“Do you want to sit inside or outside?” The owner of the Japanese restaurant looks at her visitor expectantly. This is Doha, the capital of Qatar, so she doesn’t have to explain that ‘outside’ doesn’t literally mean ‘outside’. In Qatar, ‘outside’ means: at a table, in an air-conditioned indoor mall. This is how it works if you live in a country where it is usually 35 to 40 degrees.
Hussain Albuhaliqa (35) walks onto the covered terrace, dressed in a spotless white thobe – the traditional long robe on the peninsula. Large flags of all participating World Cup countries hang from the ceilings. Albuhaliqa works as a youth coordinator at Al Ahli, Qatar’s oldest football club. Together with his compatriots, he is counting down the days until the football tournament starts next Sunday. Beaming: ‘We’ve been working towards this for twelve years.’
He has not missed the fact that it will be a controversial World Cup, but his body language remains laconic. He considers the criticism about human rights ‘propaganda’, spread by jealous journalists who do not allow the Qataris their moment in the spotlight. ‘It is constantly about the dead migrant workers. But accidents happen everywhere. If a new tube line is built in London, there will also be deaths, right? The only difference is that it is not written about.’
Qataris versus migrants
‘The workers themselves choose to do this work,’ his good friend falls Habib Khalfan (36) joined him. ‘We give them shelter and a salary. But every riyal they earn, they send to their relatives in their home country. I don’t understand, why don’t they put some money aside to take better care of themselves?’
Behind them, the Filipino waiters are running wild. There is a friendly laughter on both sides, and yet everything shows that the two groups, Qataris and migrants, live completely at cross purposes. For men like Khalfan and Albuhaliqa, the days are comfortable. They drive 4×4 sports cars, fly around the world and are guaranteed a well-paid job, usually in the government. Education and healthcare are free. They marry in their own circle. When the time is right, their mothers find a suitable marriage partner, after which the families meet and agree on a dowry.
You would almost forget that it was ever different. The path that Qatar has traveled actually covers one lifetime. A resident who is now 80 years old saw it all happen. When this fictional Qatari was born in 1942, the British still held sway and the peninsula was a colonial protectorate. It was nothing on the world stage. The trade in pearls from the Arabian Gulf was doing well, but by the 1920s Qatar had been outcompeted by Japan. Doha had as many inhabitants as present-day Enkhuizen. Rupert Hay, the highest colonial official, described it as ‘hardly more than a miserable fishing village’. The inhabitants fetched their water “two or three miles out of town with skins and jugs.” Even the Emir was so short of cash that he took out a mortgage on his house.
First football match
Football was not yet played, although it did not last long. The first game in the desert state would have been played around 1948, according to an elderly Briton a few years ago in the Daily Mail. This Tom Clayton said he was there when Indians and British from oil company BP competed against each other. Shortly afterwards, the first football clubs were founded.
The discovery of oil and – in the early 1970s – natural gas changed everything, and laid the foundations for an unwritten agreement between government and citizens: we provide you with a good job at one of the ministries or charities, and in return you support the emir, on currently the 42-year-old Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani. Money is the lubricant, consumption the main pastime. A bitter consequence, calculated by Qatar University, is that three-quarters of households are in the red, often tens of thousands of euros.
Albuhaliqa shrugs, not wanting to spoil his mood. He has not yet been able to get a ticket for Qatar-Ecuador, the opening game, but he has been drawn for Poland-Argentina. Behind the wheel of his wide GMC Sierra pickup, he lets his yellow prayer beads slide through his fingers. “Everyone here is talking about one thing: that we are the first to host the World Cup. The first in the Arab world. It gives us the feeling that we are unique.’
In the evening sky, the skyscrapers compete with each other with the most outrageous light shows. An advertisement featuring World Cup ambassador David Beckham flashes by. On the horizon, someone has trained hundreds of brightly lit drones to form first the twinkling World Cup and then the words Welcome to Qatar.
Qataris and Western expats stroll along the boulevard, interspersed with small groups of women in long, black abayas. Qatar has never been as strict as neighboring Saudi Arabia, and yet women are often restricted in their freedom of movement. As a woman, you must have permission from your ‘guardian’, i.e. your father or husband, to arrange a study grant, driver’s license or foreign trip.
Migrant workers in orange overalls clean up the mess on the street. Out of sight of the public, they grind the last tiles to size and prepare the sidewalks. In Qatar, they are the silent backdrop for every conversation. The country has an average of nine migrant workers for every Qatari. If you let those figures sink in soberly, you feel that they could easily take over the country. ‘In half an hour, without firing a shot’, as researcher Samuli Schielke dryly notes in his book Migrant Dreams.
It will always remain pure fantasy, especially because of the model that Qatar uses. Trade unions are prohibited, for which you must have a Qatari passport (and naturalization is actually impossible). The migrants come from dozens of countries and do not speak each other’s language. A Thai construction worker earns twice as much as a Nepalese, with the result that solidarity rarely gets off the ground. Strikes are sometimes allowed to turn a blind eye, provided the strikers are of the same nationality.
In a recently published study, Qatar expert Natasha Iskander, of Princeton University, describes how the government is quietly trying to prevent one population group from becoming dominant. There is a fear that social movements from Asia will spread otherwise. “One big protest and Qatar becomes India,” she quotes a senior official as saying.
Regret
If the migrants do come to the fore, it is almost always forced (or against payment). A remarkable example comes from 2015, when a sports club in Doha attempted to set the world record for the largest marathon ever. At the start, the turnout was quite disappointing, after which buses were hurriedly deployed to collect migrant workers, some in jeans and slippers. They ran until they were exhausted. Those who wanted to stop were told: you have to keep going. The record was not met.
Sport and politics are completely intertwined in Qatar, so much so that former FIFA president Sepp Blatter now openly admits he regrets the award. This criticism does not sound within the national borders – that is too dangerous. One of the last to try is Jordanian Abdullah Ibhais, the media manager at the World Cup organizing committee until 2019. When he protested internally against the non-payment of salaries to migrant workers, he was fired, arrested and detained without due process. According to his brother, he has been in solitary confinement since the beginning of this month, after the guards caught him with a letter to his wife.
Despite all the criticism from human rights organizations, the emir will hope that the World Cup will mainly help him. If not in the West, then at least in the Middle East. Qatar is diplomatic (and small) enough not to upset the neighboring countries too much, but at the same time it wants to radiate: we are not to be trifled with.
In the car, Albuhaliqa talks passionately about the 4-0 victory over the United Arab Emirates (UAE), three years ago. It was the semi-final of the Asian Cup, a tournament that Qatar won to everyone’s surprise. The victory tasted extra sweet, because the Saudis and the UAE (along with the rest of the Gulf) were completely boycotting the Qataris at the time. That boycott was ‘a stab in the back’, the friends agree, and the Asian title (dragged on UAE soil) the ultimate revenge. At the beginning of last year, the countries settled their quarrel, at least on paper. ‘We haven’t forgotten,’ Albuhaliqa grumbles. “We have to be careful who we still trust.”
Slavery in the Museum
A little further on, a 15-minute drive from the coastal boulevard, is Doha’s chic museum quarter. One of the museums, the Bin Jelmood House, opened its doors in 2015 and surprisingly focuses on the theme of slavery. Via medieval serfdom in Europe, the visitor is taken to the Qatar of the early 20th century, when enslaved workers from the Horn of Africa scraped the pearls from the seabed.
And the Qatar of today? That has seized slavery ‘by the roots’ and eradicated it, according to a short film. On one panel is a beautiful statement from the former country first lady, Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser: Freedom is the ‘driving force’ of human history. Slavery has been illegal for 70 years.
It just doesn’t feel that way, says a Kenyan who works as a security guard in Qatar. He does not want his name in the newspaper for fear of reprisals. Thanks to a handful of legislative changes, brought about under international pressure, migrants are now allowed to change employers. But when some of his friends tried to do so two years ago, they were deported as punishment.
‘Our skin color plays a role, there is always discrimination. When an African parking attendant explains to a Qatari that you cannot park somewhere, he is told: ‘This is our country.’ The guard says he earns 450 euros per month, of which he sends one fifth to his father in Kenya.
He has been trying to get out of Qatar for some time now. Together with two friends, he paid more than 1,100 euros per person to a small company that promised them a visa for Canada. It turned out to be cheating.
He knows the texts from the museum. He doesn’t take them seriously. They say that to please the world. They try to fool people.’ He hopes to be gone in a year. Preferably to Europe.