A Critical Analysis of Personal Culture Intelligence and Qatari Culture

The 2008 Economist article titled Small Country, Big Ideas accurately stated that ...the emirate of Qatar has assiduously wooed the United States, inviting its Central Command to set up its forward headquarters at al-Udeid, an airbase near Doha, in time for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Today, the base has one of the biggest stocks of American military supplies anywhere in the world.1 In June of 2010, I will deploy for one year to al-Udeid Air Base AUAB in Qatar as the 379th Composite Wings Expeditionary Force Support Squadron Commander or 379 EFSSCC. As the 379 EFSSCC, the missionduties and personnel entrusted to me will be those that ensure the quality of life for approximately 10,000 joint forcespersonnel assigned to AUAB, those transiting through AUAB for Iraq and Afghanistan, those redeploying from Iraq and Afghanistan, and those using Rest and Recuperation R and R leave at AUAB. A few illustrative examples of the types of missions and kinds of personnel entrusted to me in this permissivenon-hostile environment are AUABs food service and billeting operations and hundreds of local and third country nationals and expatriate contactors working within them. Local and third country nationals and expatriate contractors constitute a bulk of the permanent-party EFSS workforce in conjunction with rotational U.S. Air Force oversight and management of them. In addition to a culturally diverse EFSS workforce, the types of missions such as food service, billeting, laundry or recreational services primarily relies on acquiring goods and services from the local Doha Qatari economy via establishedestablishing reoccurring contractual mechanisms local Qataris and businesses.