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| Qatar
A thinly populated peninsula jutting into the Persian Gulf, Qatar is home to both the pan-Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera and, since the buildup to the 2003 Iraq war, the regional headquarters of the US Central Command.
While the emir has bankrolled al-Jazeera, whose critical broadcasts have aroused the ire of almost every authoritarian Arab regime, Qatar itself is a hereditary monarchy without an electoral system or another mechanism for popular participation in politics. Yet there is little agitation for change, perhaps because Qatar boasts the highest gross domestic product per capita in the Middle East. In the twentieth century, exports of oil and natural gas transformed this former pearl fishery into a prosperous state that provides its citizens with free health care and education.
With the third largest natural gas reserves in the world, Qatar will be meeting the burgeoning demand for gas in Japan, India and China for some time to come. High oil prices are fueling a construction boom, as Qatar moves to develop tourist attractions comparable to those in Dubai down the Persian Gulf coast. Meanwhile, the ruling family is also investing in higher education, with several American universities establishing satellite campuses outside of the capital of Doha. By the government’s “Qatarization” program, educated nationals are supposed to be given priority over foreigners in key managerial positions.
As in neighboring Gulf states, the manual labor of building Qatar is done by guest workers from South Asia and poorer Arab countries. In Qatar, non-nationals compose four fifths of the population.
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