Qatar less activist, but still active in projecting soft power

In any week Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani is photographed presiding over events from football finals to conflict negotiations. With a beaming smile he glad-hands power-brokers and ordinary citizens, the very model of a younger generation Gulf Co-operation Council leader – his age alone breaking a mould of gerontocracy that several senior GCC heads hardly appreciated when he took over from the now ‘Father Emir’, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, in June 2013. Tamim is reputed for a canny understanding of his people and the peninsula’s potential. But in many respects he remains an enigma, with his style of rule the subject of speculation among the expensively assembled guests who attended the 21-23 May Qatar Forum. (GSN should disclose they included its editor.)