Terror designation lists highlight Qatar’s failure to tackle extremist funding

Of the names that do not overlap, many are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by the four Arab States.

Experts point to a host of issues impeding progress on understanding Qatar's enduring terror financing problem. Katherine Bauer, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former treasury official who served as the department's financial attaché in Jerusalem and the Gulf, said: “It is unclear what Qatar has done and it seems to lend itself to questioning if they have done anything.”

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David Weinberg, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the designations are evidence, “that the Qatari line is wrong.”

“The Qatari foreign minister keeps insisting that the allegations are totally baseless but the list [from the quartet] and particularly its overlap with the names on the UN and US lists- tells us there is at least something there.”

Asked about other GCC states accused of privately funding terror, Mr Weinberg said “while terrorist financing still flows from some private individuals in Saudi or through Kuwait, Riyadh has taken strides in convicting hundreds of these financiers, while Qatar hasn’t.”

Qatar's problems are defined by “providing impunity for terror financiers, becoming a safe haven for internationally banned terrorist groups, and allegedly paying multi-million dollar ransoms to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda,” he said.

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