Qatar's gambit in Syria: "Decreasing ability to influence & becoming a scapegoat for all participants"

"... Yet, as the Arab world’s bloodiest uprising grinds on into its third year, Qatar finds itself pulled into a complicated and fractured conflict, the outcome of which has a decreasing ability to influence, while simultaneously becoming a high-profile scapegoat for participants on both sides. Among the Syrian regime’s numerous but fragmented opponents the small Gulf state evokes a surprisingly ambivalent – and often overtly hostile – response... Qatar has been in the lead, readily disgorging its gas-generated wealth in the pursuit of the downfall of the House of Assad. Qatar’s role in Syria seems uncharacteristically prominent for a country that lacks the diplomatic experience and traditional heavyweight status of a more discreet Saudi Arabia.In the shell-blasted areas of rebel-held Syria, few appear to be aware of the vast sums that Qatar has contributed – estimated by rebel and diplomatic sources to be about $1bn, but put by people close to the Qatar government at as much as $3bn....©EPATo some extent, the fact that Qatar is so exposed reflects the reluctance of western governments to intervene in Syria. ...
Most of Doha’s neighbours in the Gulf are hostile to the Islamist trend in the region, but this is of little consequence to a state that takes pleasure in being contrarian. Nor are the al-Thanis embarrassed by the contradictions of an autocracy cheerleading for revolution. “The Qataris say if there’s a tsunami coming your way you ride it, not let it hit you,” says a western diplomat describing Qatar’s attitude towards Islamists.... the military stalemate of the Syrian uprising, has also revealed the recklessness and political impotence that ultimately undermine Qatar’s objectives....“The Qataris are overextended – their system runs on a few people at the top, and there isn’t much in terms of a bureaucracy,” comments another diplomat.... the disapproval levelled at Qatar is pervasive. A senior rebel commander who has dealt with the Qataris suggests that Doha should look long and hard at why its role has also sparked so much animosity. “After two years it is time for everyone involved in Syria to review their actions and engage in self-correction,” he says....
their efforts to shape a fragmented rebel army into a more coherent form by helping to unify the brigades under one command have contributed to its incoherence.One person who influenced the emir’s thinking at the time is Azmi Bishara, a prominent former Arab Israeli MP, exiled in Qatar...
An adviser to the emir and the crown prince, Bishara has become something of a court intellectual in Doha. He is said to have been involved in the formation of the Syrian National Coalition, now the main opposition umbrella group, and to have been used to “test” opposition figures...
Doha’s leaders were particularly emboldened by the revolt in Libya, where Qatar had played the lead Arab role in the Nato-led intervention...they expected western partners would eventually step in on the side of the opposition... Assad’s removal, after all, served the strategic purpose of weakening Iran, his closest regional ally. So far at least, this gamble has proved a miscalculation. ..
Supporting the armed rebellion was the inevitable next stage of Qatar’s deepening involvement in Syria,  buying arms in Libya and in eastern European states, and flying them to Turkey, where intelligence services helped deliver them across the border. At first, say people with direct knowledge of the arms shipments, Qatar worked through Turkish intelligence to identify recipients, and then, as Saudi Arabia joined the covert military effort, through Lebanese mediators (Here) ...
Qatar is, as its detractors say, seeking to build up a proxy force in Syria to implement its regional agenda, it is doing so in an environment which is not conducive to either loyalty or cohesion... For the Saudis, the handful of secular rebel factions, plus the Salafi groups that espouse a stricter Wahabi Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, are vastly preferable to the Brotherhood, a more organised political group and therefore a greater political threat... the erratic and limited nature of weapons shipments means that even recipients of Qatari support are not always aware of Doha’s role. ...
But the behaviour has bred resentment. “Qatar and Saudi Arabia … are playing out their rivalries here, they are dividing people,” says Abdul Jabbar Akaidi, the head of the Aleppo revolutionary military council. Speaking from one of his bases on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey, he adds: “People will remember those who gave without having an agenda. The Syrians are clever, they know when there is an agenda.”
By late 2012 a new factor was emerging in Syria, one that had the potential to complicate Qatar’s relationship with the west. The extremist group Jabhat al-Nusrah was gaining ground, playing a prominent role in dislodging the regime from military facilities in northern Syria. In December, the US felt sufficiently alarmed to add Nusrah to its global terrorist list.
Concerned that Qatar’s level of tolerance for radical Islamists was higher than theirs, western governments also wanted safeguards in place to ensure that weapons did not end up in the hands of jihadi groups like Nusrah. The problem, says one former senior US official, was that “the Qataris felt it didn’t matter who you give to, what’s important is to bring down Bashar.”According to him, the objective in Washington became “to keep the Qataris from doing whatever they want”. So the US instituted a “consultative process”. Two “operations” rooms that oversee weapons deliveries were set up, one in Turkey, the other, more recently, in Jordan....Yet allegations that the Qataris have – directly or indirectly – helped Jabhat al-Nusrah have not gone away...
Beneath the quips, however, are signs that Qatar’s influence over military supplies to the rebellion may be waning, ..."