Qatar's Maverick Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani

Qatar's maverick Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, has been getting some excellent press lately--for good reason. He's fresh from mediating a peace agreement between Lebanon's bickering Sunni, Shiite and Christian factions. The agreement ended 18 months of constitutional paralysis in Lebanon. He's mediated a truce between Yemen's warring factions. He's been coaxing Palestinian rivals Hamas and Fatah into a truce of their own. And he's managed to shale hands himself with George W. Bush, Syria's Hafez el-Assad, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without alienating any of them.

"Since Sheikh Hamad ousted his father in a bloodless coup in 1995," The Economist wrote in June, "observers have questioned the apparently erratic course of Qatari foreign policy. But under the guidance of his distant cousin, Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim, the long-serving foreign minister, and more recently also prime minister, Qatar has cut the apron strings that traditionally tie smaller Gulf states to bigger, older regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and adopted a firmly independent line."

The New York Times this week devotes a lavish 40 inches or so to the emir's diplomacy trotting: "Despite occasional diplomatic problems and frequent complaints, Qatar’s policy seems to have worked, catapulting the country to new levels of recognition around the globe."

Besides his interests in international diplomacy, the emir, now as corpulent as William Howard Taft at his girthiest, has channeled his younger days' fascination with sports (and personal accomplishments as a diver) into making Qatar an international sports venue. The country now hosts the Qatar Open Tennis Championship (which Maria Sharapova just won), it hosted the 15th Asian Games in 2006, and its athletes have won two Olympic medals (in Barcelona in 1992, Mohammed Ahmed Sulaiman won the Bronze in the Men's 1,500m; in Sydney in 2000, Said Saad Asaad won the bronze in Weightlifting in the Men's 105kg category, lifting 420 kg).

Here's my new profile of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani.