[00:00] My supervising producer, Kara Jensen-McKinnon,
[00:01] has coined a phrase that I think I'm going to start using.
[00:05] The phrase is "Jungle Times."
[00:08] As in, "We now live in the Jungle Times."
[00:12] You know the ones.
[00:13] >> Soldiers boarding container ships with rifles drawn.
[00:16] >> Streets littered with cars torched in the intense bombardment.
[00:19] >> Delta Force commandos seized Venezuela's president.
[00:23] >> Russia has unleashed its deadliest attack so far this year on Ukraine.
[00:28] >> The sound of several gunshots sent the president ducking that way
[00:34] as a swarm of officers surrounded. >> This show is generally
[00:37] about looking at historical moments that either lead to current events
[00:41] or help us better understand current events.
[00:44] We find historical precedents. And taken individually,
[00:49] all the things happening right now do have a precedent. From oil shocks
[00:54] to wars in the Middle East.
[00:55] We have been talking about these precedents for weeks.
[00:59] >> In the 80s in Sydney, the petrol rationing was done by state governments.
[01:02] >> We all know from Iraq, from Afghanistan, a war that's one month,
[01:07] that becomes six months, that becomes six years, that becomes a decade.
[01:10] >> But I think that, in one very important way, what we're watching now is different.
[01:16] And it's because all of these things are happening at once,
[01:20] and every day things just seem to get more and more chaotic.
[01:24] >> We have a plan where every bridge in Iran
[01:29] will be decimated, where every power plant in Iran
[01:33] will be out of business. I mean, complete demolition.
[01:37] >> We're watching the world change in a way that will be with us for a long time.
[01:42] I think the best example of what I mean by this is found
[01:45] not in Iran, Israel, the US or Lebanon, but in Qatar.
[01:51] >> Qatar, where the world's biggest gas plant is. >> Qatar has spent the last 50 years
[01:56] meticulously planning, scheming and plotting to make itself
[02:00] immune to global instability, to make sure that something like this:
[02:05] >> Iran targeted Qatari gas infrastructure in retaliation
[02:08] to a strike on its major gas field. >> Can never happen.
[02:12] And yet it has. Why?
[02:15] Well, because unfortunately for Qatar, we're no longer in the stable times.
[02:20] We're in the Jungle Times.
[02:23] And meticulous planning doesn't count for anything in the jungle. Today,
[02:28] the story of the elaborate, decades-long, trillion-dollar scheme that Qatar hoped
[02:34] would protect them, and what its failure tells us about what we are about to face.
[02:40] I'm Matt Bevan,
[02:42] and this is If You're Listening.
[02:43] Welcome to the Jungle Times.
[02:50] I love old atlases.
[02:53] If you've got one you're trying to unload, send it to me.
[02:55] I'll take it.
[02:56] This one I've got here is from 1961.
[02:59] And it's not only full of extremely dated maps, but it's got fascinating
[03:04] statistical information about every country in the world.
[03:08] For example, in 1961, there were significantly more cars
[03:12] in Australia alone than there were in all of Asia combined.
[03:17] That's a fun fact.
[03:22] I went looking through the atlas
[03:23] for fun facts about Qatar, and there is none.
[03:29] Qatar is drawn on a map of the Middle East.
[03:31] But apart from its roughly sketched border,
[03:33] the fun facts are very much lacking.
[03:36] Apparently Encyclopaedia Britannica knew
[03:38] nothing about it, not even its population.
[03:42] And that's because:
[03:43] >> The sheikhdom of Qatar is geographically prominent
[03:46] but otherwise one of the least-known of the Arab Gulf states.
[03:50] It was essentially famous for not being famous.
[03:53] >> Perhaps more than any Gulf state, Qatar's history is shrouded in obscurity.
[03:58] >> And look, to a certain extent, that is understandable.
[04:00] Qatar is a barren, flat, horrifically hot,
[04:04] windswept peninsula on the edge of Saudi Arabia.
[04:08] It had very little connection with the outside world.
[04:11] In fact, in one of the country's museums, it's noted that it wasn't until the 1960s
[04:16] that football was first introduced to the country.
[04:20] If Britannica had checked, they'd have found that Qatar's
[04:22] population in 1961 was just 36,000.
[04:26] And yet it had its own royal family.
[04:29] >> There's no question that Sheikh
[04:30] Khalifa and his family rule the emirate in every respect.
[04:34] >> Now, usually, royal families are ripe for scandal and intrigue,
[04:38] but the royal family of Qatar, the Al Thanis, are almost bizarrely boring,
[04:44] apart from the fact that they have a fondness
[04:47] for conducting coups while the emir, the leader of the country, is on holiday.
[04:53] >> Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani,
[04:55] who's just celebrated ten years as ruler
[04:58] after deposing his cousin in a bloodless royal coup.
[05:01] >> The former emir made the grave mistake of going on holiday to Iran,
[05:06] and while he was away, his cousin Khalifa changed the locks and bingo
[05:10] bango, he became the new emir.
[05:13] Now, why pull a sneaky coup
[05:15] to take charge of a barren peninsula populated by fishermen?
[05:19] Well, they'd found something under their feet.
[05:22] >> Its oil reserves are not large by the standards of its bigger neighbours,
[05:26] but it has got gas to exploit for the next 500 years.
[05:33] >> So, 500 years worth of gas and a very tiny population.
[05:36] The Al Thanis used the gas to make their
[05:40] population incredibly rich. Today, Qatari nationals are provided
[05:44] with a free home for every family, a free car.
[05:47] They pay no taxes, no rent,
[05:50] no utility charges, no telephone bills.
[05:53] Education for Qatari nationals is free, whether it's at home
[06:00] or at the most exclusive and expensive college abroad.
[06:04] Healthcare is unlimited.
[06:06] Qataris can fly to any specialist anywhere in the world,
[06:10] and the government will pick up the airfares, the doctor's bill
[06:14] and the family's luxury hotel bill for as long as they're abroad.
[06:18] Now, this sounds like an incredibly sweet deal.
[06:21] And if you were one of the 40,000-odd Qataris, it really was.
[06:26] Work was pretty much optional.
[06:29] >> We encountered an elderly
[06:30] and delightful man working as an occasional government car driver,
[06:34] although he was a dollar millionaire twice over.
[06:37] >> But this decadent lifestyle had a couple of pretty dark clouds hanging over it.
[06:42] For one thing, because Qataris didn't really need to work,
[06:45] they imported basically their entire labour force.
[06:49] Most of the actual work in Qatar was done
[06:52] by migrant labourers and indentured servants.
[06:56] By the 80s, the labourers outnumbered Qataris three to one, and lived
[07:00] as a virtual underclass with almost none of the rights Qatari citizens had.
[07:05] >> Menial tasks are reserved almost exclusively for non-Qataris.
[07:10] They definitely didn't get free cars and unlimited healthcare —
[07:14] not a particularly sweet deal for them.
[07:16] >> The other dark cloud hanging over it all was Saudi Arabia.
[07:21] >> Big brother is Saudi Arabia,
[07:23] with which Qatar shares its only and unmarked land border.
[07:27] >> Khalifa and his people lived like kings, but only in the material sense.
[07:33] They were reliant on big brother for security, and when push came to shove,
[07:38] it was the Saudis who were really calling the shots.
[07:41] >> Qatar could have just lived with that reality.
[07:43] It's what their fellow emirs in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates
[07:47] decided to do, basically.
[07:49] Accept that they were all a big happy family of Sunni Arabs
[07:53] and that there was more that united them than divided them.
[07:57] Just let the Saudis run the show.
[07:59] Don't rock the boat.
[08:00] Just sit there quietly and be rich.
[08:03] But in 1995, Khalifa did something that no Qatari emir
[08:07] should ever do, and went on holiday to Switzerland.
[08:11] His son Hamad saw an opportunity to take a leaf out of his dad's book.
[08:15] >> Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani seized power
[08:19] from his father in a palace coup. >> The thing was, the new emir, Hamad,
[08:23] wanted to exercise more autonomy over Qatar's foreign affairs
[08:28] than his father had.
[08:30] This displeased Qatar's big brother.
[08:32] And in case you've forgotten,
[08:34] >> big brother is Saudi Arabia. >> The new emir wasn't
[08:37] willing to accept Saudi Arabia's role as the regional superpower.
[08:41] So Saudi Arabia tried to get rid of him.
[08:44] The Saudi counter-coup failed, potentially because Hamad refused to go on holiday,
[08:49] but it left him in a tricky position.
[08:52] Wedged between a pushy big brother
[08:54] to the south and something even scarier to the north.
[08:58] >> The only real threat to the development programs of the ruling family
[09:01] would appear to be Islamic fundamentalism
[09:04] along the lines of the Iran model.
[09:07] >> Iran. While Saudi Arabia might see the Qataris
[09:10] as a little brother, they were at least from the same family.
[09:14] Iran is extremely different in almost every way.
[09:18] Different ethnicity, different language,
[09:20] different religion — Shia instead of Sunni Islam —
[09:23] and a totally different regime. A fundamentalist theocracy
[09:28] that had overthrown their monarch in a violent revolution.
[09:34] >> They would need to find
[09:35] a bigger, scarier friend.
[09:38] And so they went to the biggest and scariest friend there is.
[09:41] >> It's my honour to welcome
[09:44] the Emir of Qatar to the Oval Office.
[09:47] >> I'm pretty sure George W. Bush just called him the Emir of Gutter,
[09:51] but anyway.
[09:52] >> Your Highness, it's such an honour to have you here.
[09:55] And I welcome you.
[09:57] And I want to thank you for your friendship.
[10:01] >> To secure this new friendship, Hamad agreed
[10:03] to host an enormous American air base in his country.
[10:06] >> It's one of the most state-of-the-art ones that you'll find in the region.
[10:09] >> And to say thanks,
[10:10] the US moved its regional base of operations to Qatar ahead
[10:14] of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
[10:26] >> This is CENTCOM, the US military's central command.
[10:27] As a result, Qatar became the epicentre of US military operations in the Middle East.
[10:31] >> We're here with permission of the Qataris, and we're doing
[10:34] our best to be good guests.
[10:38] >> Luring the Americans gave his tiny country a powerful protector against,
[10:42] at times, aggressive neighbours. But it wasn't just about demonstrating military strength and bringing in guys with big guns.
[10:47] Hamad wanted to show that Qatar was allied to the west in ideological ways as well.
[10:53] So he started democratic reforms, then spent millions setting up Al Jazeera.
[10:59] >> Welcome to the world news from Al Jazeera,
[11:02] and the very first program live from our Doha news
[11:05] headquarters here in the heart of the Middle East.
[11:08] >> By advocating for a freer press in a region where that's not really a thing,
[11:12] Al Jazeera became both a thorn in the side of authoritarian regimes
[11:17] and the most important platform for those regimes
[11:21] to communicate with the wider world.
[11:23] Just about every government in the region has, for a time,
[11:26] closed Al Jazeera's bureau.
[11:29] Some have withdrawn ambassadors from Qatar in protest.
[11:33] But today, even the toughest Arab leaders have to deal
[11:36] with Al Jazeera, because it speaks to the people.
[11:39] >> So, Qatar has become the region's US military
[11:42] base and centre of information.
[11:45] But for Hamad, that wasn't enough.
[11:48] >> Fly to over 80 destinations onboard one of the world's youngest fleets.
[11:53] Qatar Airways.
[11:55] World's five-star airline.
[11:56] >> He dumped investment into Qatar Airways, hoping to turn the Qatari
[12:00] capital, Doha, into a global business travel hub.
[12:04] >> Halfway to anywhere with plenty of time to spare.
[12:08] At the Qatar Airways premium terminal in Doha —
[12:11] >> five-star service for first and business class passengers.
[12:14] >> And he spent money trying to get people to actually leave the airport
[12:18] and see the country, instead of just flying through.
[12:31] >> Hamad basically bought the FIFA World Cup,
[12:34] only 50 years after football was first seen in his country.
[12:38] Then he spent more money on it than every other World Cup in history
[12:43] combined.
[12:51] Hosting the World Cup
[12:52] wasn't just about football.
[12:55] Qatar wanted to be the place where the world gathered,
[12:58] where people with nothing in common could come together.
[13:01] During the tournament, Iran played against its greatest enemy, the United States.
[13:07] >> Whenever these two teams play anywhere, in any competition,
[13:10] it brings with it history.
[13:12] It brings with it culture, it brings with it politics.
[13:14] >> We talked in last week's episode about how important it is to build
[13:18] trust and credibility when you're trying to negotiate with your enemies.
[13:22] Qatar decided to try and be the place where that trust was brokered.
[13:27] >> Senior Taliban leaders are in Qatar for peace talks with US officials.
[13:30] >> Qatar welcomed not only the US military to its territory,
[13:32] but the Taliban.
[13:36] >> We are prepared to engage the Taliban
[13:39] through a negotiations office in Doha.
[13:44] >> With implicit western backing, Qatar hosted offices of the Taliban,
[13:49] financiers of al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and rebel factions
[13:53] from all over Africa. All of this, just a few kilometres from the regional headquarters
[13:57] of US Central Command.
[13:59] It is a very small country, after all.
[14:01] Not everyone was a fan of this.
[14:03] It's a small-world style of politics, and Qatar was publicly criticised
[14:08] for trying to bring these groups together,
[14:09] particularly by Israel and its supporters.
[14:13] >> It is quite strange that the Emir of Qatar
[14:17] should take sides with Hamas.
[14:22] >> I blame Qatar. That very rich emirate that's been pouring money into the hands of Hamas.
[14:25] >> Despite publicly disagreeing with what Qatar was doing, behind the scenes
[14:30] the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu was supportive of it.
[14:34] >> Netanyahu allowed Qatar to give massive amounts of cash to Hamas in Gaza.
[14:39] >> Qatar electronically transfers cash to Israel.
[14:43] That cash is then physically carried over the border by UN officials
[14:48] and by Israeli officials into Gaza.
[14:50] >> It was a
[14:51] divide-and-conquer strategy, with Netanyahu hoping
[14:54] Hamas would weaken the more moderate Palestinian Authority.
[14:58] >> We did everything in order to make sure
[15:01] that Hamas will go on controlling Gaza, and the Palestinian
[15:05] Authority will control the West Bank, so they will fight each other.
[15:10] >> So there's money flowing in all sorts of directions for all sorts of reasons.
[15:14] And Qatar wanted to be at the centre of it. Having a diplomatic and financial
[15:18] relationship with everybody means nobody will want to attack you.
[15:22] Simple.
[15:24] Over the last 50 years, Qatar has grown from being
[15:26] a strange, barren peninsula with no fun facts
[15:31] to being home to the richest citizen population on earth,
[15:34] to being the centre of an enormous,
[15:37] intricate spiderweb which stretched into the business,
[15:41] economic, journalistic, tourism, cultural, energy and political worlds.
[15:47] But Hamad — and after his abdication in 2013, his son
[15:50] Tamim — didn't do all this for fun, or for ego, or for glory.
[15:55] It was a long-term strategy of making Qatar
[15:58] a significant player in world affairs.
[16:01] If they were at the centre of the web,
[16:03] they would be too important to mess with.
[16:06] It was a rational strategy formed during
[16:09] an era where rational people ran the world.
[16:12] Their refusal to just sit there and be rich
[16:14] may have made Saudi Arabia grumpy.
[16:17] But what was Saudi Arabia going to do about it?
[16:19] Qatar had made itself too important.
[16:23] The strategy was all working
[16:24] very well until around May 2017, when there were hints
[16:29] that the era of rational strategy may be coming to an end.
[16:34] >> From bagpipes to men on horseback.
[16:36] Saudi Arabia turned up the pomp for Donald Trump's first foreign visit.
[16:40] >> The new US president, Donald Trump,
[16:42] was invited to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to dance with swords
[16:46] and join the Saudi king, Salman, in laying his hands upon a glowing orb.
[16:51] >> It was a surprising destination for Trump's first foreign trip as president.
[16:56] >> Donald Trump has been welcomed to Saudi Arabia with open arms,
[17:00] despite his campaign rhetoric depicting the Saudis as woman-hating
[17:04] gay killers and promising a ban on Muslim travel.
[17:08] >> Before he left, the Saudis agreed to a massive trade and weapons deal.
[17:12] >> Around $147 billion in US arms sales to Saudi Arabia,
[17:18] and $270 billion in other trade.
[17:22] >> Two weeks after Trump's visit, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered
[17:26] an extraordinary military operation against Qatar. Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
[17:31] the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain imposed an aggressive blockade on Qatar.
[17:37] Land, air and sea routes in and out of Qatar were blocked.
[17:41] >> The four blockade countries alleged Qatar used its wealth to fund extremist
[17:45] groups linked to Iran. >> They demanded that Qatar decrease
[17:49] its diplomatic and military engagement with Iran and Turkey,
[17:54] kick terrorist groups out of the country,
[17:57] and shut down its government-funded broadcaster, Al Jazeera.
[18:02] >> The US military and State Department were shocked.
[18:05] >> The US has 10,000 troops at a critical air base in Qatar.
[18:11] American diplomats rushed to stop any fallout.
[18:14] >> While the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations had seen Qatar as an ally,
[18:19] this time around, the vibe from the White House was very different.
[18:23] >> The US president even took credit for the crackdown on Qatar, tweeting:
[18:28] "Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism."
[18:32] >> I've heard reports that President Trump didn't even realise that
[18:35] the United States had a base within Qatar, which is pretty alarming.
[18:39] >> It turns out, hosting a US military headquarters isn't
[18:43] a great insurance policy if the US president doesn't know it exists.
[18:48] Thankfully, Trump had some people in his cabinet
[18:50] who were aware of the significance of Qatar.
[18:53] >> We call on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain
[18:59] and Egypt to ease the blockade against Qatar.
[19:03] >> A group of Trump cabinet officials,
[19:04] informally referred to as the "axis of adults",
[19:08] basically ignored his instructions and shored up the relationship with Qatar.
[19:12] >> The blockade is also impairing US
[19:14] and other international business activities in the region.
[19:17] >> The blockade is hindering US
[19:19] military actions in the region and the campaign against ISIS.
[19:22] >> Eventually, the blockade was eased and officially ended
[19:26] in the early months of the Biden administration.
[19:29] >> Qatar didn't cave in to any of the Saudi demands.
[19:32] They survived the blockade with their strategy intact,
[19:35] and their importance as a location for resolving disputes between enemies
[19:40] only increased. Following the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel,
[19:45] Qatar was the only mediator able to get both sides to the table
[19:50] for ceasefire and hostage release negotiations.
[19:53] >> With officials in Doha insisting talks can continue
[19:57] if both Israel and Hamas show a willingness to negotiate in good faith.
[20:02] >> In a world ruled by rational people, you need a safe place for those people
[20:05] to be able to talk to each other while they sort out key differences —
[20:09] somewhere bitter enemies can come and sit at a table
[20:13] and try and find common ground, without worrying
[20:15] they're going to get poisoned or stabbed in the middle of the night.
[20:19] >> Qatar was that place.
[20:21] But then Donald Trump returned to the White House, and things started changing.
[20:28] >> A brazen attack in Qatar's capital.
[20:33] >> Israeli forces
[20:34] targeting Hamas's political headquarters in a residential area of Doha.
[20:39] >> Decades spent shoring up their position as an important ally of the west
[20:43] had failed to protect Qatar from Israeli airstrikes.
[20:47] Hamas's political leadership had reportedly gathered in Doha
[20:49] to discuss the latest US proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza.
[20:53] It wasn't the first time
[20:54] that Hamas's leadership had been in Qatar to talk with the Americans and Israelis,
[20:59] but Bibi Netanyahu saw an opportunity this time to strike
[21:02] without any fear of ramifications.
[21:05] >> These are the terrorist chiefs who planned,
[21:10] launched and celebrated the massacres of October 7.
[21:14] >> The Qatari government called it state terrorism.
[21:17] Any other US president would have been furious.
[21:20] Donald Trump, though —
[21:23] >> Well, I'm not thrilled. I'm not thrilled about it.
[21:26] Not jazzed. Not psyched.
[21:28] >> There was no condemnation of Israel, no axis of adults
[21:31] to give Israel a rap on the knuckles and tell them to stop.
[21:34] In fact, when Netanyahu suggested just a few months later that it might be
[21:38] a good idea to attack Iran during peace negotiations with the US, Trump joined in.
[21:43] >> The Israeli-US joint strikes began in broad daylight,
[21:47] hitting multiple Iranian cities, including the capital.
[21:49] >> Iran responded with fury, firing missiles at anyone within reach.
[21:55] For hours, missiles crisscrossed Middle Eastern skies. Warning
[21:59] sirens blared.
[21:59] Israelis ran for cover.
[22:01] Missiles were also fired towards Qatar.
[22:03] >> In Doha, Qatar's military has been intercepting missiles
[22:07] aimed at a US air base and the international airport.
[22:11] >> Iran targeted Qatari gas infrastructure in retaliation to a strike on its major
[22:16] gas field, wiping out 17% of capacity for up to five years.
[22:22] >> Decades of planning, investment and diplomacy by the Qataris went up in smoke.
[22:28] >> The Qatari government has labelled the strike a flagrant
[22:31] breach of international law.
[22:32] >> The trouble is, international law doesn't really apply during the Jungle Times.
[22:39] Qatar has always
[22:40] been incredibly vulnerable geographically,
[22:43] so it spent decades building strategic security.
[22:47] It played the game better than most.
[22:50] But that game is over now.
[22:52] Alliances don't matter.
[22:54] The people with the power don't think about consequences.
[22:57] In the Jungle Times, strength is the only thing that matters.
[23:01] And Trump, Netanyahu and Mohammed
[23:04] bin Salman in Saudi Arabia have the strength.
[23:07] Qatar will survive this crisis.
[23:10] They're still rich and they still have the US military on their side,
[23:14] but they will not feel nearly as secure.
[23:17] Will people continue to choose Qatar as a place for negotiating
[23:20] if they're worried about Israeli airstrikes?
[23:23] Will people invest and travel there
[23:25] if Iran might bomb them at any moment?
[23:28] Is the relationship with America secure
[23:31] if the US president doesn't even know that Qatar is home to the most important
[23:35] American military base in the world's most volatile region?
[23:40] Qatar was under the impression it had solved the problem
[23:43] of being a small country in a scary neighbourhood.
[23:48] It hasn't.
[23:49] This is the Jungle Times.
[23:51] If you're not big and scary, you need to find a tree to hide in.