As American-backed forces proceed to sweep out ISIS militants from their last village stronghold in Syria and as President Trump declares the Islamic State “100 percent defeated” in the war-torn region, Republican strategists speak optimistically about how these positive developments in the war on terror portend. They bode well for his re-election prospects in 2020.
But these tactical defeats of ISIS on the ground may be obscuring a shift in policy that is undermining the administration’s effort to marginalize and isolate radical forces of terror across the Middle East. A new documentary, titled “Blood Money,” tells the story of how various foreign interests have successfully achieved that policy change and how this threatens to reverse Trump’s significant progress in isolating and diminishing contingents of radical Islamic terror in the region.
President Trump’s speech in Riyadh in May of 2017 announced a dramatic departure from the Obama administration’s approach of supporting the purportedly “democratic movements” around the region that constituted the so-called Arab Spring. In classic totalitarian fashion, the forces of intolerance and terror, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, merely used these U.S.-supported movements as an opportunity to seize power and persecute their enemies.
As authoritarian (and relatively moderate) regimes in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya were toppled, these supposedly odious regimes were replaced by significantly more repressive governments, whose material and rhetorical support for worldwide terror became significantly more pronounced. Not only was that to the great detriment of U.S. national interests, it brought mass persecution of political and religious enemies, including moderate, pro-Western political parties and Christians. Trump’s Riyadh speech served as a renunciation of this failed political approach to radical Islam, and a call to Arab leaders across the region to “drive out” the forces of terror and radicalism within their borders or face serious consequences from the United States.
Many Arab leaders present, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, subsequently cracked down on the radicals within their borders: clerics preaching pro-jihad ideology were rounded up, billionaires funding terrorism and the spread of radical Islamic propaganda had their wealth appropriated. A notable exception to this trend was Qatar, whose regime continued funding and providing safe haven to terrorist groups such as ISIS.
Rather than change course, after concerted pressure from other Arab leaders on the Qatari regime to cease their patronage of the Muslim Brotherhood and associated radical forces, Qatar went on a propaganda “charm offensive,” spending over $16 million in 2017 alone on lobbying activities while pouring countless millions into media buys, Twitter targeting, and sponsoring pay-to-play “journalism.” In addition, Qatar funneled money to prestigious American think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, effectively buying the production of pro-Qatar policy papers and “scholarship.” Another key component of Qatar’s efforts to move the U.S. policy debate has been the winning over of key Republicans in Washington, credentialed conservatives such as have been enlisted to lobby the administration and the Congress on behalf of the Qatari government in return for fat retainers.
This “charm offensive” has already resulted in a shift in the administration’s initial posture of pressuring Muslim leaders to “drive out” the radicals to one of “working together” to achieve a political solution. The new policy is barely distinguishable from the pro-Arab Spring rhetoric of the previous administration.
The sheikhs and emirs in Doha and around the region who have been funding terror must be breathing a sigh of relief. And the U.S. media has shifted from a blindness toward the nefarious activities of the Saudis that characterized the 9/11-era to a strange reticence about aggressively investigating either the Qatari regime’s continuing support for Islamic radicalism or the robust propaganda effort to cover its tracks. Barely mentioned in media accounts of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was the fact that he was one of many receiving funds from the Qataris. According to the Washington Post, text messages recovered after his death revealed that Qatari agents shaped the content of many of his Post columns. The Post’s editors had been unaware of this arrangement.
“Blood Money” is not only a case study in the corruption of American foreign policy on the part of well-funded foreign interests. It also serves as a warning to conservatives ready to declare victory, both tactical and political, in the war against worldwide terror. This war is not over, and as long as corrupt regimes with big bucks are allowed to treat D.C. as their playground, both the Trump administration and the United States risk defeat in the long term.
Brian Robertson is a former senior administration official who served most recently in the U.S. Department of State.
