October 28, 2014
The Brookings Institution bills itself as “the most influential, most quoted and most trusted think tank in the world,” but should it be?
Brookings’ long-term relationship with the Qatari government – a notorious supporter of terror in the Middle East – casts a dark cloud over such a lofty claim to credibility.
A September New York Times exposé revealed Qatar’s status as the single largest foreign donor to the Brookings Institution. Qatar gave Brookings $14.8 million in 2013, $100,000 in 2012 and $2.9 million in 2011. In 2002, Qatar started subsidizing the Brookings outreach program to the Muslim World which has continues today. Between 2002 and 2010, Brookings never disclosed the annual amount of funds provided by the Government of Qatar.
Sources of funding should not automatically discredit an organization, but critical facts and claims about Brookings should be examined in light of them, starting with a harsh indictment by a former scholar.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has reviewed the proceedings of 12 annual conferences co-sponsored by Brookings and the government of Qatar comprising more than 125 speeches, interviews, lectures and symposia; a dozen Brookings-based programs that were linked to the Qatari financed outreach to the Muslim world; and analyzed 27 papers sponsored and issued by the Brookings Institution and scholars based in Washington and at the Brookings Doha Center since 2002. Our review, which will be detailed in a four-part series beginning with this story, finds an organization that routinely hosts Islamists who justify terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and American troops, who advocate blasphemy laws which would criminalize criticism of Islam, and which never scrutinizes or criticizes the government of Qatar, its largest benefactor.
“[T]there was a no-go zone when it came to criticizing the Qatari government,” Saleem Ali, who served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar in 2009, toldthe New York Times.
“If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware — they are not getting the full story. They may not be getting a false story, but they are not getting the full story.” Ali noted that he had been told during his job interview that taking positions critical of the Qatari government in papers would not be allowed, a claim Brookings vigorously denies.
“Our scholars, in Doha and elsewhere, have a long record of objective, independent analysis of regional affairs, including critical analysis of the policies of Qatar and other governments in the region,” Brookings President Strobe Talbott said in response to theTimes story.
Unfortunately for Talbott, Qatar’s own Ministry of Foreign Affairs openly acknowledges that the partnership gives Qatar exactly what it wants: a public-relations outlet that projects “the bright image of Qatar in the international media, especially the American ones,” a statement announcing a 2012 memorandum of understanding with Brookings said.
Indeed, their close collaboration stretches back more than a decade.
After Islamist terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa. on September 11, 2001, the Brookings Institution looked to Qatar to answer the question, “Why do they hate us?”
Former Qatari emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani answered Brookings’ call in 2002, providing the think tank with the necessary seed money and resources to initiate its engagement with the Islamic world.
The alliance culminated with the 2002 Doha Conference on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, co-sponsored by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and Qatar. Qatar underwrote the conference’s cost.
Ambassador Martin Indyk, who headed the Saban Center at the time, and other Brookings leaders noted their desire to “build strong bridges of friendship” and avoid a “clash of civilizations.”
Indyk took a leave of absence from Brookings in 2013 and the first half of 2014 to serve as President Obama’s envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Indykplaced excessive blame on Israel for their failure.
At an April 2013 Brookings forum in Washington, Indyk mentioned that he and Qatar’s al-Thani had remained friends for “two decades.” This relationship dates to when Indykserved as special assistant to President Clinton and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council.
Indyk noted that he approached the sheik after the 9/11 attacks, informing him that Brookings planned to launch a project focused on American engagement with the Islamic world.
“And he said immediately, ‘I will support it, but you have to do the conference in Doha.’ And I said, ‘Doha, well that sounds like an interesting idea,'” Indyk said at the 2013 forum. “Three years into that, he suddenly then told me we want to have a Brookings in Doha. And I said, ‘Well, okay, we’ll have a Brookings in Doha, too,’ and we ended up with the Brookings Doha Center” (BDC), in 2008.”
Brookings’ Qatar-based scholars see their host country with rosy spectacles, ignoring the emirate’s numerous terror ties.
No comments:
Post a Comment