Matt Bevan

Most of the actual work in Qatar was done by migrant labourers and indentured servants.

By the 80s, the labourers outnumbered Qataris three to one and lived as a virtual underclass with almost none of the rights Qatari citizens had.

Menial tasks are reserved almost exclusively for non-Qataris.

They definitely didn't get free cars and unlimited health care.

It wasn't a particularly sweet deal for them.

The other dark cloud hanging over it all was Saudi Arabia.

Big Brother is Saudi Arabia, with which Qatar shares its only and unmarked land border.

Khalifa and his people live like kings, but only in the material sense.

They were reliant on Big Brother for security.

And when push came to shove, it was the Saudis who were really calling the shots.

Qatar could have just lived with that reality.

It's what their fellow emirs in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates decided to do.

Basically accept that they were all a big, happy family of Sunni Arabs and that there was more that united them than divided them.

Just let the Saudis run the show.

Don't rock the boat.

Just sit there quietly and be rich.

But in 1995, Khalifa did something that no Qatari emir should ever do and went on holiday to Switzerland.

his son Hamad saw an opportunity to take a leaf out of his dad's book.

Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani seized power from his father in a palace coup.

The thing was, the new emir, Hamad, wanted to exercise more autonomy over Qatar's foreign affairs than his father had.