In the three months leading up to the FIFA World Cup in Doha, Qatar, once acclaimed, suffered a media lynching in Europe on an unprecedented scale.
It was quite surprising, for such a small country in the Middle East, which has never waged war on anyone, which has never invaded any of its neighbors, which has never had its population shot at.
Qatar is certainly not a paradise on earth, nor a model state.
It neither destroys the political democracy of Switzerland, nor the social model of Denmark, nor the technological courage of Israel.
But he deserves neither this excess of honor nor this indignity.
Read alsoQatar facing the challenge of an extraordinary world
A desert peninsula, the size of two French departments, clinging to the Arabian Peninsula, Qatar is a conservative Bedouin Sunni monarchy, of Wahhabi tradition. The country lived on camel breeding and pearl fishing until he oil and gas were found there just before the Second World War.
It was following the first oil shock (1973) then…
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