From ABC News, with thanks to Nicolei:
However big a shock a recent suicide bombing in Doha was to the Qataris, it was far from unexpected in Western capitals, where intelligence agencies had discreetly put out a travel warning through their respective embassies.The emirate, a key ally in the Bush administration's war on terror, has been high on the terrorist target list ever since it became home to the U.S. Central Command's operational headquarters in early 2003. Just five days before the March 19 blast, which killed a British teacher and wounded 12 others, the State Department issued a general warning to all Americans travelling in the Gulf that "extremists may be planning to carry out attacks against Westerners and oil workers" in the region. What did surprise intelligence officials was the name of the group which claimed responsibility for the bombing: Jund al-Sham ("Soldiers of the Levant").
Although the group said that this was its first statement, Jund al-Sham is the same name as a group started by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Intelligence officials believe it may be a sign that Zarqawi is beginning to attack targets outside Iraq, and may, in fact, be emerging as a replacement to Osama bin Laden as the operational leader of the global jihad. Analysts are concerned that Zarqawi may now begin to redeploy his cadre of militants who, having gained important combat experience in Iraq, are capable of carrying out deadly missions elsewhere.
According to Jordanian government sources and European intelligence documents, Zarqawi first set up Jund al-Sham in Afghanistan in late 1999 with $200,000 in startup money from bin Laden. The group's objective was to operate in a geographical area known as the "Levant," which encompasses Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan where al Qaeda's presence was deemed too weak. Headed by Zarqawi, Jund al-Sham federated about 150 jihadis, including Jordanian Islamic militants exiled by the Jordanian government earlier that year, as well as various recruits from Syria (some holdouts of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood), and Lebanon (mostly Palestinian refugees of the movement "Asbat al Ansar"). These militants were trained in explosive, guerrilla warfare and chemical weapons techniques at a training facility ("Al Matar Training Camp") operated by Zarqawi near the Afghan city of Herat, close to the Iranian border.
The group's stated objective, according to Jordanian intelligence documents, was a compromise between Zarqawi's obsession to destabilize the Jordanian monarchy and bin Laden's desire to conduct major terrorist operations in Israel. From Herat and Kabul, where the organization had its headquarters, its members started planning several terrorist operations, including the "Millennium Bombings" in Jordan in December 1999. Most of these plots were fortunately uncovered by the Jordanian intelligence which had sent its own recruits to "join" Jund al-Sham in Afghanistan in 1999. After 9/11 and the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, the organization was visibly disbanded and most of its members, including Zarqawi himself, fled back to their home countries through Pakistan or Iran....
Read it all.
"The emirate, a key ally in the Bush administration's war on terror..."
The reason, the only reason, that Qatar graciously permits American forces to be stationed in Qatar, and to thereby protect the regime and the country, is because as a tiny city-state Qatar needs protection from, inter alia, Iran, Iraq, and the biggest bully on the Arabian peninsula's unpleasant block, Saudi Arabia.
This is not clearly understood in Washington, which seems to believe that Qatar, with its smiling emissaries, and the Sheik or Emir (or has he, like the ruler of Bahrain, already given himself a promotion to Prince or even, dare we hope, King?) married to that good-looking and chic supposed "feminist" (and therefore all sorts of forward-looking beliefs are falsely attributed to her, to her husband, to the country), likes the United States for its blue eyes alone. Not at all -- it cooperates only out of self-interest.
One already knows about Iraq and Iran and their ability to threaten itsy-bitsy neighbors, right up the water-spout of the Straits of Hormuz. But do not overlook Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has constantly threatened or bullied its smaller neighbors. It made outrageous demands in the Buraimi Oasis dispute with one or two of the tiny sheikdoms that subsequently constituted the United Arab Emirates. Indeed, in the early 1970s, the talented crook Adnan Pachachi, that Baghdadian Vicar of Bray, finding himself on the lam from Saddam, was employed by Zayed to perform various tasks, including that of supposedly aiding J. B. Kelly in the preparation of the case against Saudi Arabia over the Frontier Question.
Saudi Arabia surreptitiously supported the Dhufar Rebellion against the Sultan of Oman. Saudi Arabia continues to keep up pressure on Bahrain, and on on Abu Dhabi, and an every single country in the area that might not do its bidding, or might have oil or gas deposits that the insatiable Saudis covet. The only country that worries Saudi Arabia is Yemen, with its large and unruly and dangerous population. The Saudis keep expelling Yemenis, sometimes hundreds of thousands at a time. They come back. The Saudis tried, in the 1960s, to fight a proxy war with Nasser in the Yemen -- that war, like the Iran-Iraq War, should have gone on forever (at least as far as Infidels are concerned).
At the moment Yemen, like Qatar, is making just a little nice to the Americans, only because Yemen has no resources and needs, it thinks, American goodwill and possibly protection against those o'erweening Saudis.
Why is it so hard to understand that no Muslim country can conceivably be a real or permenant ally of any Infidel power? It is simply not possible, given the way in which Islamic tenets pervade, suffuse, every aspect of political, economic, social, and intellectual life in those societies that consist largely of Muslims -- whether "Wahhabis" or another kind.
"...including Jordanian Islamic militants exiled by the Jordanian goverment earlier that year..."
Short prison terms and "exile" are about as effective in fighting global terroristic Islamic maniacs as putting a dunce cap on a crocodile that eats your child.
The dunce cap belongs on all governments who don't just crush these s.o.b.'s.
Notice that all of the terror attacks in Qatar,Saudi Arabia, Kuwait target the infidel, any Muslims who get killed (as in Saudi Arabia or Sudan) are "collateral damage", and if not working with or supporting the kafir Amriki, they are consider Shaheeds (martyrs), that's the way their mind works.
Dead Muslims are either shirk, hypocrites or giaour (heretics) or shaheeds.
They have the game constructed so they (the Ideology) can't lose, (within the PR game within the Islamic commmunity).