The machinations of Qatar’s former prime minister

Although he left the Qatari government, following the passing on of the reins of power from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani to his son Sheikh Tamim in 2013, the shadow of Hamad bin Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, the former prime minister and foreign minister, hangs over the Doha regime.

Foreign media sources attribute various titles to Hamad. British newspaper The Independentdescribed him as a “powerful plutocrat because of his wealth” and “the man who bought London”. The Financial Times too called him “King of Real Estate in London”.

Forbes magazine said that Hamad was “one of the 140 politicians around the world, whose names were mentioned in the Panama Papers scandal”. Kuwaiti journalist Fouad al-Hashem described him as “addicted to political tricks, with contradictory behavior”.

A western news website said: “He combines political intelligence and economic influence”. A Qatari official confided to an American website, that Hamad is “the economic owner of Qatar”, while on Wikipedia, he is described as “an important businessman”, and “an open liberal face.”

The number of titles attributed to describe him stems from the controversial nature of his personality, and the multiple, contradictory and sometimes ambiguous roles he played in his country before and even after stepping down.

He can afford to travel around the world in his private plane, the fourth of its kind in luxury as well as sail around the ports and resorts in his luxurious yacht, the 8th largest of its kind in the world.

Personality complex

Some newspapers have compared Bin Jassim with an emperor. It is said that the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, being short, suffered from a complex, which impacted him, which explains all his planning and the moves.

Napoleon started off as an officer of Corsican descent from a small island in the Mediterranean. This island did not meet his aspirations for being distinguished and to get over his complex of being very short.

He was thrown into the military leadership position after the French revolution, finding ultimately what he was aspiring for. But the platform he had was not enough for his ambitions and personality which he thought should be beyond France, looking for a broader empire that includes Europe and Russia together.

“The Napoleon complex” pushed Europe into tragic wars, drained the French economy and its military power, and ended up uniting everyone against the short-statured emperor who eventually ended up being an exiled prisoner on St. Helena island, humiliated and disgraced at the hands of his British jailers.

There is no resemblance between Napoleon and Hamad bin Jassim, but the latter – with a height exceeding 183 centimeters and a fortune in excess of £20 billion, according to British reports – believes that he is greater than any average citizen or Arab official on the 12,000-square kilometers wide Gulf Peninsula.

This complex may have been the reason that led diminutive Qatar to engage in policies and activities that support and fund dubious organizations and groups in order to then assume a mediatory role in conflicts and clashes in Africa, the Arab world and Asia.

The aim was seeking influence in regional and international affairs in the political, economic, financial, environmental and military spheres – in addition to using Al Jazeera network to enunciate Qatar’s policies.

Hamad bin Jassim, who adopted the policy of generating false media hype about Qatar during his term as foreign minister and prime minister from 1992 to 2013, has succeeded in marketing himself in Western political circles as a politician, thinker and someone with a vision.

He is always available for interviews, participate in seminars and lectures, and even buy and host senior journalists, media professionals and researchers, for lunch or dinner at one of the many luxury hotels he owns in the United States or Britain.

The interviews, lectures and seminars that Hamad bin Jassim conducts provide “rich literature” about his thinking. Of course, the ideas in themselves are worthless, but their importance stems from the fact that they are issued by a person who was a senior official in the State of Qatar.

He considers himself the godfather of the coup d’état of 1995, the Qatari foreign relations engineer for 21 years and the evil conspirator who has undermined the GCC and the Arab countries.

In his interview to Middle East Quarterly (December 1996, a year after the Qatari coup), Hamad bin Jassim said Saudi Arabia was the leader of the Gulf states. He said: “It’s good to have a leader,” adding: “I consider Saudi Arabia as a great regional power. Historically, we have the greatest relations with Saudi Arabia, and they treat us as equals.”

But in a conversation with the Financial Times, 20 years later on April 2016, he said: “Saudi Arabia led the Gulf region for thirty years, and has controlled oil prices for the benefit of the West, what did we gain in return?”

He has claimed that Qataris had intervened in Syria because Saudis were not willing to do so. Suddenly Saudis changed their mind about Syria without informing the Qataris, causing “unhealthy competition”.

Contradictory comments

Regarding the Yemeni affair, Hamad bin Jassim said in his lecture at the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies in Britain in November 2015 that Saudi intervention in Yemen was justified and necessary to strike the Houthis, “because Saudi Arabia itself was threatened by Iranian interference, so it was necessary that Saudi Arabia hit back.”

In his lecture at the Qatar University in April 2017, he said that Iran has used Yemen to its advantage and exploited the contradictions on the Yemeni issue to achieve its strategic goals and to make a radical change in the balance of power.

At the surface, all of this seems to be indisputably correct, but the leaked exchanges between Hamad bin Jassim and Muammar Qaddafi, and the documented evidence that Saudi Arabia has in its possession, confirm that this former Qatari official, who still enjoys a great deal of power, has always conspired against Saudi Arabia.

In his talks with Qaddafi, he stressed that Saudi Arabia is too big to remain a single state and that its division is inevitable. This division can only come from those who are involved in a conspiracy of thought, execution or the financing of that execution. Two Qatari and Libyan officials were behind the conspiracy to assassinate late King Abdullah.

Conspiracy stories

The stories of Qatari conspiracies carried out by Hamad bin Jassim are well known today. How many millions of Syrians fell and how many hundreds of thousands perished in Yemen and Iraq? How many Arabs were deceived when Hamad bin Jassim projected Bashar al-Assad as a young hero who would save his people?

How many Syrian officers and soldiers were deceived in the name of the revolution, only to end up being killed at the hands of the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda and ISIS? Who got Erdogan into Syria and funded Turkish adventures in Syria and Iraq? And who encouraged Qaddafi to conspire, then suffer from the conspiracy they agreed upon with NATO?

Shall we count his games in Yemen? He fomented reforms in favor of al-Ahmar clan, led the country into rebellion by destabilizing the state entity and bringing in the Houthis. And just remember that Hamid al-Ahmar considers himself the personal friend of Hamad bin Jassim.

 

Source :  english.alarabiya.net

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