corporate policy opposed to any concessions to designated terrorist organizations. Many of its officials interpreted this as a prohibition on negotiating. European countries, including Spain and Italy, were known to pay ransoms, and Washington was involved in this practice, which it said encouraged kidnappings while funneling huge sums of cash to rebels and militants. But the U. S. position was tested when, between 2012 and 2014, Islamic State militants captured a giant organization of Westerners in Syria. After European governments paid ransoms, their hostages were released; Americans and British, whose governments refused to pay, were killed.
In 2014, the Obama administration began a review of its hostage guidelines. Its policy on concessions or bailouts remained unchanged, but the review, finalized the following year, clarified that negotiations were not prohibited and Qatar has become a key player in those discussions. Since then, those involved in the hostage fight, both inside and outside the government, have come to characterize the country’s role as indispensable.
Christopher O’Leary, who served as Director of Hostage Recovery for the U. S. government from March 2021 to September 2023, said, “The Qataris are exceptional mediators, highly motivated and very willing to help in the conflict. O’Leary, who now works at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm involved in numerous hostage recovery efforts, has spent much of his career as an FBI counterterrorism agent. It recalls an era after 9/11 and during the Iraq War, when government officials were concerned about Qatar’s possible aid to al Qaeda in Iraq by influential figures in Qatar. U. S. investigations have been inconclusive and Qatar has never been sanctioned.
In recent years, as kidnappings of Americans have changed from an enterprise largely carried out by insurgent groups to one regularly employed by states (like Iran) and entities controlling territory (like Hamas), U.S. officials seeking to recover Americans taken hostage have benefitted from Qatar’s long-standing relationships. “I don’t know when it shifted, but it’s come a hundred and eighty degrees,” O’Leary told me. During the two and half years that O’Leary spent leading hostage recovery for the government, he worked closely with Qatari officials in negotiating the return of Americans from Iran, Afghanistan—starting in 2013, the Taliban had been permitted to maintain an office in Doha—and Mali. O’Leary credits Qatari diplomats with winning the release, in 2022, of the American contractor Mark Frerichs, who was held by the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant group linked to Pakistani intelligence, for more than two years, and who was released in exchange for a convicted drug trafficker, Haji Bashir Noorzai. Qatar has become so essential to managing such crises, O’Leary told me, that it was included in a global hostage-crisis simulation led by the U.S. earlier this year, alongside representatives of America’s key European allies and the Five Eyes intelligence group.
According to the White House, among the hostages were about a dozen Americans; he obviously hopes that Qatar can help them negotiate a deal that will bring them home. But in recent days, the Israeli army’s action in Gaza has become a sticking point in negotiations: Israel says the severity of its attacks is pressuring Hamas to release the hostages, while the Qataris say they want a pause in fighting to reach a deal. “It’s frustrating and disappointing to see us go backwards on the progress we’ve made,” a senior Qatari official told me in early November. “That’s why we’ve also been in close contact with the Israelis to bring about a de-escalation, some pauses that will help us and give us a space for the release of the hostages. “
Hostage-taking is a cruel crime; it is also a violation of international humanitarian law. But hostage crises are not resolved through slogans or posturing, and rarely through rescue or military operations. In the vast majority of cases, they are resolved through negotiations—and, in order to negotiate, opposing parties need an effective interlocutor. “In addition to the contacts and reputation for securing these deals, you need the process, the skill set, and the division of labor,” Dani Gilbert, an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University and a leading expert of hostage policy, told me. Being a successful hostage negotiator is “an influential position to be in. To be needed and valued by more powerful countries gives them the position of a real power player on a geopolitical issue that is getting a lot of attention.” Qatar may have reaped rewards from performing such work in recent years, but it has also proved that it can be a reliable and responsible conduit. One can only hope that, in Gaza, it can prove itself again. ♦
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