Please, this has little to do with Al Jazeera and Qatari funding of terrorism. Do people not notice that any country that tries to sell oil without going through the petrodollar system is quickly branded as supporting terrorism. Saudi Arabia attacked us on 9/11, yet we don’t brand them terrorists, nope, not as long as they continue to prop up our economy with petrodollars. But Qatar, Iran, any country that looks outside the petrodollar box is suddenly a terrorist country that must be invaded and destroyed. And the USA gives other Arab countries multiple types of passes on their oppressive regimes to keep it that way for us, lest we get our hands dirty.
9
MbS and his megalomania is a huge problem for SA and the ME, just like Trump, Bibi, Assad and Sisi. Erdogan remains an outlier. Zarif and Thani seem to be the only rational people in the neighborhood.
4
Had I not a house and too many cats, would consider going there tomorrow to study and teach.
1
Worth noting that it is not just the US that Qatar is buying fighters from, but also the UK and France. Front line fighter numbers are increasing tenfold
3
Bravo Qatar!
Saudis have become too used to throwing their weight around, and have corrupted just about everything they touch. For not caving, for leaving the OPEC cartel, for opening universities - bravo.
If the country can truly evolve into a self-sustaining republic without a large number of indentured servants to boss around and abuse (from South and Southeast Asia) - it would represent a positive step too.
11
"It has been buying top-of-the-line fighter jets from the United States, and is expanding Al Udeid, the largest American military base in the Middle East, which Qatar hosts."
Yet Saudi Arabia is favored by Trump over Qatar. Another example of geopolitical dyslexia in the White House.
12
The Middle East makes no sense to me.
1
Glad to see this. I used to shop at an Al-Meera in a strip mall a hot 5-minute walk from the compound where I lived in Doha. As Cousy posted below, I wouldn't bet against Qatar, Lots of good people there, & from all over the world.
9
The gross incompetence of Saudi foreign policy would probably lead those who subscribe to conspiracy theories to suspect that MbS is actually an Iranian agent.
7
This is what often happens when a country faces an economic blockade of one sort or another. Brazil really industrialized when WWII drastically limited what manufactured goods it could import. Cuba couldn't, and can't make it economically because of its stupid ideology, but the US embargo gave its government someone to blame for its own mistakes. Trade sanctions on Russia are doing zilch to stop its interference in the internal affairs of the US and, I guess, other countries as well.
Now the US is hoping that trade sanctions -- mostly tariffs -- will succeed in getting China to stop stealing technology. Good luck with that. They will bite the bullet, find some other markets for their exports and live with a reduced total, speed up their industrialization and modernization (in part by continuing to steal technology) so as to decrease their dependence on imports of advanced products, and at some point maybe do some lies about how they will behave better in the future so the US government can tell its own lies about how "we won again" and get rid of the tariffs that are hurting us more than they are hurting the Chinese.
We don't study history, we repeat it. And this time it really is farce.
Sad...
8
Gutsy little country. Hope they make it. Personally I wouldn't live anywhere in the Gulf. Too much sand and too hot.
9
Qatar, like much of Arabia, is essentially a slave-society, as the article delicately hints at when mentioning 88% of the population is made up of foreign “workers”.
That makes it all the more amazing they could summon the grit to fight back from their estranged brothers.
I hope this time of need will help their foreign workers gain some recognition, as women did when working in World War II factories.
21
Qatar's resilience to this crisis has to do with the fact that country as we know it has only been around for 40 years. It has been rapidly adapting to new circumstances and emerging opportunities every since.
For example, the Qataris started their western-oriented education city in 2003, and have built it to include significant outposts of eight American and European universities and one Qatari university. The new subway system in Doha, which might have taken decades to build in the US, was started and finished in about 4 years.
Monarchies can be, for better and worse, pretty efficient. Add huge sums of money and the Qataris are able to do whatever they want. Its still a weird place, and they turn a blind eye to their vulnerabilities and their moral lapses. But I wouldn't bet against them.
26
@Cousy
Educational opportunities at the secondary level are also abundant and hardly a recent development.
My granddaughter attends the American School in Doha, which was founded in 1988. (As it happens her father graduated from the American School in London, courtesy of the neat benefit package my then US-based multi-national employer provided its American ex-pat executives at the time.)
5
When the unhappy event of ostracizing Qatar happened I thought that the survival strategy that the country would take would definitely help it to be better off in the long run. It is great to note that this has been the case. I would encourage Qataris to shun bitterness and stand ready to collaborate with their Arab brothers in any way possible so long as it does not compromise their values of peace and the freedom to talk truth to power.
7