9/11 and branding the Gulf States’ foreign aid

In many ways, 9/11 and the subsequent ‘Global War on Terror’ came to represent defining factors for the evolution of the Gulf States’ development and humanitarian assistance. In this context, this article explains how the Gulf States responded to these accusations. It argues that Gulf aid has undergone profound changes in terms of transparency, allocation patterns, sources of aid provision, and coordination with multilateral organisations. This ‘branding’ aims to thwart accusations of supporting extremist groups and to create a new image for the Gulf States as big donors, transparent, humanitarian actors with efficient funding mechanisms. Reflecting on the ‘new’ image that the Gulf States are seeking to propagate as donors, this article explains the loopholes in this narrative. Specifically, it reveals, inter alia, that a small fraction of aid is channelled through multilateral organisations, that humanitarian assistance is allocated mostly to regions where the Gulf States are involved in conflicts, and that transparency in foreign aid is merely based on the Gulf States’ reports.