Doha’s story has been one of rise and fall, a yo-yo in fortunes. In the 1960s one of the last British residents of the colonial class that discreetly controlled these oil-rich Gulf states observed that Doha, capital of Qatar, was “almost treeless”, so desolate was the town. At the time the sheikh-run government was also on the verge of bankruptcy, a situation repeated in the early 1990s as spending outstripped oil revenues.