Qatar: The tiny nation that roared
Qatar has used its petro-riches to buy global clout. What does the emirate
actually want?
By <
http://theweek.com/author/theunis-bates> Theunis Bates | September 25,
2013
How rich is Qatar?
The 250,000 native Qataris are the world's richest people, with an average
annual income of about $400,000. That's because the tiny Arab nation, a
Connecticut-size peninsula jutting out from Saudi Arabia into the Persian
Gulf, sits on the world's third-largest natural-gas reserves. That resource
has enabled pint-size Qatar (pronounced KUH-tr, not ka-TAR) to employ 92
percent of its citizens in government-funded jobs, and to fund an outsize
role in the world. Since 2011, the emirate has spent at least $17 billion
supporting Arab Spring revolts and bankrolling Islamist groups across the
Middle East. In Europe, the ruling Al Thani family has snapped up
skyscrapers, soccer clubs, and banks. In the U.S., the country has given
generously to the Brookings Institution, an influential think tank,
including $2.5 million in 2012. Last month, the emirate launched Al Jazeera
America, an offshoot of Qatar's international news network. "Qatar wants to
be the [Arab world's] next superpower," said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East
expert at the London School of Economics.
Has Qatar always been a global player?
For most of its history, the emirate was an impoverished back-water, home to
a few thousand pearl fishermen and nomadic tribesmen. The discovery of oil
and gas in 1940 made locals rich, but it wasn't until 1995, when Hamad bin
Khalifah Al Thani deposed his father, Sheik Khalifa, in a bloodless coup,
that Qatar became a force in the region and beyond. While the old sheik
avoided getting involved in international affairs out of fear of angering
his larger, more powerful neighbors, Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait -
another small, hydrocarbon-rich state - taught Hamad that keeping a low
profile could be dangerous. "If you are going to be invaded," said David
Roberts, a director at Britain's Royal United Services Institute, "you don't
want people to go, 'Qatar? There's a country that begins with a Q? Where's
that?'"
How did he raise Qatar's profile?
First, he let the U.S. set up its regional military headquarters just
outside the capital, Doha. Hamad then went about stitching Qatar tightly
into the global economy. He built the world's largest facilities for
condensing liquid natural gas, which the emirate now exports to Europe,
Japan, and India. In 1996, Hamad launched Al Jazeera - a 24-hour news
station that combined aggressive reporting, high production values, and an
Islamic worldview. "It really projected Qatar to a role of importance in the
region," said William Youmans, a media expert at George Washington
University. Qatar now hopes Al Jazeera America will raise the emirate's
reputation in the U.S. "It's really about enhancing Qatar's visibility,
prestige, and influence," said Youmans. Others, however, fear the channel
will push hateful propaganda on American audiences.
What kind of propaganda?
The conservative media-watchdog group Accuracy in Media says that the
station's Arabic parent has given considerable airtime to extremists such as
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Muslim cleric who has praised the killing of U.S.
troops in Iraq. The group also points out Qatar's history of backing radical
Islamists. The emirate gave $8 billion to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-led
government, funnels cash and weapons to Islamist fighters in Syria, and last
year handed $400 million to Hamas, the hard-line Palestinian organization.
But executives at Al Jazeera America - which employs some 800 journalists
and staff in the U.S., most of them Americans - insist their programming is
"editorially independent" of Doha. So far, the channel has focused on such
topics as the hunger strike in California prisons and the impact of Chicago
school closures, making Al Jazeera America look more like "NPR with
pictures" than "terror TV," said Lawrence Pintak, a media analyst at
Washington State University.
Does Qatar support radical Islam?
Qatar is actually a relatively moderate Islamic state. Unlike in neighboring
Saudi Arabia, women are allowed to drive, non-Muslims can buy alcohol, and
young men and women often hold hands in public. Many Middle East experts say
Qatar's rulers are pragmatists, not ideologues, and are trying to walk a
very fine line between having influence in the West and cultivating favor in
the Islamic world. When the Arab Spring broke out, said international
relations professor Gregory Gause of the University of Vermont, Qatar's
rulers "made a decision: 'If we are going to play, we are going to be with
the people on the rise and that is the Islamists.'"
Has betting on Islamists paid off?
It's backfiring. Egypt's new military rulers recently accused Al Jazeera of
supporting terrorism by airing interviews with Brotherhood supporters, and
shut down its offices in Cairo and began jamming its signals. The emirate's
support for Islamist militias has also angered Libya's interim government.
When Sheik Hamad stepped down this summer in favor of his son, Tamim, the
new emir called for an end to "arrogant" policies - an indication he might
scale back his father's attempts to exert influence abroad. "For years,
Qatar has been punching above its weight," said Simon Henderson, a Middle
East expert at the Washington Institute. "Now, some may just try punching
back."
Qatar's weighty problem
The emirate isn't just the world's richest country, it's also one of the
fattest. Half of adults and a third of children are obese, and almost 17
percent of the native population suffers from diabetes. By comparison, about
a third of Americans are obese, and 8 percent diabetic. The problem is that
Qataris are so rich that they don't need to work, and have developed a taste
for fatty American fast food. "In Qatar, we just sit, smoke, and eat junk
food," one resident told The Atlantic. "Everything is done for us." The
government has tried to battle the bloat by encouraging Qataris to eat less
and exercise more. But the country's traditional culture makes it difficult
for anyone to go on a diet. "If you don't eat, it's considered a shame," one
Qatari told The New York Times, "and if you leave someone's home without
eating it's a shame."
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Received on Wed Sep 25 2013 - 05:43:33 EDT