Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (19 page)

In their approach to tribes and tribal identity, all states of the Arabian Peninsula rely on a combination of enticement as well as enforcement to ensure tribal loyalties and, ultimately, national cohesion. Depending on context and circumstances, this mixture of the
saif
(sword) and the
mansaf
(bedouin banquet) can take a variety of forms and degrees of intensity, but often occurs through the provision of employment opportunities and state services with the intent of deepening patron-client relationships and the tribal groups’ dependence on the state.
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Throughout the Arabian Peninsula, kinship, oil, and religion have coalesced to produce what appears to be a “tribal ideology” that permeates most institutions and practices. Though never formally articulated, this tribal ideology is not openly criticized either.
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The nexus between tribe and state remains nuanced and complex, with the Al Thanis maintaining an uneasy relationship with what is purported to be the country’s largest tribe, namely the Al Murrah, who occupy vast expanses of territory in northern and eastern Arabia. In 2005, as Qatar’s relations with Saudi Arabia steadily darkened, more than 5,000 Qataris belonging to the Al Ghafran branch of the Al Murrah tribe were stripped of their citizenship because of their alleged involvement in the failed 1996 coup attempt, which was supposedly backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
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The official reason given was that the tribe was of Saudi origin and held dual citizenship, which is banned under the Qatari constitution. A year later, as Qatari-Saudi relations began to improve, most of the Al Murrah except about two hundred regained their Qatari citizenship. Nevertheless, twenty-one prominent members of the tribe remained in prison for fourteen years, until their release in 2010 in response to a personal request from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Upon their release, the former prisoners were flown to Saudi Arabia.

The state’s efforts aimed at marginalizing the Al Murrah have ironically led to their increasing self-awareness and, at times, expressions of grievance against the state. Ultimately, it has been the emergence of state institutions, and their growing consolidation, that has shaped the destiny of the Al Murrah along with the rest of Qatar. As I discuss later, Qatar’s tribal society had a direct impact on the nature and direction of the evolution of the Qatari state. Although oil created a wide gap between the ruler and his subjects that did not exist before, the state—or, more specifically, the person of the emir—still considers itself a natural extension of society, its grand patriarch and protector. Processes of political consolidation and state-building particularly in a tribally rooted country like Qatar, must necessarily take into account the state’s ongoing entanglement with forces found in society.

Political Consolidation and State-Building

State institutions and social actors engage in multiple processes of negotiations, interactions, and resistance toward each other, and in the process they have significant constitutive and transformative consequences on one another.
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It is important to focus on the processes of interaction between state and society and how each transforms and influences the other through ongoing interactions. As Joel Migdal has convincingly demonstrated, while states transform societies in multiple ways, “the state is hemmed in—indeed transformed—by” a mélange of social forces within its territory, just as it is by international forces. Society’s structure affects politics at the highest levels of the state, just as it does the implementation of state policy at the lowest level. The structure of society can deny the state its ability to carry out its intended agendas in relation to particular social actors and groups. At multiple levels and in multiple arenas, states struggle to dominate society, at times with complete success while at other times only partially successful, and still at other times with no success at all.
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Rejecting “the false primacy of institutions,” Sangmpam similarly argues that “society-rooted politics determines institutions even if one recognizes the latter’s effect on politics in return.”
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This mutually transformative process of state-society interaction is most evident in efforts to construct a state and consolidate political rule in Qatar. State-building in Qatar took place under circumstances that are largely unique in relation to most other parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Unlike in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Bahrain, Qatar’s ruling family did not have to contend with other groups in their vicinity who had collective identities or corporate interests. In Qatar, lack of easily accessible ports and an underdeveloped pearling industry resulted in the comparative weakness of the merchant class, and an absence of vibrant urban centers impeded the growth of a robust religious establishment. This left the large Al Thani clan as the only organized group to vie for power and freed it from the need to offer concessions to other, potentially competing groups. Political competition was thus limited to within the ruling family.

The flow of oil revenues further consolidated Al Thani rule, though it did little to foster cohesion and unity within the family. If anything, internal family competition over political power and influence intensified. The emir was not always successful in resisting demands of the family members for revenues accrued from oil sales. In 1952, British officials in the region reported that the Al Thanis received one-third of the proceeds from oil revenues, a sum that was raised to 45 percent of the total by 1958. At the same time, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, following the advice of the British to involve more family members in the state administration in order to “blunt the edge of the succession issue,” the emir gave more concessions to unhappy family members and allies and potential rivals alike, therefore deepening the Al Thanis’ hold over the various offices of the state.
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Only beginning in the 1990s, with the ascension to power of Hamad bin Khalifa following yet another palace coup, were the internal politics of the Al Thani family streamlined and were the rules of succession codified. Preoccupation with political consolidation took place at the expense of state-building processes, thus resulting in the absence of many of the institutional accouterments of a modern state. Institutional underdevelopment has been reinforced by the pervasiveness of rent revenues, which have freed the state from the need to give concessions to any potential opposition groups. Since the mid-1990s, the state has undertaken a frantic effort to proliferate much needed institutions for modern governance. But the underlying personalism of the sultanistic system remains intact. The emerging system of benign despotism has so far not encountered any serious difficulties, but its continued viability in the post-oil era, at least in its present form, is open to question.

Although it has been an ongoing process, the process of political consolidation started in earnest with the emir Ali (r. 1949–1960), during whose reign state institutions proliferated thanks to oil revenues and, more important, who organized and codified, as much as possible, the allocation of allowances to members of the ruling family. The process of consolidation continued, and deepened, during the rule of the two subsequent emirs, Ahmad (r. 1960–1972) and Khalifa (r. 1972–1995). Neither of them, however, was able to rein in the fractiousness that had long divided the Al Thanis and which had intensified in recent decades due to the increasingly higher financial windfalls at stake. In fact, the successions of 1949, 1960, and 1972 were all contested, and the 1995 succession was made possible through a palace coup. In an effort to secure his reign, Khalifa placed family members in key positions, including his son Hamad, as the heir apparent, in 1977. The emir initially promised reforms, but instead centralized power. Upon taking over, he had immediately set out to expand the existing institutions of the state and to build new ones. To expand the reach and authority of the state, he increased the size of the armed forces, and established public housing benefits, old age pensions, housing units, and food cooperatives. Qatar University was established in 1974.
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But no institutionalization occurred and dissent remained. The emir then resorted to the establishment of alternate institutions as means of consolidating his power, a practice used extensively by his son and successor. Despite a proliferation of bureaucratic institutions, Khalifa remained personally involved in the minutiae of government, personally singing all checks above $50,000.
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It was largely only during the reign of Hamad (1995–) that political consolidation put an end to the bitter divisiveness that had characterized the Al Thanis since before their assumption of power.

In reality, Hamad started the process of political consolidation before he formally assumed power, when, in his capacity as heir apparent, in 1989 and then again in 1992 he instigated two major cabinet reshuffles that progressively cast aside old guard Al Thanis and replaced them with a crop of younger and more like-minded family members. From then on, and with unprecedented speed after his formal assumption of power in 1995, the emir has gone about consolidating his own rule—and by extension Al Thani longevity—simultaneously constructing a supportive state edifice. Historically, Qatari rulers’ control over various states institutions, which were controlled by their family members, were weak. Sheikh Hamad appears to have effectively reversed this and to have consolidated his own hold, and that of his immediate family members, over the various institutions of the state. Previous emirs initiated moves toward political consolidation and state-building, but only haltingly and under pressure (from Britain and family members). But Hamad has taken both endeavors, particularly state-building, to new heights. In this sense, his reign has been truly transformative.

The proliferation of state institutions in Qatar was a remarkably late and also remarkably rapid phenomenon. Only in 1964 did Khalifa attempt to form “a family proto-cabinet” by announcing the formation of a
majlis al-shura
made-up of fifteen sheikhs of the Al Thanis. The
majlis al-shura
never met, however, and it was not until 1970—when under pressure from family members and the British—the ruler announced the formation of a cabinet of ten, with seven sheikhs from the Al Thanis, coming from the different branches of the family.
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The consequences of oil on processes of state formation in Qatar cannot be overemphasized. Oil changed both the Qatari state as well as society. It broke down old ruler-merchant coalitions and enhanced the autonomy of rulers. With the arrival of the oil era, the merchants were reincorporated into the state once more, this time in a “more subservient capacity as commercial agents and importers of commodities from the capitalist world.”
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As a class, they were “bought off” by the state.
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Traditional forms of interaction with society, meanwhile, especially the institution of the
majlis
, were maintained, thus helping gauge opinion, preempting grievances, providing a channel for “venting” or participation, and helping maintain a certain measure of “social pluralism.”
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Similarly, the growth of the petro-state and the resulting financial windfalls afforded ruling families the opportunity to expand, and in many ways institutionalize, their control over the state and its expansive organs. The creation of cabinets provided positions and offices suitable for sheikhs and princes, and internal family bargains over these and other similar positions within the state afforded the ruling family the opportunity to expand its control over the state. In other words, internal family politics and jockeying for position led to the political consolidation of the ruling family and its expanded hold over the state. “The ruling family captured the new bureaucratic state in its infancy and its corporate authority, in comparison with other clans in society, grew at a dizzying pace alongside the explosive growth of the modern state, which the ruling families virtually came to own.”
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The resulting political system that has emerged is a hybrid of traditional institutions and practices coexisting alongside ostensibly modern ones. Hisham Sharabi uses the concept of
neopatriarchy
to describe the consequences of distorted changes that have “deformed” Arab society over the past hundred years. Through partial and incomplete modernization, the patriarchal structures of Arab society have been deformed, then strengthened, and have resulted in a hybrid condition called neopatriarchy.
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The concept perfectly describes the traditional modernizers of Qatari politics. Similar to its neighbors in the Arabian Peninsula, Qatar has a “post-traditional state” that uses “neo-traditionalist forms and methods.”
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In the absence of consolidated power in such systems, leaders resort to “elite
asabiyya
[communal and kinship ties] to control state institutions, which result in
neo-patrimonialism
in which participation narrows to cronies and clients. Leaders are both empowered and constrained by modern institutions, resulting in rather durable hybrid regimes.”
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Throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s, as economic underperformance resulted in mounting pressures on wealthy Qataris, and as Khalifa busied himself with the pursuit of worldly pleasures in Europe, his popularity plummeted. In 1991, fifty-four prominent Qataris presented a petition to the emir demanding a series of reforms, such as the establishment of a meaningful legislature and improvements to the health and education services. The 1995 coup, in fact, came at a time of serious downturn in Qatar’s economic fortunes and therefore had considerable support among many Al Thanis.
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