A Personal Reminiscence: After 24 Years, Qatar Again Has a Succession Problem

by Richard H. Curtiss

In 1971, when the British formally relinquished control of foreign and defense affairs in the Arabian/Persian Gulf, British resident political officers in the area became British ambassadors to the small sheikhdoms that in some cases were hundreds of years old when they were accepted as new members of the United Nations. Until then, the British hadn't made it easy for Americans without clearly defined business to get visas to visit the emirates of the lower Gulf.

Deciding to test the waters, I drew up an itinerary that would take me right up the Gulf, from Oman which I had never visited, to Kuwait, which I had visited frequently. I worked out an itinerary, partly by air and partly by road, that would give me three working days in each stop, enough to contact each brand-new ministry of information to get permission to hire a local correspondent for the Voice of America Arabic service, which I then headed.

Prudently, I showed my tentative schedule to a Palestinian member of the VOA Arabic staff, then based on the Greek island of Rhodes, who had worked in radio stations in the Gulf. He said it looked feasible to him. Then, after a polite pause, he added hesitantly, "Actually, it isn't necessary to spend three days in Doha and three more days in Qatar. The first is the capital city of the second." That's how much I knew then about what has become potentially both the richest per capita member of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the richest per capita nation in the world.

To get visas then for the newly created seven-member United Arab Emirates, and for Qatar and Bahrain, the two emirates that had decided to go it alone, it still was necessary to apply at British embassies. For reasons I've forgotten, but which looked somewhat obstructionist at the time, my U.S. passport had to be forwarded from the British embassy in Athens to the British embassy in Rome to get all the visas I needed for that first lower Gulf trip. Some involved large folded and stamped papers to be stapled into my passport, into which extra pages already had been inserted to accommodate all of the documentation. It was an impressive diplomatic passport indeed that, months later in early 1972, I handed to officials at the Doha airport, where I was the only passenger to disembark from a Gulf Airways flight from Abu Dhabi, headed for Bahrain.

It was raining, an uncommon event, when I disembarked, and a member of the crew had walked me under a large umbrella from the aircraft to the small terminal. I gladly accepted an invitation from the Qatari official who accepted the passport to go into the adjoining coffee shop while he waited for my baggage to arrive. As I drank my coffee I could see my bags being unloaded onto a cart in the rain, and the aircraft being buttoned up to continue its flight.

I loitered over my coffee until I was sure the bags were in the terminal and then returned to the customs office. My rain-soaked bags remained on the cart that had brought them from the plane. Two officials, garbed in the white keffiyeh headdresses and thobes that are standard dress among all male Gulfis except for the Omanis, who wear multi-colored robes and turbans sat motionless, eyeing me uneasily. Suddenly I became horribly aware that I had not heard the plane take off, although there had been no boarding passengers and therefore no visible reason to remain on the ground.

"May I go now?" I asked, trying hard to smile nonchalantly.

"No," said one of the officials. "You will have to return to the aircraft."

"Why?" I demanded. "My visa is in order. It was issued in Rome."

"It's not your papers that are the problem," said the other official apologetically. "It's your luggage."

"Yes, it got wet, but I'll dry it off in the hotel," I said, tentatively reaching for the largest of my two suitcases. "Mush mohim," I added in my best Gulfi Arabic. "It's not important."

Relieved when he realized I spoke Arabic, the more forthcoming of the two explained in a burst of words: "Look. We've had a recent change in the government here. Things are very peaceful. But how do we know you aren't bringing in some guns to cause problems?"

I looked incredulously at my two suitcases. I don't travel light, and I had brought two or three radios with me to test reception of our signal from Rhodes throughout the Gulf and to leave, if necessary, with reporters I hired. In fact the suitcases suddenly seemed to bulge, and no one knew better than I that they were very heavy, as the man who unloaded them obviously had reported.

"But there are no guns in them," I said. "You can check for yourselves."

"You have a diplomatic passport," the official said, gloomily eying my awesome documents. "If we opened them there could be a big problem with America."

"This is a great surprise to me," I said, sincerely. "Right now I just want to go back and finish the coffee I left in the coffee shop. It was too hot to drink. It probably still is, so it will be a while before I come back." As I walked out I added, "My bags are not locked."

I sat alone and tense in the coffee shop until I heard the aircraft engines begin to roar. However, I waited until the plane that had brought me was airborne before I returned to the customs office. The officials were all smiles as they supervised the loading of my bags into the one taxi waiting at the terminal.

"You are welcome," one said. "Enjoy your visit to Qatar," the other added.

As the taxi sped along the nearly empty mile of road between the airport and the town's two principal hotels, I decided that as far as I was concerned, the U.S. relationship with newly independent Qatar was off to a very good start.

The Gulf and Oasis Hotels, side by side, were clean and comfortable, then and now, with an unobstructed view across the bay upon which Doha is situated. The town itself seemed to be under total reconstruction. Every old house, inside its walled compound, apparently had fallen down or was being torn down and replaced by modern concrete structures following the traditional lines and retaining the marvelous decorated gates that ensured that a man could, literally, ride into the compound on a camel if the big gate was thrown open, or would have to stoop and bend to enter if the big gate remained locked and he had to enter through the tiny gate-within-a-gate for everyday use. It meant that a visitor could make a grand entrance if the occupants chose to let him, but that an unwanted visitor was, literally, in danger of having his head chopped off if he tried to enter against the will of the occupants.

I was able to walk from one end to the other of the then-tiny town. From my hotel at one end of town to the radio station at the other was less than a mile. Toward the far end of the town, past a combination fort and residence of the ruling Al Thani family that now has been turned into a museum, a new palace/ diwan was being built from which the then-newly installed ruler, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, could govern his newly independent state. He had been prime minister and heir apparent when the British withdrew in 1971. A few months later, however, with the agreement of the Al Thani family, he became the emir in place of his cousin, Sheikh Ahmad bin Ali, who then had settled in Dubai, one of the newly formed United Arab Emirates, ruled by Sheikh Ahmad's father-in-law.

This was the peaceful change of government to which the customs inspector had referred. One reason it had been accepted so equitably was that Sheikh Khalifa also had been the heir apparent under Sheikh Ahmad's father, Sheikh Ali bin Abdallah. However, when he abdicated in 1960, instead of handing over power to Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad, Sheikh Ahmad made his son the ruler. Under both rulers, Sheikh Khalifa had served as deputy ruler and prime minister. He continued to hold the latter post throughout his 23 years of peaceful rule until June 1995, when his eldest son and heir apparent, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, assumed the rule before his father was ready to relinquish it.

The first correspondent I hired, a young Palestinian broadcaster with Radio Qatar, turned out to have little interest in the job. In fact, a few months later when I returned, he was in Europe looking for employment and had delegated his older brother, a long-time employee of the Shell oil company refinery near Doha, to show me around.

The brother hospitably offered to drive me "out of town" to the Shell refinery where he worked. It was about 4:30 p.m. when we left, and the winter sun was close to setting. I asked if we would be back in time for dinner. He was still looking incredulously at me when, three minutes later, we arrived at the Shell refinery, at the end of the paved road. After another 10 minutes we were back at his house. He'd shown me Doha's environs.

On my next visit there was an American Embassy. The first U.S. ambassador, Robert Paganelli, was a friend with whom I'd served in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria as well as briefly in Rome, where we'd all ended up in 1967 when so many Arab countries broke diplomatic relations with the U.S. that we embassy staffers-in-exile had to take over a wing of the U.S. Embassy there to liquidate U.S. affairs in six Arab countries. At the ambassador's house I met the then Qatari minister of information, Issa Ghanem al Kawari. He not only found me a Qatari correspondent for the Voice of America, but also requested assistance in finding visiting U.S. lecturers in journalism who could help set up media training in Qatar.

One of those instructors was Dr. Jack Shaheen of Southern Illinois University who subsequently has become a film and network consultant and prolific writer on the Arab image in the U.S. media.

Next came Ambassador Andrew Killgore, another old friend from Baghdad days, and now publisher of this magazine. Then came Charles Marthinsen, Charles Dunbar, Joseph Ghougoussian, Mark Hambley, Kenton Keith and now Patrick Theros, every one of whom I have visited during their service in Doha. On each visit the city limits had expanded further and the spaces within were being filled with new housing blocks, ultra-modern office buildings, and dramatically beautiful new government buildings.

In the 24 years that have elapsed since my first visit, Qatar has undergone a remarkable social, educational and economic transformation, as the accompanying pages reveal. That is why it was particularly poignant to be reminded, on my visit in the spring of 1996 to help prepare this special issue, of the unease that accompanied Qatar's change of government in 1995 as in 1972. Now, as then, extra security precautions are painfully evident. But now, as then, they did not affect what I was there to do. The new minister of information, Hamad al Kuwari, a friendly and energetic former Qatari ambassador to the United States, put his staff at our disposal to provide photos and appointments with persons to be interviewed.

However, it no longer was so easy to see Sheikh Hamad, the new emir. After reports of an assassination plot, he had removed himself to a desert camp a 40-minute drive away from potential enemies in the capital. Although he vacations annually in the desert, this time the vacation was longer and the security precautions more elaborate.

Visitors to the camp had to park their cars part way out, and switch to a Qatari government vehicle. Upon arrival they were directed to whichever of the widely dispersed tents Sheikh Hamad was occupying. After more than three months of the heaviest rains recorded in more than 40 years, the desert was green and beautiful in Qatar this spring. But the new procedures had cut down the number of visitors he was seeing. We were not able to interview Sheikh Hamad for these articles, although he had given his permission for them in a personal meeting last fall.

Although there has been no bloodshed associated with the change of rule, there have been widespread arrests, and some 30 persons are expected to stand trial on charges of plotting to return Sheikh Khalifa to power. Some may be charged with an assassination conspiracy.

Right now, the bitterness runs deep. Qataris are nervous and hope for a reconciliation that will avert political instability. So far there is no sign of such a reconciliation, however, just as there was no reconciliation 24 years ago. This time, however, no one knows better than the Qataris how much more, in its absence, they all have to lose.