We have long advocated the need of strengthening political and commercial relations between our country and the Gulf region way before the Arab Spring surfaced and the Libyan people began their struggle for political freedom.

We had done so by advocating closer ties with these countries while also promoting the idea of a Gulf-Mediterranean Business Forum to develop networking beyond purely government to government structures and, at the same time, giving the whole process a bi-regional dimension.

The point had been made both locally as well as on a Foreign & European Affairs Committee visit prior to the last general election.

If we take Qatar as a role model, this little but highly influential Gulf country is no doubt most appreciative of Malta’s efforts to help the Libyan people in their hour of need. The very first tangible efforts to strengthen our bilateral relations were made in September 2009 when President George Abela paid a most successful State Visit there, which coincidentally also happened to be his first State Visit since assuming office as President of the Republic of Malta in April of the same year.

People who formed part of the delegation spoke highly of the warmth and empathy with which Dr Abela was received by the royal family.

Apart from paving the way for stronger bilateral links, he had also opened the first ever Malta/Qatar Business Forum in the hope of laying ‘the foundation stone’ for a new phase of Qatari/Maltese economic and commercial relations.

Though Qatar’s main thrust of its ambitious investment programme is still rightly in the gas sector, it has an impressive investment authority that is basically its sovereign wealth fund, which has already left its mark both on many European capitals as well as distant countries like the Ukraine, Pakistan and Thailand, in banks, tourism and real estate among other sectors.

In terms of value added, Qatar is also projecting itself as a regional hub for knowledge, education and research together with high value industrial activities.

As the President had pointed out three years ago, with Malta strongly positioning itself as a financial, trading, logistics and high tech manufacturing centre in Southern Europe, we should maximise the opportunities that strong bilateral links with such countries are inclined to offer, particularly given our skilled productive and creative English speaking workforce as well as our quick adaptability to high educational and training standards.

While efforts have been made over the years to boost our Mediterranean-Gulf links by putting our respective strategic locations to mutual benefit, I still think that in terms of result orientation there is so much more to achieve and so little that has been exploited in the positive sense of the word.

Some time back, the European Commission and the Arab League had opened an office in Malta to foster our mutual and active commitment to furthering peace, security and economic stability in the region, but whether it has so far yielded many or any positive results still needs to be quantified.

On a positive side, a number of reputable companies are known to have already started operating successfully in Qatar in various areas, including the financial services, logistics and hospitality sectors, both prior to the Libyan crisis and even more so in its wake.

Qatar and Malta are known to have launched a programme to provide medical treatment for a small number of Libyan children, under which some 20 children from various cities of Libya will be treated every month for the next five months. In the majority of cases we are talking of direct victims of war.

The idea of easing the strain on Libyan medical services is indeed positive even if arguably more symbolic than tangible, given the high number of wounded and maimed still in Libya awaiting treatment.

It is no secret that Qatar has also used Malta as a hub for humanitarian aid to Libya, particularly through the efforts of a senior Qatari military official who headed his country’s aid mission for Libya in Malta.

This was made possible following talks at a military level between the two countries much earlier on.

I am confident that much co-operation has also taken place behind the scenes, apart from that which has hogged the state controlled media in Malta.

One thing is certain; Qatar had made it clear that all aid for Libya was not only to be paid with Qatari funds but also purchased through our local market.

Qatar’s international profile itself has no doubt been raised considerably as a result of their Libyan co-operation, particularly given the distance between the two countries.

While some have rightly or wrongly defined Qatar as a world power in miniature, it has shown in recent years a multi-dimensional approach on both a country-to-country basis as well as from one crisis to another.

Some have been critical of the strict Wahabi form of Islam that is the state religion in Qatar, while others were somewhat critical that Al Jazeera did not even report on the suppression of the protest movement in the Kingdom of Bahrain, but one simply has to admire this small but wealthy country’s desire to review the Arab identity, rooted in the tribal traditions of the Arabian peninsula, which is indeed one of the strongest motives attributed to the Emir’s political activism.

Through the Arab Spring Qatar saw its role change from that mediator to political player.

When covering the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and even Egypt, the Doha based Al Jazeera delivered the iconic images of the Arab Spring.

It is not easy to forget that the same station had broadcast live, for several days, from Tahrir Square in Cairo during the Egyptian revolution.

A French weekly even recently described this small realm as part of a new world order.

For some, including Israel and the pro-Israeli lobby in the US, its motives remain obscure in spite of Qatar’s very strong links with the USA itself, as evidenced by their massive Al Udeid air base there.

One reason for this unease is that while Qatar’s links with the West have consolidated further, they have the best of relations with both Hamas and Hizbollah, placed as they happen to be so close to Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Israeli sources claimed that Qatar has been one of the chief backers of the PA’s bid to declare an Arab state in PA controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, and has been a major contributor of anti Israeli groups abroad.

But this inbuilt flexibility is a mirror image of the country’s disproportionate dynamism. Particularly as it has acquired a reputation for sharp quick responses to crises in the Arab world and for what has been described as ‘modern and unorthodox thinking.’

As the Foreign Affairs publication by the Council of Foreign Relations recently claimed, among the many countries that supported Libya’s rebels in their fight to unseat Gaddafi, Qatar was a particularly enthusiastic partner. In actual fact, since the mid-1990s, Qatar has pursued an activist foreign policy, using its influence, non-threatening military position and skills as a mediator to interject itself in conflicts around the Middle East and beyond. Still, Qatar’s actions in Libya took most analysts by surprise.

If anything this signalled a qualitative change in Qatari foreign policy.

In 2008, it mediated a successful resolution to the 18-month long political stalemate in Lebanon, and in recent years has also facilitated temporary agreements between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels.

But, as the COFR stated, never before has Qatar so overtly supported one side or made such an active intervention.

Perhaps the key to its success is also that Qatar must have had the support and permission of the international community to do so, as it did in the case of Libya.

Whatever its motives, we need to act fast and pro-actively – the time is more than ripe for us to boost our bilateral relations with this dynamic new force as well as the countries in the region to which it belongs.

The same way that we used our bilateral co-operation with Qatar to help the Libyan people, we now need to put it to good use to foster and develop our strictly bilateral relations between our two countries too on a purely one to one basis, as well as within a Mediterranean and Gulf perspective and dimension.

Mr Brincat is a member of the Foreign & European Affairs Committee

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