Afad Donation

The government of Qatar has been helping the African Union and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to finance their peacekeeping missions in West Africa for over a decade. This money-giving action was covered extensively by the African Union's press coverage of the 1994 North-South peacekeeping operations, and covers similar activities today. This is a critical opportunity to build a network of solidarity and support that directly benefits the African Union and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Qatar's national media has not touched on the donations to the African Union and the OIC from the fund making its web page difficult to access. Qatar has very open-door policy for media access and the only substantial media source about these critical issues was "al Jazeera" (owned by Saudi TV). The recent closure of "al Jazeera" could leave the Western press with a significant "by proxy" source on the Qataris and other donors that want to maintain secrecy.

Al Jazeera is an almost wholly European institution that operates from a single office in Denmark. Its hosts are the late OBE Sir Richard Dearlove, of the Royal College of Surgeons, and OBE Sir David Steel, President of the Royal Society and an authority on science and medicine.

One of this news channel's staff members is an ex-soldier who was discharged from the military at the age of 17, then recruited to the front lines in North Korea a few years later, where he was killed in action in 1998. He then became known as the "de facto director" of the Doha-based English-language "al Jazeera" when he was detained by Saudi government operatives in 2003.

Al Jazeera's recent coverage of the Qatar Fund and the African Union is no substitute for genuine journalism, but it does raise some critical issues that are worth raising in light of the Arab Spring, the death of the Western press in the Middle East, and the growing influence of the Arab world.

A UN study in 2015 said that "violence continues to be deployed by sponsors of conflict in Darfur as well as in other parts of East and West Africa." The report stated that the "Sovereigns of the region continue to display varying degrees of political and economic support for the conflicts, sometimes as a result of the effectiveness of their sponsorship, or as a result of the tacit support the countries derive from the international community.