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Fires in Qatar: the conspiracies 14, June 2012

Posted by thegulfblog.com in Qatar.
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3 comments

A few months ago when stratfor was hacked and it was discussed endlessly for a few days on the internet, I was struck by the tone of the reporting. In hushed terms, it was described as if a quasi-CIA had been hacked as opposed to a bunch of reporters and interns writing copy. Truly, after reading straftor for a few years on and off, the notion that they were anything other than bog-standard never occurred to me.

Well, it seems that my rating of ‘bog-standard’ was far, far too generous. For they now allege that the real reason for the deadly fire at the Villagio shopping mall in Qatar was because of some kind of Shia splinter terrorist group, seeking revenge upon Qatar for its meddling somewhere in the Middle East.

There are, of course, numerous plausible parts to the story. It is entirely feasible if not certainly true that Qatar as a country has angered a great many people around the region. Many of those angry people are Syrian and Libyan, both of whom have a history, shall we say, of using irregular and asymmetric means of retaliation. The notion that they might attack Qatar is, therefore, plausible. (Let’s forget for the moment that Qatar has been rigorously backing Hamas and – more importantly in this context – Hezbollah for many years).

But, if you’re going to push such a story, really, honestly and truly the very last person that you would wish to quote setting up your thesis is a Sunni Bahraini MP. I mean really. Bahraini Sunni MPs – or rather some of them – spend their lives finding imaginary Shia bogeymen to blame stuff on. It’s practically a sport and an art-form in Bahrain. Nary a semblance of truth, nor a shred of evidence is typically present yet this seldom prevents such gents stoically, studiously, and vociferously ignoring reasoned evidence to the contrary (to wit: the Bassiouni report) and pursuing the ‘Shia are behind everything’ defence.

To me this means that either the stratfor author/intern is:

1) Wholly and profoundly unaware of the basic realities of this region and thus completely untrustworthy and incompetent

or

2) Schemingly aware of the realities of the region and overtly attempting to push one particular narrative

I’d lean for option (1), but stand ready to be corrected.

‘Aaah’…the useless or Machiavellian reporter would retort…’we note that:

So far, there is no evidence to confirm such involvement.

Well imagine that! Isn’t that just super analysis and journalism? Running a story with the provocative title

In Qatar, Possible Retaliation for Syrian Opposition Support

only to later note that there is no evidence for this?

What other articles could they run with no evidence? George Bush possibly converts to Islam? Saddam Hussein maybe comes back to life? Ayatollah Khameini apparently an avid Twister addict? The mind boggles.

Worse still, this article puts stratfor directly in the same basket as Press TV. They recently ran a story stating that the fire in Doha was the work of the Qatari Opposition and/or the Qatari Royal Family. These stories are worse than Press TV’s usual fare. Don’t get me wrong, its perpetually garbage, but usually there’s a bit more of a serious tone about it, where as these are so egregiously and obviously wrong that one suspects that the authors couldn’t really be bothered to think up a decent or remotely convincing narrative.

Stratfor either need to present some evidence – some anonymous source noting that one Shia person is in custody being worth precisely fudge all – or retract this exceedingly poor article.

On the Doha fire 29, May 2012

Posted by thegulfblog.com in Qatar.
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14 comments

A fire at one of Qatar’s largest malls – Villagio – has killed 19 people including 13 children. A tragedy of this scale has not been seen in Qatar in recent times and has been felt deeply by all communities.

While an incident of this size is never to be expected, there is a certain grim lack of surprise that there was such an incident. There have apparently been three fires in the last 18 months at Villagio and Qatar’s other large mall, City Centre, suffered severe damage from a fire only few weeks ago.

Apparently in this incident it seems that the fire alarms only went off in some places; no one was encouraged/told to evacuate; the sprinkler systems malfunctioned; there were no maps for Civil Defence to use to coordinate their efforts; the initial Civil Defence reaction was to send in people without gas masks (!); and the nursery which was so awfully affected was a death-trap waiting to happen on the first floor with only one staircase for access, which was soon burned down forcing the Civil Defence people to hack their way in through the roof.

Why are there such problems?

First it needs to be noted that such an incident, in my view, could have happened anywhere in the Gulf. I don’t believe that such procedures are that much better at, for example, malls in Kuwait or KSA. Nevertheless, this incident happened in Qatar and we must examine it.

Part of the culture of management in Qatar is overly deferential. Overall there is a profound lack of initiative and a box ticking culture pervades. Diktats from on high often come thick and fast with little systematic planning overall. Conflicting policies are common. Yet no one below the elite level would dare criticise such policies for fear of retribution or reputational ‘damage’.

Qatar is a young country. It has the accoutrements of a modern state which can be bought in whole-sale, but the boring, decidedly not interesting but essential rules, regulations, and oversight purviews are sorely lacking.

Moreover, it is a basic human trait that it often takes a tragedy to galvanise people into action. British authorities knew that they had a huge problem with football hooliganism and crowd control in the 70s and 80s but it took the awful events at Hillsborough in 1989 for authorities to actually act. This is just the way that it is.

Media

Qatar’s established media get an F- for their coverage. Late to the story and then patchy in their coverage, they have all been decidedly unimpressive. Believe it or not, QBS radio, Qatar’s key local station, did not lead with this story but with Sheikha Moza chairing a conference at the Convention Centre in its 18:00 bulletin the day after the fire. This is a profound indication of the levels of uselessness that pervade the local media, which are all but irrelevant to meaningful coverage of issues.

Instead it is Doha News, a ‘new media’ blog and twitter based news service, that has rightly received universal praise for its comprehensive coverage. Truly they have put all other news organisations however big or small to shame.

Reaction

An investigation committee has been announced specifically to look into this incident and into fire safety more generally. There are several counts of criminal negligence that need to be accounted for both in the Villagio management structure itself; in the nursery for its apparent [perhaps I should say, ‘presumed’ – for we don’t really know what happened there yet] lack of response; in the planning ministry for licensing such a nursery with such apparently poor evacuation procedures; in the Interior Ministry generally for its lack of oversight of basic fire safety procedures in such a key location; and in the Civil Defence and the other reaction forces for their seemingly chaotic response to an incident.

I hope that the reaction will not be the public arrest of some Philippine and Indian management-level people alone.

I also fear that there will be new misguided stringent rules. Don’t misunderstand me; tough new rules on fire alarm drills or procedure practice are welcome, but the authorities must resist the temptation to ram through new but ultimately ineffective knee-jerk laws to assuage the need to ‘do something’.

World Cup

Does this incident have any repercussions for World Cup 2022 in Qatar? Not really.

Firstly, it is over a decade away which ought to give authorities a long time to evaluate such procedures and systems. Hopefully a rigorous approach to this issue will be instilled and in every day usage.

Secondly (and somewhat confusingly) whatever issues were present before this incident will still be present. For example, the desire to simply ignore ticket holders in the Asian Cup final between Australia and Japan and to fill the stadium for cosmetic purposes with ticketless workers to potentially create a security incident out of nothing; that kind of single, absurd decision taken by ‘a Sheikh’ who cannot be questioned will remain for it is ingrained in the culture here. Such decision making – rule by whim as I have dubbed it – can be quick and decisive but intrinsically suffers from a lack of strategic understanding and its consequences can be wide-ranging.

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Of course there is no satisfactory way to conclude such an article. Fiendishly bad luck coupled with a seemingly long list of violations of best practice have resulted in an immense tragedy in Qatar. The slimmest of silver linings can, as ever, potentially be seen on the horizon in terms of future improvements in safety, not that this could ever amount to a sliver of comfort to the bereaved. Everyone’s thoughts are with them.