Special Report: A MECA World Cup in Retrospect
View of the pitch in the newly constructed Education City Stadium prior to the match between South Korea and Uruguay (Wikimedia)
On November 20th, the most watched sporting event in the world commenced: the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Since the 2010 announcement, Qatar has been ecstatic to be the first Arab country to host a world cup. New developments were made across the country to prepare for the millions of people who would be arriving to watch the event, including the construction of new stadiums and hotels.
One of the authors, who grew up in Qatar, vividly remembers the excitement that broke out in the nation when the announcement was made. Cars filled the streets with people waving Qatar flags while the Emir drove around the capital city, Doha, to celebrate being named host of the most anticipated soccer event around the globe.
For as long as one of the authors remembers, soccer has dominated the sports scene in Qatar. She recalls how it was the most popular sport played at breaks in her school days and how excited everyone got over European club soccer teams. The author believes that the reason she has been actively following the FIFA world cup since 2010 was because of the immense soccer culture in the country she grew up in.
While Qatar has been filled with the excitement of hosting the world cup, several controversies have risen. The international community has been buzzing with allegations surrounding human rights issues in the country, referencing the treatment of migrant labor workers and the silencing of the LGBTQ community at the world cup.
Gulf countries such as Qatar heavily rely on the use of migrant labor with it making up 90% of the nation’s workforce. In order to construct the new stadiums, hotels, and other infrastructure, migrant workers were tasked with assisting this development through their roles in construction work. The harsh conditions which the migrant workers had to endure in the development of Doha for the event has been a focus of Qatar’s world cup. Migrant workers are required to work outdoors in a country where the temperatures reach 120 degrees fahrenheit. After adding heavy lifting, unsafe working conditions, and long hours to the immensely boiling weather, working conditions are brutal.
In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, the Secretary General of the Qatar World Cup Supreme Committee stated that around 400-500 migrant workers have died due to their work on construction for the World Cup. Most of the information regarding the deaths are in relation to extreme heat and overworking conditions that have led to cardiac arrest. However, many times no explanation was given to the cause of death of the workers, and families suffered the loss of their loved one without knowing the reason for their passing. The news of the amount of deaths in building stadiums for the world cup has caught the attention of the international community. Many criticized FIFA’s decision to allow Qatar to continue hosting the event.
Workers in Qatar have also reported wage theft by their employers. A report in 2020 by the Human Rights Watch reported that migrant workers in Qatar have gone months without getting paid, or have been paid below minimum wage. Which is less than what Qatari companies had promised in original contracts. Some employers have taken away workers' passports to prevent them from leaving the country. Furthermore, employers house migrant workers in facilities with unpleasant living conditions. Eight workers are crammed into a small room while having to share two bathrooms amongst 30 people. Kitchens and facilities are unsanitary while air conditioning fails to function properly.
In response to conversations questioning Qatar’s legitimacy to host the World Cup, the Qatari government asserted that they have made substantial progress in implementing reforms to change the conditions of migrant workers. Now, Qatar is the first Gulf country to introduce a minimum wage. Nonetheless, many call for further progress that still needs to be made in regards to workers rights.
Along with issues regarding migrant workers’ role in the world cup, controversies arose on the Qatari government's treatment of the LGBTQ community. The captains of 7 European nations’ soccer teams were set to wear rainbow armbands in support of the LGBTQ community during their games. In Qatar homosexuality is illegal and thus, FIFA banned the players from doing so. If the players were to demonstrate their support for the LGBTQ community, they would be penalized. Additionally, fans attending the world cup events were prohibited from carrying LGBTQ flags, wearing rainbow themed attire, or supporting homosexuality in any other manner.
The anti-homosexulaity laws implemented in Qatar makes it punishable by law for people of the same gender to have a sexual relationship. FIFA announced to LGBTQ fans that while they are not permitted to showcase their support for their community, they are still able to “express themselves” but should support the local culture of the host nation.
The controversies surrounding human rights issues in regard to the exploitation of migrant workers along with the Qatari stance on the LGBTQ community have dominated discussions on the world cup and its reputation.
In light of the negative perceptions that Qatar has generated globally over the last decade, as well as the large financial burden of hosting a world cup in a small country with no pre-existing infrastructure for the sport, it is reasonable to ask what Qatar seeks to achieve with this project. Though to some extent, the appeal of hosting a world cup appears natural, it may be helpful to contextualize the World Cup within a larger project of cultural diplomacy and soft power, both in Qatar and the GCC countries at large.
The Qatar World Cup fits into a larger trend towards economic diversification that began in the 1990s. Many of the GCC countries realized how problematic their national economies’ sole reliance on the highly fluctuating profits from the exploitation of eventually finite hydrocarbon resources was. As a result, all of them developed strategies to use the wealth generated by these profits to reform their economies away from their dependence. Examples of this trend abound, with perhaps the most prominent being the United Arab Emirates, who have been able to transform themselves into a global luxury tourism hub over the last thirty years. Similar plans are also being implemented in Saudi Arabia, where unprecedented infrastructure investments are being undertaken as part of the “Vision 2030.”
As part of its own National Vision 2030, Qatar has especially focused on turning itself into a cultural hub and a center of knowledge production. The first larger element of this effort was the founding of Al Jazeera in 1996, which has since become the Middle East’s principal journalistic institution. At the same time, the emirate started to develop Education City, a massive district in Doha dedicated to both premier international and home-grown educational institutions. In 2003, Georgetown University also became part of this project, joining the other American satellite campuses of Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Texas A&M, and Virginia Commonwealth University.
When comparing the development of journalistic and academic soft power in Qatar to similar efforts of other authoritarian and socially conservative countries, the genuine credibility of the Qatari institutions is quite remarkable. Instead of being dismissed as mouthpieces of authoritarian leaders, these institutions have all received great renown for their achievements: Al Jazeera is known in the region and globally to be a mostly objective and reliable source on the Middle East and GU Qatar scholars regularly make meaningful contributions to regional studies. A large part of this success can be attributed to the significant leeway given to Al Jazeera and the universities in terms of their reporting and scholarship, so that the influence of Qatari interest is seldom felt in any of their publications. That being said, the limits of this freedom are also clearly demarcated when it comes to publications related to Qatar itself.
Aside from the well-known national airline and global investments in real estate, the other significant prong of Qatari soft power has clearly been sports. While Qatar has significant investments in a number of large European soccer clubs, outright buying Paris Saint Germain in 2011, it has also hosted a number of sports tournaments prior to the World Cup, among them the 2006 Asian Games and the 2019 IAAF World Athletics Championships. This development of sports diplomacy is by no means unique to the region of course, with Saudi Arabia hosting the LIV Golf tournament earlier this year and Abu Dhabi organizing an annual Formula 1 Grand Prix since 2009.
However, the sheer scale of the World Cup as the biggest sporting event in the world, dwarfs these tournaments, and so far, in spite of all the controversy that has accompanied the buildup and the early stages of the tournament, it has arguably been immensely successful. Instead of dead migrant workers or lack of LGBTQ+ rights, the many upsets of the tournament’s group stage have been dominating the recent discourse. In this immediate sense then, the monetary and prestige costs of the tournament have clearly paid off for Qatar.
On the other hand, the nagging question of what will happen to all of the infrastructure after the moment has passed is yet to be fully answered. While Qatari economic growth is projected to slow significantly in the absence of a World Cup-induced investment boom, the state has developed a tentative plan of how the venues and surrounding infrastructure could be redeveloped to continue to serve local communities, which might soften the blow. While the realization of these plans remains to be seen, so far, Qatar has proven exceptionally prudent in the redevelopment of its economy. Accordingly, it should be expected that its post-World Cup future will be more sustainable than many would have expected. Ultimately, Qatar will likely get exactly what it originally wanted out of this tournament: largely positive attention and a higher status within international society.
