For most of the past year the city-state of Qatar, the wealthiest peninsula on the planet, has been exploring the law of unintended consequences. The trigger for that came last June, when Qatar’s closest neighbours, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE, escalated a simmering disquiet about the Gulf state’s role in the region to implement a full land and air blockade.

Overnight, planes and cargo ships heading for Qatar were diverted, all diplomatic links were cut and Qatar’s sole land border, with Saudi Arabia, was closed. Even camels were not spared the politics – 12,000 Qatari animals were forcibly repatriated.

The stated aim for the blockade – which came with a 10-day ultimatum of 13 unlikely demands – was a protest against what was seen as Qatar’s singular role in “funding terrorism” (the Saudi line that Donald Trump swallowed and retweeted whole). Politically, it seemed rather an attempt to humiliate the sheikhdom and call it to heel. In the event, something like the opposite of that expectation has unfolded.

Far from destabilising Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family, resistance to the ultimatum has lent it an “us against the world” authority. Among the 313,000 native Qataris (in a population of 2.6 million) a cult of personality has grown around the youthful emir, Sheikh Tamim, whose idealised portrait now gazes across the Gulf from the steel and glass skyscrapers of Doha, and is almost ubiquitous in the back window of the 4x4s that cruise the capital’s six-lane corniche.

Isolation has also, it seems, acted as a catalyst to Qatar’s long-term vision for itself. One of the inbuilt ironies of the richest per capita state on earth was that, ever since it discovered and exploited its vast natural gas reserves, there has been little native necessity to drive invention. The al-Thanis’ stated goal has been to create a diverse knowledge economy that lasts beyond the gas reserves. As Sheikha Hind, younger sister of the emir, explained to me in Doha last week in a rare interview, money – and the incentive of capital projects such as the 2022 World Cup – solves only some of those skills shortages.

“It is not a secret that we are a wealthy society and that maybe nobody even needs to work,” she said. “But knowing that you can contribute in developing your country, and allow it to become even more prominent, is something everyone feels pride in. If anything, the blockade helped that. We see a big opportunity to be self-sustainable.”

Qatar’s modern nation-building aspirations were first expressed by Sheikha Hind’s parents. While her father developed the partnership with Iran that could exploit the natural gas fields, her mother, Sheikha Moza, established the multibillion-dollar Qatar Foundation in order to transform education, particularly for women. Sheikha Hind, 34, a mother of five herself, was one of the first beneficiaries of “Education City” and has for the past three years been chief executive of the Qatar Foundation.

From the balcony of its offices you can see the glass and marble evidence of that ambition in the futuristic campuses of a dozen “partner universities” that radiate outward. Each was persuaded here for its particular expertise in building capacity that Qataris need: Georgetown for its programme in government, Texas A&M for engineering, and so on.

The newest addition to Education City is the stunning Qatari National Library, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas: a huge, welcoming building in which book stacks rise all around a central area that includes an open theatre and cafe, like terraces on backlit hillsides. There has been no library tradition in the Gulf, so Koolhaas’s idea was to create a space that is immediately understandable. Fifty-one thousand Qataris have already taken membership and the children’s library has proved particularly successful. In the few months since opening, every one of the 150,000 books on its shelves has been borrowed at least once.

The IM Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art in Doha with the city’s skyscraper skyline in the background. Photograph: Gavin Hellier/Rex Shutterstock

Along with those silver terraces of books, at subterranean level, in what look like excavated catacombs made of Iranian marble, the library houses an expensively acquired collection of rare manuscripts and calligraphy relating to the Arab world. This collection has been assembled in the same acquisitive spirit in which the al-Thani billions have filled its IM Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art: to establish Doha as the modern intellectual capital of the Arab world. Later this year a new National Museum, shaped as a series of giant intersecting discs, designed by Jean Nouvel, will add another dimension to that claim.

There is a blatant “look at us” attitude in some of this, but also the message that the territory that Qatar aims to colonise is as much cultural as economic. The al-Thanis have made headlines buying blingy stakes in such global landmarks as the Empire State Building, Harrods and the Shard – and splashing out ostentatiously on the world’s most expensive paintings ($250m for Cezanne’s The Card Players) and footballers ($262m to bring superstar Neymar to Qatari-owned Paris St Germain). But they have also long realised that it is whoever controls the story who generally wields power.

That principle was first tested 22 years ago when the then emir established and funded the Arab broadcaster al-Jazeera. The harsh journalistic light the television station has shone on the internal politics of other Arab nations (and the relatively soft focus it gives to Qatar) is at the heart of the current enmity and blockade. One of the 13 ultimatum demands of the blockaders was that the broadcaster be shut down.

The Saudi-led outrage at al-Jazeera’s reporting and editorial stance deepened during the Arab spring, when the station (and Doha’s ruling family) threw its support behind the popular uprising, rather than the established ruling powers. This stance was seen as part of a wider pattern in which Qatar seeks to build power at home while fomenting dissent abroad, aiming to be all things to all people: keeping trade and diplomatic channels open to Israel while openly funding Hamas; hosting the major American air base, al-Udeid, while giving support to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood; offering to broker peace talks on Syria while giving refuge to known al-Qaida affiliates.

For Qatar’s detractors, al-Jazeera has become the symbol of the hypocrisies of that self-styled radicalism. In Doha it is rather an emblem of independence and sovereignty. As Sheikha Hind suggests: “Imagine [another nation] telling Britain to close the BBC – you would be shocked.” She makes a strong case for the liberalising effect the broadcaster has had. “I think when we are talking about where we want our region to be, al-Jazeera is an important part of that … ” she says. “Maybe a lot of people are not happy with things that have come out from the darkness, but if you want to build a civil society and allow people to think for themselves and be critical, every story has to come out.” The apparent effort to embed that muck-raking spirit more deeply in Qatari society is rooted in the Education City campus of Northwestern University – an outpost of its Medill School of Journalism.

Imagine another nation telling Britain to close the BBC – you would be shocked Sheikha Hind

The dean, Everette E Dennis, a distinguished observer of the fourth estate’s role in extending civil society in the former eastern bloc as well as in the US, had expected a fight over censorship when he came to Doha. He has found, he says, that “there has never been a single intrusion into what we teach and how we teach it – the full range of social issues that would be part of the conversation on an American campus are freely discussed here”.

Initially, he found some unwillingness to challenge authority among the students,who come from across the region and beyond, but that quickly dissipated. He suggests that the gains of regular press freedoms have begun to be appreciated in Qatar (despite the fact that, since 2016, the authorities have blocked Doha News, an online outlet that offered more critical reporting of their actions).

There has been learning on both sides, he suggests. The university has established the first system of press accreditation, for example, and lobbying from graduates of the programme has coincided with the establishment of a properly functioning government information office. That spirit of critical enquiry, he suggests, has also prompted the ruling family and its government to address international concerns, in particular over the shameful treatment of migrant labour in Qatar on capital projects for the World Cup. They have responded to concerns with a minimum wage and new policy over housing programmes and healthcare that have been given a qualified welcome by the International Labour Organisation of the UN.

In the dean’s view the blockade has again accelerated this transparency. At the same time as it has become illegal in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE for citizens to question or criticise even the idea of the blockade, Qatar is lifting visa restrictions and attempting to brand itself as a home of greater free speech. While Saudi Arabia congratulates itself on finally allowing women to drive, Sheikha Hind can point to a majority of female undergraduates across all departments, including engineering, at Education City.

In that sense, I wonder if the Qatari ruling family is secretly grateful for the blockade in sharpening a perceived cultural divide between itself and its Wahhabi neighbours. Has it proved more an opportunity than a crisis?

“I won’t lie to you and tell you we are OK with the blockade,” Sheikha Hind says, “absolutely not. We have had students here who are terribly affected by it – whole families have been torn apart. It is a sad situation we are in.” She hopes, along with every other Qatari I speak to, that there is a resolution to the conflict soon. Still, she says, “if anything, the push we always had here for self-sustainability is just exploding now.” The goal has not changed, she suggests, “but now we are running rather than walking”.

• The author travelled to Qatar as a guest of the Qatari government’s culture department.

