For the last decade Qatar’s mainstream armed forces have used a modern hybrid camouflage pattern but Qatari Special Forces mostly wear DPM variants, writes Bob Morrison.
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It has been my good fortune to photograph Qatari Special Forces several times in Jordan, where the terrain is not to dissimilar from their homeland, and unlike with Qatari M2015 pattern I was able to take my photos in natural light. However at DIMDEX 2026 in Doha earlier this year, a little before Messrs Netanyahu and Trump brought open warfare back to the Middle East, I was also able to snap the range of current DPM (Disruptive Pattern Material) camouflage variants used by Qatari Special Forces under artificial lighting.
Naturally the primary colour palette used by Qatari Joint Special Forces or QJSF is biased towards desert operations, but a more verdant colourway is issued for training or operations in tropical or temperate theatres. Qatar’s Special Forces include Land, Naval, Internal Security (Lekhwiya) and Police elements and the last three usually wear blue DPM versions. However when Naval SF personnel are deployed ashore under Joint Special Forces Command they wear the Desert or Tropical colourways more normally associated with Land SF; both Land and Naval SF teams participating as QJSF Team 1 and QJSF Team 2 in the Annual Warrior Competition in Jordan last October wore the Desert variant.
Qatar Desert DPM has two shades of sandy tan, one dark and one light, on a stone base colour with a greyish brown tertiary shade used to give depth. Qatar Tropical DPM uses the same sandy tan shade plus a light green secondary colour but the base colour fabric is what I would describe as a light khaki drill and the classic tertiary ‘pterodactyl’ shapes are a darker near-black shade.
At DIMDEX 2026 I also spotted a Qatari Naval Special Force officer wearing Blue DPM and he kindly agreed to let me photograph the back panel of his combat shirt plus his patches. There was also mannequin as part of the official national uniforms display, but it was unclear if this was representing Police Special Forces or Lekhwiya. The internal lighting conditions were not the quite same for the two Blue DPM examples, but I reckon both colourways were in a similar combination of light gray, dark blue and black on stone.
While Qatar’s Special Forces are primarily issued with DPM uniforms, they can also be issued with all-black uniforms and Qatar Armed Forces M2015 Pattern, dependent on tasking.
[images © Bob Morrison]
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