AN ARAB ENGAGEMENT WITH DEMOCRACY:

Letter from Qatar: Democracy by Decree (Mary Anne Weaver, 2000-11-20, The New Yorker)

Qatar, the tiny, oil-rich emirate adjoining Saudi Arabia, has long been one of the most traditional societies in the Persian Gulf. It is a place where women still go about veiled, where Bedouin tribesmen, chattering to one another via cell phone, still herd their sheep on foot, where falconry and camel races are the preferred royal sports. It came as a surprise, therefore, when, on the morning of June 27, 1995, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the forty-five-year-old son of the ruling emir, Sheikh Khalifa, proclaimed that he was taking over the government from his father, who was vacationing in Switzerland. In recent years, Sheikh Khalifa had been inclined to rule in name only, preferring to spend his days on the French Riviera and to leave affairs of state to Sheikh Hamad, his oldest son and the heir apparent; for that reason, the coup, which was peaceful, was sanctioned not only by members of the ruling al-Thani dynasty but also by leaders of the country's power élite. After taking control, Sheikh Hamad telephoned his father, in Zurich. Khalifa refused to take the call.

A year later, the new emir swiftly put down an attempt by his father to regain the throne, and issued a number of writs against him, demanding, among other things, that he return three billion dollars of state money that he had transferred to his personal accounts. Then, to the astonishment of his subjects, Sheikh Hamad decreed that Qatar was to become a democracy. He had already dismantled the Ministry of Information, abolished censorship, and launched the freest cable-television station in the Arab world. In 1998, he announced that women had the right to vote, and the right to run for office. And on March 8, 1999, he presided over the first elections in Qatar's history-for twenty-nine seats on a municipal council, which advises him. In the meantime, he appointed a commission to draft a constitution, which will allow for an elected parliament. Although the commission's work is not expected to be completed until 2002, Sheikh Hamad's actions in the conservative, autocratically governed Arab world amount to a one-man revolution.

So far, things appear to be going fairly well. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 17, 2002 9:32 AM