Qatar, one of the richest states in the world, has played an ambitious and dangerous role in Middle East power struggles in recent years - but it may now have overreached itself.

It was a decisive player in the intervention to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi in 2011 and was the major backer of Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.

It continues to play a destructive role in funding and manipulating Syria's armed opposition.

But all three projects now appear to have been derailed as Qatar's larger neighbour Saudi Arabia has manoeuvred to reassert itself as the dominant Arab Gulf state.

Covering an area less than two-thirds the size of Wales, the hereditary emirate of Qatar has a far higher annual GDP of $185 billion. It boasts one of the highest per capita incomes in the world as it sits on huge oil and gas fields.

Its absolute monarchy is drawn from the al-Thani family based in the capital Doha. A powerful clan even in Ottoman times, the al-Thanis dominated Qatar during the British protectorate of 1916 to 1971 before becoming outright rulers.

In June this year Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who had ruled since deposing his own father in 1995, handed power to his son Tamim, educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Hamad led a drive to diversify Qatar's economy and increase its global influence. The country's fantastic wealth is based not only on natural resources but on ruthless exploitation.

The population is 1.7 million, but 94 per cent of its 1.3m workers are foreign nationals. The expatriates range from highly paid executives in the finance and energy sectors to brutally exploited unskilled workers, mostly from south and south-east Asia.

This year Nepal's Doha embassy reported that 32 Nepalese workers were killed in Qatar in July alone, 21 directly through construction site accidents or dehydration working in temperatures of up to 46ºC.

Over the last few years Nepalese worker deaths in the emirate have averaged around 200 annually while Indians account for another 100 or so. Figures for other nationalities are not easily available as Qatar doesn't publicise migrant worker deaths.

Many migrant workers pay agencies a large fee to get work - up to £2,500 - which they have to pay off over their contract.

Whole families sell land, spend savings or borrow to meet these fees. Migrants are routinely cheated out of their wages but Qatar's labour contract system, the kafala, prohibits workers from changing jobs or leaving the country without their employer's approval. This is little different from bonded labour.

Financially Qatar exerts power through the Qatar Investment Fund, which the Financial Times (FT) has estimated to own around $100bn in assets. This sovereign wealth fund controls these through various subsidiaries. One of them, Qatar Holding, bought a quarter of Sainsbury's in 2007 and acquired Harrods in 2010 for £1.5bn.

As the FT noted in August 2012: "Since 2008 Qatar Holding has taken stakes in Credit Suisse, followed by Barclays, Agricultural Bank of China and Banco Santander Brasil. It also has a significant stake in Volkswagen as well as Porsche and BAA, the owner of London's Heathrow airport..."

Qatar has also focused on boosting its "soft power," for example through media outlet al-Jazeera.

In its early years this multilingual news channel was praised for its professionalism and for offering an alternative perspective on the Middle East to that of the unfailingly pro-Western and pro-Israeli coverage of the likes of the BBC and CNN.

But recent partisan coverage of Egypt and Syria has resulted in falling ratings in the Middle East and numerous resignations among editorial staff unhappy with political pressure to shape coverage in line with Qatari foreign policy.

Qatar is also due to host the 2022 football World Cup, though the bid is hugely controversial - mired in bribery allegations and concerns over labour and human rights violations in the construction sector.

But it is Qatar's involvement in the Libyan, Egyptian and Syrian crises that mark its emergence as a regional power.

Before the destruction of the Gadaffi regime Qatar had around $10bn invested in Libya, mostly in construction projects.

But as the government crumbled it quickly switched sides, supporting outside intervention in support of extremist militias.

At a Doha meeting of the "friends' committee in support of Libya" in October 2011 Qatari chief of staff Major General Hamad bin Ali al-Atiya admitted: "We were among [the militias] ... Qatar had supervised the rebels' plans because they are civilians and did not have enough military experience. We acted as the link between the rebels and Nato forces."

Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) referred to Qatar as "a major partner in all the battles that we fought," though the relationship soured after it emerged that the Qataris were continuing to arm Wahhabi militias behind the NTC's back.

The pattern has been repeated in Syria, where the New York Times has reported that Qatar has supplied rebels with heat-seeking missiles as well as around $3bn in military aid.

Qatar's diplomatic wrangling in Syria saw it use its influence with Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members in the "official opposition," the Syrian National Council (SNC) which was launched in Doha, to get Ghassan Hitto named as "prime minister" of an alternative government in March.

But Hitto was forced to resign on July 8 after the SNC elected Ahmad Assi Jarba as its president. Jarba has lived in exile in Saudi Arabia and is seen as Riyadh's man.

If its influence on the SNC has peaked, Qatar is still important on the military front. As the New York Times reported on June 21, Qatari aircraft have made at least three stops in Libya this year. Cargo was flown to Qatar's al-Udeid air base and then to Ankara, Turkey, "along with other weapons and equipment that the Qataris had been gathering for the rebels."

The paper didn't mention that al-Udeid is not just a Qatari airbase but home to the forward headquarters of United States Central Command, US Air Forces Central, the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the USAF and the No 83 Expeditionary Air Group RAF - in short, it's one of the most important bases in the Middle East, a major hub for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and potentially for Syria and Iran.

Finally there has been the debacle in Egypt. Qatar was a major ally of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and provided around $8bn in loans and aid to keep its government afloat.

Immediately following Morsi's overthrow by the military Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait offered Egypt $12bn in aid. The rebuff to Qatar was obvious.

Unlike Doha, which put all its money on the Brotherhood, the Saudis spread their bets.

They are not only close to the Salafist al-Nour Party, which came second to the Brotherhood in Egypt's 2012 elections, but also to the Egyptian military.

Army chief General Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is a former military attache at the Egyptian embassy in Riyadh and has many connections in the desert kingdom.

The Saudis are winning and Qatar has been humbled, for now. How quickly the new emir will be able to regain ground remains to be seen.

Doha and Riyadh have huge chequebooks. But too many people have paid the price for their ambitions in blood.