Free Qatar: Small State, Big Politics by Mehran Kamrava

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
    I am grateful to the many individuals who helped me navigate the science of Qatarology. In particular, Abbas Al-Tonsi, Talal Al-Emadi, Ali Al-Shawi, and Patrick Theros gave generously of their time and shared their insights into Qatari politics and society. Dirk Vandewalle was equally generous with information and sources on the extent and nature of Qatar’s involvement in the Libyan civil war in 2011–2012. At different stages of work on the book, Reem Al Harmi, Dianna Manalastas, Melissa Mannis, and Kasia Rada provided invaluable research assistance, all too often digging up obscure sources and meeting unreasonable deadlines far ahead of schedule and in good cheers. Colleagues at the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, where this book was conceived and completed, helped create a supportive intellectual environment for the book’s writing. A semester’s research leave, kindly provided by Georgetown University, allowed me to concentrate on completing the manuscript. Grateful acknowledgment goes to Carol Lancaster, Marcia Mintz, and James O’Donnell for making the research leave possible, and for their friendship and their professional support over the years. A visiting professorship at the Institut d’Études Politiques at Sciences Po-Lyon provided an idyllic setting for writing the book’s final chapters and for benefiting from the friendship and warm hospitality of Lahouari Addi and Vincent Michelot. Gary Wasserman and Robert Wirsing read all or parts of the manuscript and provided numerous invaluable comments and suggestions. Along with Roger Haydon and anonymous reviewers for Cornell University Press, they helped me refine, sharpen, and better articulate many of the book’s arguments and saved me from a number of embarrassing mistakes. Closer to home, my wife Melisa and our daughters Dilara and Kendra, who have shared with me life in Qatar since 2007, put up with the ups and downs and the exhilarations and frustrations that come with writing a book. For putting up with me during the course of work on this book, and for all they do for me big and small, I dedicate this book to them.

I NTRODUCTION
    The emergence of Qatar as an influential powerbroker in the Middle East and beyond over the past decade has puzzled students and observers of the region alike. How can a small state, with little previous history of diplomatic engagement regionally or globally, have emerged as such an influential and significant player in shaping unfolding events across the Middle East and elsewhere? This is the central question to which this book is devoted. Qatar is a young, small state, with a commensurately small population, sandwiched between giants Iran to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south. But, perhaps audaciously, the sheikhdom, which boasts the world’s highest per capita income, has quickly become one of the most consequential and influential actors in the region. Domestically, Qatar has transformed itself into a global hub and a central pivot of globalization. Doha, the capital, changes by the day, featuring the latest and the best of everything in its streets and its gleaming skyscrapers. The country hosts world-class universities, a world-class museum, and a world-class airline. This much the next-door emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi also have. But what sets Qatar apart are its foreign policy and its international relations. The country has pursued a high profile, proactive diplomacy. It has been an active, and mostly successful, mediator, having been instrumental in peace accords in Lebanon in 2008 and in the Sudan in 2011. Qatar played an important role in helping Libyan rebels put an end to Moammar Qaddafi’s rule in 2011, and was similarly instrumental in helping isolate the Assad regime in Syria. Its support and influence is actively courted by powers big and small, near and far. By all accounts, as the events and