The 2022 FIFA World Cup is currently underway in Qatar, a small country in the Middle East. Yet in the Afghan crisis, in the energy crunch now facing the international community, and in many other regional and global issues, Qatar wields an outsized influence.

What should we make of the human rights accusation thrown by some western critics onto Qatar ahead of the World Cup opening? What enables Qatar to play a mediating role between the U.S. government and the Afghan Taliban?

Host Liu Kun is joined by Dr. Wang Jin, Associate Professor and Middle East expert with Northwest University in Xi'an, China; Dr. James Dorsey, Senior Fellow with S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Middle East Institute at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and author of the syndicated column "The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer"; Hannan Hussain, an Islamabad-based foreign affairs commentator, author, and recipient of the Fulbright Award.