QATAR: A Dangerous Alliance

Crisis in the Gulf Cooperation Council and threats to American, European, and Middle Eastern Security are subjects of new documentary

Policy Impact Communications

​​​​​Experts from academia and leading international think tanks provide insight and analysis on the current crisis in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), where member states continue to boycott the peninsular country of Qatar, in Qatar: A Dangerous Alliance — a new documentary by the award-winning production company PIC Media.

"There is a list of radical groups that the Qataris support," explains Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former counter-terrorism analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. "This includes Hamas. It includes the Taliban. It includes Nusra Front, the al Qaeda group from Syria. It includes the Muslim Brotherhood. It includes jihadists in Libya, and, more broadly, extremists from across the Arab world."

Our objective is to provide an authoritative and compelling overview of the dangerous situation in which Qatar finds itself, while also providing an objective analysis of the dangerous consequences that situation is creating for the rest of the world.

William Nixon, Writer and Director

At the same time, Qatar: A Dangerous Alliance examines the complexity of that country's relationship with western nations. "Qatar is both an ally and an adversary of the United States," says Lee Smith, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. "This is the role that Qatar has been playing for the last 20 years. They continue to support a lot of bad actors, while also hosting our largest air base in the Middle East."

Other experts include Ambassador Husain Haqqani, a foremost thought-leader on terrorism and the Muslim Brotherhood, who served as Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011, and Alex Vatanka, senior fellow from the Middle East Institute and a leading authority on Iran and its engagement with Qatar.

According to William Nixon, who wrote and directed the film, "Our objective is to provide an authoritative and compelling overview of the dangerous situation in which Qatar finds itself, while also providing an objective analysis of the dangerous consequences that situation is creating for the rest of the world. To achieve this, we produced the documentary in six easy-to-watch-and-share chapters — each one examining concerns shared by Qatar's neighbors in the Gulf, as well as the U.S. and Europe."

Chapters include:

  1. A Troubled History, examining Qatar's history and relationships within the GCC 
  2. Brothers in More than Name, focusing on Qatar's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood 
  3. Dangerous Designs, analyzing Qatar's growing alliance with Turkey and other elements promoting Islamism
  4. First Among Equals, placing the normalizing relationship between Qatar and Iran in context of Iran's designs in the region
  5. The Voice of Al Jazeera, exploring the line between news and propaganda and how Qatar's government-funded network influences a radical Islamist agenda
  6. Follow the Money, investigating how Qatar uses untold wealth to maintain alliances with the western nations, while at the same time funding radical and terrorist activities undermining those same nations 

PIC Media, a division of Policy Impact Communications, is a production firm using cutting-edge technologies to educate and inform in the public interest.

Media Contact: 
Jeff Schrade
Phone: 202.737.5339 
Email: jschrade@policyimpact.com

Source: PIC Media

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