In an effort to deepen ties with U.S.
military, Qatar’s defense minister has laid out plans that would allow
the U.S, Navy to base warships there and allow American families to live
at a massive air base outside of Doha.
The move comes nearly eight months after Gulf Cooperation Council
members Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain cut off
diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism. The U.S. relies on all four counties for military basing and diplomatic support in the region.
Qatar is planning to build about 200 houses for American families,
increase capacity at dormitories, and construct an entertainment
facility at Al Udeid Air Base, a sprawling military complex that hosts U.S. Air Force Central Command and its operations center, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
“We’ve been studying the needs and how to make our guests
comfortable,” Qatar’s defense minister Khalid Bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah
said in an interview with Defense One on Tuesday evening. “I believe it’s well received.”
The base is currently host to more than 9,000 American and allied
military personnel and about 100 military aircraft, according to an U.S. Air Force spokesman.
The U.S. moved its air operations center from Saudi Arabia to Al Udeid in 2003. Since then, the base has expanded dramatically. Airmen used to live in trailers without attached bathroom facilities, but now have more modern, dormitory-style apartments. Unlike U.S.
bases in Germany and Japan, families do not live at the base, and most
airmen there are considered temporarily deployed. The families of some
officers deployed to the base for more than a year live in an American
compound in nearby Doha.
“The Air Force is currently planning and executing more than a dozen
infrastructure improvement projects across the base, including several
new warehouses, taxiway lighting improvements, new training facilities
and improvements to existing ones, dining hall upgrades, a new
maintenance workshop, and connecting the base sewage system to Qatari
system outside the base,” the Air Force spokesman wrote in an email.
“These construction projects represent a transition from an
expeditionary environment with temporary facilities, to a base with an
enduring infrastructure capable of sustaining long-term operations.”
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