“Change is afoot in the world’s richest nation, Qatar. Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and his Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, are said to be putting in place an ordered succession plan for the tiny Gulf emirate. The transition will see them leave a stage they have dominated for nearly two decades enabling the emir’s son Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and younger ministers to take charge. Rumours have been circulating for several months but in recent weeks, discreet communications have been passed on to various diplomats and leading businessmen alerting them that change is coming.………….”

This is, if true, an unusual event in the Gulf states. Unusual in any Arab country. I suspect the Emir of Qatar is having health issues, although there has been only one mention of this possibility in the media. Voluntary abdication is not common in the Gulf GCC states. That other involuntary kind of ‘abdication’ is quite common, as I noted in an earlier post about de Tocqueville of Qatar.
Which brings me to a couple of other interesting dynasties of the GCC states, probably the two most avaricious and most repressive of the Gulf ruling clans:

• In Saudi Arabia they play a waiting game, as the older princes die off and are replaced with other older princes. It used to take a few years to dispatch one king and usher in a new one. From now on they will be likely rotating every few months. The current King Abdullah has buried two successive crown princes in one year, but his luck may be running out. The Saudi dynasty will probably go through the elderly princes for another decade or so. At some point the king may be 100 years old, on life-support and IVs when he ascends the throne. 
  The last elderly king will probably have to turn off the lights in Riyadh as he takes his last breath. Taxidermy is frowned upon in le royaume sans la Magie, which is a good thing.
  
• In Bahrain the old prime minister, Khalifa Al Khalifa, has been in power and doing serious damage, essentially screwing the island almost, but not quite, like the late Papa Doc in Haiti. The imported foreign mercenary militias are his equivalent of the old Haitian Tonton Macoutes. For some 42 years, longer than Muammar Qaddafi ruled Libya. By now he probably smells like a pickled herring, and as oily, and possibly has the texture of over-aged smoked salmon. Nevertheless, he would like to continue looting the country, teargassing and imprisoning his way to death and a long tenure en enfer afterwords. With friendly help from other Gulf GCC potentates and the Western powers.
  

Cheers
mhg