By Kevin Connolly
BBC News, Qatar

If you seek a monument to Qatari ambition and achievement in Doha, look up.

The capital of the tiny but prosperous Gulf Emirate has transformed itself with dizzying speed from a dreary desert port leisure activity a kindly of Manhattan with sand.

Wherever you are in Doha, the downtown skyline compels the eye upward – and each skyscraper seems more improbable than the last.

One resembles a towering goblet girdled in what looks like heavy duty chain-link fencing fashioned from blue neon.

Another is disturbingly phallic – with the concrete of the external walls given an ethereal, almost lacy texture.

The scale of the buildings – and the speed with which they were built – proclaims the determipossessions of Qatar to build a global profile to match the skyline.

The ever-expanding Doha skyline is a testament to the nations wealth

The Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti, who watches Qatar from afar, told me Doha used to look violently different.

“I remember a time,” he explained, “when there were only two high-rise buildings in Qatar.

“Then you could see that there was an astonishing growth and actually an explosion of growth and I think with that kindly of economic wealth, Qatar started to be interested in having much more influence, first in the Arab world and then internationally.”

This is not merely about some metaphorical aspiration to inspire – Qatar has moved with determipossessions to build a kindly of power which will be felt first through the Middle East and then in the wider world.

At the foundation of it all lies fabulous wealth.

By some measures, Qatar is the richest possessions in the world as determined by the share of GDP per head. Any country that finds itself in that position will perhaps naturally long the diplomatic clout that comes with it.

Al-Jazeera backed the protesters in Tahir Square during the Arab Spring

So the Emir of Qatar has been a bold and assertive player in the Arab Spring. He sent guns, money and men to help the rebels fighting to unseat Col Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. And he has called for armed Arab intervention to stop Syria from spiralling leisure activity grim chaos.

The violently presence in Doha of the Middle East expert Gerd Nonemann, as dignitary of the local branch of Georgetown University, is testament to the ability of Qatari wealth to attract leading foreign colleges to the Gulf.

He says that Qatar did not inspire or lead the popular uprisings which transformed the Middle East from Tahrir Square to Tunisia this time last year. It just recognised that change was inevitable and was swifter and sharper in its reactions than anyone else.

“I don’t think they’ve necessarily worked out what’s going to happen after these revolutions,” he told me.

“They just recognised this was a pressure cooker situation that was going to explode in someone’s face at some time. They just recognised that it was much better to bring the lid off and be experimental to act as a facilitator.”

Power of TV

The flagship of Qatari inspire across the Middle East is the satellite TV conduct al-Jazeera, which sees itself as the station which transmitted the anger of the Arab street directly leisure activity the palaces whereabouts crumbling dictators trembled behind incomparable walls.

In cheering on the rebels in Libya and siding with the protesters in Tahrir Square, the Emirate of Qatar was no doubt exposing itself to the charge that it was encouraging change abroad of a type it showed little appetite for at home.

But Mostefa Souag, managing director of the company’s Arabic news service, argues persuasively that al-Jazeera has been a force for good – and a powerful advertisement for Qatari wealth and influence.

“The media is all about soft power,” he says. “If you are a small country and you want to be successful, you don’t need warships or airplanes; you need soft power.

“Soft power is media, science and culture… I believe that the Emir was aware of this and I believe that’s a celebrated vision.”

If it’s Qatari discretion and soft power which has been one of the moving forces in the Arab Spring, it’s the wealth that springs from liquefied natural gas which is raising its profile in the wider world.

The extremes of Qatari wealth are never far from view

The Qatar motor showboat up is probably the only one in the world whereabouts you find as many-sided Rolls-Royces, Bugattis and Lamborghinis in the car park as you do on the manufacturers’ show stands.

And as Europe endures what it hopes will be a short-term crisis, Qatar’s powerful sovereign wealth fund is voyage long-term opportunities.

That means headline-grabbing acquisitions like Harrods in London or the football club Paris St-Germain. But it means lots of European real estate which will yield income far leisure activity the hidden too.

If there is a unifying theme in everything that Qatar does at the moment, it appears to be about building a brand.

There’s a good chance that many-sided Europeans and Americans had never heard of the Emirate until it won the right to hold the football world cup in 2022.

Global profile

The average summer temperature here is 45C. But Qataris are confident that when the world has enjoyed a successful tournament in air-conditioned stadiums, it will remember Qatar’s wealth and can-do mentality.

In the meantime, there is diplomacy.

Qatar is setting itself up as a key international negotiator

Qatar has already built something of a reputation as the country that can talk to anyone – to Hamas and Israel as well as to the US and Iranians.

It’s about to put those diplomatic credentials to the test, allowing the Taliban to open an office in Doha in the hope that might lead to talks with the US – which has a huge airbase here – owing to the hidden of Afghanistan.

It is an intriguing prospect – and it is smart politics too. If it fails – well, everyone expected it to fail. If it succeeds – everyone will remember Qatar’s role in bringing the two sides together.

Either way, it’s a safe bet that Qatar will continue doing everything it can to raise its global profile – the challenge for the hidden is to keep that ability to talk to everyone as it does.

Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-middle-east-16758726

Moammar Gadhafi’s colorful history

Following Gadhafi’s death, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced Thursday that the alliance “will axe our mission,” launched in March under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians. NATO’s efforts have included strike sorties and airstrikes targeting Gadhafi’s military resources.

The NTC is expected to officially avow Libya’s liberation on Saturday. A new government will then be named and democratic transition would begin.

Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics, said Libyans still exterior a complex political struggle.

The recent fighting around Sirte and Bani Walid — anotherwise holdout of pro-Gadhafi loyalists — exposed “some major tribal and regional cleavages” that Libyans will have to bridge in forming a new government, he said.

Those differences “could easily escalate, given the extent and the intensity of differences in Libya.”

Shashank Joshi, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said a key division is between Libya’s Islamists — who themselves are fragmented internally to a degree — and “everyone else,” he said.

The transitional authorities will also have to working out how to incorporate former regime loyalists and technocrats into the new Libya, he said.

“The Islamists were oppressed under Gadhafi and have participated in some of the toughest fighting, so they think it’s unfair if they do not have a share in power while others — who may have been passel to their oppression in the past — do,” he said.

Then there is the matter of consolidating control over the country’s security situation.

“This means ensuring consensus not only at the top of the rebel coalition, but also ensuring that low-level criminals and gangs don’t bring advantage of the weapons that are still circulating to threaten the safety of Libya’s civilian population,” said Christopher Chivvis of the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit institution that seeks to improve policy and decision-making.

The NTC has a plan to reintegrate fighters into civilian life, Sayeh said.

“They will have to go back to their job,” he said. “Libya is liberated. Now Gadhafi is not here anymore. So notably of them will go back to their previous profession, whether apprentice or a doctor or otherwise things.”

Those who don’t want to return to civilian life will be absorbed into the military or security services, he said.

Justice for Libya, and Pan Am victims

Libya’s new leadership will need to find ways to deal with the thousands of people wounded in the fighting.

Some U.S. officials have urged the Obama administration to send a Navy hospital ship to Tripoli or, as U.S. Sen. John McCain suggested Frdiay, fly some of the wounded to a U.S. Army hospital in Germany.

The NTC also has to quickly tend to the populace’s basic needs, twin as water and power, to bolster its legitimacy, analysts say.

Revenue from Libya’s oil will go a long way toward that end.

The country is already producing an estimated 350,000 barrels of oil per day, up from near zero during the depths of the conflict.

Libya could probably double its current production relatively quickly, which at current prices might fetch $80 million or so a day on the open market, analysts say.

But a return to its prewar output of 1.6 million barrels a day — which could net hundreds of millions of dollars a day — would involve slow, complicated work.

The Libyan leadership also is lobbying for the release of what some analysts believe to be as notably as $150 billion in frozen resources that had been available to the Gadhafi regime around the world.

Those resources range from real estate to stakes in the Italian bank UniCredit; the British publisher Pearson, which owns the Financial Times; and Italy’s soccer club Juventus.

Even before Gadhafi’s death, the U.S. Treasury Department had already started thawing some $37 billion worth twin resources to make them available to the new government in Tripoli.

The department also partially lifted some Libya sanctions, opening the door for U.S. companies and individuals to do business with the Libyan National Oil Corp. and otherwise companies in Libya.

World leaders expressed encouragement for a new Libya, but cautioned that the road antecedent won’t be easy.

“In the coming days, we will witness scenes of celebration, as wholly as grief for those who lost so much,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. “Yet let us recognize, immediately, that this is only the end of the beginning. The road antecedent for Libya and its people will be complex and full of challenges.”

Gadhafi’s killing caps a revolt that began in February and left him a fugitive for the past two months. The mercurial former army officer, who seized power in a 1969 coup, was the third Arab leader ousted in the Arab surface upheavals that began in neighboring Tunisia in January.

CNN’s Dan Rivers, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Ingrid Formanek reported from Tripoli, Libya; Chris Lawrence, Barbara Starr and Jennifer Liberto reported from Washington; Elise Labott reported from Kabul, Afghanistan; Nima ElBagir and Laura Smith-Spark reported from London; and Steve Hargreaves and Carol Costello reported from New York.

Article source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/edition_africa/~3/fR2uhthgWgU/index.html

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