The Qatari World Cup

 

Somehow, I simply can't get excited, even slightly, about this year's FIFA bean-fest.  As World Cups go, it's the first one I've failed to have any enthusiasm for - and it has nothing to do with the controversial location.

I understand the controversy.  I watched the draw that awarded the competition to the country live on television while working in Trinidad, way back in 2010. Like everyone else, it came as a surprise, as did the award of the 2018 competition to Russia.  In all honesty, that was more annoying to me, since England had bid for it too, and it was disappointing not to get the nod again after nearly 50 years since the glorious summer of 1966.  Although the worst excesses were still years ahead and perhaps unforeseeable, I had even then doubts about Putin, who at the time was strutting around on the world stage as it he owned it.  It seemed to me that such behaviour was out of character - way out of character! - for someone who had formerly been a high ranking KGB officer. It seemed to me, even then, that he undoubtedly had blood on his hands, and was not the benevolent modern leader he was being made out to be, leading his country into a powerful but peacefully dominant position in world affairs.   On the basis of the saying about leopards and their spots, I didn't trust the man at all.  Without wishing to blow my own trumpet and say I told you so......I think I've been proved spot on.

But my American colleagues were absolutely outraged, since Qatar was awarded 2022 instead of the USA.  Coming so soon after the Snowden affair and WikiLeaks publishing the cache of classified material given to them by (then Bradley) Manning which proved that America's conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan had been, shall we say, less then professional (highlighting as it did avoidable friendly fire incidents and cases of completely ordinary men, women and children - not to mention foreign reporters - all unarmed, being essentially murdered by air-strikes based on the most spurious, if any, intelligence) being snubbed by Blatter and FIFA was the straw that broke the camel's back.  I can't remember such total outrage over something so relatively unimportant as that shown by my esteemed colleagues.  They were angry, they felt victimised, they insisted, possibly correctly, that it was all funded by brown envelopes stuffed with cash being handed out with the name tags at the award meeting and wanted the CIA involved....  I fell about laughing, which didn't do me any favours at work, but what the hell: I just found it funny.

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Fast forward three years, and I found myself working in Doha.  The company had made me redundant and after several months of job hunting, and setting up my own consultancy, I managed to get a six to twelve month contract at a bank there.  In the event, I was only there for about four months, as for reasons totally beyond my control, the project was cancelled amid a flurry of lawsuits between the three companies that were project stakeholders,  But I was there long enough to form an opinion of the place and the people.

Doha, then, was a growing city, springing up from the surrounding desert, and a vibrant, multi-cultural place to be. It had some of the most spectacular modern architecture I've ever seen anywhere in the world: in my view it exceeds even Dubai, despite the existence there of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa - and that is saying something.  The picture at the top of this piece I took one November evening on a waterfront stroll after work - there were similar views all over the place. Mixed in with all the modern stuff were smaller, traditional Arab houses and shops, and a big souk at one end of the bay that, like all such places, sold silks and carpets, spices of all kinds and scents, and cages full of animals and birds - it was a fascinating place, especially one guy I saw, strolling along with about four wives in tow, three or four laughing and chattering kids, all dressed in the full Arab robes, including a big curved knife stuck in his belt.  On his shoulder, watching everything closely with its beady eyes in a constantly swivelling head, sat a full grown falcon.  Apart from me, no-one batted an eyelid: perfectly normal behaviour.  I found it all fantastic.

The people at the bank were all perfectly friendly and helpful to we foreigners, even the few who were part of the Family that owned the bank and half the country.  I hadn't realised some of them worked there, until I bawled out one very beautiful girl, mid-twenties I suppose, who worked in the bank's Product Sales department, because she was playing about on her mobile phone when I was running a training course she was attending.  I told her if she was going to take thing seriously, the phone had to go off or be given to me immediately, as it was disturbing the other participants.  Failing that, then stop wasting all our time and leave the group.  She was as good as gold, apologised to us all, switched her phone off and placed it on my desk, and gave her full attention for the rest of the day's training. I told my boss about it over a drink in the hotel bar that evening, and he was horrified: her father was Sheikh Someone Or Other, part of the Qatari royal family and the bank chairman.  I'd essentially been bollocking Princess Anne, which as a working class council house kid I though was great.  We both expected fireworks the next day, (and I expected to be on the next flight out of there, in disgrace) but no-one ever mentioned it, and the girl was great for the rest of the course.  For me, it was an undoubted career highlight!

Even then, eight years away from the tournament, construction work was gathering pace, and there were metro lines being built to serve the football grounds under construction, the new airport was two-thirds finished, and work was beginning on an ambitious undersea tunnel between the airport and the downtown business area across the bay: it was supposed to have glass walls so you could look out at the fish and sharks and whatever else as you drove through it (or, more likely, were chauffered).  For all Doha's beauty and modernity, it was also like living and working in a huge building site.

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With this construction work came the influx of migrant workers that have been flooding the news for years.  Any article in any news outlet, newspaper, telly, internet, the lot, about Qatar's preparations for the tournament focuses on the issue of the country's record with human rights, slave labour and so on, at the expense of everything else.  There are accusations of migrant workers dying at work because of safety issues, about them being treated badly, housed in barracks, passports taken away from them, underpaid and so forth.  There may be some truth in some it: certainly, there have been deaths, but major construction programmes are invariably dangerous and accidents do happen.  There were deaths and serious injuries on the Channel Tunnel project, for instance. I can remember workers living in caravans beside the M25 motorway and elsewhere (Bob Geldof had stories of that in his autobiography, he was on the crew that built the M23/M25 intersection at Redhill), so living in barracks could be seen as an improvement on that.  Passport withholding, the so-called kefala problem, was an issue when I was there, being roundly condemned by the UN amongst others, and the practice was removed soon after I left.

I honestly believe a lot of it has been blown up out of all proportion, as has been the sportwashing outcry over the ownership of Manchester City, Newcastle United and other clubs with Middle Eastern ownership.  Similarly, complaints about human rights abuses have been exaggerated: I saw many work gangs in Doha, largely from places like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, all of them earning as much (or more) in a couple of months as they would in an entire year at home, and able to send most of it home to their families.  And I honestly can't remember seeing anyone looking sad or frightened or wishing they were elsewhere - but I did see a lot of cheerful faces and hear a lot of laughter, games of cricket taking place on closed roads during lunchbreaks, none of which appeared to me then or, on reflection, now, as evidence of people whose human rights were being abused.  

In any case, it seems to me "human rights" are difficult to categorise. and most (if not all) major, developed nations are guilty of abusing them.  I would suggest the human rights of the Native Americans counted for nothing when tribes were being wiped out across the USA and Canada in the 19th century (and those of their descendants dumped into poorly maintained  reservations still are).  The same could be said for the Aboriginal population (the First Nation) in Australia, the Maori in New Zealand, even those who were wiped out or enslaved in Colonial India.  This is without considering the victims of the Slave Trade from Africa, or the Amazonian Rainforest indigenous people still struggling to survive in modern Brazil.  Or the Palestinians bottled up in Gaza and the West Bank by an aggressive Israel supported by the US.  Or even people in Ukraine currently struggling to survive Putin's War.  I seriously can't see that Qatar's behaviour is either unique or much different - which is NOT to condone it.

There also many complaints about LGBTQ+ rights and fears that such people may find themselves in difficulty, or somehow persecuted because homosexuality is illegal in Qatar.  This again is an exaggeration: it's illegal in most Arab or Muslim countries, and frowned upon in many western countries, but that doesn't always lead to any kind of persecution. I believe a gay person is more likely to face problem in eastern European countries than in Qatar: in Poland, for instance, being gay is considered (and promoted thus by the government) to be an "ideology", and illness to be treated medically, for instance by electroshock therapy - I kid you not.  There is a loudspeaker van, funded by a nationalist organisation that receives financial support from the government, that spends the summer touring the country, spouting anti-gay propaganda (I prefer the term hate speech) - I've seen it a few times. Amid all the anti-Qatar stuff in the press, this is never mentioned, for some reason..... 

And this is why I find getting excited simply not possible.  It's not Qatar, or its human rights record. Or even the way it was awarded the tournament in the first place.   I can't get excited simply because of the reams and reams of hypocrisy, slanted press reports and simply  misrepresentative YouTube videos that have killed it for me.

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That said, I have no doubt I'll watch some of it.  I'm not sure which television channel(s) will be broadcasting it here in Poland, I still need to find that out. I'm betting that once it kicks off, it will be an entertaining few weeks of football, with its heroes and villains, the way it always is.  I expect my home country will make the quarter finals, then lose on penalties to Germany, as England tends to do a lot.  I also expect Poland will struggle to get out of its group, and if it does so will promptly lose to an unfancied surprise packet who will in turn be eliminated next game.

As to the winner: I suspect Argentina (Messi's Last Tournament is a hell of a driver for them) or Brazil.  Germany cannot be discounted (they never can be), nor France (provided they don't implode this year, as they have a tendency to do).  But I hope The Netherlands do it: they are possibly the Best Country Never To Have Won it, so it's about time they did.  They also have the remarkable Louis van Gaal coaching them (as he was when they lost the Final to an ascendant Spain in South Africa a few tournaments ago). He is 71 now, but as cantankerous and filled with self-belief as ever.  He is also suffering from Stage 4 prostate cancer, meaning he has to use a catheter (under his track suit when he's coaching) and increasingly nowadays a wheelchair.  Whatever happens, this will be his swansong.

And what a wonderful goodbye it would be!