Qatar’s quiet rise as a development powerhouse
Across the Gulf, aid has become a primary lever of diplomacy — and Syria is emerging as its latest proving ground.
One week after rebel forces seized Damascus in December 2024, Fahad Hamad Al-Sulaiti — director-general of the Qatar Fund for Development — touched down in a Syria transformed. Days earlier, Syria's former president, Bashar al-Assad, had fled the nation’s capital — and for the first time in five decades, the al-Assad family’s grip on power had broken. But 14 years of war had left the country desperate: More than 90% of Syrians were living below the poverty line, and nearly 13 million people had fled the country’s borders. Despite that — or perhaps, because of it — Al-Sulaiti’s visit marked a dual shift. Syria began taking its first, tentative steps toward rebuilding. And Qatar, an ascendant power in the region, began extending its reach in Syria beyond humanitarian relief and into reconstruction. “In Syria, we’ve been there since the beginning,” said Al-Sulaiti, speaking to Devex in Doha last month. “But since the eighth of December, we’ve made a big transition in terms of our commitment.” It was the latest example of how the agency is shaping its evolution from a relief partner into a development heavyweight. As Qatar’s wealth has continued to grow, so too has the Qatar Fund for Development — an agency that has quickly become one of the country’s most important tools for projecting influence beyond its borders. “We are the opposite of others,” Al-Sulaiti added. “There are huge cuts now to [official development assistance] in the world, and our role is not only to cover that, but to grow the economies of these countries.” The rise of QFFD — and the rise of Qatar The Qatar Fund for Development, or QFFD, is Qatar’s central aid agency. It has grown in step with Qatar itself, a nation which, despite being just 54 years old, had a gross domestic product of nearly $220 billion last year. When the country’s population is taken into account, that wealth is staggering. Just over 3 million people live in Qatar, making the country’s gross domestic product per capita roughly twice that of the United Kingdom, Canada, or France, along with most other high-income nations. But for much of the 20th century, the country’s economy was modest, relying on fishing and pearl diving until the latter industry collapsed in the 1920s. Life was harsh and uncertain: small coastal villages dotted the arid landscape, and most families eked out a living from the sea. But the discovery of oil in the 1940s — followed by natural gas decades later — would ultimately transform the tiny peninsula into one of the world’s wealthiest nations. By the early 2000s, Qatar’s wealth had exploded. And in 2002, the Qatar Fund for Development was born. Since then, the agency has disbursed over $7 billion across 100 countries, $3 billion of which was allocated over the past five years, according to Al-Sulaiti. Their annual disbursements have consistently exceeded half a billion dollars, Al-Sulaiti said, peaking at more than $700 million in 2022 due to rising global crises. While QFFD is responsible for channeling the majority of Qatar’s foreign assistance, other aid flows come from the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the education-focused Qatar Foundation, and other national agencies, which provided a cumulative $642.4 million in foreign assistance last year. That’s 0.32% of the country’s gross national income — a figure far below the United Nations target of 0.7%, but about average for the world’s largest donors, which came in at 0.33% the same year. Bigger than itself But 20 years ago, aid wasn’t the only diplomatic muscle the nation began to flex. Al Jazeera — the media network that is today, one of the most influential in the world — was launched by Qatar’s emir in 1996. Around the same time, Qatar began expanding its network of natural gas customers from Spain to Japan to South Korea. In 2005, Qatar created a sovereign wealth fund to grow its energy revenues even further, channeling them into investments that would continue cementing the country’s global reach. And as the country’s wealth continued to soar, so too did its influence. By the early 2010s, Qatar had mediated conflict resolutions in Yemen, Lebanon, Sudan, and other nations across the Arab world. That’s continued today: The country has been a key mediator in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and worked with the United States and Egypt to facilitate a long-awaited ceasefire in October. “Where there is mediation for the Qataris, there is humanitarian or development funds,” said Mohammad Yaghi, a political scientist specializing in the Middle East and the Gulf. “Qatar is a small state, so it has to act within an international system that is bigger than itself.” Those diplomatic ambitions are tightly woven with Qatar’s foreign aid strategy — and with the priorities of QFFD itself. The agency’s portfolio has increasingly centered on countries where Qatar seeks both humanitarian impact and political relevance, with a heavy emphasis on fragile states across the Middle East, explained Yaghi. “The Gulf States have a lot of interest in expanding their influence in the Arab world and in the Middle East in general,” he added. “It’s an area that affects their sovereignty, and it’s an area that can undermine their stability.” QFFD’s top sectors mirror that approach: humanitarian relief consistently dominates its spending, alongside high-profile reconstruction efforts in post-conflict settings such as Syria. QFFD officials say the goal is to pair rapid-response relief with longer-term development investments — a model designed not just to project Qatar’s soft power, but to define it. In 2023, more than one-third of the country’s foreign aid went to Gaza and the West Bank, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data. Aid to Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria followed, with Qatar giving $111 million, $44 million, and $37 million, respectively. “When we see Europeans and Americans provide aid to Ukraine, that is European solidarity toward one of their members,” said Khaled AlMezaini, an associate dean at the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed University. “It’s the same as what is happening in the region here: there is a lot of aid that is being given to Arab states in solidarity.” <div class='tableauPlaceholder' id='viz1764720128801' style='position: relative'><noscript><a href='#'><img alt='Dashboard 1 ' src='https://public.tableau.com/static/images/Qa/QatarsbilateralODAin2023/Dashboard1/1_rss.png' style='border: none' /></a></noscript><object class='tableauViz' style='display:none;'><param name='host_url' value='https%3A%2F%2Fpublic.tableau.com%2F' /> <param name='embed_code_version' value='3' /> <param name='site_root' value='' /><param name='name' value='QatarsbilateralODAin2023/Dashboard1' /><param name='tabs' value='no' /><param name='toolbar' value='yes' /><param name='static_image' value='https://public.tableau.com/static/images/Qa/QatarsbilateralODAin2023/Dashboard1/1.png' /> <param name='animate_transition' value='yes' /><param name='display_static_image' value='yes' /><param name='display_spinner' value='yes' /><param name='display_overlay' value='yes' /><param name='display_count' value='yes' /><param name='language' value='en-US' /><param name='filter' value='publish=yes' /><param name='device' value='desktop' /><param name='showShareOptions' value='false' /></object></div> <script type='text/javascript'> var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1764720128801'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 800 ) { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';} else if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 500 ) { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';} else { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height='727px';} var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); </script> <i style=font-style: georgia;”>Qatar’s bilateral ODA in 2023, based on OECD.</i> From relief to reconstruction Thirteen hundred miles from Doha, Damascus has become a testing ground for Qatar’s development ambitions. The country’s role in Syria elevated not just after the overthrow of the al-Assad regime, but the collapse of the U.S. Agency for International Development — a donor that for years had been the largest provider of foreign aid to the conflict-battered country. Last year, USAID gave $524 million to Syria and contributed nearly a fifth of all humanitarian aid provided to the country. But in January, organizations operating in Syria were barred from helping those across the nation, creating a tinderbox in one of the most fragile contexts on earth. For countries across the Gulf, the pullout created an opening — and within weeks, nations such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates seized it. Qatar had been sending humanitarian aid to Syria through an “air bridge,” landing its 13th plane — with 19 tons of emergency supplies — on Jan. 23. But soon after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, the country expanded another layer of its support: reconstruction. In March, Qatar began transferring natural gas to a power plant in Syria, where the electricity system had been crippled by years of war. In May, Qatar and Saudi Arabia paid off Syria’s $15.5 million debt to the World Bank, making the country eligible for future loans from the multilateral group. In July, QFFD announced it would be surging natural gas deliveries to Syria, boosting the country’s electricity supply to five hours per day. And in September, Qatar and Saudi Arabia provided the U.N. Development Programme with nearly $90 million to support public services — such as the salaries for government employees — for three months. “We are changing our model, and we want to make sure that we are on the right track of development,” said Al-Sulaiti, speaking not just of Syria, but of QFFD’s engagements as a whole. “What we’re looking for is, how can we create a good economy? And how can we create a good return for those countries?” The country has also continued providing humanitarian support to Syria, virtually swapping places with the U.S. in less than a year. In 2025, the U.S. contributed $116 million in humanitarian funding to Syria, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 7.9% of the year’s total. Qatar’s share of Syria’s humanitarian aid jumped more than fivefold, going from just $69 million to $259 million — 3.4% to 17.6% of the country’s total — in a single year. But for QFFD, the main focus today — almost exactly one year from the overthrow of the Al-Assad regime — is infrastructure. The agency is partnering with allies in the region, including Jordan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, to power the post-conflict nation, while also working its diplomatic levers in the region by reestablishing an embassy and committing to Syria’s reconstruction. The Gulf’s expanding aid machine Qatar — one of the smallest countries in the Gulf — is far from the only one in the region providing aid. Nations across the Gulf have increasingly emerged as development players, with aid primarily flowing to the Middle East, North Africa, and Arab states. In 2023, the top donors in the region — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar — gave a collective $7.9 billion in foreign aid. The way that money has been allocated, however, has changed over time: after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., Western institutions accused Gulf charities of supporting terrorism through aid, Yaghi explained. As a result, foreign assistance in the region was transformed, and the region’s nations implemented policies to make aid more transparent and accountable going forward. For Qatar, that meant the rise of QFFD, Yaghi added, and a more centralized, state-driven approach to foreign assistance. “After 9/11, the governments of the Gulf States wanted to know where each dollar was going from their own country,” he said. “And slowly, there has been more development in foreign aid.” Today, Saudi Arabia is the biggest donor in the Gulf, followed by the United Arab Emirates. Respectively, the countries gave $5.2 billion and $2.1 billion in foreign assistance in 2023, the last year with comparable data from the OECD. Qatar comes in third, contributing $695 million the same year. Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates outstrip Qatar in terms of generosity, with 0.4% of the United Arab Emirates’ GNI going toward foreign aid — and 0.5% of Saudi Arabia’s — in 2023. But despite Qatar’s smaller footprint, increasingly, the nation’s foreign aid has been viewed more favorably than its neighbors, AlMezaini said. In part, that’s because of the impact of Al Jazeera, AlMezaini added. While the broadcasting giant retains editorial independence, it’s sometimes been accused of elevating its donor nation. There’s also the fact that, increasingly, other donor nations in the Gulf have been caught in scandal with the exact countries they’re seeking to support: the United Arab Emirates, for example, has been accused of backing Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces with arms shipments, and allegedly using humanitarian aid corridors to do so. The country has repeatedly rejected the claim. “The main objective for all of them is to have as much impact in the region as possible,” said Zayed University’s AlMezaini. “Whoever wins the hearts and the minds of the people will be most successful.” Devex Senior Development Analyst Miguel Antonio Tamonan contributed to this story.
One week after rebel forces seized Damascus in December 2024, Fahad Hamad Al-Sulaiti — director-general of the Qatar Fund for Development — touched down in a Syria transformed.
Days earlier, Syria's former president, Bashar al-Assad, had fled the nation’s capital — and for the first time in five decades, the al-Assad family’s grip on power had broken. But 14 years of war had left the country desperate: More than 90% of Syrians were living below the poverty line, and nearly 13 million people had fled the country’s borders.
Despite that — or perhaps, because of it — Al-Sulaiti’s visit marked a dual shift. Syria began taking its first, tentative steps toward rebuilding. And Qatar, an ascendant power in the region, began extending its reach in Syria beyond humanitarian relief and into reconstruction.
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Elissa Miolene reports on USAID and the U.S. government at Devex. She previously covered education at The San Jose Mercury News, and has written for outlets like The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Washingtonian magazine, among others. Before shifting to journalism, Elissa led communications for humanitarian agencies in the United States, East Africa, and South Asia.
