Transition in Qatar: Will he or won’t he?
By James M. Dorsey
Conventional wisdom predicts that 33-year old Sheikh Tamim
bin Hamad Al Thani will adhere to his father’s use of sports as a key foreign,
defense and security policy tool to embed Qatar in the international community.
Experts and pundits suggest that Sheikh Tamim at best will nibble at the fringe
of his father’s at times bold policies by expanding the government’s focus on domestic
issues.
No doubt, Sheikh Tamim has demonstrated his interest in
sports as head of the Qatar Olympic Committee and by creating Qatar National
Sports Day, a popular annual event on February 14. That move coupled with his
chairing of the Supreme Education Council lies at the core of the suggestion
that he will focus not only on the emirate’s regional and global projection but
also on his country’s domestic affairs.
As always, the devil is in the detail. No doubt, outgoing
emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani will be remembered as a visionary who
put his tiny country on the world map, changed the Middle East and North Africa’s
media landscape with the creation of the Al Jazeera television network, offered
the Gulf an alternative vision of leadership by stepping aside to make place
for a younger generation and turned Qatar into a nation with the world’s
highest income per capita of the population.
Few Qataris will question the achievements of Sheikh Hamad,
who on Tuesday handed over power to his son, a virtually unprecedented step in
a region in which rulers hang on to power untill death even if they at times
have experienced a deterioration of health that has incapacitated them not only
physically but also mentally. A wave of demand of change sweeping the Middle
East and North Africa only serves to highlight the significance of Sheikh Hamad’s
move. “The time has come to turn a new leaf where a new generation steps
forward… Our young men have proven over the past years that they are a people
of resolve,” Sheikh Hamad said in a nationally televised address.
Sheikh Hamad’s accomplishments notwithstanding, conservative
segments of Qatari society with whom Sheikh Tamim at times appeared to
empathize have questioned some of the side effects of the emir’s policies,
including:
n
Huge expenditure on a bold foreign policy that
put Qatar at the forefront of regional demands for greater freedom and change but
also earned it significant criticism;
n
Unfulfilled promises of change at home that
would give Qataris a greater say in where their country is going;
n
A stark increase in foreign labor to complete
ambitious infrastructure projects many of which are World Cup-related and have
exposed Qatar for the first time to real pressure for social change;
n
More liberal catering to Western expatriates by
allowing controlled sale of alcohol and pork;
n
Potential tacit concessions Qatar may have to
make to non-Muslim soccer fans during the World Cup, including expanded areas where
consumption of alcohol will be allowed, public rowdiness and dress codes
largely unseen in the Gulf state, and the presence of gays.
A discussion in Qatar about possibly transferring ownership
of soccer clubs from prominent Qataris, including members of the ruling family,
to publicly held companies because of lack of Qatari interest in “the sheikh’s
club” illustrates a degree of sensitivity to popular criticism.
Sheikh Tamim has moreover enhanced his popularity by his
close relationship to Qatari tribes, his upholding of Islamic morals
exemplified by the fact that alcohol is not served in luxury hotels that he
owns and his accessibility similar to that of Saudi King Abdullah. He was also
the driving force behind last year’s replacement of English by Arabic as the
main language of instruction at Qatar University. He is further believed to
have been empathetic to unprecedented on-line campaigns by Qatari activists
against the state-owned telecommunications company and Qatar Airways. Sheikh
Hamad appeared to anticipate a potententially different tone under Sheikh Tamim
by urging Qataris “to preserve our civilized traditional and cultural values.”
Much of the criticism of Sheikh Hamad’s policies have been quietly
supported by Saudi Arabia whose relation with Sheikh Hamad, who came to power
in a bloodless coup in 1995, has more often than not been troubled. Sheikh
Tamim could well bring a different tone to Saudi-Qatari relations. Since the
eruption of the crisis in Syria, Sheikh Tamim has been the point man in coordinating
policies with the kingdom and instead of the emir greeted guests as they
arrived in March for an Arab summit in Doha.
“Sheikh Tamim will not rock the boat. He is well-versed and
immersed in Qatari vision and policy. He understands the importance to Qatar of
sports. At most, he will be more publicly embracing of traditionalism in what
remains at the bottom line a conservative society,” said a Qatari with an
inside track.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s
Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog.
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