Qatar is a country located in Western Asia. It has an area of 11,571 square kilometers and a population of approximately 2.7 million people. The ethnic composition of Qatar is mainly Arab, with other minority groups including Indian, Filipino and Pakistani. The majority of the population are adherents to Islam, with around 95% following the religion and the rest being either Christian or other faiths. Education is compulsory for children up to the age of 16 and the literacy rate is estimated to be around 94%. The official language is Arabic but there are also many other languages spoken throughout the country such as English, Urdu and Hindi. The capital city Doha has an estimated population of over 1 million people making it the largest city in Qatar. Check hyperrestaurant to learn more about Qatar in 2009.
Social conditions
Oil revenues led to a dramatic change in the public sector, and Qatar created one of the most advanced and comprehensive welfare systems in the Gulf region. However, it only covers the nation’s citizens. In 2010, there were 2.8 doctors and 7.4 nurses per 1,000 residents, the highest figure in the entire Arab world. Check to see Qatar population. There are nine hospitals, five of which are state and four private. There is no reliable data on Qatar’s active workforce, but estimates suggest that about 80 percent are immigrants. Women work for the most part in healthcare and teaching. In recent years, the government has deliberately, often through special wages, encouraged the country’s citizens to work in industry and in new service industries with the aim of reducing immigrants’ share of the labor force. In Qatar, many young are well educated, both women and men. To see related acronyms about this country, please check AbbreviationFinder to see the definitions of QAT and acronym for Qatar.
Security policy
Qatar has played an increasingly important role in security and foreign policy in the Middle East since the 1990s. Commitment increased throughout the 2000s, especially during and in the wake of the Arab Spring. Qatar has sought to take on an independent role in a region of many conflicts, and has on several occasions acted as mediator. The capital city of Doha has sought to be established as a form of neutral zone. Qatar has thereby, in a way, sought to take on a similar role as Norway: a petty state that facilitates meetings between conflicting parties.
Already in 1981 joined Qatar to cooperation organization Gulf Cooperation Council (Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC), but has at times at odds with several of the leading states, especially neighboring Saudi Arabia. Both in 2014 and 2017 there was a diplomatic conflict between Qatar and several GCC states:
Military operations
Qatar has participated in several multinational military operations. Qatar forces participated in the campaign to liberate Kuwait from Iraq during the Gulf War in 1990-91, and were then used as a base for Allied air strikes. After the war, the United States strengthened its cooperation with Qatar, and established a military base and a command center, used both during the attack on Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Military cooperation continued and expanded.
Qatar itself participates in fighter jets in this multinational operation – Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) – aimed at Islamists in Iraq and Syria. Qatar has also participated in the Saudi-led multinational fight against the Houti militia in Yemen, through Operation Decisive Storm. As a result of the conflict with Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2017, Qatar was excluded from this. Qatar also participated militarily during the war in Libya, through Operation Unified Protector (OUP). At the same time, Qatar provided weapons assistance to rebel forces in Libya, outside the framework of the operation.
Despite its military ties to the United States, Qatar has far from been hit by international terror, but in 2005 a suicide bomber detonated in Doha.
History. – Ascended to international news as one of the most dynamic realities in the world, the Qatar ruled by the al-Tānī dynasty – first by the Emir Ḥamad bin Ḫalīfa alṮānī and then from June 2013 by his son Tamim, who succeeded his father after the peaceful renunciation of the throne of the latter – took shape in the early 21st century. as one of the most influential subjects of the entire Middle Eastern landscape. A success, this, derived mainly from the abundant availability of gas that made it the largest global exporter of liquefied gas in fifteen years.
Faced with the huge financial resources, the alṮānī family started, especially between the first and second decade of the 21st century, a constant policy of media overexposure through an articulated plan of development and transformation of its international image. Thanks to investments in the luxury, finance, media, culture and sport sectors, Qatar on the one hand fueled this soft power in an instrumental function to its interventionism in foreign policy, on the other hand it strongly supported an assimilation of the image of the country to the concept of luxury. From 2009, Doha and the national sovereign fund initiated the acquisition of important stakes in international companies and brands (Barclays, Shell, Valentino, Porsche, Paris Saint Germain, Malaga). A great return of image also favored by the penetration in the western networks of al-Jazeera, the Qatari all-news channel that soon became the sounding board of Doha in the world.
In those same years, the Qatar was distinguished by his hyperactivity in foreign policy. This trend led him to play an important strategic and decision-making role in the main crisis areas of the Middle East and the world. The wide-ranging Qatar strategy soon led the country to enter into a collision course with Saudi Arabia due above all to its policy of supporting Islamist, including radical, demands throughout the Middle East.