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| Arabia |
| Qatar is a new target for terror |
| 2005-03-29 |
| The recent suicide bomb attack on foreigners in Qatar suggests that the Islamist extremists who look to Osama bin Laden have opened a new front in their war against the west and its Arab allies: the rich and fast-expanding Gulf city-states that run down the east of the Arabian peninsula. While no one knows how soon or far this campaign will spread, it is in some ways a surprise that these glittering emirates have managed to stay out of the line of fire this long. It is not just that their aggressive modernisation policies affront the medievalism of the jihadis. The autocrats who rule these tiny sheikhdoms have to perform a high-wire act of consummate skill to stay politically aloft. Qatar and Dubai are cases in point. Both are using bumper oil and gas revenues to diversify, aiming to become the Singapore of the Gulf. Dubai, with centuries of trading history, is already an air transport hub and tourism magnet, and is aiming to become a regional financial and services centre. From a slower start, Qatar aims to emulate it. There are elements of braggadocio and overreach in their ambition. Dubai, for instance, seems to want the biggest of everything: the largest man-made island, the highest tower (the planned 3,000 feet Burj Dubai), the richest horse-racing prize or the biggest civil aviation order. But this willingness to spend money to make money has so far worked. After 9/11, moreover, Gulf citizens, benefiting from high oil prices but suffering unprecedented visa restrictions, are a captive market. Some of the world's leading universities and hospitals are setting up units in the Gulf emirates to serve them, while Dubai, Qatar and the older banking centre of Bahrain are plausible homes for some at least of the region's fast-accumulating petrodollars. From the jihadi perspective, however, these are all rotten family auto-cracies in thrall to infidels and "crusader" armies. Qatar houses US Central Command and was a main platform for the Iraq invasion. Bahrain is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet. Freewheeling Dubai meanwhile, host last year to the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, is viewed by the fundamentalists as a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah on the peninsula that gave birth to Islam. Recent al-Qaeda webcasts identify all three as targets. The Qatar bombing suggests the jihadis are not impressed by the political acrobatics of the ruling family: providing a base to US Central Command yet also sponsoring al-Jazeera, the Islamists' favourite TV channel; or keeping links with Israel yet also giving refuge to Hamas leaders. All these states run tight security and most spread largesse among their citizens (usually a minority as in Dubai, where only 15 per cent of the population is indigenous). There has always been a question as to whether that would be enough, but the Qatar bombing is posing it in an acute and urgent way. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |