By Jonathan Schanzer and Invoice Roggio

A 12 months after the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the refugee disaster is just worsening. By the tip of final 12 months, 3.5 million folks had been displaced inside Afghanistan’s borders, and greater than two million had fled the nation, based on the Workplace of the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees. Washington bears important accountability for this, and it ought to do extra to assist.

However so ought to one other American ally: Qatar. The tiny desert kingdom performed a key position in facilitating the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan final 12 months. Within the early 2010s, senior Taliban leaders, with the assist of the Qatari authorities, moved to the nation’s capital, Doha, to ascertain an workplace to conduct talks with the Obama administration. Qatar’s acceptance of the Taliban was hardly a shock. The nation has served as a haven for members of many extremists teams, together with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al Qaeda affiliate teams. This makes Qatar a de facto state sponsor of terrorism, but in addition affords it important geopolitical energy. A rustic smaller in space than Connecticut with fewer than 300,000 residents, Qatar has a seat on the negotiating desk in a number of Center Jap conflicts.