Qatar has emerged as the pea-sized power behind the Arab League’s tough new stance over Syria

Under the title “Qatar, the tiny Gulf state that has turned into a big player in the Great Game”, the British daily The Telegraph reported that Qatar has emerged as the pea-sized power behind the Arab League's tough new stance over Syria.

The daily said that almost exactly a year ago, the Queen hosted a state dinner for “one of the world’s more colorful couples, the portly Emir of Qatar and his spectacularly attired wife, Sheikha Mozah”, The Telegraph correspondent Richard Spencer said he wrote at the time that there were two interesting things about this tiny country: it was very rich, Everyone seems to hate it.”

“In the intervening 12 months, the emirate has become much better known. Its jets have flown alongside our own over Libya. It has showered largesse on pro-democracy movements, even as its pet television station, Al Jazeera, publicised their revolutions. At home, the Emir announced the statelet’s first elections. Yet the dislike has only got worse. What has the poor old nouveau riche country done?,” the report said.

The daily pointed to that a lot of Arabs burn the Qatari flag in hatred to Qatar’s interference in their politics, taking former Libya’s interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril as an example. He used to say that “had it not been for the Emir, might now be swinging from Gaddafi’s gibbet.” However this week, the daily said, he excoriated Qatar as “the most obvious” case of foreign powers relentlessly pursuing their own interests.

Abdulrahman Shalgam, Libya’s envoy to the United Nations, was blunter. “Who is Qatar?” he asked in a television interview. “Does Qatar even have an army? Qatar only has mercenaries.”