Qatar Intervention in Syria

The Syrian political situation is a recent and developing social issue in the Middle East that has contributed to the displacement of millions of Syrians and the death of over 0.5 million people primarily consisting of both foreign and Syrian civilians. The Syrian volatile war situation portends a severe humanitarian crisis that affects both social and economic progress in the Arab country (De Bel-Air, 2015). The Syrian political situation can best be expounded by the analysis of the underlying factors that have led from the Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of uprisings that started in 2011, to a full-blown civil war.

The Syrian situation, like other uprisings of the Arab Spring, in the beginning, was a war between an autocratic government against revolting citizenry. However, with time, it turned into a spate killings by both government forces and rebels. A third dimension of the Syrian skirmishes represented by the Islamic state (ISIS) presence on the Syrian and Iraqi territory has further complicated the search for lasting peace and has contributed to the death toll rising from public executions and amputations of resisting elements and rival militia (“Syrian Regional Refugee Response,” 2016).

The lack of stability in Syria has affected not only the nation but also its neighbors due to increasing security risk and an influx of immigrants escaping the war zones. In the international community, many countries have found it necessary to monitor the Syrian situation closely due to potential adverse spillover impacting on individual states’ interests. Russia and the United States hold a close interest in Syria and both have interfered to be mediators in peace negotiations and aid their preferred party. Interventions from the international community have been minimal and guarded due to the large varying interests in the progress and the outcome of the Syrian situation. On this regard, the research focuses on the impact of interventions on the international community, particularly Qatar.

Relevancy

An inquest into Qatar’s intervention in Syria is relevant for a range of reasons. First and foremost, the two states are immediate neighbors and the former is a member of the Arab countries community. As a close neighbor, Qatar illustrates the nature and level of Syrian neighbors’ interventions in the civil war to a great extent. This nation serves as a basis to understand the impact of international intrusions into the Arab country and how much other states are willing to involve themselves in the war. Further, the reasons behind Qatari’s intervention in the Syrian civil war are also an important point for understanding the causes leading to international interventions in general. Whereas, refugee influx and heightened security risk have been cited as the primary considerations for intrusion, Qatar’s case has included money offerings to Syrian citizens who are willing to expatriate themselves from Syria. The research focuses on the impact of Qatar’s involvement in Syria on the movement of refugees into Qatar. Specifically, the study is relevant in examining the aftermath of these refugees fleeing from a hostile home environment to their country of refuge (De Bel-Air, 2015). Further, the research will also highlight the implications of Qatar’s expenditure on war and security in facilitating/intensifying the conflict in Syria and consequent displacement of civilians. Finally, the study will discuss the adaptation of different tactics in the conflict since 2011 and its influence on the course of the war.

Research Problem

The research seeks to identify the effects of Qatar’s support for Syria’s oppositional forces measured in two ways. The first is to look at the movement of refugees out of Syria and track where those refugees arrive. Second, the Syrian government’s expenditures on war and security, as well as their adaptation of tactics from 2011 to 2016 will also be considered in relation to refugee movements. The primary objective of the research is to identify the impact of Qatar’s involvement in the displacement of people and providing humanitarian aid to thousands of refugees fleeing from hostile conflict zones (“Syrian Regional Refugee Response,” 2016).

Research Questions

Has Qatar’s involvement in the Syrian civil war caused a greater number of Syrian refugees to leave Syria? It is known that Qatar’s government and the royal family, the Al-Thani, have supplied arms and resources to the oppositional forces that are fighting against Syria’s Al Assad regime. Qatar has also offered money to Syrian citizens who are willing to expatriate themselves from their Syrian citizenship. The Syrian civil war started in March, 2011, after mass protests across the country, and the Syrian regime confronted them with violent crackdowns. The protests then evolved into armed rebellions supported by various foreign powers that all desired to topple the ruling regime in Syria. The state of Qatar has played a significant role in financing and arming rebels of different factions in Syria in addition to hosting Syrian opposition and taking diplomatic measures to isolate the Syrian regime. How did Qatar’s involvement shift the balance in the conflict between the oppositional forces and the Assad-led regime forces? The research also focuses on how Qatar’s participation relates to the ISIS factor and its impact on the cause of conflict on this front (“Syrian Arab Republic,” 2016).

Literature Review

Syria has been involved in a civil war since 2011. This war began after Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s crackdown on the Arab Spring protesters. The Arab Spring started as a people’s movement for equal rights across the Middle East and parts of northern Africa. Al-Assad, who became president of Syria in 2000 after the death of his father, former President Hafez Al Assad, was accused of being abusive and oppressive toward his people. The Assad family is also Alawite, a sect of Shia Muslim, which caused concern in the mostly Sunni nation of Syria ever since his father took control over the state in 1971. The Syrian civil war has led to the widespread destruction of the country. Millions of Syrians have been displaced as a result of the war fought on multiple fronts: the Syrian government against Syrian rebels, nationalist opposition groups, and the terrorist groups Al Nusra, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. The Syrian government has responded to opposition forces by dropping “barrel bombs” on cities, leaving behind flattened rubble. The displaced civilian population has fled as refugees to the nearby Arab nations and refugee camps to escape the war.

According to the experts on the conflict, the opposition forces receive heavy resource support from their allies and similar interest groups (“Syrian Regional Refugee Response,”  2016), reportedly they have been supplied with weapons, training, vehicles, and monetary resources from neighboring nations. One of these countries is Qatar, one of the wealthiest states in the Middle East. Qatar has not been heavily involved in foreign affairs until the last 20 years. Its foreign policy is closely similar to that of its ally Saudi Arabia. This research project traces the effectiveness of Qatar’s support for the Syrian opposition by measuring the effects of this aid based on the number of refugees produced by the civil war. Fewer refugees/displaced will be considered sufficient support whereas a greater or growing number of refugees/displaced will be considered the result of ineffective policy (Miles, 2005).

An expansive amount of literature sources addresses the issues surrounding the relationship between Qatar and Syria. “Qatar’s Foreign Policy” is written by David Roberts, a foreign policy researcher at King’s College in London, and some other foreign policy analysts. The authors argue that Qatar played a “direct and decisive role” in the overthrow of Libya’s ruler, Muamar Qaddafi. Qatari leaders thought they could achieve this same quick success in Syria. They did not. Qatar’s regional/national identity has always been based on an alliance with a stronger ally to protect them militarily. During the Gulf War in the 1990s, it was clear that Qatar’s ally Saudi Arabia could not defend Qatar from an invading country. Qatar then formed a close alliance with the US, but Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist terror groups such as Al Nusra brought international criticism on it. During the so-called “war on terror”, Qatar’s favor in foreign policy was lost, but it maintained its allegiances due to its wealth and global investments (Roberts et al., 2016).

Roula Khalaf and Abigail Fielding Smith (2013) covering the Syrian conflict story for the Financial Times provide a lot of insight into the nature of refugee crisis and migration in Syria. They claim that Qatar funded over $3 billion to Syrian rebels during the first two years of the Syrian civil war (Khalaf & Fielding Smith, 2013). Although this value is typically presented as raw monetary amounts, the support also came in the form of weapons and training. A US military base in Doha has served as a training ground for Syrian rebels instructed by Qatari and American soldiers (Youssef, 2014). According to these source, Qatar was the largest foreign supporter of the Syrian opposition during the first two years of the Syrian civil war (Khalaf & Fielding Smith, 2013).

The research relies on available data from news stories to investigate the direct consequences of Qatar’s  intervention in Syria. The study will rely on news stories, specialized organization reports and data from international organizations, such as the U.N. and UNICEF, for information relating to refugee numbers and refugee movements. These figures are not entirely clear, although each nation that has hosted refugees has kept relatively precise numbers. However, the definition of “refugee” is very different in Arab countries than it is in the West. For instance, Turkey does not consider Syrians are fleeing from the civil war to be refugees; the Turkish government believes these Syrians to be “guests.” That is because “refugee” is a Western concept related to the UN rules of war. In Islamic nations, fellow Muslims seeking refuge or protection are “guests” and must be treated according to special rules prescribed in the Quran and the hadiths (Saez, 2016). Because the refugees are defined as guests in Turkey, this country does not have accurate numbers for Syrian refugees it has accepted. Regardless being called “guests” or “refugees”, according to these data, Syrians fleeing from war will simply be counted as “refugees” in the conventional sense (Roberts et al., 2016).

To trace the growing number of Syrian refugees from 2012 to 2016, it is important to analyze an array of documents as there are no available accurate or official data on the same (Saez, 2016). The most recent reports by the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs state that there are nearly 12 million Syrians who are displaced within and outside of Syria: 6.5 million are “internally displaced” and another 4.8 million have fled to other nations. Internal displacement refers to any Syrians who are now homeless or who have left their homes because of the war. Al Jazeera, Qatar’s international news agency, claims that in a nation of 22 million citizens, that means that over a half of Syria’s total population has been displaced by the war (“Syrian Refugees: A Catastrophe in Numbers,” 2015). The fact that there has been significant displacement is indisputable based on these numbers, but how much of this displacement is due to Qatar’s foreign policy in Syria?

Determining Qatar’s contribution to the chaos in Syria is very difficult, because it is not the only nation involved in aiding fighters in the civil war. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States have also made major contributions to the Syrian opposition. In contrast, Russia and Iran have given support to the Syrian government, which has not only further worsened the effects of the war but has also complicated the data. With money and support coming from many nations, some errors may arise in the research process, especially regarding the kinds of non-monetary support these nations provided (training, weapons, vehicles, and other types of support). However, since Qatar was the leading supporter of both monetary and non-monetary aid to the Syrian opposition, it can be considered as having the primary influence on any changes in refugee counts. Because many nations are intervening in Syria, the shift in refugee numbers between 2015 to 2016 will be substantial. That is because in 2015, Saudi Arabia became the major supporter of the Syrian opposition forces with greater contributions than Qatar (Sanger, 2012). How will these effects be considered? (“Quick Facts,” 2016).

One way of assessing these effects will be to look at Qatar’s history. The nation has only recently become a major player in the Middle Eastern affairs (since the Gulf War in the 1990s). However, Qatar gave public support to the Islamist governments that arose during the Arab Spring. No solid data is showing that the country provided monetary or other direct support to Islamist parties, but it invested heavily into businesses that might have had influence among Islamist groups in Tunisia and Egypt (Beydoun & Baum, 2012). This open support for Islamist regimes was unusual as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries opposed these Islamist governments. Nonetheless, the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood was eventually outed in Egypt, which led to a bloody civil conflict as a military dictatorship took control of the state. Tunisia has remained relatively secular and democratic, although there were political assassinations and other social strife since the Arab Spring.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework for this project involves some ethnography and phenomenology. Qatar has never stated outright that it seeks to destabilize the nearby regions, but one does not require direct statements to draw conclusions. By compiling information and data from some verified sources, the study intends to show that Qatar has intentionally caused destabilization in Syria by funding the oppositional forces and causing mass movement of refugees. Through confirmatory research, the paper will demonstrate that Qatar had the intent to replace the Shia Assad regime with a Sunni Islamist government. Considering that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are such close allies and are both Salafi Sunni nations, they would probably prefer Salafi regime in Syria. However, this last concern regarding the intentions may be better reserved for the closing part of the study rather than addressed at the beginning of the research (Beydoun & Baum, 2012).

By looking at Qatar’s culture of forming alliances with nations that possess strong militaries and its support of rebels in neighboring Arab countries, one will require the frameworks of rational choice theory and game theory. Under rational choice theory applied to politics, it makes sense that a small but wealthy nation such as Qatar seeks allegiance with larger states and that it would want destabilization/regime change in the nearby regions that it views as threats. Because of swift successes of regime change in Iraq, Libya, and Egypt, the Qatari government probably believed it would achieve this same kind of success in Syria.

The game theory approach in question is “war’s inefficiency puzzle,” which states that wars are costly and unpredictable, and that is why Qatar prefers to quietly support fighters and militaries rather than get directly involved in military conflicts. This theory may also explain why Qatar appears to support (or even play) both sides of a conflict. It is to maximize instability: if its allies become a danger to Qatar’s national security, it would have an alternative as well as in a case if neither party achieves complete dominance in any particular conflict (Fearon, 1995).

Methodological Frame

The primary method of collecting data for this project will be reading news articles. Much of what has happened in Qatar and Syria is relatively recent. The Syrian civil war started in 2011 and continued to this day. Because of how recent the events are, scholarly articles are not available in large numbers regarding this topic. News reports only from reputable American, European, and Middle Eastern news sources will be considered. Some of these items cover Qatar’s foreign policies, especially with Syria, while other sources cover the refugee crisis resulting from the war. Scholarly articles will accompany many of the news reports. Papers from foreign policy journals, human rights/aid magazines, government data, non-government/NGO data, and other academic sources will be included in the project.

Types of Research

Quantitative. There will be some quantification included in this project. The amounts of money provided by Qatar to the Syrian opposition will be analyzed on a yearly basis. This is most prominent in 2011-2015 when Qatar used to be the major funder and supporter of the Syrian opposition. Money provided will be correlated to the numbers of refugees leaving Syria. If enough data can be found to correlate money spent each year to surges in refugees, simple statistical/regression analysis will be performed to show if the relationship is coincidental or connected. Although the numbers of refugees are not entirely accurate, combining estimates of the UN with journalistic sources should provide a workable average. Displaced Syrians within their native country  will also be considered in these figures. Graphs will be generated to show the relation over the years between Qatari support for the Syrian opposition and the number of refugees produced during that time. Other variables to consider will be other foreign governments’ (the US, Russian) involvement in the civil war, changes in the Syrian government’s approach to the opposition, and economic/financial factors that could have led to Syrians fleeing from the country.

Historical analysis. One way to measure the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Qatar’s foreign policies as well as the effects of these foreign policies is to analyze Qatar’s support for Islamist regimes in other countries before the Syrian civil war, including Egypt and Tunisia around 2011-2013. In Tunisia, a revolution occurred in 2011, when Islamists were ousted from the government and a constitutional democracy replaced them. Qatar supported the former at that time. In Egypt, Qatar sustained the Muslim Brotherhood, which took control of the Egyptian government under President Mohamed Morsi. In 2013, Morsi was overthrown in a military coup and arrested for allegedly inciting violence and supporting terrorism. In both Tunisia and Egypt, Qatar did not finance any political parties or movements directly. Instead, the Qatari government (which is also the Qatari royal family, the Al-Thani) invested heavily in certain businesses and industries closely connected to Islamist groups (Miles, 2005). In both Tunisia and Egypt, Qatar’s support for Islamists ultimately failed. Citizens and politicians (and in Egypt, the military) are against the rise of Islamists out of fear of terrorism (Beydoun & Baum, 2012).

Hypothesis

Aid provided by Qatar to Syrian rebels led to an increase in the intensity of conflict between Syria’s government and the oppositional forces, resulting in a greater displacement of Syrian refugees from the country. Qatar’s aid undoubtedly has an impact on the course of the conflict and as such is a significant contributor to the displacement of masses since the revolution in 2011.

Operationalization of the Hypothesis

The impact of Qatar’s interventions should be analyzed from different standpoints to grasp the full magnitude of its involvement in the conflict in Syria. Qatar, in the first two years of the conflict, primarily limited refugee flow inside the country partly for security reasons and partly due to the assumption that the war would not last for a long time. Examining the policy aimed at restraining refugee movement is necessary to understand the impacts of Qatar policy on Syria as a neighbor and interested party. Restrictions on refugee immigration further complicates an already dangerous humanitarian situation and directly contributed to more deaths due to civilian exposure to war risks. Further, Qatar’s support for the rebels has  resulted in the conflict dragging on for longer that all other Arab Spring uprisings and, consequently, higher numbers of displaced persons (Pattison, 2015).

Economically Qatar’s intervention in Syria has some effects as well. First, Qatar’s continued support has led to longer conflict standoffs which mean less peace and thus lesser economic progress. Further, Qatar’s involvement is not only time and resource consuming but also expensive with a host of ramifications on the country itself and its financial performance. Qatar also risks being embroiled in the conflict for more than planned or beyond the set limits of its involvement thus stretching its resources and risking its interests. It is necessary to explore the economic impact of Qatar’s participation on both Syrian and Qatar’s economies.

The research also intends to investigate the effects of Qatar’s intervention on international policy on the Syrian civil war and the involvement of other parties in the conflict. Qatar’s participation affects the involvement of other countries in the conflict in varying manners and degrees. This state, for example, runs an oppositional force training camp in one of its army bases in collaboration with the US military. Similarly, Qatar supports the oppositional forces through cooperation with Turkey, an outspoken interested party in the conflict. Further, Qatar’s involvement also influences the nature and degree of help that the Assad regime receives from interest groups such as Russia and Iran even though this correlation may be hard to illustrate clearly.

Cases and Data

One of the primary means different states use in attempts to realize their foreign policy goals includes arming rebels in countries with severe low-level conflict, oppression and/or civil wars. This method is particularly recurrent on matters concerning the Arab Spring. Following the 2011 Libyan uprising, various nations provided both nonlethal and lethal arms to forces opposed to the then incumbent Muammar Gaddafi. This resource support included but was not limited to financial and material supply from Libya contact group as well as arms from Qatar, United Kingdom, and France. In Syria, the case has not been too different; the arming of oppositional forces by external actors is one of the key elements that continues to catalyze the escalation of conflict and inability to settle on peaceful negotiations. On the one hand, it is reported that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries supplied arms to the Free Syrian Army FSA, the United Kingdom and France provided supposed nonlethal support, while the USA and Turkey coordinated the delivery of this goods. On the other hand, it is a common fact that Russia and Iran continue to provide supplies to the government forces, and such weapons as missile systems, mortars and rockets are said to be among the inventory supplied (Youseff, 2014). In 2012, the United Kingdom was reported to have drawn up plans to train a 100,000 strong rebel army abroad aimed at striking the government forces in a shock, and conduct attacks similar to those witnessed in Iraq in 2003. Similarly, the United States in 2013-2014 approved the training and equipment for common Syrian rebels. And even though the US plans were not carried through, it is reported that the US continues to provide training to the rebels based in a Qatari military base (Pattison, 2015).

Initially, the Syrian rebels operated in disintegrated units depending on local intelligence from pro-revolution civilians and a second-hand assortment of weapons captured from the Assad regime. The appearance and spread of exogenous arms in the oppositional forces’ arsenal over the past year, however, provides first glance evidence of the presence of external weapon supply. As a result, it is notable that the current level of intervention in Syria is high; it is almost similar to the levels exercised against the USSR and its communist proxies during its intervention in Afghanistan. External actors in Syria are not only providing humanitarian aid, intelligence and training but also weapons making their response visible (Withnall, 2016).

In Afghanistan, the Saudis and Americans allowed a proxy Pakistani inter-service agency to decide which among the fighting legions received a bulk of the funds and weapons. The choice of suitable benefactors relied on their efficiency and effectiveness in the battlefield. Interestingly, the most efficient in the battlefield were radical groups driven by zealous jihadist theology. Similarly, in Syria, an almost similar process has been taking place for the last two years; the most effective battlefield troops have largely been jihadist-oriented groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra which consist mainly of the fighters enlisted from the coalition forces in Iraq. Despite this evident jihadist inclination, many states continue to provide assistance to these rebels. As a result of international interventions from countries such as Qatar, Syrian civilians continue to crumble with the lack of security and high death rates due to the unending war precipitated by the intrusions of outsiders. Further, the constant supply of arms and weapons into the conflict zone has accorded ISIS, a jihadist hardliner group, space for growth as government forces fight oppositional forces. Further, ISIS has benefitted a lot from outside interventions as it has ensured a constant flow of arms to the territory that ends up in the hands of jihadists (Pattison, 2015).

Definition of Key Terms

“Involvement” will be defined as providing monetary, political, or resource support to the Syrian opposition. “Refugee” means someone migrating from one country to another to escape a hostile environment and receive protection in the new state. “Rebels” and “oppositional forces” will be used interchangeably to identify any militant group that is fighting against the Al Assad regime in Syria. “Displacement” refers to any movement of Syrians away from their homes either to refugee camps inside or outside the country. Jihadists refer to elements with radical Islamist beliefs.

Limitations and Assumptions

Due to the complex nature of the situation in Syria and the limited information that is available, there is a host of assumptions made that are not entirely accurate. One of them is that the oppositional forces are a better alternative than the Assad regime. This is not true based on the fact that the oppositional forces like the government forces have been accused of mass civilian murders, disappearances and displacement. Further, it is notable that most of this fighting troops harbor radical Islamist tenets that are extremely dangerous to the multi-ethnic and religious Syria. There are also assumptions that the civilians in Syria prefer the oppositional forces in power rather than the current regime which is not entirely true, as many civilians favor the autocratic Assad regime which does not harbor any extremist sentiments as opposed to the rebels. There is also an assumption that interventions by outside actors are the best solution for the conflict which is not true. Intrusions of outside agents have only led to an escalation of hostilities rather than ceasefire, and thus it may not represent the best course to end the conflict (Cafiero & Wagner, 2015).

The research has several limitations. All of them are caused by not enough information, inaccurate numbers of refugees fleeing from Syrian and a fact that the impact of outside intervention is not immediately recognizable given a large number of actors in the play and the lack of a clear outline to determine the same (Sanger, 2012).

Ethical Considerations

The first objection—the ‘rebel-risk objection’—raises an epistemic problem: it is hard to determine precisely who these ‘rebels’ are (especially when there is more than one rebellious faction, as has often been the case). Additionally, it is even impossible to determine whether they are fighting about the principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello and, whether they would be better than the current government if they got to power. These risks are frequently cited and debated over the past two years regarding the Syrian rebels (Cafiero & Wagner, 2015).

Another significant concern of the rebel-risk objection is that it is hard to evaluate whether arming ensures that only those who are liable to harm will be subject to it. For instance, supplying agents may, in some cases, not possess sufficient information about the liability of those against whom the armed forces will use their weapons (or the commitment of the fighters themselves) (Pattison, 2015). Even when this information is available, suppliers could lack sufficient control over the rebels to ensure power is only used against those who are liable. Thus, the rebel-risk objection also points out that there are significant risks concerning those subject fought against by the rebels.

To help explain this point further, it can be framed regarding the contingent pacifist objection to revisionist just war theory. The waging of any wars is likely to involve harm to those not liable to such damages, like innocent civilians. According to the revisionist approach to just war theory, there are likely to be many non-liable parties. On this view, it is not only wrong to target innocent non-combatants, but also to target innocent combatants, such as those who fight justly, and even those who make just contributions to otherwise unjust wars. It is hard to ensure that those waging war target only people who are liable, since it is impossible to determine who is innocent and thus make certain that there is no harm to innocents. Given the worries about doing harm to innocents (rather than just allowing it), the risks of waging war or supporting one are too high (Pattison, 2015).

Findings and Evaluation

Consequently, considerations of interceding agency may be thought to reduce the force of the escalation objection significantly. But how much does it discount the worries of escalation? Interceding agency of others bares a huge weight of the following occurrences. On this view, Qatar would not have any responsibility for the harms caused by an escalation in Syria. Similarly, in this vein, Ned Dobos claims that mediated consequences do not matter for rebels. Further, that there is no good reason to think that they should matter for intervening parties either. He suggests, they do not matter for the rebels since those facing violations of their basic human rights still retain the right to self-defense regardless of reactions from others to the exercise of this right (Sanger, 2016).

The three central objections have two important implications. First, they provide some reason to be skeptical about the general permissibility of arming other states. This is due to the fact that there is a threat that governments may misuse the supplied weapons. It may be difficult to determine the real intentions of the state and its various opposing organizations and almost impossible to control whether government/ oppositional forces will use the military resources supplied as required. According to the escalation objection, there is a worry that arming a state escalates a conflict, because other parties will then arm the opponents and may increase the motivation for the fighters not to settle. The diffusion objection states that supplies provide to one side of conflict may end in the hands of the opposing party. For instance, Thomas Jackson in his study finds that the central way for rebels to obtain weapons is to steal them from government stockpiles (Pattison, 2015).

Conclusion

In conclusion, intervention into the Syrian conflict has had its fair of positive and challenging outcomes. Nevertheless, the integrity of outsider’s involvement in the conflict cannot be succinctly judged as wrong or right but rather through the lens of gains by intervening party and the intervention’s impact on the course of the conflict. In the case of Qatar’s involvement in Syria, many conclusions may be drawn with regards to its actions. First and foremost, Qatar’s intervention in Syria is morally justifiable for good reasons. One is that Qatar is one of the key regional powers neighboring Syria; as a result, it would not be proper to sit back while a neighbor is skidded into social and economic turmoil which has a negative spillover effect to other countries. Further, Qatar justifies its aid to oppositional forces as similar to assistance accorded to Libya rebels to oust the then incumbent Gaddafi. Qatar’s humanitarian aid is also a valuable resource to millions of civilians faced by a hostile environment. The major positive effects witnessed in Qatar’s intervention has been its ability to support and provide protection to refugees fleeing from the war-torn Syria.

However, even though Qatar’s intervention especially military intervention is morally defendable it does not expressly mean that it is ethically right. Throughout the project several negative impacts of interventions have been analyzed this challenges are in no manner out balanced by the interventions’ positive effects. Even though Qatar does good to arm rebels and thus prevent mass massacre by the current regime there are considerations that this is one of the catalyst that has further deemed the hope for peace in Syria. Further, there are concerns that foreign arm supply ends up arming radical jihadists who in future may pose a threat to world peace and security. Even though, the true magnitude of foreign interventions in arming jihadist is not immediately visible it may pose a threat in future.

As a result of the considerations above Qatar’s intervention may be morally justifiable but not ethically defendable. While intervention especially non-military is important for civilians in the war torn regions. However even so passive military support may be the key to preventing further perpetration of atrocities by the Assad regime. However this assistance should be highly monitored and regulate to ensure arms are used in an ethical acceptable manner.

• Russia and Ukraine
• Mass Media Influence in US Elections
• Donald Trump’s Influence
• Qatar Intervention in Syria
• US Government Branches