Historical Camouflages – Qatar

Commanders!

Since we know you like historical camouflages, we’ve prepared a few of those for the end of the year. Normally we wouldn’t add these as they don’t quite fit anywhere but considering the soccer championship in Qatar is almost over – we thought, why not add two rather distinctive camouflages from this country?

Now, the emirate of Qatar isn’t exactly known for its powerful military – no wonder, the whole country only has less than two million inhabitants and most of those are immigrants and workers from India, Pakistan and South East Asia. What Qatar does have, however, is oil and gas and therefore money. Lots and lots of money. Which in turn means – as it often happens with Arabian countries – cutting edge equipment from multiple countries.

In Qatar’s case, it’s a whole bunch of modern German Leopard 2s (Leopard 2A7+) and various assorted French equipment that includes the modern French VBCI IFV as well as hundreds of light Turkish APCs and utility vehicles. Under normal circumstances operating equipment from several different countries is a terrible idea – the logistics alone are a nightmare. However, in the case of Arab countries, you aren’t really buying the equipment. You are buying international relations.

Simply put, Qatar’s military couldn’t possibly hold out against the Saudis or the UAE (which are doing exactly the same thing with their militaries, only on larger scale), so they are buying influence on the world stage. After all, the Turks, Germans and the French would hate to lose a loyal and rich customer, which is why they’d more than likely intervene on the customer’s behalf.

The Qatar Army doesn’t have a long history either – the country gained independence from the British in 1971 and has since (aside from one coup) only participated in a single conflict – the Gulf War. During one of the initial battles, the Battle of Khafji, a Qatari tank battalion armed with the French AMX-30 MBTs managed to knock out several Iraqi T-55s in support of the Coalition forces while losing a single tank. On one hand, this was a valuable experience for the Qatari military. On the other hand, the Qatari tanks were operated almost exclusively by Pakistanis so how much it meant for the military pride of Qatar is anyone’s guess.

The camouflages are based on two military parades that took place on December 18 in Doha, the capital city of Qatar.

The 2017 pattern camouflage consist of a sand color base paint with leaf-like dark shapes.

The 2020 pattern is more elaborate and consists of irregular light sand, dark brown and green shapes on sand-colored surface.

And that’s pretty much all there is to them. They’ll soon be available (for free) and we hope that you’ll enjoy them.

See you on the battlefield!