Qatar’s democratic system still more of a distant concept than a reality–is courtesy of a benign aristocrat, not a grass-roots movement. The relative freedom of discussion on Al-Jazeera, like the four-year-old municipal electoral system, were gifts from Qatar’s progressive emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. The Sandhurst-educated al-Thani has decided his people need representative government, just as they need free health care and education. “If the people don’t ask for democracy, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t offer it,” his wife Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned told NEWSWEEK. “Democracy is what [the emir] thinks people should enjoy.”
The Middle East’s Mediterranean capitals–Cairo, Beirut and Tunis–used to spark what little progressive political thinking occurred in the region. The Gulf kingdoms, by contrast, were dismissed as politically crude: tribal, conservative, lacking basic civic freedoms. That could be changing. While Egyptians, Syrians and other Western Arabs are chafing under nondemocratic governments, Gulf Arabs are feeling hopeful about newfound freedoms. Recent lower-house elections in Bahrain and Oman, and last month’s announcement that the Saudis would hold municipal elections within the year, suggest that the Gulf could be groping toward a uniquely Arab style of democracy. Political scientist Barry Rubin has argued: “In the next decade, we may come to view the smaller Gulf Arab kingdoms as the vanguard of progress, reform and democratization in the Arab world.”
As laboratories for democracy go, Qatar has it easy. Not only tiny, the emirate is also homogenous–only 150,000 of its 800,000-odd residents are citizens. (The rest are foreign workers.) Politically, it’s passive: the emir is popular, and there is no history of dissent. The country is so rich in gas revenues that it doesn’t tax its people, and yet provides them with lavish social services. Like Saudi Arabians, Qataris are mostly Wahhabis, though jolly ones with no traces of radicalism. Unlike in other Gulf states, Qatar’s Shiite minority doesn’t feel persecuted. (“What’s a Qatari Shiite?” goes the old saw. “A Sunni and a half.”) Where the youthful demographics of bigger countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have dragged down their economies, providing governments a useful excuse not to reform because of the fear of radicalism, Qatar’s easygoing prosperity is a pleasant climate for change. “People aren’t demanding all these things,” concedes Hassan Al-Ansari, director of the University of Qatar’s Gulf Studies Center. “But it’s better to move when you are stable. If we wait too long, then everything collapses, and you pay the price.” The cautionary tales are, of course, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both racked by joblessness, dissent and economic problems. For now, at least, democracy may be a luxury that only rich Gulf Arabs can afford.
