Qatar’s unique role in Afghanistan

IT TAKES AN hour to drive to the shimmering towers of Doha from the sun-baked tarmac of Al-Udeid air base. For America, though, the journey took eight years. In 2013 the Taliban set up a diplomatic mission in the Qatari capital. Opened with America’s consent, the office was meant to launch a peace process that would end the American war in Afghanistan.The ending, of course, was not as America hoped. Like the talks that preceded it, last month’s frantic airlift out of Kabul relied heavily on Qatar. Of the 120,000 people America flew out of Afghanistan, almost half passed through Al-Udeid (pictured). The tiny emirate, home to just 3m people (only 20% of them citizens), thus played a central role in the beginning of the end, and the end itself. Now it has a vital role as an interlocutor between Afghanistan’s new rulers and the West—but it may struggle to deliver much for either side.