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constituencies, municipal council voting followed along family and tribal lines, rather than party lines. That is no surprise, as the prevailing political climate scarcely allows room for any political parties, only for the dual authority of the mosque and the state working in a sometimes strained alliance. If there is a political opposition it is likely to be subdued and influenced by external, pan-Arab ideologies, such as those of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, rather than by any local-grown movement dealing with local issues.

This means that, at best, completely free elections of a new government would lead to a titanic shift in power from the ruling Al Thani family, who have grown into their role over the past 120 years, to the more populous Bedouin families of the Al Marri and Al Mohannadi, whose experience of public life is limited. Such a power shift would be accompanied by a loss of economic and political direction in one of the world's leading gas and oil producers and by a huge and disruptive shifting of wealth and prestige between families.

Whether this "democracy" would lead to anything more than the creation of an elected ruling family to replace a traditional ruling family is questionable, and the political dislocation that would accompany such a change would create opportunities for Al Qaeda to greatly increase its political influence in a key energy producing nation and American ally. It is unlikely, for example, that the continuing presence of an Israeli diplomatic "trade mission" would be tolerated by an elected Qatari government.

It is to the credit of the present Qatari leadership that it has embarked on an extraordinary program aimed at enhancing the education of its citizens, so that the great-grandchildren of illiterate nomads and pearl fishermen have access to the intellectual ideas and achievements of Western - and other - civilizations. Similar efforts to harness Western education are being made in several other Gulf countries.

Only when those ideas have taken root and a new synthesis has come into being between the cultural ideologies of East and West, of Islam and the Renaissance, will Qatar and other parts of the Arab Gulf be able to make a transition to true democracy without endangering the peace and stability of the entire region.

The Bush Administration's democracy agenda for the Middle East has been driven by dogma and ignorance, making no allowances for the realities of the process of continuous change that the Arab world

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