Apparently, other Arab countries, Egypt in particular, do not care for the way Qatar conducts its foreign policy. The United States maintains a large military presence in the Doha area, at Al Udeid Air Base and Camp Al Saliyah; the government has also played host to Iranian delegations. (For a detailed account of Qatar’s supposedly problematic associations, see the Washington Institute’s recent policy brief). As Al-Jazeera is a creation of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, the satellite channel has been taking hits as well, such as the following:

Qatar is acting “as a mediator but it is pretending to be a major power, and it is using Al Jazeera for this purpose,” said Amr Choubaki, an Egyptian analyst. “Qatar created Al Jazeera, but now Al Jazeera is creating Qatar. It’s like when you build a robot and eventually lose control of it and it controls you.”

Yikes.

But Qatar’s ‘rogue’ attitude toward diplomacy - namely, forging alliances with countries that the Arab collective considers problematic - is certainly not without precedent. One need only reflect very briefly to think of similar “treasons” … Anwar Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel would probably be at the top of the list. Moreover, Qatar is not the only Arab country hedging its bets as it attempts to navigate a middle ground between Saudi and Iranian influence; today’s Business Week indicates that Oman is charting a similar course. Politics invariably makes for strange bedfellows; the idea that Arab countries’ interests coincide has long since been eroded.

FP’s Paul Collier writes a Pro and Con list as if he were an authoritarian leader (Egypt’s Mubarak was his inspiration). He evaluates the different avenues available to dictators whose power is subject to upheaval. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Option 1: Turn over a new leaf and embrace good government

Pros: This is probably what most people want. I might start feeling better about myself, and I might even leave a legacy my children could be proud of.

Cons: I haven’t much idea how to do it. The skills I have developed over the years are quite different—essentially, retaining power through shuffling a huge number of people around a patronage trough. My God, I might have to read those damned donor reports. And even if I worked out what needed to change, the civil service wouldn’t be up to implementing it. After all, I’ve spent years making sure that anyone who is exceptional or even honest is squeezed out; honest people cannot easily be controlled.

Worse still, reform might be dangerous. My “friends,” the parasitic sycophants with whom I have surrounded myself, might not put up with it: They might decide to replace me in a palace coup. They would probably dress it up to the outside world as “reform”!

But suppose I did it. Suppose I actually delivered good government. Would I get reelected? I start to think about all those rich-country political leaders who over the years have met me, often lecturing me on the need for good governance. I do a rough tally: They seemed to win their own elections only about 45 percent of the time.

So, even if I pull it off, I’m still more than likely to lose power. Best to cheat. But how?

It’s a bit silly, but points out the intense skepticism with which “elections” have come to be regarded in contexts where democracy is modified by words like “young” “emerging” or even “un”. As Collier remarks at the end of this piece, only the truly paranoid resist holding elections, because there are so many possible ways to manipulate the results. I found this part above, though, especially clever, because it points out how entrenched the behaviors of authoritarian governments are. Collier puts it in Mubarak’s voice to be funny, but the authoritarian tradition in Egypt didn’t start with Mubarak and in all likelihood will not end with him. The institution itself may be site of entrenchment here, not the personality of this man:

President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak

… in today’s elections in Algeria. The current President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is hoping to garner more votes than he did in the last election (84.99%). Some Algerians are concerned that getting elected for a third term would situate Bouteflika as the next “President for life” in the tradition of Hosni Mubarak, Bashar al Asad, Zine El Abedine Bin Ali, and Muammar Qaddafi. Clearly, he wouldn’t be the first.

… at least with respect to US-Turkish relations. Never fear, this article does include the obligatory interview with a rug merchant in the bazaar.

Linda Hearst comments on the emergent trend among Western journalists of predicting Dubai’s imminent demise. Her response? Any city that can emerge from essentially nothing to become what Dubai is today is not going anywhere, financial crisis or no.

… is that not funny?

Johann Hari of the UK Independent has an investigative journalism piece at the Huffington Post (are those two things a contradiction in terms?) that points out the flaws in Dubai’s sustainability long-term (or even medium-term). It’s a little melodramatic in its language, but raises some important points, primarily about the civil rights for foreigners and the damage that building a major water-consuming center in the middle of the desert does to the surrounding environment.

Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party announces its support for amending Egypt’s personal status laws and instituting a quota for female MPs.

President Obama’s visit to Turkey has inspired some internal reflection on the phrase “moderate Islamic republic” and Turkey’s sometimes confounding internal diversity.