Qatar's Al Ameri

There was never a bonanza like it. Sutter's Mill, the Klondike and Witzwatersrand may evoke images of promised lands of unheard of opportunity and riches, of towns springing up overnight, filled by fortune-hungry men who had braved mountain and desert to find El Dorado. But they were nothing on the scale of the oil boom in the Arabian Gulf. There every element associated with the legendary bonanza was dramatically brought together, and given twentieth century form: a ravenous appetite for energy in the industrial world; sudden and vast wealth to a hitherto neglected part of the world; rapid growth and the leap into the future: cities where once there was desert; stark contrasts of old and new; and undreamt of opportunity and challenge for young men like Abdelkader Braik Al Ameri, Ambassador of the State of Qatar in Washington.

In 1943, the year the Ambassador was born, Qatar was still part of the British Empire and experiencing hard times economically. The introduction of cultured pearls from Japan during the Thirties had wrecked the thriving Gulf pearling industry, while the exigencies of World War II delayed development of the recent oil discoveries in Qatari territory. Not until 1949 was the first barrel exported.

Al Ameri grew up and came of age in the Fifties and Sixties, during the early years of the Qatari oil industry, when money was still short and the pace of development slow. Young and ambitious Qataris with an eye towards the future, Al Ameri amongst them, recognized that the present state of affairs was transitory, that ever-escalating oil production and economic development would create the need for a corps of university graduates to guide Qatar into a new era. Thus, after a stint with the Qatar Petroleum Company, he moved on to Beirut, where he worked towards a Bachelor of Science degree at the Arab University.

The early Seventies brought dramatic changes for both Qatar and young Al Ameri, as Britain implemented its decision to withdraw from "east of Suez." In 1972 Qatar gained its independence; in 1973 Al Ameri earned his B.S. degree and an appointment as Third Secretary in the Qatari Foreign Service; and in 1974 the Amir of Qatar appointed him Ambassador to Algeria. Al Ameri's meteoric rise to prominence reflected the new nation's need to post ambassadors to sister OPEC states and to the world's major capitals; a scarcity of university educated citizens; and Al Ameri's own reputation as an intelligent and dedicated worker. Five years service in Algiers led to an appointment in 1979 as Ambassador to the United States. Before leaving Algeria he earned a Masters degree in International Law from the University of Algiers.

The Seventies had been a tumultuous decade for Qatar. The 1973 Arab Israeli War ushered in an era of rapidly rising oil prices. Annual oil revenues mushroomed from a few hundred million dollars to several billions over the course of a few years. Such sudden riches, however, presented Qatar's leaders with a dilemma: pushing too hard for rapid economic development would risk weakening the nation's Islamic and tribal oriented traditions.

The decision was for fast but not furious development. Workers poured in from other Arab countries, from Britain, Pakistan, Iran and India until foreigners outnumbered Qataris perhaps four to one in their own country. Schools went up everywhere. A university, hospitals and clinics were established, a welfare state surpassing in generosity and scope anything the Western world had ever seen was created. Up to ten percent of Qatar's income went to help poorer, mainly Arab, nations. University education was entirely free for citizens, with the top third of high school graduates eligible to study abroad.

Al Ameri is personally aware of the dilemmas of Qatar's new wealth which, due to gigantic reserves of natural gas, is capable of insuring the financial future of Qataris for generations to come. He and his wife, the former Su'ad al Jami' of a prominent Bahraini family, are concerned not to spoil their children and to imbue them with a sense of their identity and cultural heritage. And like all Arab diplomats in Washington they don't want their offspring to concentrate so much on the English language that they neglect to learn Arabic well.

Ambassador Al Ameri is a serious and hardworking professional diplomat. His many duties include serving as his country's Ambassador (nonresident) to Mexico and Venezuela, which occasions extra work and travel; and serving as Dean (senior in Washington service) of the Gulf Cooperation Council Ambassadors in the U.S. In that capacity he sees to it that the G.C.C. grouping of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, formed after the Iraq Iran war broke out in 1979, maintains close contact and solidarity on matters of mutual concern in this country.

Respected and well liked in Washington, Ambassador Al Ameri gets on well with Americans. He shares with other Arab diplomats here difficulty in understanding a U.S. Mideast policy so skewed in favor of Israel. Still he takes this in stride and does all he can personally to promote better understanding between Americans and Arabs.

—By Andrew I. Killgore