Israel’s attack on Qatar may have rocked the emirate’s geopolitical high-wire act, but it will neither disrupt its leaders’ penchant for moon-shot diplomacy nor the nation’s push for greater relevance on the international stage.
Be it negotiating a peace deal in Gaza; backing an al-Qaeda offshoot to overthrow the al-Assad regime in Syria; hosting the Taliban as they take tea with US state department officials; or backing Islamist political groups across the region; Qatar – the Little Emirate that Could – has shown a stubborn willingness to grasp an array of nettles in the field that constitutes the Middle East political landscape.
The question an onlooker might ask is why?
The answer, like much of the politics in the region, is Byzantine, many-sided and subject to intense debate. But like any political question, once you drill deep enough, it ultimately comes down to survival.
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The Emirate of Qatar, a small peninsula of about three million people jutting out into the Gulf, was nearly stillborn as a nation when the British called time on its protectorates along the Gulf in 1971. The original plan had Qatar and Bahrain joining the seven sheikdoms that now make up the United Arab Emirates as one nation, a tacit acknowledgment of the threats posed by Doha’s larger neighbours: Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq.
The intervening years have supported Qatar’s decision to go it alone. A hydrocarbon bonanza has seen it morph from a regional backwater into one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Qatar has even outshone its oil-rich neighbours in terms of the gilded, cradle-to-grave welfare system offered to its own citizens. The foreigners who constitute about 88 per cent of the population are somewhat less fortunate. This has occurred while remaining a hereditary monarchy where political parties are banned and the ruler, or emir, wields absolute power.
But Qatar has not just sat on the sidelines wallowing in its wealth. While Dubai has been content to innovate in areas such as Instagram-friendly confectionery, Qatar has developed a taste for politics, abrasive cable news and revolution – at least overseas.
From funding the Al Jazeera news network that infuriated other Middle East governments, especially during the Arab Spring; backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s push for power in Egypt; financing the Sunni rebels who toppled the Assad regime in Syria while all the time maintaining cordial relations with Iran’s Shia republic; Qatar has been willing to push just about every hot button issue going in the region.
This approach has generated significant blowback. In 2017 Qatar faced an existential crisis in the form of a blockade by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain over its alleged support for terrorist groups.
But Qatari outreach is not confined to just Islamists and Iranians. The emirate is also a “major non-Nato ally” of the US government, hosting US CENTCOM at the Al Udeid Air Base. Georgetown University has also set up shop, and football fans from across the globe saw the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, enfold Lionel Messi in a traditional robe, or bisht, as he hoisted the World Cup aloft in 2022. Qatar was also one of the first Gulf Arab nations to engage with Israel and invited former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres to Doha nearly 20 years ago, long before the much-trumpeted Abraham Accords.
This year, however, Qatar is walking a diplomatic tightrope: Iran fired missiles at US military targets outside the capital after Tehran’s nuclear programme was attacked in June, while Israeli air strikes killed six people in a Doha suburb, as the Binyamin Netanyahu government sought to eliminate senior Hamas officials – and ceasefire negotiators – given refuge in the country.
But what is Qatar trying to achieve with all this political engagement? Wouldn’t it be easier for the al-Thani ruling family to just keep their heads down and avoid the spotlight? Unfortunately, in the Middle East, trouble can come looking for you – as Kuwait learned during the Iraqi invasion of 1990. And as the ruling al-Sabah family discovered, the best way to ensure your survival as a nation is to develop a powerful and wide coterie of friends, ideally ones who need you to pick up the tab.
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Having built this complex web of foreign entanglements stretching from Gaza City to Ankara, from Tehran to Washington DC, Qatar’s wealth allows it to finance its soft power ambitions unhindered, forging connections that can one day be called upon to ensure survival in the absence of military might. At the height of the tensions with its Arab neighbours in 2017, it was a close contact of the al-Thani family – former ExxonMobil chief executive and then secretary of state Rex Tillerson – who is said to have applied the necessary pressure in Riyadh and Washington to ward off a Saudi invasion.
Situations such as this illustrate perfectly what Qatar is trying to achieve through its expansive approach to international affairs: shelter from the storms that periodically roil the region. Therefore, we should not expect the country to change course and withdraw from the global stage any time soon, despite the risks that come from standing in the spotlight.
Raymond Barrett is an Irish journalist based in the Washington, DC area and the author of Dubai Dreams: Inside the Kingdom of Bling
