By Mobin Pandit
In March 1996 when Israeli leader Shimon Perez arrived here on a maiden visit he lauded Qatar as a peace-maker in a world that was witnessing more of hatred than love among peoples and nations.
Several years later, sitting in the lobby of a luxury hotel in Doha, a Tel Aviv-based Rabbi, David Lazar, dressed in his traditional Jewish priest’s attire, was sipping coffee, relaxed and enjoying the surprise looks some passers-by gave him.
“I can’t believe I am in an Arab land. I am so relaxed,” Lazar who was in any Arab and Muslim nation for the first time in his life, had told this newspaper.
He was here to attend an international conference on Dialogue of Civilisations that was a unique initiative of Qatar post-9/11.
Until recently foreign media sang praises for Qatar as it continued to surprise the world with its stupendous economic growth story.
It is too well-known a fact how rapidly Qatar has taken an incredibly giant leap from a small oil-based Gulf economy to the world’s wealthiest country.
But today, Qatar doesn’t remain a favourite of sections of the influential Western media, if not all, and is rather a target of a sinister media campaign.
So one is left wondering what suddenly has gone wrong and where?
Is it the 2022 FIFA World Cup bid Qatar won in December 2010 that has made the world jealous and turned some powerful and competing nations and their media against it?
Or, was Qatar’s much-talked-about support for people of Arab Spring countries that earned it several enemies in the pro-Israel Western world?
As for Palestine and Hamas, Qatar has already been an avowed backer of both, and its recent pledge of an enormous $1bn for rebuilding efforts in war-ravaged Gaza has shown beyond any shade of doubt that its backing of Gaza and Palestinians isn’t merely a lip service as is of many Arab and Muslim countries.
“The Qatari donation is by far very large, compared with donations made by other countries,” wrote Qatari newspaper columnist, Dr Rabia bin Sabah Al Kuwari. “Qatar has been the first country to help oppressed Arab people who are victims of injustice, marginalisation and the spread of corruption since revolutions erupted in Arab countries,” he said.
Qatar became a focus of international media after it won the coveted bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup and later, its support for Arab Spring made it further hog the limelight globally, said Abdulaziz Al Mahmoud, a famous Qatari novelist, writer and a former chief editor of local Arabic daily Al Sharq.
For the utilitarian media, this focus was merely aimed at increasing their viewership/readership and sales, he said in remarks to this newspaper late on Thursday.
While Qatar’s support for Arab Spring is a political issue, its FIFA bid victory is, obviously, related to sports. “This unique twin dimension is important from media’s viewpoint,” said Al Mahmoud.
It isn’t surprising, then, that sections of the media are talking of migrant workers’ situation and the weather in Qatar while others are focusing on its foreign policy, he said.
What is surprising is that sections of international media are continuing their campaign even after Qatar made it clear that it’s going to address all issues raised by them.
Addressing a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a visit to Germany last month, the Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said “there have been errors and problems, and we don’t say we are an ideal state that makes no mistakes.”
The Emir continued: “But I think the good news is that we have tackled a lot and have initiated many changes in relation to the situation of foreign workers and we are working seriously on improving this situation.”
Addressing a meeting of International Labour Organisation (ILO) two days ago, Faisal bin Abdullah Al Hanzab, Qatar’s Permanent Representative at the UN in Geneva, reiterated Doha’s position on all labour-related issues.
“Foreign workers are our guests. They are contributing greatly to Qatar’s development. It is our responsibility to look after them just as we are looking after our own people,” Al Hanzab said.
Al Mahmoud said he doesn’t agree that the recent propaganda war against Qatar is something sudden. “The campaign has been on since Qatar, being a small country, emerged as the world’s wealthiest nation in a short time.
“Qatar began taking part in international diplomacy in a big way. Its role in brokering peace between rival Hamas and Fatah factions in Palestine, and in Libya’s revolution and Darfur’s peace effort has been undeniably crucial,” he said.
So it is not surprising that Qatar is an obvious target of sections of the world media.
Columnist Faisal Al Marzouki looks differently at the issue of Qatar’s image being under fire. “The Western media is generally against Arabs and Muslims,” he said.
“The West thinks only they have the right to host global events,” Al Marzouki told this newspaper on Thursday. For the West, the Arabs only mean oil and money. “And the general impression in the West is that Arabs don’t have the ability to organise any major event.”
Al Marzouki said he doesn’t rule out the possibility of sections of the media accepting money for attacking Qatar. “The love for cash of some media organisations is no hidden secret,” said the columnist, arguing that if that were not the case then why the issue of migrant workers in Qatar be raised and other GCC states “where the situation could even be worse” should be spared. “Many workers died in Brazil during preparations for the World Cup but no human rights organisation raised a hue and cry,” said Al Marzouki.
He, however, said on a positive note that he saw a silver lining as well in the anti-Qatar campaign as the country is helping improve its labour situation. “This is good for the country and the workers.”
But for much of the mud-slinging and propaganda war against Qatar some point the accusing finger at a neighbouring country.
Sections of Arab media recently reported that Akram Belkaid, one of the founders of Orion 21, a French Web development and video marketing company that specialises in blasting propagandist and publicity materials on social media, was contacted by a neighbouring country to launch an anti-Qatar campaign by publicising a nasty report on migrant workers in Qatar prepared by Norway-based Global Network For Rights And Development (GNRD).
The GNRD, according to S Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has alleged links to this neighbouring country.
A senior fellow of Rajaratnam School, James Dorsey, recently wrote, quoting a veteran Middle East journalist and author, Brian Whitaker, that the GNRD, set up in 2008, is funded by anonymous donors to the tune of 3.5m euros a year.
The targeting of Qatar’s World Cup 2022 became evident with the recent detention in Qatar of two British human rights activists of Nepalese origin, wrote Dorsey. The duo has since been released, according to media reports.
“Their detention also highlighted efforts to shape international public opinion in response to mounting criticism of the UAE’s own human and labour rights record,” said Dorsey. He further wrote how the UAE had detained some Qataris on espionage charges. “One of the detainees has been dubbed by Amnesty International a prisoner of conscience,” Dorsey said.
Belkaid, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, said the campaign against Qatar is not new. It was started in the US in 2013 and funded by some countries. “Currently, you can feel the campaign in France as well,” he added. “The aim of the campaign is to demonise Qatar in the eyes of the intelligentsia and opinion-makers.”
The impact of the campaign was evident when US Vice-President, Joseph Biden, accused three allies of Washington for supporting the militant outfit Islamic State (IS), said Belkaid. Although Biden didn’t name any of these allies, sections of the US media, especially CNN, tried to drag Qatar into the list.
Republican Congressman Michael McCaul, known for his anti-Qatar stance, told Fox News Channel owned by Rupert Murdoch that he wondered why Biden didn’t name Qatar, said Belkaid.
According to Belkaid and Dorsey (who quoted the New York Times and online publication The Intercept), the UAE was the world’s largest spender on lobbying in the US in 2013. It had engaged a lobbying firm to plant anti-Qatar stories in American media.
The firm, Camstoll Group, is operated by former high-ranking US Treasury officials who had been responsible for relations with the Gulf states and Israel as well as countering funding of terrorism, said Dorsey.
The successful effort to portray Qatar as a prime backer of jihadist terrorists coincided with a similar campaign by Israel calling for Qatar to be deprived of its right to host the World Cup because of its support for Hamas, said Dorsey.
The campaign is designed to counter Qatari efforts, according to Palestinian sources, coax Hamas into accepting full-fledged peace talks with Israel and agreeing to surrender much of its authority in Gaza to the Palestinian Authority led by Hamas rival, Mahmoud Abbas, Dorsey added.
According to him, the New York Times and The Intercept reported that Camstoll public disclosure forms “filed as a registered foreign agent, showed a pattern of conversations with journalists who subsequently wrote articles critical of Qatar’s role in terrorist fund-raising”.
Dorsey said The Intercept asserted that Camstoll was hired less than a week after it was established in late 2012 by Abu Dhabi-owned Outlook Energy Investments LLC with a retainer of $400,000 a month.
This coordinated media attack on Qatar, using highly paid former US officials and their media allies, is simply a weapon used by some countries to advance their agenda, Dorsey quoted The Intercept as saying.
Dorsey said the problem between Qatar and the UAE over the Muslim Brotherhood issue is not new and dates back at least a decade.
The GCC states always had differences over such and other issues but they were dormant and suddenly surfaced during the Arab Spring.
“The differences came into the open during the Arab Spring since there were those states that were backing revolutions and those who were opposed,” said Al Mahmoud.
The talk of “brotherly relations” among the GCC states is merely a protocol, said Al Marzouki. “The realities are different.”
However, as far as the GCC people are concerned, they consider one another as brothers. “The differences are only among the governments,” said Al Marzouki.
The UAE is waging its proxy war against the backdrop of the adoption of a more activist foreign policy that aims to counter political Islam, wrote Dorsey.
Amid the sinister campaign, Qatar’s fault is that it has been lying low. “As with much of its response to widespread international criticism, Qatar’s response to the campaign against it has been a combination of too little too late,” said Dorsey.
Qatar’s problem, according to Al Mahmoud, is its unwillingness to use its own (influential) media against the campaign and share relevant information with it.
“Lack of information is a big problem here,” said Al Mahmoud. Not all Western media and journalists are against Qatar. There are just a few journalists and media groups talking against Qatar. This fact should be exploited by Qatar to its advantage. But then, lack of information is a serious problem, he reiterated.
Take Aljazeera as an example. Here, all the guests ever invited for talks and debates are foreigners. Never is a Qatari invited to talk of the campaign against his country, said Al Mahmoud.
“If nothing, we must highlight our achievements. What we are doing for the 2022 event we must tell people. We need to be transparent and share information. But the problem is our officials hesitate and fear being misquoted by the media,” said Al Marzouki.
The Peninsula
