>> Mission of the
World Affairs Council
is to empower the people
and organizations
of West Michigan to engage
thoughtfully with the world.
We do that with the help
of 50 local businesses
like SoundOff Signal,
and all of our colleges
and universities.
And we're very grateful to
Grand Valley State University
for being a
part of it,
and the Seidman School
providing this wonderful space
for us to have
this event.
Now, let me briefly introduce
the Ambassador to you,
and then have him
come up and lead us.
Chase Untermeyer is Chairman
of the Qatar-America Institute,
which aims to
increase understanding
of the important
Qatari-American relationship
in security,
education, and energy.
From 2004 to 2007, he served
as the US ambassador to Qatar
on appointment of the
President George W. Bush.
He has held positions at all
four levels of government--
local, state, national,
and international--
over a period of
more than 30 years,
with work in journalism,
academia, and business as well.
He was born in
Long Branch, New Jersey,
which I was happy to talk with
him about-- uh, Jersey Shore--
and he came to Houston
at the age of two.
He is a 1968 graduate of Harvard
with honors in Government
and while in college, he
helped George H.W. Bush
in his 1966 race for a seat
in Congress from Houston
and spent two summers as an
intern on the Washington staff
for a freshman
Congressman Bush.
He's commissioned under
the Naval Reserve Officers
Training Corps, and he served in
the Navy during the Vietnam War
as an officer aboard the
Pacific Fleet Destroyer,
the USS Benner.
After two terms as a
Texas state representative,
his good friend
George H.W. Bush
asked him to come to
Washington when Mr. Bush
became
vice president.
He has many, many additional
adventures in government
and public service, and
including executive positions
in the Navy and of
Voice of America,
and as assistant
to the president,
and, of course, as
US ambassador to Qatar.
Please join me in
welcoming Chase Untermeyer.
(applause)
>> Well, thank you,
Mike and Erica and all,
for the chance
to be here
particularly on a
beautiful autumn day.
Coming from the tropics
down there in Houston
to see trees that are
naturally colored
as opposed to
artificially colored
is a great,
great thrill.
Also had the pleasure
with Mike of going back
to the Ford Presidential
Museum today.
And I was reminded that my
very last trip to Grand Rapids
was September 18, 1981, which
was when the museum opened.
I was then working for
then Vice President Bush.
He was there, along with
President Mrs. Reagan
and Pierre Trudeau and
various other luminaries.
So that was a highly
memorable time.
I'm sorry, it's been 37 years
since that visit,
but thanks to Erica and company,
I'm here and so grateful.
I also realized that I am
a second choice Untermeyer
to come here because my wife,
Diana, who wrote a book
about Qatar, called
"Qatar: Sand, Sea and Sky,"
spoke before the World Affairs
Council of Western Michigan
about five or
six years ago.
Some of you may have
been here for that.
You got a much
better talk from her
than you will get from me,
and so I can only try.
But she's safely a
thousand miles away
and I have the
floor to myself.
(audience laughing)
But to begin, my tenure in
Qatar was for three years
during a very
dynamic time.
And it was a totally
new experience for me
and for our entire
little family.
That's because I was what
is known as a "non-career"
or "political-appointed
ambassador."
In any given administration
of either party,
two-thirds of
all ambassadors
are career Foreign
Service officers,
people who are very bright
graduates who take an exam,
sometimes they have to
take it more than once,
and through a very
stringent interview process
are selected to enter
the Foreign Service,
at which point they rise in
ranks just like in the military
to the point when,
after 20, 25 years,
the State Department identifies
them as a good candidate
to recommend to
the White House
for posting as
an ambassador,
and then, in two-thirds
of the cases,
they are posted by
appointment of the president.
The other one-third are the
so-called "political appointees"
and these, typically,
and most famously,
serve in London,
Paris, Rome.
Like Peter Secchia of the
first Bush administration
who was ambassador
to Italy.
And these are people who
either have particular
political merit,
such as Mr. Secchia
helping George Bush elder
win the Michigan primary
and then carry Michigan
in his race for president,
or they may be fundraisers
or major donors.
I suppose I
qualified
under the "old friend of
the president" category,
because I certainly
didn't qualify
because of my intense
knowledge of the Middle East.
You know, Mark Twain said,
"Confession may be good
"for the soul but it's
bad for my reputation."
And I do not come before you
as someone who has spent
an entire career
as an Arabist,
as somebody who studied
the Arabic language
and had many assignments
and postings.
I came into the job of
being a US ambassador
in a Middle-Eastern
country,
which is very rare for
a non-career person,
through the vagaries
of politics.
Now, in addressing
how that works,
I really have to reach to a
totally different sphere,
namely that of
the musical stage
because there is a
famous songwriter
named Sammy Cahn,
and Sammy Cahn used to
address the question
that every songwriter
is always asked,
which is, "What comes first--
the music or the words?"
And Sammy Cahn used to
say, "What comes first?
"It's the telephone call."
(audience chuckling)
And that means that he would
be somewhere in Hollywood.
The phone would ring,
it would be a producer
who would ask a question
like, "Can you write a song
"called 'Three Coins in a
Fountain' or some such thing?"
And he, of course,
said "yes"
and he would proceed
to write the song.
So, how did I get
to be an ambassador?
I got a telephone
call one day.
It was from the director
of Presidential Personnel,
a job that I myself held for
the first President Bush.
And when the personnel
director came on the line,
I realized immediately
two things.
One is that it
was about a job
because the director of
Presidential Personnel
does not idly call people
around the country
to find out how
things are going.
And I knew it had to
be an important job
because she herself
made the call,
not a member
of the staff.
And it's true-- it was about
becoming an ambassador.
And through the process,
it was identified
that I would be nominated,
if I so chose, to go to Qatar.
Now, I had never
been to Qatar.
I knew about it
because as a earnest
World Affairs Council member
in Houston, and reader of
newspapers and magazines
and the rest, I had an
acquaintance with the country
in general terms, but
because I'd never been there,
I'd never been
posted in the region,
it did raise the question
of why this happened.
And maybe it's because
of some of the things
that Mike mentioned
in the introduction.
It was never said to
me in so many words
but there was
a kind of logic.
One is I'd been the director
of the Voice of America,
too briefly I'm sorry to
say-- only about 17 months--
at the end of the first
Bush Administration.
But because the
all-encompassing major issue
and source of aggravation
for my administration
when I was selected
was "Al Jazeera."
"Al Jazeera" is
wholly owned by Qatar.
It operates out of Qatar
and broadcasts in, now,
a number of languages but the
primary language is Arabic.
And the voice of
"Al Jazeera" in Arabic,
reporting on the war
in Iraq in particular,
was considered by
my administration
to be a
hostile voice.
And therefore, I was
told that that would be
one of my prime
assignments
was to "do something"
about "Al Jazeera."
And I took on
that assignment
and I told them that once
I had "done something"
about "Al Jazeera,"
that I would offer to do the
same for the "New York Times,"
for the "Washington Post"...
(audience laughing)
for CBS and all the other
sources of irritation
that afflict many a president,
not just that time.
So, that was one of the,
perhaps, contributing reasons.
The other is that education,
particularly higher education,
is very important
in Qatar.
It was the original design
of the then-wife of the emir,
the mother of
the current emir,
to bring the University
of Virginia to Qatar,
a entire complete campus and all
of its different disciplines...
a very dramatic proposal
that underscored the fact
that this very dynamic,
remarkable, and resourceful lady
Sheikha Moza
bint Nasser
believed very much in
Western education.
She herself had not been
to a Western university
but she recognized that in
the Western education canon,
critical thinking is most
prized and most encouraged.
She wanted that in lieu
of the more traditional
Eastern hemisphere way
of dealing with education
by mere rote
learning.
Unfortunately, the University
of Virginia, in the end,
turned down her
invitation.
This was a stinging
blow at the time
but she then hit
upon a better idea.
In many ways, it was fortunate
that her original idea
did not come to blossom
because what she did was to go
to a number of
US universities
and select them on the basis
of their particular strengths.
And that is why
in Qatar today,
there are six
American universities,
full four-year institutions
that give the identical diploma
in Doha that they give
in their home campus.
That was part of the deal,
that it not be considered
an adjunct, secondary
level of education
but the complete
education.
So, as a result,
we have Texas A&M,
which is the School
of Engineering,
particularly
petroleum engineering.
There is Virginia
Commonwealth University,
which is the school of
design, interior, fashion,
and graphic design.
There's Carnegie Mellon,
which is the School
of Information Technology
and Business.
There is Weill Cornell, which
is the School of Medicine.
There is Georgetown,
which is the School
of International Relations
and Larger Liberal Arts.
And then, there is
Northwestern University,
which has the School
of Communications.
This assemblage of universities
is called "Education City."
The Qatar Foundation,
headed by Sheikha Moza,
provided the cost of hiring
world-class architects
and building
magnificent buildings
for each of these
universities
to operate in a
campus of campus
just outside
of Doha.
And there are other
ancillary activities
such as Convention
Center,
Research and
Development Center
and even, if you will,
a university for horses.
a world-class stables
called "Shaqab."
In any event, I'd been working
at the University of Texas
Health Science Center
as of the time
that I got the phone call
from the White House.
I had also been the chairman
of the State Board of Education
in Texas on appointment of
then governor George W. Bush.
The State Board of
Education in Texas,
and probably every state,
is a controversial body,
and in my office at
the Embassy in Doha,
I often pointed to the
certificate of appointment
by Governor Bush to the
State Board of Education
and saying, "This is why I am
serving in the Middle East."
Is that it was deemed
that, having gone through
that particular bit
of controversy,
that even the Middle East
should be no problem.
So, maybe it was
higher education
and I had been involved in
government and politics,
having been elected to public
office as a state legislator
and to the State Board
of Education.
The state of Qatar
is not a democracy
but it is a
proto-democracy
in that they do elect what's
called a "municipal council."
Municipal council
is responsible
for all the ordinary street
and road and sewer,
and other regulatory
requirements of a municipality,
but because it is
such a small country,
about the size
of Connecticut,
the scope of this municipal
council is nationwide
rather than just
for one city.
So, having been a office-seeker,
an office holder,
it was useful, I think,
to be in a place
that was just taking early
steps toward democracy.
Whatever the reason was,
I was duly nominated
and went before
the US Senate.
When the hearing happened--
and I should say that 99%
of all nominations are very
routine and uncontested,
that only the occasional
Kavanaugh or Bork
or Gorsuch-style
nominations
get the kind of national
attention and controversy
that you've seen
on television.
But when that particular
hearing took place,
I had more senators on
my side of the room
than on the
other side.
That is, the two senators
from Texas were kind enough
to introduce me,
and be one senator
who was the chair
of the Middle East
Subcommittee
of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee
sat there, asked a
few soft questions,
and, in time,
I was confirmed.
And when that happened,
we had to go do the job.
We arrived in Doha in August,
the middle of August.
And if you've been in
that part of the world,
it is even hotter than
my part of the world.
And people said, "How is
it that you came to us
"at the worst time,
in middle of August?"
And I said, "Well, there
were three reasons.
"One is the president
gave me this job,
"so I figured I should
start doing it.
"The second is that our
daughter is going to go
"to the American
School of Doha
"and they're starting
classes next week.
"But the third was
the Texas wisdom
"that you should eat a bullfrog
for breakfast every morning
"because nothing you do the rest
of the day could be as bad."
(audience chuckling)
And that's how it was,
the weather got better
and better and better,
and in fact, for about
six months of the year,
the Persian Gulf
area is delightful,
it's like Southern
California.
The other part, we
won't talk about
but it is, let us say,
endurable
especially in a very
wealthy country
that has the
finest facilities
and definitely doesn't
have to worry about paying
the energy bills to
air-condition it all.
In fact, I should say a
little bit about the history
of Qatar and its economic
history, in particular.
The entire
Persian Gulf area--
and I include places
like Bahrain, Abu Dhabi,
Dubai, and Doha--
were, to be very charitable,
backwater villages,
fishing villages on the shore
of the Arabian Peninsula.
They were not of any great
consequence and for much
of the history, the
importance was not the land,
but the water, the body of
water that is generally known
as the Persian Gulf, but what
is known in the Arab world
as the
Arabian Gulf.
And the wealth of the
Arabian Gulf was pearling.
That was the great
source of income.
In fact the only real
source of capital
for these little villages
that clung to the shore
of the Arabian Peninsula
for centuries.
During the hottest
months of the year,
which is to say, when the
water was at its warmest,
people would go out
in pearl boats.
From sunup to sundown,
they would constantly
jump into the water,
holding on to a large rock
to speed their descent, about
50 feet or so to the seabed.
And then, opening their eyes
in that very salty water,
without goggles, they would
throw oysters into a crude bag
of some sort made out of
rope and yank on the rope
for a buddy on the
deck to pull them up.
They could hold their
breath underwater
for about two minutes, but
that was enough time to gather
a bag full of oysters that were
then thrown onto the deck,
where nothing was done to
them except the hot sun
beating down upon them
that caused the oysters
to gasp for breath
and to open up
such that, at the
end of the day--
that is, when
the sun was down
and the evening meal and the
evening prayer was held,
then everybody would
gather on the deck
and they would
open the oysters,
and out of hundreds
or thousands,
you might get one or
two or three pearls.
These were the common
property of the boat.
The captain, of course,
had the largest share
but everybody gained
from the income
from the sale of the pearls
to merchants from India.
And eventually, these
pearls would get to Europe
and the
wider world.
The great portraits
of Queen Elizabeth I,
where she is hung with
strands of pearls,
undoubtedly, those pearls
came from the Persian Gulf.
And that was the source of
wealth for those centuries
until roughly the 1920s, when
a gentleman named Mr. Mikimoto
in Japan came up with
the cultured pearl.
And when that
happened,
the business for
so-called "sea pearls"
or "natural pearls"
completely died away.
And therefore, the
countries that today
are some of the very richest
countries in the world
were essentially destitute for a
period of about 20 years or so.
That 20-year period included
the discovery of oil
in the Persian Gulf
area in the 1930s,
and the coming of
the Second World War.
And when the Second
World War came,
the Persian Gulf was
definitely a backwater
to the activities
of the Allies
and to the entire
rest of the world.
That was the period of
time when the people
of that part of the world
were so desperately poor
that they depended upon
whatever they could get
from the sea or take
from date-palms
in order
to survive.
When the war ended, roughly
about the year 1950,
the oil resources
began to be developed,
jobs were created very
slowly as a result
of the need for drivers
and laborers,
and then came the secondary
benefits of merchants
who were able
to sell things
and who could become the
distributor for foodstuffs,
or Coca-Cola,
or automobiles.
And then, things began
rising to the level
that we're more
familiar with,
except that in the
case of Qatar,
the key time was
the late 1990s,
when the new Emir,
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa,
the husband of Sheikha Moza
who created Education City,
decided to go into debt to
develop the gas reserves,
which are in immense
quantity under the seabed.
A bit of irony that the
wealth of that place
such as it was for centuries
was just on the seabed,
and the future wealth,
the great wealth of Qatar,
is under the seabed,
in a gas field
that is shared
with Iran.
The international border
down the middle of the Gulf
divides the gas
field with Qatar
having about
two-thirds of it,
Iran having
the remainder.
Qatar being the only country
that truly has developed
the gas
resources.
And by developing, that
means pumping the gas ashore
to immense long factories
that are called "trains."
Has nothing to do with
railroads, but a train
takes the methane
from the seabed
and chills it to
-261 degrees centigrade,
at which point it
becomes dense, a liquid.
It can be then pumped onto some
of the world's biggest tankers,
and billions of BTUs
can be transported
to Europe
or East Asia.
-261 degrees
is so cold
that when I went to watch
this loading process
in the middle of
the summer once,
there was thick frost on
the outside of the tankers
from that
degree of cold.
The nature of the LNG
business was so successful
and continues to
be so successful,
that the debt that was
incurred by Qatar
to develop those gas resources
was more than repaid,
and today, Qatar is
the wealthiest country
per capita
in the world.
And it takes a
little footnote
to say a little bit more
about that statistic.
You get the per capita wealth,
according to the World Bank,
by taking your population and
dividing it into the wealth.
Well, the population of Qatar
is about 2.5 million,
but the real number is the
number of Qatari citizens.
There are only about
300,000 of them,
and that's men, women,
children of all ages.
They are the ones who
actually own the wealth.
The other 2 million or so
people are expatriate workers,
ranging from geophysicists
hired by ExxonMobil or Shell,
all the way down to
laborers from Sri Lanka
or Nepal or Bangladesh, who
are just barely scraping by,
although what they get
is a whole lot more
than they would
have back home.
So, if you took the 300,000
who really owned the wealth
and divided into
the income of Qatar,
you get a number so
astronomically high
that it is literally
off the chart.
What does Qatar do
with this wealth?
Well, happily, the
wealth came to Qatar
long enough after what hit Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain,
other oil-producing
countries in earlier decades,
and the Qataris decided
that they did not want
to go in for, if
you will, excess.
Now, you will see on
the skyline of Doha
some amazing
buildings
and they have
used their wealth
to develop an amazing
airport and seaport,
and they have
successfully bid
to host the World Cup
in soccer in 2022,
all leading to the
construction of something
like seven
new stadiums.
And all the facilities
required to host a World Cup
in the way of freeway access
and Metro, hotels, et cetera.
So, that is where
the money is gone
but it is also gone into
such things as education,
creating education
(mic cuts out).
That is because the wealth
is there, undeniable,
and it's certainly wonderful
to have as your regular
source of income.
But the visionaries of Qatar,
such as Sheikha Moza,
wanted to create a society that
depends upon human capital,
brainpower,
rather like countries like
Singapore or Korea or Taiwan
that don't have very
much, if anything,
in the way of
natural resources,
but to rely upon the
energy and inventiveness
of their
own people.
That is what the
Education City
and other facilities that have
been developed aim to do,
is to create that kind
of a society over time.
Once again, it's wonderful to
have the wealth of the seabed
to fall back upon, but
too many other countries
that have been
blessed by resources
have tended to let that,
if you will, distract them
from trying to develop
the larger society.
And that's why-- I've always
said that if you go to Doha,
you will certainly
be impressed
by the magnificent
office buildings,
the great museums designed
by world-class architects
and by the buildings
at Education City,
but it's what you don't see that
is really the most impressive
and that is this approach toward
developing human capital,
particularly
that of women.
70% of the
student body
in these various six
universities I mentioned
are women.
And that's also
because the young men,
for a couple
of generations,
have been able to go
abroad much more easily
than their sisters
and female cousins,
and they did not need to have
the Western universities there
quite as much as
the young women,
whose families were open enough,
if you will, liberal enough
for them to have a
Western-style education,
but not quite so much as
to send them overseas,
certainly not to send
them overseas alone,
the way the young men
have done for so long.
Well, that's the most impressive
part of what's going on.
There's also the
foreign policy angle
and that is that
Qatar has exercised,
since about
the mid-1990s,
an independence
of foreign policy
and an aggressiveness
in foreign policy
that far outstrips the
size of the country
that is very
physically small
and has such a tiny
citizen population.
It has played a role in almost
every Middle-Eastern conflict,
from the situation in
Gaza and the West Bank,
to Lebanon,
to Syria, to Yemen,
particularly in its own
immediate neighborhood.
Plus the fact that Qatar
sought and was elected
to a seat on the
UN Security Council,
where it then had to take on
not just regional problems
but global
problems.
This ambition to play
a role is reflection
of the particular leader,
Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa,
the father of
the current emir,
and his Foreign Minister
Prime Minister
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim.
Together, they were the
ones who pushed Qatar
into having this very
forward-leaning foreign policy.
One of the other initiatives
done by Sheikh Hamad
was to build a
10,000-foot runway
in the middle of the desert
on the correct presumption,
"Build it and
they will come."
And the "they" that he had in
mind was the United States.
For in that year, 1996,
the Saudis invited
the United States
to leave.
They had had elements
in Saudi Arabia
roughly since the time of the
invasion of Kuwait by Iraq,
and those elements--
primarily air force elements--
remained in Saudi Arabia
until 1996.
And we know that, part
of the-- well, in fact,
the strongest part of the
argument used by Osama bin Laden
and others was that the
infidels, the Crusaders,
were occupying the
sacred soil of Islam
on the Arabian
Peninsula,
and that this
was offensive
to those of the jihadist
mindset such as Osama bin Laden.
And therefore, the kingdom
responded by asking
the United States
to depart.
Well, it proved to be
very fortuitous for Qatar
because it was not very
far to go from those bases
in Saudi Arabia to a
prospective new base in Qatar.
And the Al Udeid Base,
which is a Qatari base,
nevertheless has hosted
American Air Force
and other coalition elements
roughly since 1996.
Today, it is a fully
developed complex
with air operations
around the clock.
It also has the
forward headquarters
of the US
Central Command.
CENTCOM's actual headquarters
are in Tampa, Florida,
at MacDill Air Force Base,
but the forward headquarters
is in Doha.
And that is a
major asset.
It's one of the reasons why
Qatar was not, in any way,
threatened by the imposition of
the blockade by Saudi Arabia,
the United Arab Emirates,
Egypt, and Bahrain
when that was imposed
in June of last year.
It was a very tense time
because Qatar got about 90%
of its food, including meat
and milk, from Saudi Arabia.
We don't usually
think of Saudi Arabia
as an agricultural country
but it is a producer.
In fact, I found some of the
best fruits and vegetables
I'd ever eaten were
those that we got,
that came from
Saudi Arabia.
That was closed off
in the blockade.
There was a crisis
atmosphere for a few days
as groceries disappeared
from the shelves,
but the Qataris
responded as they could
because of their
financial ability
to import food from
outside using their fleet
of very modern
aircraft.
They also had just opened a
very major cold storage plant
on the grounds of their
brand-new airport.
They also had opened
their brand-new seaport
and could import things
by sea directly,
without it having to be
transshipped at Jebel Ali,
the port
of Dubai.
They also worked up a
land bridge arrangement
whereby food comes from Turkey,
by truck, through Iran.
It's then boxed in RORO--
"roll-on/roll-off"-- vessels
that cross the Gulf, unload
the trucks onto Qatar,
the trucks go to the
market, unload the gear
of whatever they're
carrying, and then repeat.
This is a very fortunate
example of how Turkey
has been a good friend of Qatar
in this particular time.
And given that connection, you
can see it's rather natural
that Turkey has been as,
shall we say, critical
or even hostile
to Saudi Arabia
in the most
recent episode,
which I imagine we'll talk
about during question time.
(coughing)
I mention all of this
because the blockade has
not, at all, succeeded
in doing anything to change
Qatar foreign policy.
And the number one issue
on the list of demands
by the blockading countries
was to unplug "Al Jazeera."
Well, that will
never happen.
Other things on the list,
which are equally impossible,
such as, in effect,
Qatar withdrawing
as a forward-leaning
foreign policy
or would likelier happen before
"Al Jazeera" is unplugged
because "Al Jazeera"
is such an asset
and such a famous
voice of Qatar
to the larger part
of the world.
There have been dislocations
from the blockade.
You cannot-- no one can fly
directly between Doha and Dubai,
or Doha and Riyadh.
You have to go through a third
country such as Kuwait or Oman.
There have been some
serious family issues
because many Qataris
are married to people
of other nationalities
in the Gulf
and some of those people were
caught in another country
at the time of
the blockade,
which meant that they
could not return to Qatar.
That, in fact, has become
a human rights question
that the United Nations has
been asked to adjudicate.
But from an economic
point of view
and certainly from a security
point of view, the blockade
has not
affected Qatar.
In fact, in many ways
it has strengthened it
because they've become
more efficient,
they have examined
how they do things
like how
they get food,
and that has helped
in the long term.
And it has also
strengthened the ruler
Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad al-Thani,
the son of Sheikha Moza
and Sheikh Hamad.
He has become
almost a celebrity
in a way that the modest Qatari
ruler or emirate has never been.
You go to many
third-world countries
and you see the maximum leader's
photograph everywhere.
That was not the
case in Qatar
except photographs that you'd
see in the usual places
like a hotel lobby
or a bank.
But in Qatar, now, you see
a classic iconic image
of the ruler
Sheikh Tamim everywhere--
in stickers, on windshields,
on people's lawns,
and on the sides
of buildings.
So that has been, if you will,
a unintended consequence
of the blockade which instead
of undermining the ruler,
has strengthened him.
So in conclusion, let me say
that the luck of receiving
that phone call and
being posted to Qatar
was to introduce my
wife, daughter, and me
to a fascinating and
very vital country
that, despite its tiny size,
has managed to be the center
of so much of what's going
on in the entire region.
And to be a center
of American interest
in a succession
of administrations.
Well, there are many topics
I have not covered
and what I'm going to do
now is to fall silent
and take your
questions.
And feel free to
ask any other thing
that might come
to your mind.
>> Yeah, I've got
the microphone here.
Let's thank
Ambassador Untermeyer
for getting us started...
a marvelous talk.
(applause)
And I've got the
microphone here,
so I'll pass it around and so
everybody can hear the question.
>> Yeah, what--
could you give us
a little background
in the ethnic
structure at Qatar?
Were they just
another Arab tribe?
Was this sealed off by some
prince that gathered some power,
and therefore-- is there
essentially no difference
between they and on those
Omanis or Saudis or others?
Or what is the background
and difference
between the different
peoples there in that area?
>> Yes, this definitely would
be the question for my wife
but, having read her book,
I can answer it.
(audience laughing)
And that is that, there
is a great deal of kinship
in that general area such
that many of the tribes,
many of the families have
been in that general area
which, of course, for a
long time was un-demarcated.
It was just
open desert.
And therefore, the nomadic
or Bedouin people
would roam wherever
their particular herds
or flocks
needed to graze,
or where they themselves could
be able to find sustenance.
That is one of the reasons-- I
believe a very subtle reason--
which lies behind the
irritation of Saudi Arabia
towards Qatar because, at any
given time in the 20th century,
Saudi Arabia could
have occupied Qatar
as easily as it occupied other
parts of the Arabian Peninsula,
but it didn't,
and therefore,
a place that they
considered insignificant
in an earlier time is
now a great challenge
because of its wealth and
its independent attitude.
So, there are two, if you will,
activity groups.
There were the Bedouin, the
nomadic people of the land.
And then, there were the
Hadar, which we could say
were the seafaring people and
the merchants on the coast
who dealt with all
commerce of some sort.
Qatar is about
90% Sunni.
The 10% who are Shia
are not like the Shia
in many other countries
like next door in Bahrain,
which tends to be the
lower socioeconomic group.
Some of the richest people
in Qatar are Shia.
That's because they
are the descendants
of original Persian
merchants originally,
who settled in Bahrain,
eventually got to Qatar,
and they were the business--
they had the business acumen
to take advantage of that
first wealth that came in
with the development
of oil resources.
And as I mentioned, the
bulk of the population
are people who are
from other countries,
primarily low-wage
workers.
They work on
contract.
They will leave after a
certain period of time
and likely be replaced by other
people from those countries.
>> And Ambassador, you
mentioned that those workers
are from many different
religious groups
and they're allowed to
worship as they wish to?
>> Yes, the bulk-- particularly
from countries like Bangladesh,
Indonesia, and Pakistan--
are Muslim,
but there are other ethnic
groups who have other religions.
There are a large number
of Indians in Qatar.
In fact, there are far more
people of from South Asia
than there
are Qataris.
I always said that I had a
very easy job as US ambassador.
I, of course, had to deal
with strategic, international,
economic issues but
the Indian ambassador
was like the mayor of the
biggest city in Qatar.
That is, the hundreds
of thousands of Indians
looked to the embassy to
try to be of assistance
whenever they had
any kind of problems,
such as labor
disputes.
And that was a job that
I did not have to have.
The American population
in Doha was quite happy
as long as the American school
of Doha was running well,
it-- they were happy, and
I didn't have to worry
about my constituency
that way,
the way the Indian
ambassador did.
And the Indians who
are working in Qatar
tend to come from the
southwest coast of India
which is the Christian
part of India.
So for the most part, the
Indians who are in Qatar
are Catholics,
and the Filipinos are,
of course, Catholics.
They're there largely
because they have
English language
skills.
So Filipinos tend to have
next higher level of job
where you need English
skills such as working
in a hotel or restaurant
or some other place
with contact to the larger
international community.
And I should say, finally, that
the former Emir Sheikh Hamad
designated a very
large tract of land
outside of Doha for
the construction
of Christian
churches.
And that started with
the Catholic Church
because Catholics
were, and remain,
the largest Christian
element in Qatar.
But there are also churches
for Anglican/Protestants,
the Coptic
religions of Egypt,
and the Orthodox religions of
Greek and Eastern Orthodox.
So that is a very
radical thing
in as much as next
door in Saudi Arabia,
no one can practice any
religion except Islam,
unless they are
clandestine.
>> I wonder, do many of the
citizens work full-time jobs
or do they primarily
live off stipends
from the
government?
And secondly, what percentage
of the population
that are still citizens
are still Bedouin?
>> Hmm, you know, I wish
I could answer the question.
The Bedouin stock is by far
the largest stock of Qataris
but there are essentially
no Bedouins left--
people who wander
through the desert.
Their descendants are now
working in the kinds of jobs
that the bulk of this
citizen population have,
such as government
positions.
That is true incidentally
of the other parts
of the Arabian Peninsula
where government employment
is a very, very high,
in many ways,
excessively high
economic engagement,
versus the
private sector.
Now, I would estimate maybe
70% of the actual jobs held
are in some way
government jobs.
The 30% are purely
private sector.
But a large number of the people
who have government jobs,
shall we say, do not
work full-time.
They, in fact, will leave
early in the afternoon
to go tend to
their business.
So many of the people
who are in government
also are in
business.
These are family
businesses.
There is entrepreneurial
activity to be sure.
But for the most part,
it is the government
that tends to
hire people.
Now, the National Petroleum
Company-- is that government?
Is it a private?
They operate as if they
are a private company
and independent oil
producer, but, of course,
it's owned
by the state.
When I say "government,"
I'm thinking people
who work in ministries
of some sort or another.
And that is a kind
of subsidized living.
There are other kinds of
subsidies that people
who are citizens receive,
such as free healthcare,
including being treated
for any disease
anywhere in
the world.
And when that happens, you can
take family members with you
at government cost.
Their education
is to the ultimate--
you want to pursue education
also anywhere in the world.
With regard to the medical
care, when I've come back
from flights
to Doha--
I'm leaving in 48 hours
to go there,
and a week from Friday
when I come back.
When I step off the
Qatar Airways plane
into the jetway, there will be
a line of 20 to 25 wheelchairs
ready to take patients
from off the flight
to go to the institutions of
the Texas Medical Center,
primarily the MD Anderson
Cancer Center
and the Texas
Heart Institute.
So that's just an example of
how healthcare is subsidized.
And it's one of those many
benefits of being a citizen.
>> You mentioned that Qatar is
going to host the World Cup
in 2022 during the
summer, and, uh...
>> Actually it's going
to be in the fall.
Normally, it's in the summer
but they're moving it--
FIFA is moving it
to the fall.
>> Ah, okay-- can you--
do you have any thoughts
about how that's
going to go,
how they're going
to manage the heat
and all the tourism
and attention?
>> Yes, I've always
said about Qatar
that if it's a problem that can
be solved by writing a check,
then it is a problem
that can be solved.
And this is a problem being
solved by the construction
of stadiums-- I'll get
back to those in a moment--
hotels, and all other
kinds of facilities
to take care
of people.
In fact, the infrastructure is
definitely going to be in place
and for soccer fans who
might like to go watch
the World Cup
in 2022,
this will be the
easiest of all
because it is such
a small country.
People will be able to
see three games in a day
just by jumping
on the metro
and going to a different
neighborhood in Doha
where there's a new
world-class stadium
available
for them.
As opposed to the way it
is when World Cups are held
in large countries
like Brazil or Russia,
where people have
to get on airplanes
and maybe would be lucky
to see one game a day,
and probably less
likely than that.
The stadiums are built
according to FIFA standards.
FIFA requires
stadiums to be open.
And that is defined in
some way that the models
that I've seen of all
the stadiums are enclosed
except to that point that
is considered the minimum
amount of
openness.
Air-conditioning is
going to be pumped in
through the
stadium.
The FIFA concern is
not about the audience
but about the players
on the field,
so the field has to be at
a particular temperature.
And that's what these great
gusts of air conditioners
are going to do.
I've said that I
would like to have
the "parka concession"
during the World Cup...
(audience laughing)
because it's going to be very
cold sitting in those stadiums.
Some of the stadiums,
incidentally, were designed
to be deconstructed,
and they will be given to
countries in the Third World
to become
their stadiums.
So, there will be a secondary
life for the stadiums
in the future because after
the World Cup is over,
you don't really
need nine stadiums,
and they can get by
with three or four.
>> Over here.
>> Yes?
>> How do you become a citizen?
(audience laughing)
(audience laughing)
>> It is possible to
become a Qatari citizen
but it is like becoming
a British Lord.
That is, it doesn't
happen to everybody.
You have to have
special merit.
Also, it helps
to be Muslim,
although there is a gentleman
with a wonderful name
of Dr. Ibrahim Ibrahim who
was an American citizen
but he was the energy adviser
to the former emir.
And he was granted
citizenship.
And he proudly called himself
the "only Christian Qatari."
But everybody else--
it is just a rare thing
that anybody can
become a citizen.
There certainly is
no naturalization
or other process by
which people go through.
It's granted from the top
by grace of the emir.
>> (with accent) Excuse me.
>> Yes.
>> How about those athletes,
especially football--
I hate the
word "soccer"
'cause you American
called something "football"--
it's not a ball, and you
don't play with foot.
So again, my question
is about the athletes
who've been granted
citizenship.
A lot of them come from
South America or Africa.
Most of them come from
non-Muslim background.
So are they real citizens
or just citizen for purpose?
And when they're done, they have
to get back their citizenship.
I'm just interested to
know about that, if you--
>> Yes, I haven't examined their
contracts to know about that.
It is clear that there's an
advantage to being an athlete
in order to get citizenship,
but even that is rather rare.
And it depends on what
the FIFA rules are
with regard to competition
and I, frankly,
don't know what
those are.
But you are describing
that the bulk of people
who are made citizens
are usually athletes
or others who have a
particular valuable skill.
I mentioned Dr. Ibrahim--
his valuable skill
was knowledge of
the energy industry.
>> You mentioned that the
boycott by Saudi Arabia
and UAE and others
is not effective.
How do you see
that playing out?
What other types of pressure
do you expect these nations
to impose upon
this country?
>> The blockade has not
succeeded in the strategic sense
that the planners
wanted.
It does have these
inconveniences
to family issues
that I mentioned,
but nothing that's going
to destabilize the state,
cause a change of regime,
or any financial difficulty.
There has been a cost,
there's no doubt,
that it is
not helpful
but Qatar can survive because
it's got a small population
and great wealth.
I tend to think the
answer to your question
as to how it's going to end
is it will end quietly.
It will just
sort of go away,
largely because it is
such an embarrassment,
particularly to Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman
of Saudi Arabia,
and especially
Mohammed bin Zayed
of the United
Arab Emirates,
who many people feel was the
real mastermind of the blockade.
It's such an
embarrassment to them
that they embarked on this
and it hasn't succeeded
that it's not going
to lead, I think,
to a peace conference
of some sort
where a document will be signed
and fraternal embraces engaged.
It will just
kind of go away.
And if it really
lasts a while,
I would suspect that the onset
of the World Cup in 2022
will make a difference because
I would imagine many Saudis
and Emiratis of high-level would
like to go to the World Cup,
and they're gonna have
to end their blockade
in order to get there...
(audience chuckling)
and, I suspect,
to get tickets.
>> Thank you.
You mentioned some
70% of the students
at the universities
were female.
What percentage of the workforce
or of the government positions
are held
by females?
>> I would estimate
something like 25% to 30%.
But that is a sharply
rising number
because the young
women recognize
that they have
every opportunity.
They have certainly
every opportunity
from an educational point
of view to pursue degrees.
They are, as a result,
very energetic,
ambitious, and
very capable.
Meanwhile, their brothers and
male cousins are, right now,
in Starbucks and they're
looking at their phones
or they're going out and racing
their cars in the desert.
I don't want to condemn
them as a group
because there are
many young men
who are also very energetic,
ambitious, and able.
But, at the end
of the day,
they know that their families
will certainly sustain them
in some form
or fashion.
And the young women are
the ones who recognize
they have these
opportunities in government,
or the National Petroleum
Company, or working abroad.
That is very exciting and
that's why I'm convinced
that they are the
truly dynamic force.
This was recognized
by Sheikha Moza
and by her
husband.
And it's the proof of
why the Arab world
and other countries,
by keeping women down,
are denying themselves
huge human energy resources
to develop
their countries.
And it's very
impressive as a result.
It also, I might add,
has a sociological angle
and that is that many
young women do want to marry
and have families,
but marriages are still
arranged between families
in that part
of the world.
It usually happens in that a
mother or grandmother or aunt
will basically
inform a young woman
whom the family has decided
that she will marry.
And for eons, that
was always accepted.
Now, imagine a young woman
who graduated from Texas A&M
and is working
as an engineer
in the National
Petroleum Company
is told that she is-- or
her family has decided
that she is to marry
her cousin Achmed.
And she might
say, "Achmed?
"I mean, he barely
finished high school,
"and he's, right now, racing
his car in the desert."
And that's true.
That is-- you
can see already
that even though men still
have a commanding position
and wealth in
that society,
they are not necessarily
at the same level,
from an educational or
professional point of view,
as their
prospective brides.
And this-- well,
I can't tell you
how the story is
going to end.
That is a drama that's probably
being played out every day now
in modern Qatar.
>> In your role
as ambassador,
how do you work with the
career Foreign Service officers
that we're also
at the Embassy?
>> Yes, that's
a very good question
because there is
no necessary tension
between career Foreign Service
and non-career officers.
I'm sure it has
happened in the past
and probably has happened
with those so-called
"political appointees"
who, for reasons
of their own mistaken analysis
or what somebody told them,
has been told, "You can't
trust those people.
"You have to
watch them.
"You have to be
on your guard."
That, to me, is the wrong way
for any political appointee
in any department
of the government
to deal with
career people.
And I'm talking about the
Department of Commerce
and the Department of Energy,
and the Department of Defense.
Those are places where
political appointees
can arrive, and
it's their choice.
If they want to believe that
the people they're working with
are sneaky and untrustworthy
and out to get them,
then they'll probably
find that to be true.
That is, it will be a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
But those who feel like
they can they can benefit
from the expertise and
experience of those people,
and who have the people
skills to bring them
into line with
administration policies,
can usually find
cooperation.
And yes, in a federal government
that has millions of civilian
and military
personnel,
there are bound to
be some who are
what we're now popularly told
is called "the deep state,"
people who want to sabotage
the policies of the president.
There's bound to be
people like that,
but, for the most part,
the Career Service,
be it the Foreign Service,
the civil service,
or the military service,
wait for leadership.
And that was
my attitude,
that I would provide
that leadership
and I would trust people
until they disappointed me...
but I, with few exceptions,
didn't find that to be the case.
I found Foreign Service
officers
and other professionals
with whom I dealt
to be there waiting for guidance
and, if they needed motivation,
then I was there to
provide that motivation.
It's an ancient battle that
will never be finished
and never adjudicated as
to what kind of person
makes a good
ambassador.
Is that the career
Foreign Service officer
who has had many
years of experience
and may have language skills
and cultural knowledge
that the political
appointee lacks?
Or is it the
political appointee
who might have the
people skills,
particularly the skills
of a business executive
who has many product lines
and many branch offices
and many, many
employees,
who has to be able to get
everybody to work together
for the common good-- that is,
the good of the company.
And there are arguments
to be made on both sides,
and, as I say, it
will never be ended.
Also, there'll be people
who fervently believe
that it's only one
side or the other.
But as always, it depends
upon the individuals
and how they decide
to interact.
Let's see, this side of
the room, for some reason,
is not as curious as
this side of the room.
(audience laughing)
>> Much to the delight
of the Iranians, the murder
of Khashoggi in Istanbul
has dominated the news in
the last couple of weeks.
How has the
emir reacted?
And is there any
relevance of Qatar
to Saudi Arabia
in that respect?
And how did "Al Jazeera"
cover the news?
>> Yes, I wish I could answer
the "Al Jazeera" question,
from certain knowledge, but
I think it would be said
that all they have to do
is just report the facts...
the facts that are known,
or at least to interview
the people who are
giving their views.
There is nothing to be
gained by the state of Qatar,
or, for that matter,
"Al Jazeera"
by trying to propagandize
this episode.
After all, the Qataris,
the Qatari government,
doesn't have to do a thing
with regard-- or say anything
with regard to what's going
on because their blockader,
the Saudi government, is making
a general mess of matters,
and therefore, it can only
redound to the benefit
by comparison
for Qatar.
I don't believe
that any statement
has been made
officially
other than what other countries,
including the United States,
have said that there should
be a complete investigation,
that the facts
should come out,
that we should withhold
judgment until those facts
are revealed
and weighed.
And that's the
proper response
for any particular country,
including our own.
But to say again, the way
that it has been mishandled
by the Saudi government
does redound by inference
or by, let's say,
counter-positioned
to Qatar's benefit,
just because these are the
people who have blockaded Qatar,
and it doesn't make them
look any more attractive
or impressive.
>> I've talked to a
few Qatari young men
who describe having
studied abroad,
live the frat life,
then come back to Doha
and cloak their
wild ways,
but, behind the scenes, they're
still very much experiencing
a broader view of the
world, religion, and that.
Any sense of how you see the
future of Islam in Qatar
as the younger generation
gets more and more exposed
to Western education
and pluralism
and some of
those ideas?
>> Yes, it should be noted that
Qatar is of the Wahhab strain
of Islam, the same
as Saudi Arabia.
And people say, "Well, it
means public executions,
"or women forced to be
veiled," et cetera.
And the answer
is "no."
It points out how
cultural differences
are much more
determinative
and there can be such
cultural differences
amongst very
similar people,
essentially, identically
the same across a border.
In Saudi Arabia, because of
the 250-year-old agreement
between the al-Saud
and the al-Wahhab,
whereby the Saudis were
came the temporal rulers
and the Wahhabi became the
spiritual leaders or guides,
that has created a
different society,
a different culture
in Saudi Arabia
then you see next
door in Qatar.
So you can say that Wahhabi
Islam is very conservative,
but it isn't necessarily
therefore jihadist
or Salafist in any way that
would cause the society
to act a
particular way.
But I do emphasize
the fact
that it is a
conservative society.
That men and women
both dress modestly--
that's an important
point to make
that often people think
that if women wear veils
or if they choose
to hide their face,
that this is
imposed on them.
It is not imposed
on them in Qatar,
but women choose to
dress like that
because they are,
by nature, conservative,
at least in amongst
themselves in Qatar.
If they travel abroad or within
the confines of the home,
they will dress, I'm reliably
informed by my wife,
either in very elegant
couture from Europe
or in jeans and
sweatshirts.
But outside on the street
or in formal gatherings,
they will be dressed
in a traditional way.
So that kind of attitude
is much more likely
to be untroubled
or unaffected
by such things as foreign
travel, foreign study,
exposure to Western
notions of doing things
because that kind of
benefit, if you will,
of different forms of expression
or different forms of opinion
is being encouraged
in Qatar,
especially through
these universities.
It might be less so across
the border in Saudi Arabia,
but in Qatar, it
is encouraged.
And yet, to look at the
people and to quiz them
on their faith, you will get
pretty much the same answer.
>> (indistinct).
>> And then, we'll go
back to the left.
>> I was just wondering
if you could tell us
about any of the
personalities
that you interacted in
a official capacity
in the Qatari's
government,
people in the country's
foreign ministry, for example,
people in high
society in Qatar.
Didn't know if
you had any.
>> Yes, well, once again,
a very small country
with a very, very small
leadership group.
A very talented
leadership group.
And the principal
personalities I dealt with,
who now seem almost like
the founding fathers
of a modern state,
began with the Emir
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa,
who took over from his
father in a palace coup.
To call it a "coup" suggests
tanks and weapons and troops.
This was more a matter
of calling his father,
who was vacationing in
the South of France,
and telling him not to
show up at the office
the next week...
(audience laughing)
that he was now in charge
and he had the support
of the other members
of the family.
And that was because it
was felt that his father,
Sheikh Khalifa, had
been, essentially,
hoarding
the money,
which at that time
came entirely from oil
as opposed to gas,
rather than to spread it and
develop the rest of the economy.
So it was
Sheikh Hamad,
with his amazing, remarkable
partner Sheikha Moza,
who began, once they
attained power,
to develop the
gas resources,
to have a outward-leaning
foreign policy,
to acquire "Al Jazeera,"
to build an Education City,
to construct a
10,000-foot runway
and get the United States to
have a strategic relationship.
All that began in a very
short period of time.
Just two
decades ago.
Another key player was
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim,
who was the foreign
minister and prime minister,
and-- on his own,
his private business--
an exceedingly
wealthy man
who has many, many
business interests globally.
And he, together
with the emir,
were very much the
intellectual force
and the personal force that
brought about the modern state.
And then, there was a marvelous
man, Abdullah Al Attiyah
who was the
Energy Minister.
And it was he who
provided the leadership
and the knowledge to
develop the gas resource
and to
market it.
He became president of
OPEC about six times
because of the respect his
fellow energy ministers had.
So those three, in particular--
and there were many other
important leaders
of the state,
but in my dealings, frankly,
just those three people
were pretty
much the core.
I left out a finance
minister named Yusuf Kemal,
who's very, very
sophisticated
and was able to hold his own
with other finance ministers
from the
Western world.
So, that group, and
they're retired now,
is less-- were very much
the founding fathers.
I should say that
Sheikh Hamad,
the emir who did
all these things,
voluntarily transferred
power to his son,
Sheikh Tamim,
in 2013.
He had served 18 years as emir,
he didn't have to step down.
There was not any
political problem.
He was not gonna get a
phone call from his son,
telling him not to
show up at the office.
But he voluntarily
did it...
and that is rare, very rare
in the Middle East.
In fact, you remember
Hosni Mubarak
was the president
of Egypt.
He was a president of Egypt
roughly for 30, 35 years.
A scholar told me that that
meant that Hosni Mubarak,
in the 5,000 years
of Egyptian history,
was the third
longest-ruling individual.
And the story was told how
one night, the spirit of Allah
appeared in the study
of Hosni Mubarak.
And Allah said, "Hosni, it's
time for you to say goodbye
"to your people."
And Mubarak looked up
and said, "Really?
"Where are they going?"
(audience laughing)
So that was the attitude
that Sheikh Hamad
decided to challenge by
voluntarily stepping down
and passing
on power.
But his son had
been raised to rule
and was ready to rule
when the time came.
>> You mentioned that
Saudi Arabia and Qatar
have bad relations.
And Turkey has become
an ally of Qatar.
Do you think there's any
influence with Turkey's behavior
or attitude with
the assassination,
trying to help Qatar maybe
get the blockade ended?
>> Well, the answer
your question
says more about
modern Turkey
than even
Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
And that is a rather
remarkable development.
We all know that
the Ottoman Empire
went out of business
roughly in 1918
and, as such,
Turkey, in effect,
became a unitary state on
the Anatolian Peninsula,
a little bit of Europe on the
other side of the Bosphorus.
In modern times, Turkey
has become a much more
outward-looking place
to realize that it can
have great influence
in its former Empire
and in associated areas
like Central Asia that
have Turkic influence
over the
centuries.
So, much better than
being a sultan of old,
where you had to govern hostile
peoples in the territory,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan realizes
that he can exercise
a great deal of influence
through economics.
And as a result there,
for many years,
been great investments
by Turkey in Qatar
and Qatar
in Turkey.
There have been
prime contracts
given to Turkish construction
companies to build museums
and hospitals
and hotels
and other major
landmarks in Qatar.
So, if you will, the
current attitude
that Erdogan is
demonstrating in this
speaks more to his leadership
in the Muslim world
than it does necessarily to
his being allied with Qatar
and Qatar having problems across
the border with Saudi Arabia.
Now there, needless to say,
is a lot of overlap
and I wouldn't say they
are totally disconnected,
but I do believe that the
position Erdogan has taken
is his larger view of
the role of Turkey
in that part
of the world.
Yes?
>> (with accent)
I have two question.
The first question
is, as you know,
Qatar has a good relationship
with Taliban.
At the same time, we are in
Afghanistan fighting Taliban.
How would you
see that?
Is that politically?
The second question I have--
Qatar such a small country.
Why they have to
buy F-15, F-16?
What's the reason
for that?
Are they go to war
with anybody?
>> Talking about the
relationship with Taliban,
this is very important because
in the list of arguments
that the blockading countries
listed against Qatar,
Qatar's having relations
with Taliban, Hamas,
Hezbollah,
Muslim Brotherhood,
were very much I would say
right under the broadcasts
of "Al Jazeera" as
an aggravation.
But the
answer is...
the old word
"realpolitik,"
that World Affairs Councils
get thrown at them
from time to time,
and that is,
these entities--
Taliban in Afghanistan,
Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah
in Southern Lebanon,
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt--
are facts on the ground.
They exist.
They are powers in
those countries.
And it's been the
view of Qatar--
and this is one of those bits
of independent attitude
and foreign affairs that
has gotten it cross-ways
from time to time with
even allied nations
like the
United States.
It believes that it needs to
have ties with these entities
because they
are facts.
This is particularly true with
the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Now, the fact that Qatar has
ties to the Muslim Brotherhood
has been a major source of
aggravation, of course, by Egypt
but also by Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates.
And yet, in 2011, when
the Egyptians were allowed
to have a free election,
the Muslim Brotherhood won.
And I predict that if ever
Egypt has a free election again,
the Muslim Brotherhood will
probably win that as well.
It's just the fact that
they are very powerful
and very
influential.
This specific item you
mentioned, the Taliban...
equals not that they
have good relations,
but they have
relations.
That is, they
invited the Taliban
to open an office
in Doha.
Why did they ask the
Taliban to do it?
It's because the
United States asked Qatar
to invite the Taliban
to operate out of Doha,
so that we have a means of
communicating with this entity
that we've been at war
with for 17 years.
And that is of use
to the United States.
It's also of use to
the United States
to have an entity that
can talk, as need be,
to rather noxious elements like
Hamas and Hezbollah, as well.
The other question you
asked had to do with...
remind me, please.
>> (indistinct).
>> Yes, about the
defense build-up.
For many years, which is to say,
during the time of Sheikh Hamad,
the father of the
current emir,
Qatar did not invest
in arms at all.
It did have half a dozen
French Mirage Fighters
and that was
about it.
And this was because
Sheikh Hamad--
first of all, he had been
the defense minister
under his father.
And when he
became the emir,
he kept the Defense Ministry
unto himself.
And why was that?
That was because he knew
that defense ministers
have a great appetite
to buy things
and to buy
weapons systems.
He had other plans
for the money of Qatar.
Building universities,
building hospitals,
building roads,
sending people abroad.
All those uses of money
was what he wanted to do.
He did not want it to
be diverted for arms,
largely in the grounds
that they weren't gonna go
to war with
anybody.
They had the United States
there to defend them
against Iran in
the first instance
and maybe unfriendly neighbors
in a second instance.
Sheikh Tamim, the new emir-- or
new for the last five years--
has always been
interested in defense,
security, and
intelligence.
So it's very much his initiative
to begin to purchase arms
from the
United States,
which is another change because
France was the arms supplier,
such as it was,
in prior years.
So, essentially, Qatar is
doing what the neighbors have.
The neighbors-- that is,
United Arab Emirates
and Saudi Arabia-- also
have American fighters
and other
military craft.
It isn't necessary for
actual war-fighting
but Qatar did get involved
militarily in Libya,
in the fall
of Gaddafi.
The six Mirages, or at least
those that could still fly,
were sent to Libya to
participate in Allied efforts
against the remnants
of the Gaddafi regime.
But why does
any country--
I mean, why does
the United States
have the military
power that we have?
Some people wonder why
we have excessive amounts
of planes and missiles
and ships, et cetera.
And that is, it's hard
to say for any country
what is too much,
but there's always the
danger of having too little.
And I think a combination
of self-defense
and smart alliances, such
as with the United States,
is a good model
for Qatar.
>> Hey, it is 8:15, so
we're gonna dismiss now,
but if you didn't get a chance
to have your question asked,
the ambassador will be here
for a few more minutes.
Please come up to the front
and ask him your question.
Let's thank him again
for a great discussion.
(applause)
Very, very, very
enlightening.
We've had two
great sessions.
We're gonna take a
little bit of a hiatus,
but November 13,
we will be back here
and Dr. Abdullah Alrebh
will be leading us
in a conversation
on Saudi Arabia
that should be
extremely interesting.
And then, a week later,
on the 20th,
we're gonna be
talking about Yemen.
So take a little bit of
a break but do come back
November 13 and 20,
and join us again.
Thank you.
