Al Qaeda figures have operated or found shelter in many countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Qatar -- nations the United States considers to be friendly.
Qatar, a nation of only 540,000 people, already had its collective feelings ruffled when Chile floated an offer last month.
Behind the shift is a tiny desert peninsula in the Persian Gulf, Qatar, a nation with little inherent interest in French soccer but with outsize ambitions and the oil money to pursue them.
In 1996, the F.B.I. director, Louis Freeh, asked officials in Qatar — a nation suspected of harboring Al Qaeda terrorists — for help in apprehending another alleged accomplice of Yousef, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was then believed to be in Qatar.
Even FIFA itself has become culpable of such disregard, having awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a nation of less than 2 million inhabitants that forbids the consumption of alcohol and is notorious for the suppression of women's rights.
Two non-NATO nations, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, participated on a small scale.
Three holdout nations — Qatar, Brunei and Saudi Arabia — finally gave up their gender apartheid in sports and allowed women to compete.
The U.S., Europe, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other nations, along with nongovernmental aid groups and the Syrian diaspora, have financed this infrastructure.
The conservative Islamic nations Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Brunei were the last countries to enter women in the Olympics, each sending female athletes to London.
That cleared the way for nearly $300 million in assistance already pledged by Kuwait and Qatar, two Arab nations that have strongly supported international action against the Qaddafi government.
Aside from Russia and Qatar, the bidding nations comprised England, Holland-Belgium and Spain-Portugal for 2018, and the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea for 2022.
