Following senior resignations at Al-Jazeera Arabic in 2011, seemingly as a result of the network’s inability to offer fair coverage of the Arab Spring, suspicions over Qatar’s intentions continued to mount. These were further exacerbated following the widespread dissemination in 2011 of a leaked US cable, originally dating from 2009, which described the Qatari regime’s apparent manipulation of the network to suit its policy objectives. Referring to several memoranda, the cables claimed that Al-Jazeera was being built up by the Qatari ruling family as a ‘bargaining tool to repair relationships with other countries’, and cited the example of Qatar’s improved relations with Saudi Arabia being based on the network’s ‘toning down of criticism of the Saudi royal family’. Before concluding that Al-Jazeera was ‘proving itself a useful tool for the station’s political masters’, the cable also damningly claimed that the Qatari prime minister[968] had told a prominent US senator[969] that Qatar had proposed a bargain with Hosni Mubarak which involved ‘stopping [Al-Jazeera] broadcasts in Egypt for one year in exchange for a change in Cairo’s position on Israel-Palestinian negotiations’.[970]
Meanwhile, on a domestic level there continues to be criticism that the Qatari authorities promote self-censorship of the media, with local newspapers and television stations being unable to cover a number of delicate issues in the emirate. Indeed, further to the difficulties faced by the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, the leaked cable also commented that the US embassy had ‘assessed a steady lack of overall media freedom in Qatar’ and believed that ‘although overt and official censorship is not present, self and discreet official censorship continues to render Qatar’s domestic media tame and ineffective’.[971] There has also been criticism that the Qatari authorities — in much the same way as the other Gulf monarchies — are quite prepared to repress their own citizens, if necessary. In March 2011, for example, Amnesty International reported that a Qatari blogger and human rights activist[972]—the founder of an organisation that monitors cases of arbitrary detention in the emirate — was himself seized. He was reportedly arrested by eight members of Qatar’s security services and his home, car, and computer were searched without warrant.[973]
CONCLUSION
The state formation processes of the smaller Gulf monarchies, and in particular their historic relationships with Britain and other foreign powers, are crucial to understanding the political institutions that developed — especially those that fit with the neo-patriarchy and liberalised autocracy arguments. Equally, in Saudi Arabia knowledge of the state that formed around the long-running alliance between the ruling family and the religious establishment remains central to any contemporary analysis. Important too have been the various components of the ruling bargains or social contracts that have been constructed by these polities. As per the rentier state model, the distribution of wealth along with the creation of a national identity and the formation of an indigenous rentier elite class that sits above all expatriates have been paramount. But other, non-economic legitimacy resources also clearly matter. As expected by revised modernisation theory approaches, Michael Hudson’s mosaic model, and observers of these regimes’ re-orientalisation strategies, these bargains have included cults of personality, the co-option of religion, tribal heritage, and other traditional sources of power and authority.
The survival explanations can now be pressed even further, appreciating how the Gulf monarchies have applied aspects of their domestic strategies to both the wider region and even the international community. Notably, the distribution of rentier wealth has by no means been limited to national populations; it is increasingly used to buy influence and goodwill elsewhere, especially in other Arab and Muslim countries. Similarly, extensive and often costly peacekeeping missions are despatched to nearby conflict zones, which have again positioned the Gulf monarchies as benevolent, wealthy neighbours. More subtly these states have attempted to buy influence and support in Western and Eastern superpowers, with headline-grabbing sovereign wealth investments, selective development assistance, and with the generous sponsorship of projects run by prestigious universities, museums, and other respected cultural and opinionmaking centres of excellence. In this manner the Gulf monarchies have become quintessential brokers of Joseph Nye’s ‘soft power’ approach[974]—as the various ruling families and their governments have not only sought to use their resources to provide payments to key external actors, but have also tried to position themselves as attractive, well-meaning, and responsible members of the international community.
Internal pressures and weaknesses are nonetheless already manifest, or soon to be so, in all of the Gulf monarchies. Affecting the six regimes’ ability to keep distributing wealth and meeting the expectations of citizens, the region’s declining natural resources and looming ‘youth bulge’ now really matter, as do the mounting challenges of unsustainable subsidies, labour nationalisation, and ‘voluntary unemployment’. In many ways, these are the by-products of rentier state structures — in particular the cradle-to-grave welfare systems that continue to underpin political acquiescence. Corruption and the squandering of national resources by the ruling families and their neo-patriarchal governments is also a growing concern. These polities — which do not have legal-rational authority — are now playing host to unaccountable elites and decision-makers. These have been allowed to squander national resources by financing prestige projects, making duplicate investments, and accumulating vast personal wealth. Further interconnected internal pressures are also evident, including increasing poverty among Gulf nationals, even in the wealthiest of the monarchies, along with rising real unemployment, and a widening wealth gap between the richest and poorest citizens. Discrimination against certain sections of society is equally noticeable, especially relating to the hundreds of thousands of stateless persons living in the Gulf monarchies and the rights of Shia citizens and other religious sects that have lived there for centuries. The more extensive use of censorship is similarly worrying, as although the regimes have largely been effective in choking off channels of free expression, they are now required to deploy the latest and most sophisticated technologies. In this manner, and as predicted by Michael Ross,[975] the Gulf’s rentier wealth is not always being used to distribute wealth to citizens, but is instead being used to finance powerful, expensive, and highly sophisticated police state apparatuses.
974
1. Nye, Joseph,