Qatar claims it hosted the Taliban at U.S. request

Taliban political office in Doha.
(Image credit: FAISAL AL-TIMIMI/AFP/Getty Images)

Amid mixed messages from Washington on the Saudi-led campaign to diplomatically isolate Qatar over allegations of terror sponsorship, the Qatari government has claimed its hosting of the Taliban's "political office" came in response to a U.S. request.

Qatari special envoy on counterterrorism Mutlaq Al Qahtani told Al Jazeera that Qatar permitted the Taliban to set up shop in 2013 "by request of the U.S. government" to "facilitat[e] the talks between the Americans, the Taliban, and the government of Afghanistan." The decision, he said, was part of Qatar's "open-door policy, to facilitate talks, to mediate, and to bring peace."

Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government and partially funded by the Qatari royal family. Qatar is also host to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, a facility that houses 11,000 American personnel and provides a base for airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.