Is Qatar the most two-faced nation on Earth?

In the distance, there is Canary Wharf, the sprawling financial powerhouse of the country, as well as the Olympic Village and One Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive block of flats, where a five-bedroom apartment is on sale for £65 million.To the north, there is Camden Market, which attracts millions of tourists each year. Also across the Thames is Harrods, perhaps the most famous shop in the world.Dotted here and there on the streets below, amid the tiny red buses, are other landmarks of London life: Sainsbury’s local stores, the London Stock Exchange, Chelsea Barracks.What few may realise is that these buildings and businesses — including the Shard itself — are all either partly or wholly owned by Qatar, a country smaller than Belgium, with just 300,000 citizens, which, only a few decades ago, was an impoverished desert state whose major industry was pearl fishing.All that changed with massive oil and gas finds in the 1980s and 1990s. So many petro-dollars have since flowed into the country — a former British protectorate, which became independent in 1971 — that it is now one of the richest nations on Earth, so rich that it can provide its people with free electricity and petrol at just 15p a litre.The country’s ruling Al-Thani family have used the extraordinary riches that have come their way to make a seamless entry into the heart of British Establishment, investing more than £10 billion in the process. The business interests of Qatar reach into the very sinews of our economy. When the London Stock Exchange came under siege from rival German, American and Australian exchanges in the mid-2000s, Qatar came to its rescue, buying a 20 per cent stake that it still holds today.More recently, Qatar played the role of matchmaker when two giant mining companies, Glencore and Xstrata, merged in 2013, with former Prime Minister Tony Blair playing the role of referee.This week, the youthful Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, flew into Britain on his first official visit, and will today be hosted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace, as well as lunching with David Cameron.In a similar vein, four years ago, a state visit by the country’s then ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani (the father of the current Sheikh), involved a spectacular horse-drawn carriage procession through the streets to Windsor Castle, where he and his statuesque third wife Sheikha Mozah were entertained by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh for three days. This year, meanwhile, Prince Charles was in Qatar for an official visit.These new-found Arab friends of British royalty who profess their love of the West have no interest, however, in our parliamentary democracy and tradition of free speech.Back home, they rule a hardline Islamic state with absolute power — a state that practises a strict regime of sharia law, in which homosexuals and adulterers face a possible death penalty, life imprisonment, or flogging.They are also accused of turning a blind eye to the funding of terrorism and the bankrolling of the Islamic State — the butchers responsible for the torture and beheading of British hostages Alan Henning and David Haines — while simultaneously signing up to the coalition of Western and Arab countries against IS.Little wonder a growing number of leading voices in Britain, America and the Middle East have branded this the most duplicitous country in the world. It has even been described as a ‘Club Med’ for terrorists on account of some of the dubious characters living in luxury in the country. (dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.Az