As the Middle East continues to be buffeted by the winds of reform, both real and fictitious, one country seems have learned how to play the game of professed reform to better control its content: Qatar.
In the last decade, the emirate, the world’s third largest producer of natural gas (after having invested heavily in the sector in the mid-1990s), has been portrayed as an Arab proponent of free minds and markets. However, Qatar’s politics have, in fact, been far more complex, and interesting. Like a latter-day Venice, the emirate has blended pragmatic amorality in its foreign affairs with an ability to play all sides in order to ensure its own prosperity, security and regime survivability.
In April, the architect of Qatar’s political transformation, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, hosted an international conference on democracy and free trade in Doha. Though the level of participation was less prominent than the initial list of invitees suggested, though there were fewer top American representatives than promised, the gathering did serve the emir’s purpose, namely to substantiate talk overseas of his assumed liberalism. In that sense, it allowed Qatar to represent itself, yet again, as an exception in a region grappling with reformist winds of change, the very same that virtually blew down the Arab summit that was scheduled to be held in Tunis in April.
While Emir Hamad is indeed more enlightened than many of his fellow Arab leaders, he does remain an absolute monarch. Qatar’s policies are very much the ones he defines, in collaboration with, among others, his influential foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani. And one of the emir’s most potent weapons has been his ability to develop a façade of free expression.
His crown jewel in that regard is Al-Jazeera, the satellite station that virtually no one in the Middle East can afford to be indifferent toward. Love it or hate it, Al-Jazeera is both Emir Hamad’s weapon and shield: he uses it to hit out at his enemies, most prominently Saudi Arabia (which has long regarded the freethinking emir as an unruly menace), but also to protect himself against the Arab nationalists and Islamists who delight in the station’s political line and what they consider its independence. “Independence” is a relative concept, however, in that Al-Jazeera is financed largely by Emir Hamad himself. At the Doha conference, one participant suggested that if the station was so popular, why didn’t it seek funding through commercials, like any private television station? The man was politely ignored. However, his query went to the very heart of the matter with regard to the station’s politics: to what extent is Al-Jazeera really separate from the emir’s interests?
In fact, Emir Hamad’s relationship with Al-Jazeera is a subtle one. By muzzling the station, his defenders suggest, he would merely undermine emerging Qatari pluralism and score another point for intolerance in the Middle East. Indeed, but it is equally true that by sponsoring the demagogical Arab nationalism or Islamism of Al-Jazeera, the emir also buys cover on his political left for hosting the huge American military base at Al-Udeid, from where American power in the Gulf is projected.
America offers Qatar what no one else will: security, permitting the emirate to export its natural gas without fear; but also a margin of maneuver vis-à-vis the emirate’s Gulf partners and the larger Arab states, so that Qatar has repeatedly taken on a prominence surpassing its diminutive size in both inter-Arab and inter-Islamic politics. It is to buttress its rapport with Washington that Qatar has also maintained ties – albeit ambiguous ones – with Israel. Yet, ever versatile, it was AGAINST Washington that Qatar stood before the Iraq war (even as it hosted U.S. Central Command), when it sought to avoid a conflict by intervening with the Iraqis after an Organization of the Islamic Conference summit in Doha in March 2003.
On other matters too, particularly Qatar’s relations with militant Islam (Qatari mosques follow Wahhabi teachings and the emir’s murky relations with Al-Qaeda have been the subject of considerable speculation), the cornerstone of Emir Hamad’s maneuverability has been his wearing the mask of openness. Democracy and a devotion to free markets, even when peddled by an un-elected ruler for life whose movement on democracy has been slow (if palpable), can go a long way to building up international goodwill. It has also allowed Emir Hamad to stand in the camp of the reformers, when some might question his authority to so brazenly do so. But Qatar remains blissfully indifferent to the contradictions on which its politics and stability rest. Security and profits are its mantra, and to preserve this, any and all fighting techniques are permitted – scratching and biting included.