Its Al Jazeera satellite television channel has broadcast messages from al-Qaeda and supported dissidents against Arab dictators. Over the years, it enraged Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian leaders who have often stopped its transmissions and kicked out its staff.
“Qatar cannot own stakes in the Empire State Building and the London Shard and use the profits to write checks to affiliates of al-Qaeda,” Yousef Al Otaiba, the U.A.E. ambassador to the U.S., wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week. “It cannot plaster its name on soccer jerseys while its media networks burnish the extremist brand. It cannot be owners of Harrods and Tiffany & Co. while providing safe haven to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Qatar has dismissed charges that it funds terrorism, saying they are a ploy for regional dominance by its neighbors. Foreign Minister Mohammed Al Thani has said his nation is combating the financing of extremist groups and has received praise. The government has hired the law firm of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to defend it.
While there have been offers to mediate, it’s unclear how the standoff will end, with some analysts raising the prospect of regime change in Qatar.
Signs of opulence are evident from the moment you set foot in Doha’s cavernous, shiny airport. The lamp-posts that line the highway leading to it are works of art, decorated with laser-cut stainless steel cladding that’s inscribed with the Qatari national anthem in Arabic calligraphy.
Most Qatari women wear black abaya full-length cloaks, but unlike in Saudi Arabia, they can drive, often wearing niqab face covers behind the wheel. Alcohol is tolerated. Churches are allowed, albeit behind walls and barbed wire in a “religious complex” half an hour’s drive from downtown Doha and without anything to identify them as places of worship.
People in the glitzy metropolis were reticent to talk about what’s happening. Among those who did, some said they’re realizing how fortunate they have been.
“We just happened to be lucky, being in this country, living the life everyone in the world wants to live,” said Nawar Al-Mutlaq, 26, an artist who co-hosted the show with Al-Semaitt this week at an old fire house converted into a gallery. “It’s not something that we worked hard for.” This crisis “is going to be an eye opener for even the young generation to see that nothing lasts,” she added.
Eye-watering wealth came to Qatar about two decades after Saudi Arabia got rich from selling oil, and when it did, it really did. But that still leaves a generation who remembers leaner times.
Nasser Al Khori, 28, said his grandfather lived through the years when Qatar’s pearl industry, the mainstay at the time, was decaying. He likes to remind his grandchildren of the times Qatar had nothing, and recounts how they used to grind date stones to make bread.