Would you still move to Qatar?
#32
Just Joined
Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 24
camels etc.
Since many of the desert camps in KSA do not have sufficient grazing for livestock, I've seen large trucks delivering fodder to these desert camps. I presume that the livestock and grazing situation is similar in Qatar given that most of the indigenous GCC population have abandoned nomadic pastoralism. If Qatar is not self-sufficient in fodder production, then that is one more item that needs to be imported from an external source.
Here is the thing that has to be understood with the blockade: Qataris (and other Gulf peoples) do not live like Westerners do, and they are not an urban people even if they may spend their weekdays at a crash pad in Dubai, Doha etc.
The first chance they get, they abandon Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai and go out to their desert camps and farms.
Once at the desert camp, their Subcontinent staff kill off one of their goats/camels etc or gets some fish (fresh caught or, unlike the livestock, bought from a shop), serves it to them with rice, and they drink milk from their own herds of camels.
That was largely how MERS was spreading a few years ago, and why it predominantly affected locals - unpasteurized camel milk.
So, the blockade on foodstuffs etc - this impacts Westerners and people from the Subcontinent and Levant/MENA, but not so much on locals, who largely have their own food stocks.
To be successful the blockade must impact LOCALS. They don't care about Westerners, people from the Subcontinent or even people from the other Arab countries.
Where it might start to impact them, is if the locals get tired of not being able to have their long weekends in Dubai, Riyadh and Bahrain. Istanbul is a poor substitute and the locals consider it exotic; Muscat, too far away and the Gulf Arabs there are quite different (in social caste) from the ones in the UAE/Qatar/KSA.
More to the point, Qatar is still a tiny country and if Qatari Citizens got barred from investments in other Gulf countries, that would bite. Ca$h is king and nowhere is that understood better than in the Gulf.
But, they are not going to back down just because foreigners can't get their choice of milk or chicken at the supermarket.
The first chance they get, they abandon Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai and go out to their desert camps and farms.
Once at the desert camp, their Subcontinent staff kill off one of their goats/camels etc or gets some fish (fresh caught or, unlike the livestock, bought from a shop), serves it to them with rice, and they drink milk from their own herds of camels.
That was largely how MERS was spreading a few years ago, and why it predominantly affected locals - unpasteurized camel milk.
So, the blockade on foodstuffs etc - this impacts Westerners and people from the Subcontinent and Levant/MENA, but not so much on locals, who largely have their own food stocks.
To be successful the blockade must impact LOCALS. They don't care about Westerners, people from the Subcontinent or even people from the other Arab countries.
Where it might start to impact them, is if the locals get tired of not being able to have their long weekends in Dubai, Riyadh and Bahrain. Istanbul is a poor substitute and the locals consider it exotic; Muscat, too far away and the Gulf Arabs there are quite different (in social caste) from the ones in the UAE/Qatar/KSA.
More to the point, Qatar is still a tiny country and if Qatari Citizens got barred from investments in other Gulf countries, that would bite. Ca$h is king and nowhere is that understood better than in the Gulf.
But, they are not going to back down just because foreigners can't get their choice of milk or chicken at the supermarket.
#33
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Joined: Jan 2017
Posts: 2,900
Re: Would you still move to Qatar?
They've "abandoned nomadic pastoralism" in theory only - and for livestock feed they are happy for that to be imported from Iran, Pakistan etc and that is easily done considering Qatar's geographic location. Most of what I have seen has in fact come from there. I can't recall much of it, if any, coming from other Gulf states.
That refers to the locals who trace their tribes back to Bedouin clans, they are the ones with power. There are of course many who originate from islands in the Gulf etc and rely on fishing but they do not have anywhere near the same influence.
That refers to the locals who trace their tribes back to Bedouin clans, they are the ones with power. There are of course many who originate from islands in the Gulf etc and rely on fishing but they do not have anywhere near the same influence.