QATAR
export of liquefied natural gas (LNG), was completed.
o This state occupies a mitten-shaped peninsula that extends for about 170
kilometers northward into the Gulf and measure eighty km at its point of
greatest width.
o The territory of Qatar encompasses approximately 10, 360 square
kilometers.
o Approximately two thirds of its population of about 600,000 lives in the
capital of Doha, on the east coast of the peninsula.
 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
 Like Bahrain and UAE, Qatar was under British protection until
independence on 1971.
 The protective status was based on treaties signed in1869, 1913, and
1916.
 It has been admitted to the Arab League and the Organization of Arab
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), OPEC and the United
Nations.
 Shaykh Khalifah bin Hamad Al Thani ousted his cousin, Shaykh
Ahmad, as ruler.
 June 1995—Hamad overthrew Khalifah because he had opposed the
more liberal domestic and foreign policies that Hamad favored.
 The six years of Hamad’s rule witnessed a dramatic opening up of
Qatar’s political system.
 POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT
POPULATION AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
 Prior to the production of oil in 1949, the population of Qatar was
one of the poorest of any in Eastern Arabia.
 Great majority of inhabitants lived at substance level, with most of
their income derived from fishing and pearling.
 Most indigenous is Arab.
 The Arabs of Qatar are largely Sunni Muslims and generally
subscribe to the conservative teachings of the same Hanbali school
of Islamic jurisprudence as practiced in Saudi Arabia.
 There is also a large foreign population if Iranians, Pakistanis,
Indians, and Palestinians.
 Native Qataris account for only about 30 percent of the total
population.
 The Iranians constitute the majority of the small merchant class;
many Indians and Pakistanis are employed as manual laborers,
artisans, and clerical staff in local banks and businesses.
 Palestinians occupy the lower and middle levels of the bureaucracy
and equivalent white collar positions in the private sector.
 Qatar lacked even the remotest semblance of a modern school
system, hospitals, clinics, electricity, piped water, and many other
government services.
 Public education for both boys and girls began in a major way in the
1950s and is free but not compulsory.
 All primary school teachers must be Qataris, and the country, like its
neighbors, now has its own national university.
 Free health services are provided to both Qataris and non-Qatari
residents.
Economic Conditions
 Petroleum production and export, together with the leadership of
reform-oriented members of the ruling family, have been
responsible for much of the dramatic transformation that has taken
place in the country’s social and economic life.
 In 1975, two major oil-producing companies, Qatar Petroleum
Company and Shell Oil Qatar, were nationalized by the
government.
 Qatar possesses the world’s greatest deposit of unassociated natural
gas (gas not mixed with oil).
 Qatar’s proven gas reserves, conservatively estimated at 4.62 trillion
cubic meters, place it fourth or fifth in the world.
 Exploitation of this field began in 1991, and in 1997 the second
phase of its development, construction facilities for production and
 The government made considerable investments and
infrastructure including excellent road system connecting Qatar to
adjacent states, an international airport, and a large modernized
port.
 Qatar is attempting to modernize and diversify its economy as
rapidly and efficiently as possible to lessen dependence on
hydrocarbon production.
 In 1973, it began to manufacture fertilizer.
 The country has built cement and steel plants as well as flour mills
and has expanded its shrimping industry.
 Qatar’s per capita income of $17,000.00 is one of the world’s
highest.
 POLITICAL STRUCTURE
 In 1970, Qatar became the first of the lower Gulf states to
promulgate a written constitution.
 It provided for a council of ministers and an advisory council,
stipulating that the former was to be appointed by the ruler and that
the majority of the latter was to be elected by the general population.
 Members of the ruling family dominate the cabinet, which is
responsible for proposing laws, which must be submitted to the ruler
for ratification, and is also technically accountable for supervising
the state bureaucracy and the financial affairs of the state.
 The advisory council established in 1972 consisted exclusively of
members appointed by the ruler.
 The council has been extended at four-year intervals
since 1978.
 It designed to represent major social and economic
interest groups in Qatar.
 It has little authority other than to make
recommendations and, by itself, is not empowered to
initiate legislation.
 In January 1992, fifty leading Qataris petitioned the emir to
establish an assembly with legislative powers and to institute
economic and educational reforms.
 POLITICAL DYNAMICS
 In 1992, Emir Khalifah had granted his son, Hamad, a graduate of
Britain’s Sandhurst Military Academy, effective control of
Qatar’s affairs, apart from financial matters.
 In 1995, a power struggle between father and son led to a coup on
June 27.
 Shaykh Hamad’s domestic reforms helped confirm his support in
Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, the United States, and other countries
promptly recognized him as ruler.
 He retained posts of minister of defense and
commander in chief of the armed forces.
 He appointed himself prime minister and in October 1996, he
relinquished that office to his younger brother, Shaykh Adbullah.
 At the same time, he appointed the third of his four sons, Shaykh
Jasim, as heir apparent.
 Hamad’s most significant domestic political action was the decision
to create, through a new permanent constitution, a national
assembly whose members would be directly elected.
 On March 8, 1999, these elections were held to Qatar’s history and
the first direct elections in any Arab Gulf state in which women
could vote and run in office.
 Hamad revoked censorship of the news media, and abolished the
post of minister of information and culture, later dissolving the
ministry as well.
 As part of this move to liberalize Qatar’s media and image, the new
emir established the Al-Jazeera television station—and all-news
station independent of the government, while broadcasts by satellite
to the whole Arab world.
 It is revolutionary because it has introduced programs,
including frank and provocative news reports and
 commentaries that are new to the Arab viewing public.
 Although it this a non-government entity, it is not yet
able to survive financially without the government
subventions.
 Al Jazeera gained international visibility when CNN
broadcast the station’s exclusive interview with alleged
terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
 These dramatic developments have not yet altered the centrality of
the Al Thani in Qatar’s government of a essential monopoly of
political power.
 The Al Thani are the largest ruling family in the region,
numbering as many as 20,000.
 The family holds around ten of the fifteen cabinet
portfolios, including all vital ones such as interior,
defense, finance, and foreign affairs.
 The merchant class has traditionally exerted less influence on
government affairs that its larger and older counterparts in Kuwait,
Bahrain, Dubai, or Oman.
 The Al Thani and the business community, through a symbolic
process, have increased their collaboration in many areas relating
to Qatar’s economic growth.

 FOREIGN POLICY

 Qatar’s foreign policy had been consistently conservative.

 It has been apt to follow the lead of its large neighbor, Saudi
Arabia.
 A hallmark of the Al Thani policy had been an effort to remain on
friendly terms with all the Gulf littoral states as a principal means
of preserving the independence of a small, weak state.
 The principal exception was Bahrain, with which territorial
disputes had soured relations since 1939.
 Qatar supported Iraq in its 1980-1988 war with Iran, but it has
sought tolerable relations with Iran, because of its Shia community
a sensitive maritime border with Iran.
 Hamad as crown prince had pursued foreign policy that departed
markedly from Qatar’s cautious external relations before 1992.
 Hamad sought to establish economic ties with Israel.
 Emir Hamad also began to play a much more prominent
international role.
 It hosted the fourth Middle East and North Africa (MENA) summit
in November 1997.
 In November 2000, Qatar hosted the Organization of the Islamic
Conference summit.
 The most significant development in Qatar’s external affairs was
the settlement with its immediate neighbor Bahrain.