The Decibel - What the World Cup buys Qatar

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

With World Cup host country Qatar getting bad press for its treatment of migrant workers, its stance on LGBTQ rights and its strict regulations on alcohol, it’s hard to imagine that it has a lot to gain from hosting this event.But as the Globe’s Asia correspondent James Grifiths tells us from Doha, Qatar has already seen its relationship with other Gulf nations improve because of the World Cup, and the event might still be an important pivot in the country’s economy.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi, I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms, and you're listening to The Decibel. The Canadian men's team is playing its first World Cup game today in Qatar. But even before the games began on Sunday, the host country had been getting some pretty bad press. So when you say LGBT fans are welcome, to me it's very different from saying LGBT fans will be safe. Hopefully it's a bit cooler. We went out for a walk this morning

about 11 o'clock and it was very warm. Qatar has been criticized in recent years over labor standards for workers building its World Cup infrastructure. Early this week, Qatar's Emir Shatameen bin Hamad Al Thani said his country has faced an unprecedented building its World Cup infrastructure. So you're threatening us by smashing the camera. But listen, sir. For the tiny Gulf nation, though, it'll all be worth it if they can strengthen their standing with their own citizens, fellow Gulf states, and ultimately the rest of the world. Today on the show, we have James Griffiths. He's the Globe's Asia correspondent, and he's in Qatar's capital,

Doha, reporting on the event. This is The Decibel, from the Globe and Mail. James, thanks so much for joining us again. Thanks for having me. So you've been in Qatar for the past few days now to cover the World Cup. Can you just give us a sense of what's it like there so far? You know, to kind of put this in context, people, it's kind of this thumb-shaped country that sticks out into the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia to the south, UAE to the east. When you land, you land here in Doha. You go from the airport into the very, very fancy city center. You see all the shiny high-rises.

You see all this new development. The only green you see here, short of a few palm trees, is outside the various stadiums where there seems to have been a huge amount of water and energy spent in having these beautiful green lawns leading up to them and obviously the pitch inside. So it's quite a strange environment because you've got this kind of city that's clearly built for cars, which has then got all these fancy new public transport everywhere. You've got thousands and thousands of foreigners pouring in, but what's kind of bizarre

and it's maybe reflective of kind of a lot of things that kind of look good on the surface here and don't quite make sense when it comes to execution, is it's a bit strange. The subway system kind of doesn't link up to things in the way that you would expect it would. You can take, so it's a great train, it's very quick, it's very easy. And then you'll walk out of the station and discover that it's actually a 30 minute walk to, you know, the destination that it supposedly serves. Qatar was seen as an unlikely place to be hosting a World Cup. I mean, it doesn't really have a soccer culture. It's very hot and it's a tiny place, not much bigger than PEI.

So hosting the World Cup is a it's a huge deal. And Qatar is the first country in the Middle East to ever host it. Can you just help me understand, James, how much is actually on the line for this event to be successful for this country? So they've spent tens of billions of dollars, I think $10 billion officially, but the actual kind of price tag when you add things like infrastructure and you add a lot of other spending that's happened in the last decade, which the Qataris argue that they would have done anyway. But, you know, a lot of it is pretty directly linked to the World Cup. That gets you closer to $200, $220 billion. So it's a huge price tag on this tournament.

And is that kind of average for a World Cup or is that extraordinary? No, that is extraordinary. You know, I think it's probably, even if you bring in extraneous spending that other countries have done on infrastructure and things like that, it's still degrees of magnitude higher than anyone else has ever spent. Partially because Qatar, unlike a lot of other countries that host this tournament,

didn't have any of the infrastructure previously. You know, they built everything from scratch. That obviously creates a huge pressure for this to be a success, both domestically, because you have to justify to your population all this spending, though this is an autocratic hereditary monarchy. So the degrees of justification are maybe not as high as in a democracy. And also, has faced a a lot of criticism and and scrutiny over the fact that it won the bid to begin with there were allegations of bribery that a fifa investigation didn't manage to prove that conclusively but they did find quote evidence of serious irregularities in the

bidding process both for the kata world cup and the previous world cup in russia and then you know on top of that basically basically every top FIFA official that was in power at the time has faced investigation in the years since and most of them have resigned in disgrace. So, you know, this was, you know, this was a very, very, very murky bidding process. And so, you know, they need to kind of show that,

look, we deserve to host this World Cup. You know, it was legitimate for us to win it and we've done a good job with it. You mentioned that the World Cup is costing Qatar hundreds of billions of dollars. But let's just put this into context because this is an extremely wealthy country. How wealthy is it? Yeah, so GDP-wise, Qatar has a GDP of about 220 billion USD, which actually is basically the price tag of the World Cup. That puts it on a par with Greece economically in terms of the size of the economy. But Greece has three times as many people, has a lot of a huge tourist economy and things like that.

But when we look at GDP per capita, you start to see this huge difference between Qatar and a lot of the rest of the world. GDP per capita here is 83,000 USD. It's only 57,000 in Canada, or it's 21,000 USD in Greece. So, you know, Qataris are, you know, immensely wealthy compared to a lot of the rest of the world. And even those figures probably underplay just how wealthy the local population is, because while there is an official population in Qatar of 3 million people, only about 300,000 of those are actually Qatari citizens. The vast majority are expats and Qatari citizens get tons of benefits like free healthcare, electricity. They have some of the

highest average incomes in the world and they don't pay any taxes. So this is a very rich country. So how did Qatar get so rich? The simple answer is oil. Slightly longer answer is oil plus natural gas. So beginning in the 1940s, there's a discovery of oil in this region, you know, both in Qatar and also in Saudi Arabia, various other countries that takes Qatar from a very poor country where the economy was almost entirely focused on pearls to one where it's almost, well, no, it is entirely focused on exporting various mineral resources. But the real boom comes in the 90s, which is slightly confusing because natural gas

was discovered in the 1970s, but they weren't able to exploit it until around the 90s when we started to see liquefied natural gas and you could transport it easily to markets around the world. And that's when we see Qatar's economy just explode. And that is something that has only sped up in the last few years. So, you know, as countries try and transition away from dependence on oil, a lot of them are moving towards more dependence on LNG. And so, you know, Qatar is becoming more important and wealthier. Just to give a statistic, last year, total LNG exports amounts to 11.9 billion US dollars, which is more than double just the year before. So this is a sector that is, you know, exploding. And you said before the economy was almost entirely focused on pearls.

Yes. So from the end of the Ottoman Empire until 1970s, Qatar was a British protectorate and, you know, essentially ruled or controlled from London. So during the colonial period, when Qatar was mainly a pearl exporting country, but also during the kind of early years of the oil boom, you see the British authorities importing workers from India and elsewhere to kind of help work in these industries. And as part of that, they adapted this traditional Islamic legal concept of kafala or sponsorship to describe this relationship between employers and their workers, which isn't necessarily what the Islamic term referred to, but it was essentially this indentured servitude where people were really tied to their employer and completely controlled and beholden to their employer.

Okay, so that's interesting. That's how we got this kafala system, which was in place when people were being brought in to work on World Cup infrastructure projects like stadiums and the subway. And human rights groups are concerned because they say that thousands of workers were injured or died on these sites. But Qatar says that reforms have been made recently. What have you been hearing on that front, James? Are these commitments to reforming worker rights and safety actually being upheld? So since it was awarded the World Cup in 2010, Qatar has faced incredible amounts of scrutiny, both over, you know, allegations of corruption, like we said, but in particular, over its treatment of migrant

workers, and especially because there was, you know, the knowledge that these people were going to be building all these stadiums, going to be building all this new infrastructure. And as a result of that, as a result of this, you know, media and activist spotlight that has been shone on Qatar. We have seen some reforms put in. They abolished, at least on paper, the kafala system, this kind of sponsorship system, which was essentially indentured servitude. They also set limits on how much work can be done outside in the summer when it gets to like 45 degrees C. And if you imagine kind of working on a building site and that temperature is, you know, that was,

it's literally deadly. It has killed potentially thousands of people. And, you know, certain groups in particular, kind of most notably the UN's International Labor Organization, they've praised Qatar's reforms. They've said, you know, that they've made Qatar a bit of a leader

in terms of other Gulf nations. But the fear is, and especially when you talk to worker groups and human rights groups, is that a lot of these reforms are only on paper, that they, especially when you get to projects that are not related to the World Cup, that don't have that kind of scrutiny, the kafala system is still there in everything but name. Workers are still being exploited. They're still being forced to do insanely long shifts, work outside, things like that.

Even connected with the tournament, journalists have found workers here that have said they're only making as much as 50 cents an hour. You know, I've spoken to people who said they're doing 10, 12 hour shifts standing outside directing tourists. And, you know, it's not summer, but it's still 30 degrees outside during the day. Like that is a really punishing heat to stand in for 10 hours. And even beyond that, the real fear that everyone has, and Doha has given us a lot of reasons to think this is a genuine fear, is that yes, these reforms have come in and yes, there have been improvements since they got the World Cup. But there isn't necessarily confidence that the Qatari authorities are committed to maintaining these beyond the end of the tournament. We'll be right back. A little bit earlier, James, you mentioned that Qatar has got one ruler with absolute power,

and that person is Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. He's a relatively young emir. He's 42 years old. He's been in power since 2013. I guess, what is he trying to do here with Qatar, especially with hosting the World Cup? What's his vision for the country? Yeah, so Sheikh Tamim's vision is, you know, trying to modernize Qatar. You know, this is a country that, like we said, has been focused on resources, on oil and gas for, you know, the best part of half a century. And there is a concern, you know, not as great of a concern as some of the oil producing countries have about needing to diversify, because like I said, LNG is going to remain

important for many, many years to come. But there is a concern about, you know, not having your entire economy be dependent on one product. And there is a desire to kind of diversify and modernize Qatar. And, you know, this is similar to what we see with other countries in the region, especially, you know, Saudi Arabia, where we have another young ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, who is, you know, really trying to change how that economy works with, you know, increasing tourism, building huge mega projects to get people to move there. So it's, you know, we're seeing this across the Gulf, this attempt to modernize and diversify these economies,

but also, perhaps most importantly, not give up any political power, not really modernize or, you know, liberalize when it comes to politics. So is the idea kind of then with the World Cup to try to bolster tourism and travel to the country then? Yeah, there's a few things happening there. Both there's a desire to create Doha as a tourist destination. You know, you have a lot of these rulers around the Gulf look at Dubai and feel very, very jealous that Dubai has been this hugely successful kind of tourist Las Vegas of the Middle East. You mentioned Dubai. Dubai is, of course, known for its luxury hotels. And actually, it's over 11 percent, 11.6 percent of the country's GDP in 2019 was travel and tourism. So it's a huge part of their economy.

So it sounds like this is the kind of thing that Qatar is striving to be then. Absolutely. And not just Qatar, but also Saudi Arabia, some of the places in the Gulf, you know, they would love to have that revenue coming in because, you know, you can't depend on oil forever. You can't even depend on LNG forever. So there has to be another reason for people to come to Doha, to come to Qatar. And what is Qatar's relationship like with neighboring countries in the region? So historically, it has not been very good,

especially when we talk about recent history. So after the British left and Qatar gained independence, it was very much dominated by its larger neighbor, Saudi Arabia. But as the country became rich with the liquid natural gas boom, you start to see this independent foreign policy from Qatar. There was this kind of, I don't know if they would say it, but there was almost kind of desire to transform themselves into an Arabian Switzerland. They would host a lot of various groups from around the region. They had established relationships with, you know, Saudi's chief rivals, Iran and Israel. They hosted a US airbase. There was this kind of, you know, real desire to set themselves apart and sometimes in ways

that really annoyed their neighbors. So you have Al Jazeera, which is the kind of Middle East's answer to CNN. That's based in Qatar. It's funded by the Qatari state and often reports on very embarrassing topics for the various neighboring countries. During the Arab Spring, you hear Qatar put a lot of money into supporting various groups, a lot of which were not sympathetic to Saudi Arabia. And this kind of created this almost Cold War for a long time, which kind of exploded in 2017 with Saudi Arabia leading diplomatic and economic blockade of Qatar, which saw, you know, flight routes, land routes shot into the country, all the Qatari ambassadors were diplomats were kicked out of their various neighbors.

Remarkably, actually, Qatar managed to kind of weather that, thanks chiefly to support from the US, which Donald Trump's administration did initially support the Saudis. They kind of changed their minds. And I think someone reminded them how important Qatar was as a military ally. And that blockade was finally lifted in early 2021. And now we're starting to see rapprochement in the last year. And, you know, the World Cup has, I think, been a really big part of that. People that watched the opening ceremony, watched the first game,

will have seen Saudi leader Mahmoud bin Salman sitting alongside Qatar's Amir, alongside Infantino, the FIFA president, you know, and we're starting to see the World Cup being used as this kind of bridge with its neighbors, both economically and diplomatically. How important is that to see those leaders sitting together there? I think it's a pretty clear sign that, you know, Qatar is at least, you know, not out in the cold anymore. You know, and Saudi is getting benefits from this World Cup, you know, both Saudi and the UAE are seeing economic spillover from tourists and other things, thanks to the World Cup.

And when we talk about kind of regional prestige as well, the World Cup is really putting the Gulf on a stage that hasn't been in the past, except when we're talking about, you know, things like the blockade, things like Qatar's alleged support for terrorism and stuff. So, you know, they're much happier to see headlines about a football tournament than they are about politics. So, you know, I think this is helping repair some of those ties. And so does it seem like this is successful from what you've seen, James? Like, it sounds like there's a lot on the line for Qatar here. Do you think their decision to host the World Cup is going to succeed in reforming their image and bolstering their relationship with neighbors and also other countries in the world? So if we look at this from a traditional sports washing perspective, and a lot of people have been saying this tournament is sports washing for the autocratic Qatari regime, you know,

I don't think that's necessarily going to be a success. I don't think when we talk about global perceptions of Qatar that the World Cup is really going to improve that because, you know, I don't think most people in the world had much of an impression of Qatar or much knowledge about it. And what this has done is shone a light on some quite ugly aspects of the Emirate. You know, the headlines around migrant workers, the headlines around LBGTQ issues, they don't seem to be going away at least at least in the first week of the tournament so that's maybe you know that's that's definitely you know a negative um result for for the catteries but when we talk about regionally like we're saying this this is helping to improve ties this is definitely um you know a big soft power win for you know ordinary people around the rest of the gulf who would you, get to enjoy the pride of hosting the World Cup in their region, the first ever World

Cup in the Middle East, in the Arab world. You know, there's a lot of kind of soft power wins from that perspective. So, you know, I think maybe the Qataris won't get all of the goals that they were hoping for from this, but they're definitely getting some of them. James, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. This was a really interesting conversation. Thanks, Menaka. That's it for today. I'm Menaka Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening

and I'll talk to you tomorrow.