Qatar, survival at all costs: how this "small" country stands up to its neighbors

Unheard of in the history of the World Cup. Discreetly, in the heart of summer, workers advanced the countdown of the huge clock installed on the cornice of Doha by twenty-four hours. The reason ? The emirate wanted to change the kick-off date so that its national team could play the opening match in front of cameras around the world from Sunday, November 20 … a day ahead of schedule. To succeed “its” World Cup, Qatar is ready to do anything, even to bend the weather.

A few days before this decisive event, the emirate is struggling to avoid any hitch. Never has Qatar, a territory barely larger than the Gironde, welcomed so many foreigners in such a short time, with the risk of demonstrations for the rights of homosexuals, for migrant workers or for the environment. According to our sources, the authorities are also watching with concern the uprising in Iran, just north of the emirate, and its possible repercussions on the World Cup. Similarly, Emir Al-Thani went to meet Vladimir Putin in person in early October to ensure that Russia would not launch a major cyberattack to disrupt the competition.

For Qatar, “this event is the apogee, the apex, the zenith of everything for which the country has been fighting for so long, enumerates, a bit grandiloquent, David Roberts, Gulf specialist at King’s College London. decades, the entire Doha strategy has been to develop its soft power and make themselves visible on a map. Nothing is more so than a football World Cup.”

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However, the splendor of this competition, for which more than 200 billion dollars have been spent, masks the fragility of this small country of 3 million inhabitants, including only 300,000 citizens. Behind the glitter and the football, it is above all a question of security, even survival for Qatar. “You can have all the money and influence in the world, you can’t change the geography, continues David Roberts. Qatar will always be stuck between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Iraq in the process of disintegration in the north, as is Yemen in the south. Not to mention the extremely tense relations with the United Arab Emirates…”

The invasion of Kuwait as a trigger

Like all the small countries in this explosive region, Qatar remains traumatized by the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s troops in 1990. “A very rich state attacked by its much more powerful neighbor is Qatar’s nightmare and the founding event of its strategy, explains Tobias Borck, a specialist in the Middle East at the Royal United Services Institute.The only way to survive is to forge alliances with powerful players on the international scene, as Kuwait was able to do with the United States and the West.” The first Gulf War saves Kuwait from the invasion of Iraq, and serves as a trigger for Qatar. Three years later, Doha hosts its first international tennis tournament: the first stone of its strategy, with sport to connect to the rest of the world.

Qatar saw its fears confirmed in June 2017, when the emirate had to face an unprecedented embargo led by its main neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Overnight, the Qatari peninsula finds itself cut off from the world, with only three days of drinking water and very low food stocks. Its neighbours, the Saudi Prince Mohammed ben Salmane in the lead, want to bring this country too close to the Islamists to their taste, very influential in the Arab world with his Al-Jazeera channel and a solo rider in the region. “Qatar had prepared for this scenario coming from Saudi Arabia and especially from Abu Dhabi, or at least feared, notes Gerd Nonneman, professor of international relations at Georgetown University in Doha. The Qataris are aware of their vulnerability. But their bet to let the Americans use their military base on Qatari territory without restriction, since 2002, paid off at the time of the blockade: the United States preserved this essential ally.” The US administration then prevented a ground invasion of the country, planned by the Saudis and by Abu Dhabi, even if the blockade continued until 2021. It ended just in time for the World Cup.

Qatar has survived, but knows itself to be fragile. Beyond military alliances and its sporting influence, the emirate has been developing a hyperactive diplomacy for twenty years. Doha has gotten into the habit of talking to everyone, including less desirable groups like Hamas or the Taliban, in order to act as a conduit to its allies. This strategy earned him accusations of financing terrorist groups, particularly in Syria, but there too ended up paying: in August 2021, when the United States left Afghanistan in disaster and the Taliban regained power, Qatar is the only country that can negotiate with the new masters of Kabul. Qatari diplomacy allows the evacuation of thousands of people, and Joe Biden gives Doha the official status of “major ally” of the United States, an unprecedented place for a country that is not a member of NATO. Today, Qatar is continuing its efforts to mediate with the Taliban, but also in Syria or Palestine, and especially in many African countries, such as Sudan, or more recently in Chad.

“Qatar was not ready to handle such a wave of criticism”

This role of world diplomat does not spare Qatar Western criticism and the suspicions that weigh on its double game with the Islamists. As the World Cup approaches, all the spotlight is on the hundreds of migrant workers who died on the World Cup sites, in conditions close to slavery. Qatar may plead that it has learned and that its labor laws have been changed, the damning testimonies of these exploited workers tarnish the image of the emirate, whose billions of dollars were not enough to take care of the human lives. “Qatar was not ready to handle such a wave of criticism, says Gerd Nonneman, from Doha. When the attacks take on such a scale, it is very difficult to offer another story. These criticisms worry the leaders, but those hopefully the tone will change once fans and reporters are there.”

These spots on his reputation do not make him deviate from his objective: to exist and to make himself indispensable for a maximum of great powers. “Now, Qatar embodies much more than the World Cup, believes Tobias Borck. With the war in Ukraine, all countries, especially Europeans, are frantically looking for alternatives to Russian gas, and logically this alternative is in Qatar. It is the only country that has the capacity, in the near future, to replace Russian gas for Europe.” The world’s leading exporter of liquefied gas, Doha plans to further increase its production capacity by 60% by 2027. Enough to make it essential to Westerners, but also to China.