Qatar

This article examines Britain’s protection of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Trucial States (United Arab Emirates), and Oman during the era of British hegemony in the region: 1820–1971. It argues that Britain’s role as guardian of the Persian Gulf, beginning in 1835, was not imposed coercively, that Britain largely conformed to local expectations of a protector’s duties and rights, and that its record in Eastern Arabia was far better than its record elsewhere in the Middle East. It begins with an overview of regional insecurity before the Pax Britannica. It then examines why Britain came to defend Eastern Arabia and the advantages and disadvantages that entailed for the local rulers. It explains the legal status of the Gulf shaikhdoms and Oman resulting from their treaties with Britain and their close relationship with the British Empire. It also discusses Britain’s post-war attempts to develop these states, the nature of Anglo–American relations in the region, and the growing challenges to Britain’s position in Eastern Arabia in the 1950s–60s. It provides a new account of Britain’s withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, showing how Britain introduced defense arrangements that remain in place forty years on. It finishes with a reflection on Britain’s legacy in the Gulf today.

Cancer is a major public health problem all over the world. Monitoring the evolution of the cancer burden in the State of Qatar is of great value but has never been explored in depth. The aim of the study was to determine the incidence patterns of cancer cases, assess trends during the period 1991 - 2006 and make comparisons with other countries. This was a retrospective cohort study based on the Cancer disease registry of Al Amal Cancer hospital, State of Qatar, from 1991 - 2006. All Qataris and non-Qataris, males and females, who were diagnosed with any type of cancer were included in this study. The diagnostic classification of definite cancer cases was made according to the International Classification of Disease 10th revision (ICD-10). A total of 5,825 cancer cases were registered in Qatar during the period 1991 - 2006 with 56.7% in males and 43.3% in females, 35.6% in Qataris and 64.4% in non-Qataris. Incidence rates per 100,000 population showed that lung (5.9), lymph node (5...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the gender differences in baseline characteristics, therapy, and outcomes in patients with acute coronary syndromes in 6 Middle Eastern countries. Over a 6-month period in 2007, 8,169 consecutive patients (74% men, 24% women) presenting with acute coronary syndromes were enrolled in a prospective, multicenter study from 6 adjacent Middle Eastern countries. Women were 9 years older than men and more likely to have diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. Women were more likely to present with unstable angina and more often had atypical presentations of ST elevation myocardial infarction. Compared to men, women were significantly less treated with β blockers and antiplatelet therapy, whereas reperfusion therapy was nonsignificantly less used in women. In all patients with acute coronary syndromes, women not only ranked higher on Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events risk score but also had increased in-hospital mortality, 1.75 times that of men. This mortality difference persisted after adjusting for all confounders (odds ratios 1.76, 95% confidence interval 1.1 to 2.8, p <0.01). In conclusion, in addition to presentation with higher risk factors, female gender also independently predicted poorer outcomes in patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction.

The historical use of sport for political purposes is well documented. Since
the early twentieth century, many states have shaped their national sport
policies to support broader domestic and foreign policy agendas.
However, while sport policy scholars, in particular, have developed
descriptive accounts of disparate approaches to sport policymaking, relatively
little attention has been paid to identifying the factors that explain
this variance. As a consequence, the variables that influence and constrain
state choice when it comes to sport policy remain underspecified. This
project addresses this deficit in the current literature by exploring how
political regime type influences sport policy development. The analysis
compares the recent sport policies of three countries which differ on the
basis of regime type: an autocracy (Qatar), a partial democracy (Lebanon),
and a full democracy (United Kingdom). While there is tentative evidence
to support the widely held notion that states ‘use’ sport for similar
purposes, this comparative survey reveals that the policy approaches
and efficacy likely vary on the basis of regime type, and argues that this
variable should be more explicitly considered in future sport policy
research.

On 4 June 2017, Qatar was suddenly put under an embargo by its regional neighbors-an effort spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who cut off most of its existing land, sea, and air traffic routes. With no domestic agriculture to speak of, Qatar's external logistics networks are essential for maintaining its food supply. The country's 2.6 million residents, many of whom flooded the grocery stores, were understandably concerned about their ability to secure food when news about the embargo broke. Eventually, new food supply chains were established, primarily with the assistance of partners in Iran and Turkey. The ongoing rift between Qatar and its neighbors in the Arabian Peninsula, manifested only in part by this effort to undermine the country's material supply networks raises a number of questions about an old idea: that of food as a 'weapon'. This article puts this concept in historical and regional perspective in the Arabian Peninsula through the lens of critical geopolitics, tracing the securitizing discourses about food security and their intertwining with narratives about territorial sovereignty, nationalism, and essentialist understandings of geography to explain the causes and effects of the food embargo in the ongoing Qatar-Gulf rift.

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of infertility in Qatari men with Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) and to examine the association between T2DM and infertility. This is a cross-sectional study. The survey was conducted at Primary Health Care Centers during a period from January 2008 to June 2008. The selected subjects for the study were Qatari men aged 25-60 years who were married for more than 1 year. A total of 1,165 men were approached and only 857 men gave consent, giving a response rate of 73.6%. Face-to-face interviews were based on a questionnaire that included variables on socio-demographic characteristics, type of infertility in men, life style habits, type of environmental exposures, and common diseases found among infertile men. All studied men were recruited using cluster random sampling at 13 randomly selected primary health care centers at the Hamad Medical Corporation. The prevalence of infertility in Qatari T2DM men was 35.1%. The prevalence of primary infertility (16%) and secondary infertility (19.1%) was significantly higher in diabetic men (P = 0.003) as compared to non-diabetic men. Also, secondary infertility was higher than primary infertility in our studied Qatari diabetic men. Half of the diabetic infertile men were overweight (50.6%) and 29.1% of them were obese. The smoking habit was more common in diabetic infertile men (45.6%) than in diabetic fertile men (33.6%). Multivariate logistic regression analysis confirmed that age (P &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt; 0.001), smoking habits (ex-smokers, P = 0.003 and current smokers, P = 0.001) and obesity (P &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt; 0.001) were the significant major contributors for infertility in diabetic men. Obesity was the leading contributor for the infertility. Other co-morbid factors associated with infertility in diabetic men were hypertension, erectile dysfunction, and varicocele. The present study findings revealed that there is a strong association between male infertility and Diabetes Mellitus. In Qatari diabetic men, male infertility is high and a significant public health problem in Qatar. The study results confirmed a strong association between T2DM and infertility in Qatari men.

ABSTRACT Dissatisfaction with body weight and the use of unhealthy weight reduction practices have been reported among adolescents. It is important to conduct rigorous studies using large representative samples of female adolescents to assess accurately the frequency of dieting, overweight and eating disorders and accompanying attitudes. The aim of the present study was to examine the severity of dieting and its association with obesity, body satisfaction and psychological problems in female adolescents. A representative sample of 800 girls aged 14-19 years were approached during the period of October to December 2004, and 566 girls gave consent and participated in the study, thus giving a response rate of 70.8%. Self-reports were obtained from 566 teenage girls using the Adolescent Dieting Scale and the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) for psychopathology. Subjects were classified into three categories: acceptable weight (BMI &amp;lt; 25 kg m(-2)); overweight (BMI 25-29.9 kg m(-2)); and obese (BMI &amp;gt; 30 kg m(-2)). The prevalence of overweight and obesity for female adolescents were 13.4% vs. 1.8%; 39.9% were intermediate dieters, and 8.3% were extreme dieters. Dieting was not associated with age but was significantly associated with body mass index (BMI) (P = 0.045). Extreme dieting was strongly associated with peer perception of respondent&amp;#39;s figure (P &amp;lt; 0.001) and self-perception of figure (P = 0.016). Additionally, in adult Qatari population overweight and obesity for males were (34.4% vs. 34.6%) and for females were (33.0% vs. 45.3%). This is significantly higher than adolescent girls. (P &amp;lt; 0.01). The SRQ score was significantly highest in the extreme dieters group (P = 0.005). The extreme dieters get most of their education about dieting from school (14.0%) and TV (43.6%). The present study revealed strong evidence for the association between frequent dieting and overweight, body image dissatisfaction and psychological problems among adolescent females.

A product of the global rise of right-wing populism has been a seeming normalisation of gendered public disinformation, which portrays female public figures as unintelligent, untrustworthy, irrational, and libidinous. Social media has also allowed gendered disinformation to be used in targeted harassment campaigns that seek to intimidate and shame women, reducing their public visibility through psychological violence. Despite this, very few studies on social media involving the Arabic language have explored in detail this phenomenon in the Persian Gulf, despite numerous examples of harassment against women public figures. Since 2017, women journalists critical of regional governments have been subjected to increased attacks online, but none as intense as the attack on Al Jazeera anchor Ghada Oueiss in June 2020. Through keyword analysis, network analysis, and open-source intelligence techniques (OSINT), this paper highlights the intensity and scale of one such attack, identifying the increasing role of malinformation and disinformation in attempting to silence journalists. Such documentation can be useful in demonstrating the volume, velocity, and discursive nature of the attacks threatening women's visibility online. This research also accounts for a potential mechanism of such attacks, which follow a playbook of: 1) leaking information through anonymous accounts, 2) co-opted or loyalist influencers amplifying the attacks, and 3) uncritical local media jumping on the attacks (breakout). From a transformative perspective, it is increasingly important that such attacks are documented, exposed, and analysed to provide evidentiary claims of such abuse. It also highlights the issues of such abuse in authoritarian regimes, who clamp down on online debate, except appear not to do so when the messaging reflects state propaganda.

For many decades the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have served as primary migratory destinations for tens of millions of individuals from South Asia, West Asia, and other points in the Indian Ocean world.  While both historic and substantial in scale, these migration flows remain some of the most understudied movements in the contemporary world.  This paper begins with an overview of the current state of scholarship concerned with Gulf migration.  The remainder of the paper frames Gulf migration through the lens of family.  The paper first considers the impact of Gulf migration upon the families and households that remain in the sending countries.  Next, the paper explores the particular dilemmas faced by those migrants whose families accompany them to the Gulf States.  Finally, the paper concludes with an analysis of the impact of these migration flows upon local families in the Gulf States.

The hijab, the headscarf and cloak worn by some Muslim women, is often viewed through a lens of constraint , but in this article I emphasize its flexible use by women in Qatar, a wealthy, conservative Arabian Gulf nation. As part of a neoliberal agenda, the Qatari government frequently depicts female citizens using an " empowered woman " narrative that touts increased college enrollment, workforce participation, and sports involvement as evidence of a progressive gender milieu. Yet Qatar continues to be steeped in patri-archy and institutional gender discrimination. This domination finds its most visible expression in the scrutiny and regulation of women's clothing. In this article, I describe how Qatari women strategically modify, adjust, reimagine, and remove their hijabs to suit changing circumstances. These hijab micropractices— women's strategic and situational use of traditional Muslim clothing—are at times so infinitesimal they are easy to overlook. Yet they are significant because they enable Qatari women to exercise agency within the confines of clothing that is believed to signify Islamic patriarchy and female oppression. I argue that hijab micropractices are a means by which Qatari women resist these conditions, while maintaining a religious identity and commitment to family.

In the State of Qatar, breast cancer has become the most common form of cancer among women. The aim of this study was to explore knowledge, attitude and practice about breast cancer and to identify potential barriers to screening procedures among women. This multistage sampling cross sectional survey in primary health care centers and the outpatient department of the Women&#39;s Hospital in the State of Qatar targeted a representative sample of 1,200 Qatari women aged between 30 to 55 years of age during the period from December 2008 to April 2009. A total 1,002 subjects (83.5%) consented to participation. Face to face interviews were conducted with a designed questionnaire covering knowledge about breast cancer, attitudes and practices of breast cancer screening. Socio-demographic variables were included. The majority of Qatari women demonstrated an adequate knowledge about breast cancer, with a significant relation to education status. Almost three quarters were aware that breast ...

Hib conjugate vaccines are widely used in the industrialized world, but are just now beginning to be introduced into other countries. To identify factors facilitating rapid global introduction, we evaluated the decision-making process, mode of introduction, effectiveness, and impact on the immunization program of Hib conjugate vaccine introduction in four non- industrialized countries through site visits and use of a standardized questionnaire. The key promoters of Hib introduction were the pediatric community and ministries of health. Local surveillance and severity data were critical in the decision to adopt Hib vaccine. Assistance with surveillance, introduction guidelines, educational material, tenders, and funding is needed to accelerate wider adoption.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and develop a hierarchical model for the barriers
affecting the growth of mobile commerce (M-commerce). Based on the model developed, the authors’
objective is to identify those variables that are of strategic nature and are the root cause of the issue.
Design/methodology/approach – Variables considered as barriers are identified, and utilizing the
interpretive structural model approach, a relationship model is developed. Further, the impact matrix
cross-reference multiplication applied to a classification approach is used to analyze the effect and dependence
among these factors.
Findings – The research in the area of M-commerce in the Arab world and related to the strategic aspect is
limited in the extant literature.Thepresent study tries to fill this gap by investigating the variables that inhibit the
growth of M-commerce in Qatar. The research shows that there exists a group of barriers having a high driving
power and low dependence requiring maximum attention and of strategic importance, while another group
consists of those variables that have high dependence and are the resultant actions.
Practical implications – There is a growing concern that although the numbers of mobile
subscribers are increasing at a very fast pace in Qatar, actual M-commerce activities in the country
remain low. The findings of this study can be used to understand the differences between the
independent and dependent variables and their mutual relationships. The study would also help the
policy makers to develop suitable strategies to facilitate growth of M-commerce in the country.
Originality/value – This research was the first attempt to investigate the relationships among the
variables inhibiting the growth of M-commerce in a fast-growing economy in a Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) region. Given that there is limited research on M-commerce in the GCC context, the study
can be viewed as an investigation that provides a good understanding of the variables and their
interrelationships affecting M-commerce proliferation.

This article explores how the professional identities of ten experienced English language teachers were affected as their pedagogies adapted to operating in a major government institution of higher education in Qatar. Exploratory research was employed. A logical chain of evidence was established in order to analyze qualitative data which was generated by open-ended questionnaires. The results indicate that institutionally imposed pedagogical adaptation may result in a renegotiation of professional identity for some teachers. Additionally, teachers experience identity renegotiation in very personal ways.

After decades of mining and industrialization in Qatar, it is important to estimate their impact on soil pollution with toxic metals. The study utilized 300 topsoil (0–30 cm) samples, multi-spectral images (Landsat 8), spectral indices and environmental variables to model and map the spatial distribution of arsenic (As), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) in Qatari soils. The prediction model used condition-based rules generated in the Cubist tool. In terms of R 2 and the ratio of performance to interquartile distance (RPIQ), the models showed good predictive capabilities for all elements. Of all of the prediction results, Cu had the highest R 2 = 0.74, followed by As > Pb > Cr > Zn > Ni. This study found that all of the models only chose images from January and February as predictors, which indicates that images from these two months are important for soil toxic metals' monitoring in arid soils, due to the climate and the vegetation cover during this season. Topsoil maps of the six toxic metals were generated. The maps can be used to prioritize the choice of remediation measures and can be applied to other arid areas of similar environmental/socio-economic conditions and pollution causes.

State leaders in the Arabian Peninsula have increasingly sought to host globalized sporting events to broadcast a cosmopolitan and modern image of the region. These efforts are typically interpreted as examples of states exercising 'soft power'. This article challenges the state-centric assumptions built into the soft power approach by employing an event ethnography of the 2016 UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Doha. Advancing a more grounded geopolitics of elite sport in the Gulf, I examine how geopolitical identity narratives about Qatar, and the Gulf region more broadly, circulate at various scales and through countless contingent encounters at the event. I ask specifically how these identity narratives are constructed and challenged, both materially and discursively by athletes, spectators and urban residents. Sporting events, I argue, are key sites of geopolitical encounter: where subjects and spaces are not predetermined, but actively constituted through people's interactions in the host cities and countries.

In 1959, a Danish anthropological expedition to Qatar created hundreds of photographs and a 16-minute film depicting the diversity of Qatari lifestyles, which included strong evidence of a Bedouin past, separate from the merchant and pearl-diving culture of the coast. However, Qatar’s new national museum, still under development, has been working on a different narrative: a more unified national identity that emphasizes the similarities of Qatari heritage rather than the differences. Artifacts such as these photos and film can become inconvenient when they do not fit new and improved civic myths, yet as some of the most important (and well known) surviving images of Qatar’s heritage, this evidence cannot be left out. How might the museum make use of the evidence so that it aligns with its narrative? Here we focus on the aesthetic style of Jette Bang’s photographs and film, which emphasizes the warmth, hospitality, and universal humanity of Qatari heritage. Our argument connects the historical and ideological contexts for both the new national museum’s push for a unity narrative and Bang’s 1959 photographs and film. We suggest that the artistic elements of these ostensibly scientific and historical artifacts may offer Qatar’s new museum a way to repurpose them without jeopardizing a narrative of national unity.

We describe the patterns of cancer incidence for common cancers in Gulf Cooperation Council countries during 1998-2001. A total of 32,291 cases of cancer were diagnosed (16,342 in males; 15,949 in females). Male preponderance was observed only in Saudi Arabia and Oman. The age-standardized incidence of all malignancies per 100,000 in both sexes was highest in Qatar followed by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Paediatric cancer ranged from 9.5% of total cancers in Saudi Arabia and UAE to 4.0% in Bahrain. In all countries, the mean age at diagnosis was higher in males than females; cancer of the lung and prostate were commonest among males, and cancer of breast and thyroid among females. Lung cancer ranked second among Bahraini women.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the role of language in multilingual blue-collar workplaces by investigating how communication is realized in construction sites in Qatar. The State of Qatar offers a unique and, hence, very interesting setting for the linguistic investigation of migration-related issues, such as multilingualism (Pietikäinen et al. in Sociolinguistics from the periphery: small languages in new circumstances, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016), due to the fact that over 90% of its population consists of non-citizens (Ahmad, in: Kamrava, Babar (eds) Migrant labor in the Persian Gulf, Hurst & Company, Lon-don, pp 21-40, 2015). In addition, after its successful bid to host the World Cup 2022, the country is currently witnessing a rapid transformation of its landscape evident through its massive number of construction sites, where people of different national, ethnic and social class backgrounds from all over the world are hired to work together in developing the infrastructure that is part of the ambitious Qatar Vision 2030. Against this backdrop, the focus is on the sociolinguistic resources (Blommaert in The sociolinguistics of globalization, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010) mobilized in a construction site at a university in Qatar. The multilingual community of practice (Lave and Wenger in Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991) investigated consists of blue-collar workers from India and their communication practices with their supervisors, who are project site engineers from all over the world. In such transnational fields, where effective communication is a sine qua non not only for the successful completion of the project or infrastructure itself but also, and perhaps most importantly, for the safety of everybody involved in the construction, multilingualism is the norm. It is argued that communication is realized through spatial repertoires (Canagarajah, in: Canagarajah (ed) The Routledge handbook of migration and language, Routledge, New York, pp 1-28, 2017), that are constructed and used as ingroup markers to facilitate communication among people from different nationalities , ethnicities and social classes. The ethnographic data, collected for almost 13 months, comprise voice-recorded interactions, field notes from on-site participant observation as well as ethnographic interviews with select blue-collar workers and

Background: Despite its commonality, there is a paucity of literature on miscarriage in non-Western societies. In particular, there is little understanding of how people ascribe cause to miscarriage. This research sought to gain an in-depth understanding of notions of miscarriage causality and risk amongst Qataris. Methods: The study adopted an exploratory descriptive qualitative approach and collected data during 18 months of ethnographic research in Qatar, including semi-structured interviews. The sample includes 60 primary participants (20 pregnant women and 40 women who had recently miscarried), and 55 secondary participants including family members, health care providers, religious scholars and traditional healers. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. Primary participants were interviewed in Arabic. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and translated into English. Data was analysed using an inductive thematic approach, which involved identification and application of multiple codes to different text segments. Data were encoded manually and examined for recurrences across the data set. Similar quotations were grouped into subcategories and further categorized into main themes. Results: A number of key themes emerged, revealing Qatari women attributed miscarriages to a number of factors including: supernatural forces, such as God's will and evil eye; lifestyle, such as physical activities and consuming particular substances; medical conditions, such as diabetes; and emotional state, such as stress, and emotional upset. Resting, avoiding stress and upset, maintaining healthy diet, and spiritual healing (ruqyah) are seen as a means to avoid miscarriage.