A Qatari arms factory that makes rifles and grenade launchers has added a product that saves rather than takes lives — ventilators, needed at home and abroad amid the coronavirus pandemic. The venture is the latest salvo in Doha’s charm offensive to cement old partnerships and secure new friends as a bitter spat with Saudi Arabia and its allies drags into its fourth year this Friday. It has also allowed the small Gulf state to draw on capabilities developed the hard way in the wake of its regional isolation. In the nerve centre of Qatar’s nascent arms industry, the state-run Barzan Holdings facility, giant posters of soldiers toting locally made rifles promote “sovereignty” and “lethality”. But alongside all the gun parts and night-vision goggles, the factory is now preparing to churn out 2,000 life-giving ventilators weekly, in collaboration with US defence manufacturer Wilcox. Many are earmarked for export to what Qatar deems “friendly countries”. “We thought it would be the perfect time to try to seize the moment to… ramp up production needs,” Nasser Hassan al-Naimi, Barzan’s managing director, said of the pandemic. Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain, abruptly cut diplomatic, economic and travel ties with Doha in June 2017, insisting Qatar was too close to Iran and funding radical Islamist movements. Qatar fiercely rejected those allegations and refused to budge on 13 demands made by its allies-turned-adversaries, including the closure of the Doha-based Al Jazeera news network and shutting a Turkish military base in the emirate. ‘Blessing in disguise’ At the end of April, Naimi oversaw a military airlift from the United States of manufacturing equipment, which will initially be used to build ventilators before later being repurposed to produce military gear. “There was a five-year strategy to bring in these machines over time, but now you’ve got it all at once,” Naimi said at the glistening factory in a science park on the outskirts of Doha. The operation was reminiscent of an airlift that flew in cattle, mostly from the US, to meet demand for dairy products in the first days of what Doha calls “the blockade”. Gas-rich Qatar’s ostracism by the Gulf’s key economic players propelled a self-sufficiency drive involving stockpiling food and setting up vegetable farms, in a country once entirely dependent on imports. Despite a flurry of positive signs at the end of last year and a round of shuttle diplomacy that saw the Qatari foreign minister visit Saudi Arabia for talks, the freeze shows no sign of thawing. The blockade “worked as a catalyst and got us to where we are today,” Naimi said. “It has been a blessing in disguise and allowed us to realise our true potential and make sure that everything that we need strategically… is manufactured here.” Despite the shock of the embargo, Qatar’s economy has proved more resilient than those of its Gulf rivals — the International Monetary Fund forecasts it will be one of only a few countries worldwide to run a budget surplus in 2020.