Wealth and Social Class in Qatar

Video Transcript

“I thought it was interesting is, I think sometimes we get a, or at least I had this idea that a lot of the Arabs are rich, even some of the soldiers. And this one officer told me that, ‘Yeah, a lot of them did have a lot of money. Come from money. Mostly the officers.’ But he said, ‘Many of the soldiers in Qatar just put up a façade of having money. They might drive a Mercedes, but that was where their money went into.’ I just thought that was interesting because I did see, one thing I did notice, a lot of them had some really nice cars, primarily German, a lot of Mercedes. This façade was something that, I guess, they didn’t do this, obviously, for us. This was, I guess, just a, within their own culture. The region, the Qataris wanted to demonstrate some form of wealth. I found that kind of interesting.”

In this video, a retired Army major describes the presentation of material wealth in Qatar.