Oriente Médio: 2011, o ano de ouro do Qatar

Poucos países tiveram ganhos tão expressivos em 2011 como o Qatar.


O país foi escolhido como sede da Copa do Mundo de 2022 -- não sem polêmicas em torno da compra de votos no seio da FIFA --, e sua economia cresceu expressivamente em meio à crise financeira internacional.


Mais importante, o pequeno emirado estendeu sua influência política pelo Oriente Médio, por meio de dinheiro, de intervenções militares, de soft power -- leia-se Al Jazeera -- e de conexões com políticos (governistas e dissidentes) de toda a região. Isso só foi possível pela janela de oportunidade aberta pela Primavera Árabe e pela transição vivenciada nos três grandes Estados líderes do Mundo Árabe (Egito, Arábia Saudita e Iraque).




Não por coincidência, saíram duas interessantíssimas matérias sobre o assunto nessa semana, publicadas pela BBC e pelo La Vanguardia.




Qatar flexing muscle in changing world


By Michael BuchananBBC News, Doha

Qatar's military joined the Nato-led intervention in Libya, training the rebels

On a recent Sunday afternoon, the normally sober, orderly centre of Doha was transformed into a triumphant melee of noise and colour as thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate Qatar's National Day.

This year has been something of a coming of age for this small Gulf nation.

It strongly backed the rebels in Libya and has led regional criticism of the crackdowns on protesters by Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

"We have to contribute with whatever we have - politics, money or by supporting military action, whatever it takes to support other nations," said one Qatari reveller.

At the state-of-the-art studios of Libya TV in Doha, they know all about support from Qatar.

The station was set up in the early days of the Libyan conflict to counter the propaganda being broadcast on Libyan state TV by Col Muammar Gaddafi's supporters; it is still being completely funded by the Qatari government.

Qatar also joined the Nato-led military action in Libya, helped train the rebels, flew the injured to Doha for medical treatment and provided humanitarian aid.

It is estimated to have spent hundreds of millions of dollars so far on Libya.

Huda al-Srari, the general manager at Libya TV, denies the Qataris have any say in the channel's editorial output, and takes their support at face value.

"I have no proof that they are looking for something from Libya," she says. "They are looking for money? They are very rich. Maybe they are not looking for anything, just to help their sisters and brothers in Libya."

Region in transition

Unburdened by any threats or major concerns at home, Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani has been willing to step into the role usually occupied by other Arab leaders, and to use his time and money to reshape the region.

Qatar is one of the world's richest nations and its economy, heavily dependent on oil and gas, is expected to grow by about 18% in 2011.

"Some of the key big powers in this region - Egypt, Saudi Arabia - are in transition, so Qatar has found itself with the ability, the leadership and the money to play a role," says Salman Shaikh, an analyst at the Brookings Institute in Doha.

"I've often heard the lament in Qatar that the Arab world has fallen behind in terms of human development, in terms of technological advancement. So the hope is that we'll be moving towards a more stable and more development orientated region than it currently is."

In one of Doha's most distinctive districts, Souk Waqif, about 20 women were selling delicious homemade food one recent evening - stews, curries, spicy crepes and Arabian coffee.

All the women wore abayas - a traditional, long black Islamic garment - and most wore shaylas - a long scarf that is wrapped around the head - as well, a reminder that despite Doha's image as a glitzy centre of Western-style skyscrapers, Qatar is still a conservative Muslim society.

Like neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the royal family of Qatar and most indigenous Qataris follow the ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Islam, but society in Qatar is more accepting of the role of women, says newspaper columnist Reem al-Hamri.

"I can drive; I can hold any position I want. Everyone is equal, women can be leaders," she says.

"For me wearing this - the abaya and the shayla - if it's going to cover my body and my hair, it's not going to cover my mind, my ideas."

Long-standing relationships

Still, there are concerns in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt that Qatar is using the unrest to support and finance Islamist parties.

Following elections in Tunisia, won by the moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, a demonstration was held outside the Qatari embassy in Tunis bemoaning Doha's influence.

Some members of Libya's National Transitional Council have criticised Qatar's influence in the country, while in Egypt, Qatar has been accused of helping fund the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mr Shaikh, however, warns against reading too much into the connections, saying Qatar is not embarking on some ideological push.

"Qatar for the last 20, 30 years has been providing a home for a lot of the individuals who had to run away from places like Libya and Tunisia. These invariably have come from Islamist backgrounds. As these people get elected, Qatar has long-standing relationships with them."

Qatar ended its recent National Day celebrations with a spectacular fireworks display, a further sign of the confidence and optimism that permeates the entire nation.

With its neighbours in turmoil and the West distracted by economic woes, this tiny emirate has the money, the connections and willingness to play a much greater role on the world stage in the coming years.

Documentário: The Death of Yugoslavia

The Death of Yugoslavia (BBC) (1995)

Episódio 1 - Enter Nationalism

Episódio 2 - The Road to War

Episódio 3 - Wars of Independence

Episódio 4 - The Gates of Hell

Episódio 5 - A Safe Area

Episódio 6 - Pax Americana

Sugestões de leituras sobre política russa (Foreign Affairs)

What to Read on Russian Politics

Kathryn Stoner-Weiss

Senior Researcher and Deputy Director at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Summary: An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on Russian politics.

Over the last two decades, observers of Russian politics have debated whether or not the country was a democracy under its first president, Boris Yeltsin, and what kind of autocracy it became under his successor, Vladimir Putin. Other key themes have been what exactly happened during the transition from communism and how to characterize the country's post-Soviet economy.

The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. By John B. Dunlop. Princeton University Press, 1995.

John Dunlop's account of the demise of the Soviet Union in the late summer and fall of 1991 is incomparable in its attention to detail, and it reveals a different Mikhail Gorbachev than the one usually depicted in the Western press -- portraying him not as a victim of a Keystone Cops coup attempt, but as a possible accomplice in the effort to depose him. Gorbachev might have been waiting to see who would emerge triumphant, Dunlop argues -- the State Committee on the State of Emergency (including members of his own Politburo) or Yeltsin, the newly elected president of the Russian Federation and Gorbachev's political nemesis.

Yeltsin: A Life. By Timothy J. Colton. Basic Books, 2008.

Timothy Colton's sweeping narrative of Yeltsin's life and political battles is unparalleled in its coverage of the political and personal journey of the founder of modern Russia. In Russia, Yeltsin has largely been reviled as a drunkard who conceded too easily to Western demands. He is also often blamed for the economic ills that befell the country in the 1990s. This biography provides a more nuanced view. Yeltsin's critics have argued that Colton is soft on his subject, but the book is actually relatively balanced and worth reading for the insights the author culled from unique interviews with Yeltsin and his family.

First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President. By Vladimir Putin, Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov. PublicAffairs, 2000.

This is an informative short book of interviews with post-Soviet Russia's second president, offering a window onto his thinking and early career. When Putin was appointed prime minister by Yeltsin in August 1999 and then became acting president five months later, following Yeltsin's unexpected resignation, little was known about him. No books on his life were available, and few Russians had heard of him. To educate the public about its new leader (and help him win election as president in his own right in March 2000), the Kremlin set out to build up Putin's image. A select group of Russian journalists was given access for a series of interviews on Putin's life and beliefs, and this book is the result. Readers learn that Putin was as surprised as anyone to have been named Yeltsin's preferred successor, and he admits to having taken the job only on Yeltsin's insistence. Putin describes his KGB past and says he never quit the Communist Party when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but rather quietly slipped his party card into his desk drawer.

Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change From Gorbachev to Putin. By Michael McFaul. Cornell University Press, 2001.

Michael McFaul's book offers a broader discussion of the development of post-Gorbachev Russian institutions. He analyzes the unintended consequences of the simultaneous political and economic transitions in Russia, and, thanks to unprecedented access to key decisionmakers, the book is replete with insider reflections on the emerging political process. McFaul was recently appointed to the staff of the National Security Council as senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, so in addition to offering insights on Russia's difficult path away from communism, his analysis might hold some clues to the Obama administration's future policy toward Russia.

Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics. By M. Steven Fish. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Where McFaul's book is largely an account of the early successes of Russian democracy, M. Steven Fish looks at the failures of the process. He blames them not on inert antidemocratic Russian political culture nor on the structural obstacles highlighted by modernization theory -- that is, the idea that Russian economic development was insufficiently advanced to generate the social changes required to support democracy. Instead, he points to institutional changes during the Yeltsin years, the lack of economic reforms, and the curse of an economy dependent on natural-resource exports.

How Capitalism Was Built: The Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. By Anders Åslund. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. By Marshall I. Goldman. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Few good books have been written on the fascinating and unpredictable course of Russian economic development. Two worthy of note, however, are Anders Åslund's How Capitalism Was Built and Marshall Goldman's Petrostate. Åslund is a longtime observer and analyst of the Russian economy who also served as an adviser to Russian policymakers in the early 1990s. His book provides an excellent overview of the uncertain road to economic growth in Eastern Europe in general and Russia in particular. Critics might argue that whatever economic system Russia has today, it is not capitalism, but Åslund provides compelling arguments as to how the system came about by describing the choices and mistakes made over the last 20 years. Goldman's Petrostate, meanwhile, is an account of Russia's largely post-Yeltsin economic boom. Written for a general audience as much as for scholars, the book focuses on Russia's role as the world's second-largest (after Saudi Arabia) exporter of crude oil. Goldman has had good access to policymakers and allows readers to get the flavor of how, say, the Russian gas giant Gazprom functions in practice. The book is particularly interesting to read now, as the country struggles with the drop in oil prices during a global economic recession.

COMENTÁRIOS DO URBI ET ORBI:

Recomendamos, com particular ênfase, o livro-entrevista de Putin Em Primeira Pessoa (em tradução livro do original russo Ot pervogo litsa, já que o livro ainda não foi publicado em português no Brasil), junto com o excelente artigo de Adi Ignatius para a Time (A Tsar is Born), que apresentou Putin como a Pessoa do Ano em 2007.

Digna de recomendação, também, é a obra de Marshall Goldman. Ele é considerado o maior especialista em economia russa e contribui frequentemente com artigos para a Foreign Affairs desde 1963, conforme pode se ver aqui.

Estamos aqui nos restringindo aos aspectos domésticos da Rússia. Considerações a respeito da literatura sobre a política externa da Rússia mereceriam mais umas duas ou três postagens em separado...

Adaptado de Foreign Affairs.

Foto: Getty Images.

Sobre países e animais

Sobre países e animais

Dentro do processo de criação de uma nação, é fundamental que ela esteja fundada em um conjunto de mitos e símbolos (verdadeiros ou inventados) que dêem coesão social e sentimento de pertencimento a ela. Entre eles podemos citar hinos, brasões, canções e heróis. Esquece-se, entretanto, da figura do animal nacional, ou seja, um bicho que corporifique todas as virtudes (e defeitos) atribuídas à nação em questão.

A tarefa de atribuir-se um animal à nação não cabe, porém, a legislações e editos governamentais - não existe artigo na Constituição Francesa que fale que o galo é o símbolo nacional, por exemplo. Encarrega-se dela a cultura popular, principalmente jornais e cartuns, que acabam criando um imaginário popular que nos leva automaticamente à associação entre países e animais.

Logo, a Rússia é o urso, os Estados Unidos são a águia, o Reino Unido é o leão, a França é o galo, o Irã é o gato (o persa), a Itália é o lobo, a Austrália é o canguru, a Nova Zelândia é o kiwi (o pássaro, não a fruta!) e a China é o dragão ou o panda.

Interessante é notar como os países herdeiros de grandes impérios geralmente possuem como animal nacional um bicho que não faz parte de sua fauna. Reino Unido, Holanda e Bélgica possuem como "mascote" o leão, a fim de demonstrar a extensão de seus (finados) impérios e associar-se às qualidades do animal, especialmente a força.

Tigres, lhamas e condores são os animais nacionais de determinadas regiões do mundo. Os tigres estão presentes no Sul e Sudeste Asiáticos, as lhamas os condores na América do Sul.

Agora resta saber qual é o animal nacional do Brasil. Arara, jaguatirica? Qual outro? Será que não sabemos ainda por causa de nossa sortida fauna ou por que não temos as características da brasilidade?