The Ugly Truth About Qatari Money

Qatar: The Mirage of Modernity

A country built by outsiders for the benefit of the few. Approximately 2.5 million people reside in Qatar, but fewer than 300,000 of these residents are actual citizens. Most are foreign-paid workers building the hotels, airports, and infrastructure needed for Qatar’s long-term prosperity, and these people have no rights to a share in the wealth that Qatar is generating. In Europe, this would constitute a human rights travesty. We boycott other nations for far less. However, the Qatari government has discovered that they can bribe NGOs and politicians with suitcases of cash to keep quiet and maintain Western support.

Qatargate: Corruption in Broad Daylight

In the run-up to the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the Vice-Chairman of the European Parliament led the opposition to a resolution critical of Qatar’s human rights record, attempting to broker a deal that would allow Qatari citizens visa-free travel to the EU. “I alone said that Qatar is a front-runner in labor rights,” claimed Eva Kaili. “Still, some here are calling to discriminate them.” Shortly after that speech, Kaili received a WhatsApp message from Qatar’s NATO envoy: “My dear, my ministry doesn’t want paragraph A about FIFA and Qatar. Please do your best to remove it via voting before noon or during the voting.”

Soon after, Kaili was arrested while trying to hide a suitcase full of cash in her Brussels flat, money given to her lover by the Qatari government to manipulate the European Parliament. The pair had even written the Qatari minister’s speech to the chamber. In the resulting Qatargate scandal, over €1.5 million in cash was found in at least 20 raids across Belgium, France, and Italy. Lobbyists, unionists, NGO directors, and political operators were receiving hundreds of thousands of euros to parrot Doha’s line in the heart of European democracy.

Education City: Western Brands, Wahhabi Rules

Take Education City, Qatar’s flagship project to bring elite Western universities to Doha. Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Commonwealth, and others have all franchised their names to campuses in Qatar with the condition that students receive degrees identical to those granted in the United States. But can standards of education truly thrive in a country that adheres to fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam?

Qatar claims these institutions have complete academic freedom. Yet books have been banned, professors censored, and Qatari money has flooded American universities, with more than $5.6 billion going to 81 U.S. institutions since 2007. Meanwhile, the Qatari-backed network Al Jazeera gives sympathetic coverage to students openly backing Hamas. In contrast, Jewish students are threatened, and terrorist organizations are normalized on campuses awash in Qatari cash. Incidents of antisemitism are three times higher at universities receiving Qatari funding than at those that do not. Harvard’s president was recently forced to resign under this very cloud.

Gas, Gold, and the Mirage of Progress

The country’s entire modern history is built not on compromise or openness but on control and domination. Until the 20th century, Qatar was little more than a sun-scorched outpost of pearl divers and traders. It became a British protectorate in 1916 and only gained independence in 1971. That same year, vast natural gas reserves were discovered beneath its desert - reserves that would catapult the country to unimaginable wealth once technology caught up.

Today, Qatar has the fourth-highest GDP per capita in the world, double that of the U.S., but it’s not a society of shared prosperity. Qatari citizens pay no income tax. They receive free land, interest-free loans, free electricity and water, and fully funded healthcare and education even if they choose to study abroad. Foreigners, who make up 85% of the population, do not have such rights.

The Illusion of Partnership

Every business in Qatar must be majority-owned by a Qatari national or a Qatari sponsor. This means that foreign entrepreneurs who undertake the work and assume the risk must relinquish 51% of their profits without compensation. Citizenship is nearly impossible to obtain. Rights are reserved for the few.

Yet Western governments, corporations, and universities continue to bow to Qatari wealth. Al Jazeera, a state-run media outlet banned in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan for supporting Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood, continues to be treated in the West as a legitimate news organization. During the Iraq War, Al Jazeera journalists were caught positioning themselves near roadside bombs to film American casualties, yet the network now partners with U.S. universities and shapes global narratives. This is not a free press. This is state propaganda.

Unholy Alliance of Radicalisms

Western partnerships with Qatar are not spreading democracy. They are building an unholy alliance between two radicalisms. One is the radicalism of purity, an ideology that does not compromise. The other is the radicalism of surrendering a culture so afraid of being accused of bigotry or exclusion that it welcomes its undoing.

Qatar maintains friendly ties with Iran, Russia, and Hamas. It hosts Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, in Doha. It sends Hamas $30 million a month. And while it funds enemies of the West, it also hosts the most significant U.S. airbase in the Middle East, Al Udeid, paying 60% of the operating costs. The West can tell itself this is strategic cooperation. But ask yourself: is Qatar funding 60% of our war on extremism, or are we funding 40% of their war on us?

What Are We Selling?

This is not just about Qatar. It’s about us. About how easily our institutions, values, and freedoms can be bought. About how we sold access to our politics, media, and education to a regime that fundamentally opposes everything we stand for.

Qatar’s wealth bubbles up from the sand without needing to make peace with civil society, pluralism, or human rights. And if we don’t stop selling off our civilization piece by piece, we will soon wake up in one that is no longer ours.

Adam Starzynski

Journalist | Foreign Policy Analyst

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