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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Letters From |
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Doha |
Into the spotlight
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| The tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar makes
its own bid for worldwide fame |
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Published : 1 January 2011 |
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FADI AL-ASSAAD / REUTERS |
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| Qatari fans celebrate at Souk Waqif in Doha December 2, 2010, after the announcement that Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup.
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N 2 DECEMBER, the tiny Persian Gulf state
of Qatar—known, if at all, as the home of Al
Jazeera and the temporary headquarters of
the US Army Central Command—shocked
most of the world by winning its bid to host
the 2022 World Cup. |
A friend had sent me pictures taken after the World Cup
announcement along the corniche in Doha, which was
overrun with flag-waving Qatari boys attacking each other
with cans of silly string and driving white jeeps covered in
loving decals of the emir. Qatar’s World Cup, a local newspaper
declared the next day, was “a victory for the umma.”
A few days later I arrived in Doha to attend a conference.
It turns out that there’s not much to do in Doha besides attending
conferences: on religious dialogue, on the environment,
on education. Often all the participants are here on
Qatar’s dime, showing the kind of largesse the country’s
rulers regularly deploy to turn this little emirate into an international
destination.
For the conference I was there to cover, 1200 educators
from around the world had been flown in and put up at
Doha’s five-star hotels. Over lunch, I overheard one American
academic say to another: “I’ll go ahead and say it if you
won’t. They want to own education.” He didn’t say it critically
but with laughing awe.
These days, it seems that Qatar has no ambition, no matter
how improbable—whether it’s becoming a leader in
global education or hosting the World Cup—that it doesn’t
have the means of achieving.
There is some private head-shaking here over the World
Cup decision—sceptics point to the oppressive summer
heat, the near-universal ban on alcohol. But mostly there
is a celebratory mood in the air, a sense that the country—
long overshadowed by bigger, flashier and more dangerous
neighbours—is having its moment in the sun. At the education
conference’s opening session, US House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi concluded a televised message by congratulating
Qatar on its World Cup bid. Former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi
told the audience that “Qatar has proven once again
that it can play in the big boys’ league.”
Fifty years ago—as photographs from the time attest—
Doha was little more than a handful of dhows and tents;
despite the country’s huge oil and gas reserves, Qatar remained
a quiet backwater for decades after their discovery,
until 1995, when the current emir deposed his own father in
what everyone calls a bloodless coup.
In the last 15 years, the new emir, Hamad Bin Khalif Al
Thani, has embarked on an astounding spending spree to
develop and modernise the country. Today, the once sleepy
bay of Doha is dotted with skyscrapers in various states of
construction, five-star hotels and architectural status symbols
like the Islamic Museum, built by IM Pei. For the World Cup, Qatar has promised to build 12 air-conditioned football
stadiums and spend 60 billion dollars (2.7 trillion rupees)
on new infrastructure.
The speed at which Doha is being transformed is hard to
overstate—and hard to imagine anywhere outside the Persian
Gulf. The city itself truly does feel like the set of a sci-fi movie; a new world imagined into being only yesterday.
In fact, Qatar Steel recently commissioned Syd Mead, who
designed the sets for the movie Blade Runner, to come up
with a vision of Doha in 2050. He envisioned a gleaming,
blue-skyed city, all towers and landing pads, hovercrafts
floating overhead.
Part of the strangeness of Qatar at the moment is that it
can apparently afford anything. The country’s GDP is over
100 billion dollars—more than 330,000 dollars per year for
each of Qatar’s 300,000 citizens, who remain a minority in
their own country, outnumbered by more than a million
foreigners (whether well-paid Western consultants or low-wage
labourers from the subcontinent and East Asia).
The public face of the new Qatar is Sheikha Mozah, the
second of the amir’s four wives, and the only one ever seen
in public. I was at a gala dinner she attended and when she
stood up half the room did too, to take her picture with their
cell phones. She has a dramatic, feline beauty; regal bearing;
a killer wardrobe; and fluent English. The Sheikha oversees
the Qatar Foundation, which undertakes a staggering array
of philanthropic, cultural, scientific and educational initiatives.
They’ve launched an English-Arabic publishing house;
funded medical and scientific research; created a renowned
regional literary competition; and assembled a world-class
Qatar Philarmonic Orchestra. And to educate 1,000 or so
Qatari students, the foundation has enticed six top American
universities to open branch campuses here.
Other attempts to brand Qatar as an intellectual hub in
the Persian Gulf haven’t fared so well. The project of setting
up a Center for Media Freedom in Doha, for example,
floundered. Robert Menard, a veteran journalists’ rights
advocate, resigned last year, saying “certain Qatari officials
never wanted an independent Centre…one that was free to
criticise Qatar itself.”
Qatar remains an absolute monarchy and its citizens follow
a conservative version of Islam. It is a crime to criticise
the emir or religion. Women—for all their gains in education
and their increased visibility—are still required to
have male guardians. Homosexuality and in fact any sexual
relations outside marriage are technically a crime. And Amnesty International says the foreign maids and labourers
that keep the country running are regularly the victims
of sexual violence and ill treatment.
None of this usually comes up in Doha’s conference halls
(although it is often discussed in the hallways, sotto voce).
Qatar’s wealth stuns and silences. It becomes awkward,
when you’re here, to note that all the reforms and plans,
good as they may be, come from one high place, their budgets
unspecified, like manna from the sky. It’s hard to know
what Qataris themselves make of it all, because there is no
public debate; little contact between expatriates and locals;
and all public figures tend to be allies or representatives of
the government.
Meanwhile all of Qatar’s new ventures are touted—by
armies of eager Western PR agencies—as part of the country’s
strategy to become a ‘post-carbon,’ ‘knowledge-based’
economy. By the time the oil and gas finally run out, the
thinking goes, Qatar will be a thriving, innovative, entrepreneurial
society and an international landmark.
But there are also more immediate reasons for Qatar to
spread its wealth—to be patron, client and middle-man to
as many countries and interests as possible. When you’re
a tiny country with enormous wealth in a volatile region
(and a ruler from a large family full of possible contenders
for the throne) it makes sense to keep a high profile, and
to buy yourself as much leverage as you can, in every direction.
To host an American base, for example, but also to
found Al Jazeera (and then to use Al Jazeera, if WikiLeaks
is to be believed, as a negotiating tool with some of your
neighbours).
On my last night in Doha, I went to a party in the Pearl, Doha’s newest luxury real estate development. It’s built on
a man-made island (that seems to be de rigeur in the Gulf
these days) and benefits from off-shore status: restaurants
can serve alcohol here. There is a Ferrari and a Rolls Royce
dealership on either side of the entrance. Nonetheless, its
high-end European brand stores are mostly empty. (I’m
told Qataris who can afford to prefer to fly to London or
Paris to shop).
That evening, the weather was balmy and perfect. From
the balcony of my friends’ apartment, I looked at the Pearl’s
half-built condos and its artificial bay. My friend is half-Qatari
and she told me she is planning on going into “animal
training.” When I asked what animals, she said “big cats.” It
has become quite popular to have lions or cheetahs as pets
here, apparently. There are stories of women smuggling
them under their abayas on flights from Africa; once here,
people install their ‘pets’ in the passenger seats of their
sports cars and cruise. The cats have to be de-fanged and
de-clawed; although my friend knows one man who just
has his cat’s teeth filed every three days by a servant. Lots
of the animals die when they are young, she said, and she
wants to teach people here to take better care of them.
Everyone at the party was young, intelligent and excited.
They’d come here, from the West and other Arab countries,
to work at new museums, new publishing ventures.
The old hands—people who have been here longer than six
months—warned of the 90-percent-humidity, 50-degree
summer weather (“it’s like standing in front of an airplane
engine”). They gave advice about all the other great nearby
places you can fly to when, inevitably, you will want to get
out of Doha.
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