The World Cup kicks off in under a week. A fog of ambivalence lurks. Ripples of excitement meet with the unanswered questions and eyebrow-raising contradictions that have shaped the twelve-year-long debate on Qatar. Our certainty-craving conscience yells, tell us what to think! Is this World Cup good or bad? Should we support or boycott it? Sometimes our brains want a binary response, but the more I think about it, I can't see a simple answer.
The first World Cup in the Gulf marks an exciting moment for football fans in the Middle East. Football is said to be dominated by the Western gaze and eurocentrism. You only have to look at the big-money European leagues, a sore lack of coaches from outside of Europe at elite clubs, and the underinvestment in football in the Global South to know why. In British and other European colonies, football was used, not as a beautiful game, but to enforce ‘rule and order’ by imposing cultural imperialism. British maneuvering in Qatar since 1868 bring up questions about our colonial past conveniently omitted from history lessons. Following the Qatar-Bahraini War, Britain signed a treaty with Qatar in 1868, acknowledging it as an independent state. In 1916, after the Ottomans renounced sovereignty, Qatar became a British ‘protectorate’. As a ruler in Qatar, Britain reaped financial benefits from its pearling industry, based on slavery (which they were supposed to fight, having signed the 1926 Slavery Convention) and the discovery of oil in 1940. Britain’s militarist foreign policy in Qatar and across the Persian Gulf has and continues to support repression and human rights abuses for its own economic gain.
Football has also acted as an important self-organising mechanism for resisting colonialism. In some respects, Qatar 2022 presents an opportunity to show the world that football is played and loved in the Middle East, not just in the West. Goal Click, a platform that tells hidden stories from football through photography, has curated a collection of beautiful snapshots from Qatari football culture, showcasing the loving connection with the game in the emirate.
Since Qatar secured the World Cup bid in 2010, media coverage has raised various criticisms. First of all, Qatar’s use of bribery to obtain hosting rights for the World Cup. Among a long list of other issues raised were the awful working conditions for migrants building Qatar, the Qatari regime’s criminalisation of same-sex relationships, and the absence of freedom of association and press. It is imperative to highlight all of these issues.
The Qatar World Cup bidding process is not the first time we have seen Fifa ruthlessly prioritise money over principles. An investigation into the 2006 World Cup found that Germany had bought the bid using a former Adidas CEO’s money. We can shout about Qatar and Germany using bribery, but what about Fifa in all of this? Fifa has long been swimming in allegations of corruption. The absence of transparency within Fifa and national football governing bodies erodes trust and leaves endless opportunities for the pursuit of money to dominate. Filling the pockets of football officials and helping corporate brands score big does nothing for the future of the game. Greed is breaking football. In its current form, elite football shows just how rigged free-market capitalism is and stands in the way of creating an alternative vision for the sport based on integrity and ethical leadership. Fifa and national football governing bodies should be setting an example within their countries and across the world, but unless they are accountable, transparent, and corruption-free, we will continue to see money blight the beautiful game.
The criminalisation of same-sex relationships and the LGBTQ community in Qatar is horrifying. It is devastating for swathes of fans who won't be able to watch this World Cup. Devastating for LGBTQ people in Qatar who have been harassed, arrested, and abused by Qatar authorities. Fifa’s prioritisation of money above all else means that LGBTQ players' and fans’ rights, safety, and ability to participate have been compromised. That Fifa still hasn’t responded to the English FA’s letter asking permission for the England team to wear OneLove rainbow armbands in support of LGBTQ rights speaks volumes. A few weeks ago, the UK Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, told LGBTQ fans travelling to Qatar to be ‘respectful’ of the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws. In November 2021, James Cleverly described UK relations with Qatar as “more important than ever”. Britain imports oil from Qatar and exports arms and surveillance technology, both of which reinforce repression in the country, as well across the Middle East and Africa. The foreign secretary’s irresponsible rhetoric shows how, when it comes to ‘special’ economic and military ties, human rights play second fiddle.
The treatment of migrant workers in Qatar has made for shocking reading. Of the numbers we know, as of a Guardian report from February 2021, more than 6,500 migrant workers have died building Qatar. The world over, migrant workers are the backbone of economies and nation-building, yet they are dehumanised. The legacy of colonialism in modern-day capitalism is key to understanding what is happening not just in Qatar, but in the UK immigration system, at Manston Migrant Centre, in garment factories, and in every space where migrants are exploited and their rights are breached.
In Qatar, 95% of the workforce are migrants and one-fourth of global remittances originate from the Persian Gulf. Migrants from all over the world, in particular, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and sub-Saharan Africa have built the incredibly technologically advanced stadiums that we will see on our TV screens, often losing their lives in the process. In her book “Does Skill Make Us Human?: Migrant Workers in 21st-Century Qatar and Beyond”, Professor of Urban Planning at New York University, Natasha Iskander, explores the tension between the highly skilled feats of architecture that migrants in Qatar have produced for the World Cup and these workers being referred to as ‘unskilled’. Natasha examines how the kafala system, which requires all workers to be sponsored by a company, results in migrant construction workers being exploited and dehumanised as a result of their 'unskilled' status. In response to international pressure, the kafala system was reformed in 2020. These reforms should now allow workers to change jobs without employer permission and have prompted an increase in the minimum wage.
Cards of Qatar, a project launched by Blankspot, a Swedish investigative journalism platform, swaps out the football stars who would usually feature on football cards for the migrant workers who have built Qatar’s stadiums, roads, and hotels for the World Cup. Alongside the cards, long-form articles immerse the football fan in the complex stories behind each person’s decision to go to Qatar to work. In one of the accompanying Cards of Qatar articles, Martin poses the pertinent question: ‘So who are the people that died and why did they go to Qatar?’. Martin recounts that one of his first assignments when he first graduated as a journalist was in Dubai, where he interviewed migrant workers as the 2008 financial crisis hit. Martin describes the eerie situation that he found. 'Everything had stopped. Skyscrapers were abandoned, and the airport car park was filled with new cars, all abandoned. Migrant workers were stranded, trying to figure out a way to get home.’ Martin travelled with one of the workers he met in Dubai, back to his village in Kerala, South India, where he produced a story delving into the push-pull factors of migration.
Martin reflected, ‘when people started to write about the World Cup and migrant workers, in the back of my head, I knew it has been the case for decades that migrant workers are building Qatar, UAE, Saudi, all of these countries are based on migrant workers.’ Martin explained that since Qatar secured the World Cup bid, people tried to go there to interview migrant workers who were willing to speak up, ‘I feel the story isn’t really there, the story is in South Asia, you need to understand that poverty is like a hammer, it will strike down on villages and change things’. The cards highlight the stories of workers from Bangladesh and Nepal who, prior to moving to Qatar, relied on generating income to support their families from smallholdings, which they struggled to live on.
Reflecting on his conversations with the families of deceased workers, Martin stated: ‘it was clear that the money meant everything to them, so of course when family members died, their families worry about their future’. Martin added, ‘One researcher told me, workers who migrate to Qatar tend to follow this pattern. In year one of working in Qatar, they will change the roof of the house, in the second year they are able to send their kids to school, and in the third year they move house.’ There are also stories of people who managed to buy a hotel in Qatar and exited poverty; they 'succeeded'. As Martin explained, ‘the Gulf man success story is glorified, it is what many migrants dream of, but of course, they pay a high price, spending maybe 8-10 years away from their families. It’s complex’. Migration is therefore central to this dream of building a better life. Yet as Babar and Vora’s (2022) paper posits, the concept of racial capitalism places migrant workers at the bottom of labour hierarchies, devaluing their lives and leading to the deaths and workplace injuries that we have seen in Qatar. Racial capitalism operates globally, it is endemic to the UK’s hostile environment, which results in the deaths of migrants in detention centres and as they try to reach British shores. It is not an either-or situation. We must continue to talk about the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar; while discussing how these same examples of exploitation and dehumanisation of migrants exist in the UK, Europe, and across the world, as a legacy of colonialism.
The World Cup, like all major international tournaments, is not just about football. Qatar has spent at least 220 billion dollars on this World Cup, to show its influence to neighbouring emirate countries and the world. Beyond the price tag, we must remember the human cost. This World Cup raises many uncomfortable questions about the exploitation of migrant workers and the erosion of human rights in the interests of profit-making. A hypocritical Orientalist undercurrent exists within the debate, which suggests we have a right to point out Qatar's human rights abuses while erasing our own from history. We don't. The World Cup further highlights both Britain’s colonial past and also how embroiled the government continues to be in human rights abuses in Qatar and other authoritarian regimes. Whether or not we watch the football, these issues still need to be faced.