Wars, revolutions, national strikes, beheadings, rockets, missiles, murders and revenge, revolutionaries turned terrorists creating their own Caliphate; kidnapping and ransom along with pirating are the products and methods of an international industry.

“Follow the money,” has always been the advice if one wants to discover the whys and wherefores of what looks like a huge world wide conspiracy. And if you follow the money today, it leads to a small peninsula on the Persian Gulf, to a country called Qatar. This little sovereign Arab country of about 278,000 citizens and about 1.5 million expatriates, is the wealthiest per capita nation in the world. And it adheres to the strict Wahabi interpretation of Islam–the same ideology that brought the U.S. 9/11 and is at the root of ISIL (used to be ISIS), promulgators of murder and genocide, rape and mutilation of everyone but themselves. They are a global threat that has already begun targeting Israel, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and even Saudi Arabia.

Qatar is reaping it rich from natural gas and oil reserves. Its influence over the rest of the Arab world is catalyzed by the Al Jazeera Media Network, which it owns. Following the money in this case isn’t so much a case of how Qatar gets its money but how it spends its money and what it is buying with it. Immediately after this latest cease-fire on Tuesday, they also seemed to make it clear that they will finance a flotilla from Turkey to Gaza, clearly a provocative move.

Qatar, host to Khaled Mashaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, has offered to help in reconstructing Gaza, though no figure was given. This happened almost immediately after the long term truce between Hamas and Israel was reached, and Israel agreed to ease some restrictions at the borders. Israel needs to know how much money and how many supplies are going in. Both are needed as estimates are that more than one third of Gaza’s population is homeless. But wariness is the key. Past aid to Hamas was used to build tunnels into Israel instead of infrastructure to support a faltering economy.

Qatar’s also floods America’s military industrial complex with billions of dollars. They made the largest deal made this year–an $11 billion weapons deal with the United States. Reuters reported that the agreement signed on July 14 sold Qatar 24 cutting-edge Apache attack helicopters, roughly 10 batteries of Patriot missiles and 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, some of the most advanced American military technology.

They also bought the recently upgraded AN/MPQ-53 radar system, and the AN/MSQ-104 Engagement Control Station ECS) which serves as the nerve center of the Patriot battery. “Today’s signing ceremony underscores the strong partnership between the United States and Qatar in the area of security and defense and will help improve our bilateral cooperation across a range of military operations,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.

The agreement was signed at the Pentagon by U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Qatar’s defense minister, Hamad bin Ali al-Attiyah. Hagel had been in Qatar just six months earlier when he and Al-Attiayah signed a 10-year Defense Cooperation Agreement to govern interaction between U.S. and Qatari forces and enable the continued assignment of American troops to installations in the area, including the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base.

Two weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that during an interview on a German public broadcasting network, Germany’s Minister of Development, Gerd Mueller said, “it was important to examine who is financing the group (ISIS or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)” and “the key word is Qatar,” though this was later denied by both governments. We do not know who ordered the back pedaling.

ISIS is a Sunni jihadist group sweeping Syria and Iraq, leaving genocide, murder and mayhem in its wake. The caliphate promotes religious violence and espouses conversion to its religion or death to infidels. A London rapper is assumed to be the jihadist who sawed off the head of freelance American journalist James Foley. This was done in retaliation against the U.S. because it prevented the destruction of Irq’a electric grid. It was also related to the attacks on ISIS after they enslaved, raped and murdered thousands of Yazidis (a sect living in Syria) and Christian women. They are now threatening to kill another U.S. journalist, Steven Sotloff.

ISIL’s ambition is to control Iraq, Syria and “the Levant,” which encompasses Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Cyprus and Hatay, an area in southern Turkey. They believe Hamas to be apostates, but both groups’ religious ideologies are very similar–including death to all Jews and other infidels, and their treatment of women.

Earlier this month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the group which only had about 4,000 fighters in June in Iraq now has 50,000 fighters in Syria and 30,000 in Iraq.

Whether Mueller was speculating or not, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar’s Emir, has funded the self-styled militias that have been fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashir al-Assad. Those rebellious militias–which Hilary Clinton said needed to be funded by American dollars, and who was denied–turned to other sources and many groups joined the well-funded ISIS.

Qatar is also arming itself, and financially supporting other like-minded leader. It is also building a new port for its Maritime security as well as the Qatar Emiri Naval Forces Base to be built offshore to provide berthing for Qatar’s Navy and visiting naval vessels.

This is happening at the same time that the U.S. Fifth fleet’s $580 million new home is being built, doubling the size of the U.S. naval base in Manama Bahrain, an island kingdom across the strait from Qatar.

On August 27, officials from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, who last March recalled their ambassadors to Qatar, met “as part of a diplomatic push to repair a rift in the U.S.-allied Gulf Cooperation Council,” as reported in The Daily Star of Lebanon. They had recalled their ambassadors because Qatar had failed to abide by an agreement not to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.

Saudi Arabia has the only land border with Qatar but is also bordered by Iraq. Kuwait is bordered by Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The United Arab Emirates shares a sea border with Qatar.

While all these puzzle pieces are floating around trying to match up to each other, Lt. Cmdr. Katie Cerezo, God Team/Current Ops, Chief Information News Desk for the U.S Navy told JLBC “The United States Navy does not have a base in Qatar; unaware of any plans to do so in the future.”

Congressman Eliot Engel the ranking member of the House Committee on foreign Affairs told JLBC that the way Qatar is behaving it would be “highly unlikely at this point. I had not heard anything like that at all.”

Asked about why the U.S. signed an $11 billion weapons, he questioned the accuracy of the amount and said he was more troubled about Turkey. Ahmet Davutoglu had set the nation’s course toward a more extreme path of Islam. Turkey is bordered by Iraq and Syria.

Engel said he would not accept that Turkey, Kuwait and Qatar are funding ISIL. “It’s very complicated. There’s a Shiite/Sunni divide that we can only begin to understand and the hatred in that divide is as greater or maybe greater than the hatred that they have for other religions.”

He said that the leading country that supports terrorism is Iran, “Iran is a Shiite country and Iraq, where the majority of the people were Shiite’s, was led by a Sunni, Saddam Hussein.” He said now that Saddam is gone Iraq has been aligning itself more closely with Iran. Hence the Iraqi Sunnis are floating towards ISIL which has opened the door for ISIL to capture much of the U.S. weaponry (tanks and weapons) given to the Iraqi forces, which fled. Engel said Saudi Arabia is a Sunni state along with the United Arab Emirate and Bahrain. Qatar is also Sunni.

“They all understand that their enemy is not Israel. That they’re real enemy is Iran and their views are very much lined up with Israel’s views of the Middle East.” He said when he’s spoken to their ambassadors they’ve told Engel that they want to see Israel strike a deal with the Palestinians, (who are Sunnis) so things can move along in a two state solution and they would be willing, they say to recognize Israel as an independent state.”

Back to the questions about Qatar and its ‘possible connection’ to ISIL, Engel said “ISIL is the worst terrorist organization in the Middle East. You can see by their brutality and they execute innocent civilians with brutality. They are just lining up people and massacring them with glee and gore and blood. It just makes you scratch your head and wonder if these people are human.”

Engel said he had supported the arming of the Syrian rebels two years ago when the rebels were pro-west. “We didn’t do it, afraid of getting sucked into a Syrian war. We didn’t help them,” and that left it open for ISIL. “They’re more brutal than Assad, now supported by Hezbollah (Shiites), who killed his own people.”

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Major Jewish Organizations told JLBC also said he had not heard of any U.S. Navel plans for Qatar, or of any funding going from Qatar to ISIL but that it has been funding Hamas. “People accused Saudi Arabia of funding it.” He said he had read a report that ISIL was funded by Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and maybe Kuwait. “I remember that the Iraqis had accused Qatar,” however ISIL is not dependent on foreign funding. They’ve been able to survive by virtue of abductions and criminal activity and involvement of all sorts of nefarious stuff, plus robbing banks and extortion. They’ve raised a lot of their own money.”

He said the $11 billion sale of armament to Qatar is troubling given their record of support for Hamas and other groups in Syri, though they gave assurances of how it will be used. Observers have noted that the Arab style of conquest is to let its enemies fight each other and when they are weakened, to sweep in. In this spider web of hatred and funding, where sits Qatar?

By Anne Phyllis Pinzow