Qatar’s former ruler sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who died on Sunday aged 74, transformed his small Gulf emirate into a global actor in diplomacy, energy and media. He ruled from 1995 until 2013, when he engineered a smooth transition to his fourth son, sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, a first in recent Arab history.
Hamad took power after ousting his father in a bloodless coup while the latter was abroad. He inherited an emirate with nearly empty coffers and built it into a major regional and international actor.
To achieve this status, he focused on developing Qatar’s huge natural gas resources. By 2006, it had become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, boosting the country’s GDP by 2,400 per cent.
Although an autocracy, in 2004 Qatar adopted its first permanent constitution and held municipal elections in which women voted and ran for office.
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Investments in international business, aviation, infrastructure and sport enabled Qatar to stage the 2022 Fifa World Cup.
By maintaining cordial relations with Arab neighbours and Iran, Qatar has been able to mediate in regional disputes, including the current crisis between the United States and Iran.
In 1996, Qatar launched the Al Jazeera news channel, which has become an influential global media network. It is occasionally critical of world and regional powers – with the exception of Qatar.
In 1999, Hamad became the first Gulf leader to visit the Palestinian territories since Israel’s 1967 occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and met the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah compound. Expressing regret that he had never visited Jerusalem before the occupation, Hamad commissioned a three-hour television documentary on its history and Palestinian identity.
Qatar funded the rebuilding of Gaza’s main highways and the construction of Hamad City in Khan Younis, a $58 million project for 53 apartment blocks designed to house 15,000 people from low-income families.
In 2019, the Sheikh Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics became the strip’s top facility for amputees and children with hearing loss.
The most prominent of Hamad’s three wives, sheikha Moza bint Nasser – the mother of the current emir – has played an important role in promoting education through the Qatar Foundation, established in 1995.
Qatar boasts 30 higher education institutions, including state-run Qatar University, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and several international branches hosted by the foundation.
During Israel’s war on Gaza, launched after the Hamas raid on Israel on October 7th, 2023, most of Qatar’s developments in the strip have been reduced to rubble, while 2.1 million Palestinian residents have been squeezed into 30 per cent of the enclave’s territory.
