The Christian Science Monitor has picked up on the Qatar coup story, or at least mentioned it in passing. I find it somewhat odd that the rest of the media hasn’t latched onto this story at all. Lexis-Nexis still doesn’t have anything I can find on it. If this were a large or particularly disruptive attempt, someone must have more information on it.
If this story is true, it leads me to believe that this was an internal coup that was caught very early on in the planning stages, or that the coup attempt was very small. Any kind of open, obvious movements would have attracted the attention of the BBC or another news agency operating in the country. You simply cannot keep news of something that major out for long – even in a relatively closed country. (Although the government of Qatar appears to have a Jordanian journalist being held for espionage, which does raise some red flags.)
If this event did take place, it also means that the US will have to protect Qatar from attack, and the original ArabicNews piece said that’s exactly what we did. We’re not going to abandon Qatar, and as long as we don’t there’s no need to worry about us losing al-Udied. If anything, our presence is Qatar will send a very firm message to the Arab world that those states that are willing to forge a constructive rather than an antagonistic relationship with us will soon find that it would be a partnership that would be in their best interests.
The Agonist has done a good of
following this story. If this turns out to be true, it will be another example of the blogosphere beating the tradtional media at their own game.
