Tiny, rich Qatar defies Arab taboos.(Chicago Tribune)

DOHA, Qatar _ Out beyond miles of pale, sun-bleached sand and stones sit the plush, green fairways of the Doha Golf club, an 18-hole PGA-quality layout with a floodlit nine-hole course and a gleaming white, palace-like club house.

Coming out of a bleak emptiness, it seems at first mirage-like, but then a statement about achieving the impossible.

It's a fitting metaphor for Qatar.

Nestled between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors, Qatar is an enigma, an Arab world maverick, and as one Middle East diplomat calls it, a meteor because of all the changes _ political, social, and economic _ going on within the tiny emirate.

The change is a result, diplomats and experts say, of a determination in recent years to preserve austere Bedouin values while breaking Arab world taboos left and right. It also is due to a tremendous amount of wealth from oil and gas reserves that has enabled Qatar's ruling elite to rapidly modernize a tiny country of 150,000 Qataris and 600,000 foreign workers.

With hefty supplies of petroleum and the world's third-largest natural-gas reserves, Qatar is among the world's richest nations. Qataris have a per capita annual income of about $21,000, but that figure may be low. "They are wealthier than they admit, but they don't want to embarrass their neighbors," said one diplomat.

Unlike in some Arab countries where women lead very sheltered lives, Qatari women hold jobs, vote and run in municipal elections. And they account for nearly two-thirds of Qatar University's 9,000 students.