Benabderrahmane Versus Qatar And The War Of Influences

It is a real risk to do business in a dictatorship. As a former diplomat, it is something I saw fairly regularly through the years. Commerce, any type of commerce, has its risks, of course, but these can be amplified depending on the local legal and political scene. American and other Western businessmen looking for profits would find themselves trapped in regimes with little or no respect for the rule of law, biased courts, government brutality, and lawfare. It was the role of diplomats to try to help, if possible, our citizens trapped in these sorts of dilemmas. Sometimes it was doable, other times, it was impossible.

On November 18, in Washington, D.C., the Capitol Institute held a press event at the National Press Club highlighting the case of French-Algerian businessman Tayeb Benabderrahmane and his persecution by the State of Qatar since 2020. The case is a grotesque one – Benabderrahmane was unlawfully detained for almost a year, subjected to psychological and physical pressure, and was later sentenced to death in absentia. The long arm of Qatari lawfare has pursued him to France and he has fought back, filing a lawsuit against Qatar at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).[1]

There is, of course, a subtext here and that is the political dispute over Qatar's role in the region and in the world. Qatar, the great patron of Islamists and terrorists like the Taliban and Hamas, has enemies. The Capitol Institute, based on the content of its website, seems to be pro-United Arab Emirates, Qatar's bitter rival. Benabderrahmane was a lobbyist for the Qataris turned into an opponent. When one questioner at the press event questioned the former lobbyist's motives, Benabderrahmane's lawyer clarified that Tayeb has not been arrested or convicted of anything (except in Qatar) but that he is, along with others, "a person of interest" to French authorities in an ongoing case involving the influence and power of a Qatar network connected to the country's ownership of the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club, an investment worth more than $4 billion.[2] It is all very sordid and murky.[3] 

I wish Benabderrahmane well in his case against the deep-pockets Qatari regime, a government which has used a lot of its money to promote evil and to promote hate, for example through its Al-Jazeera propaganda network. That said, this case and Qatar's role is damning not just of the regime in Doha, but raises larger issues about foreign influence and dishonest practices touching many other countries.

When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, Americans felt that this was a major step in "Westernizing" China, that would eventually lead to it becoming more tolerant, more open, more like what the West wanted to see in a supposed liberal rules-based international order. It was a tragic mistake. China, not surprisingly, used its entry into the WTO as a tool to subvert Western economic dominance.[4]

Qatar is not China, nor are its partners and rivals in the Middle East. But all of them – the rich Gulf states and poorer regimes like Turkey and Egypt – have learned how to use the Western system to project power, maximize influence and outreach, and bend the rules of Western open societies to their own nefarious purposes. We have left ourselves exposed and vulnerable and others have taken advantage. There is today too much foreign influence and interference in Western societies. In 2019, "Qatargate" erupted in Europe as European Parliament officials and their friends were accused of corruption and influence peddling in the service of Qatar. But incredibly, the scandal also involved the much poorer countries of Morocco and Mauritania. While Qatar seems to have had the biggest bucks in the still ongoing investigation, news reports added Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Russia as other influence peddlers possibly involved in similar crimes.

Much was made in recent years of President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and his receiving fat payoffs from suspicious foreign entities in China and Ukraine. Although there is a law – the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 – which would seem to have applied in his case, Biden was never charged by the authorities which instead preferred to focus on much more minor offenses that had less of a paper trail that could have led to uncomfortable places.

If we have learned anything from these debacles, it is that our safeguards on foreign influence peddling are woefully inadequate, both in the United States and in Europe. Maybe foreign countries, especially ones subject to serious human rights concerns like Qatar and its neighbors, should not be allowed to give billions to universities or even buy sports teams. And a donation or investment coming from, say, a legitimate Western European entity should not be the same as those arriving from a Middle East petrostate. In the United States at least, the rules on foreign gifts to American universities are lax and seem to have been routinely ignored. U.S. universities are exempt from FARA restrictions.[5] Again, it is not a shock that Qatar is a leader in the university influence game, followed by other Middle East players.[6]

Bizarrely, in this interconnected world, law enforcement and government agencies in the past four years have prioritized silencing the voices and curbing the platforms of Americans (as supposed "disinformation") rather than the influence of foreign powers, whether adversaries or supposed "friends and allies." This is an imbalance that should be addressed.

*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.