The Rest Is History - 255. Qatar: A History

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

It is finally here. Tom and Dominic are embarking upon their mighty World Cup themed extravaganza. Every day they will be releasing a new episode, each one based upon a different country that is competing in the tournament. 32 days, 32 countries, 32 episodes, fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride. First up is Qatar. How did this tiny country in the Middle-East come to play such a prominent role in world affairs? Oil money, controlling the narrative, and western security are all part of the story. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello and welcome to The Rest Is History, the first of this extraordinary epic series of World Cup themed podcasts that we'll be doing. And when I say World Cup, Tom, we are doing a podcast for every country that has qualified for the FIFA Football World Cup are taking place in Qatar, but none of the podcasts are going to be about football or indeed really about sport. They are aspects of a particular country's history, aren't they? With one exception, which is today's podcast, because today we are kicking off with the host nation, aren't we? Yes. So today, uniquely among our 32 episodes uh we're going to give the entire

history of a country namely qatar and dominic i guess i mean if you look looking back at previous countries that have hosted it so that would be what russia brazil and france south africa yes so so these are in france yeah these are countries that have a very kind of complex, fascinating history. And they tend to be global players, inevitably, because to host the World Cup, you have to be wealthy. And generally, you have to have a large population. Qatar is, I would say, unique among the countries that has hosted the world cup in that it is incredibly small so it's very very small physically if you imagine that the persian gulf or i guess i should call it the arabian gulf people get very cross depending on where they come from but let's

say they call it the gulf qatar is kind of like if you imagine the gulf as being like a throat qatar is kind of like the epiglottis sticking up. It's a tiny kind of peninsula sticking up. Peninsula, yes. Next to the island of Bahrain. And its population is equivalent to the population of Hull. So it's just over 300,000. There are just under two and a half million expatriates, but there are just over

300,000 Qataris. And for most of its history, it has existed to be dominated by other great powers. It has not been one of the great centers of the world. It's not been one of the great motors of world history. I think it would be fair to say. That's probably fair, isn't it, Tom? I mean, even a Qatari historian would surely agree with that. Yeah, I think so. And obviously there are very distinctive reasons why Qatar now is such a significant player geopolitically. So it's the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas,

which at the moment, of course, is absolutely the center of world politics. But it's also, it's not just the fact that it has these large, I mean, the world's largest reserve of liquefied natural gas. It's also what it has done with its money. And it's such a fascinating story, really fascinating story. So very much the focus of this canter through the history of Qatar will be, the focus will be very much the last few decades, because that's really when Qatar has become a geopolitical player. But the backstory is interesting as well, because Qatar is, well, I saw an advert for it.

The tourist industry said it's desert and sea, which is basically what you know. It's sand and salt water. So that's basically why the population traditionally has been quite small, because neither are naturally hospitable. But having said that, the sea for hunter-gatherers has always been a resource because it provides seafood. And in fact, particularly Bahrain, but also Qatar as well, is famous throughout antiquity right the way up into the 20th century for its pearls. So it did have kind of food resources to offer hunter-gatherers as they moved out of Africa, so modern humans spreading eastwards

across Asia. So populations were there from very very early on um and it qatar was really created rather in the way that um the island of great britain was created by the rise in sea level about 8 000 years ago so the same inundate process of inundation that that drowned the dogger bank it um it it flooded vast uh areas of of land around what becomes the Gulf. And Qatar, it kind of emerges from this Atlantean deluge and it becomes a peninsula and therefore it becomes a refuge for people who are fleeing the inundation.

So that is the very, very deep backstory. But basically from that point on, if there is a local superpower, Qatar comes under its influence. So it comes under the influence of the Assyrians, of the Babylonians, of the Persians, and then under the armies of Alexander the Great, it comes under the Seleucids. And one interesting detail that comes from Herodotus, and I'm very happy that our World Cup series, there's a chance for a mention of Herodotus, because he reports an intriguing fact, which is that the Phoenicians who settle what's now Lebanon and who will go on to found Carthage,

which will be the subject of a later episode that we do, he says that they came from this region. They came from the region of Qatar and Bahrain. So that's kind of interesting. I can't be right there. Can I? Is that right? I don't know. Apparently, he says that this is what the Phoenicians themselves claimed. So who knows?

I don't know. But Dominic, another of my favourite classical writers is the first person to actually give us the name of Qatar. So can you guess who that is? Can I guess that it's plenty the elder tom plenty the elder yes absolutely it is so very much friend of the show and he's um he's tracking uh all the various peoples who live along the gulf and he he talks of the nachetti the zarazi the bogodi and the cathare oh so the cathare thearis. The Catharis, presumably. What happened to the Bogodi or whatever?

Who knows? Who knows where they went? And he clearly sees it as a place of wealth and legend. So he's obsessed by pearls. So he's very alert to the fact that pearls can be sourced from here. He describes towns built from square blocks of salt. He describes tribes of Icthaphagi, which are fish eaters. He describes the Gulf as being prey to whirlpools. So it's a place of wealth, of mystique, and of danger. And that's very much the kind of the Roman sense of it. Ptolemy, the great geographer, he produces a map that shows a place called Keturah, which is obviously Qatar as well. They're talking about the same place.

So the Romans are aware of it. Of course, the Romans themselves aren't ruling it. The Parthians rule it. The Sasanians rule it. And then it comes under the rule of the Arabs, the Umayyad dynasty, the first Muslim dynasty. And it becomes a Muslim territory territory a muslim land right but the numbers living there tom must be pretty small i mean it's very nice isn't it it is but it it serves a useful purpose because um you've got in basra which is the port in um the south

mesopotamia south of iraq which becomes the great port for ships that are servicing Baghdad in the heyday of the Abbasids, the dynasty that succeeded the Umayyads. And they're sailing up the Gulf out into the Indian Ocean, sailing all kinds of, to India, to Ceylon, to Malaysia, across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. And essentially, Qatar provides a way stop, a readily defensible way stop along the way. So it's the kind of place that you can imagine Sinbad stopping. Oh, yes, absolutely.

With all the pearls and stuff, I mean, perfect. It's perfect sort of Arabian Nights territory, isn't it? Exactly. So there are pearls. It becomes famous for its horses and for its camels. So it's breeding them. And I think a measure of the way in which, even in the 8th or the 9th centuries, it's taking on a role as a hub, a global hub, is that forts are built then. And they're using a style of masonry that seems to derive from China.

So, you know, there's a hint of the Tang dynasty in Qatar, which is very interesting. So it must be part of a trade network that goes all the way. Completely, yes. Via the Silk Roads, I suppose, all the way to China. Yeah, absolutely. All by sea. All by sea. All by sea. Yeah, absolutely. All by sea.

All by sea. Yes, it's all by sea. And so there are also kind of traces of trade with Africa, with Malaysia, with Thailand, gold, silver, spices, all this kind of stuff that basically the Arabs are controlling. So they are the local superpower and they are controlling. They've got access to all the wealth of the Far East. And to the degree that it's reaching Europe, it's having to go through them. And the Europeans resent this, or more particularly the Portuguese come to resent this because of course there are certain Europeans they profit from it, but the Portuguese stuck out facing the Atlantic, very, very peripheral power. And of course, the Portuguese were very much friends of the show because we did four episodes on them. And we talked about how first Henry the Navigator and then King Manuel sent ships going down the side of Africa, down to the Cape of Good Hope, back up as far as India. And the ambition of the Portuguese was firstly to bypass the Muslim control of these trade routes. And secondly, to basically destroy

Islam. I mean, that was their goal. And so the Portuguese make a systematic attempt essentially to take over these trade routes. And so under the command of Albuquerque, this extraordinary figure who becomes the second viceroy of India and who commands the imperial expansion of Portugal, basically across vast sweeps of the world blazed by the Portuguese then gets followed first by the Dutch and then by the English. And sure enough, Qatar then comes under first the Dutch and then the English. So they establish posts there. At the same time, you've got the Ottomans expanding southwards. So it also comes under Ottoman influence. So essentially, it's simultaneously looking at, to the degree that it's looking out to the seas and playing this role of a kind of

way stop on these global trade routes, it's under European influence. But to the degree that it's under the thumb of a kind of local hegemon, it's under Ottoman influence. And this is a kind of tension within Qatari history that really runs right the way through from the early modern period through the modern period. And what role is there for the locals? 1870, a consortium, a kind of confederation of Arab tribes with the very, very dune name of the Bani Khalid. They expel the Ottomans. Yeah. And this is a confederation that it includes Qatar, but it kind of runs up the coast of Eastern Arabia to southern Iraq. And so they establish a kind of loose confederation, keeping both the Ottomans and the Europeans at a kind of remove, although inevitably they have to have some accommodation

with them. And then in 1783, so that's basically a kind of a century after the Bani Khalid have taken control, there's a further fracturing when the House of Khalifa take over the kingdom of Bahrain. And the House of Khalifa also seize control of Qatar. And the House of Khalifa are in a kind of seesaw contest with a new and aggressive tribal confederation that has emerged in Arabia, who are called the Wahhabis. Ah, now that's going to be a big theme, isn't it? Yes. So the Wahhabis are very, I guess you would call them, they're the kind of the ancestors of what today we might call radical Islam. They are very ascetic. You could almost say puritanical. I mean, that's possibly not the right word, but they are very doctrinaire in their practice of Islam.

And they're coming from the depths of the desert, whereas the people on the coast, so the Qataris, inevitably are more cosmopolitan. They're more open to foreign influences. They have both the Ottoman and the Arab. So there's actually some really interesting themes there. One of them is the extent to which Qatar is a sort of plaything, I suppose, for foreign powers, or an important, merely, they see it as a node on their trading network and then you've also got kind of local chieftains and clans trying to play off the foreign powers but then you've also got the tension between the desert and the coast i suppose don't

you yes so these are themes that will that are always there and the wah Wahhabis can draw on such reserves, and they're so kind of aflame with a sense of their own mission, that the Al-Khalifa dynasty have to look for overseas help. And so obviously, they turn to the Ottomans, they also turn to the kind of sub-Ottoman dynasty that's emerged in Egypt. And absolutely, you know this complete awareness from the the the dynasty that rules qatar and bahrain that the only way it can survive is by allying itself with the local great powers and so that's what it does but meanwhile of course moving into the 19th century um this is the period of growing british influence So the English have been keen participants in these trade routes for a long time. But by the 19th century, the East India Company is the dominant power in India.

And seizing control of the shipping lanes that run from Britain to India is obviously of absolutely fundamental importance. And an ability for British shipping to sail undisturbed by pirates is absolutely key. And so in 1820, the East India Company signs a treaty with, or perhaps forces a treaty, on all the various sheikhs along the Gulf um which has as its focus the ending of piracy and also interestingly the slave trade so 1820s we're into the period where uh abolitionism is becoming an absolute motor of british foreign policy this is the period when the royal navy is starting to patrol the atlantic trying to stop the slave trade going from Africa to the Americas.

Tom, this is where you get that phrase, the trucial coast. Yeah. So the coast with which we've signed a series of truces, I suppose, or treaties. Yes, exactly. So I think in our episodes in Portugal, we talked about the Portuguese had a – or was it the Brazilians had a phrase, this is a law to be looked at by the British. Oh, yes, the Brazilians, exactly. The Brazilians.

A law for the British to see. Yes. So I think that that's essentially what these various shakedoms along the Gulf have. Officially, they've signed an anti-slavery law. They probably don't have the slave market directly opposite the British ambassador's residence, but it's still going on. And to be honest, the British are not in a position to enforce it. And it's not really in their interest to do it. So everyone's kind of happy. The British can feel that they've done their bit to stop the slave trade the sheikhs get their

treaty with Britain they get their protection and they can still do that they can still trade in slaves so that's kind of basically the state of play through the 19th century but specifically what happens in Qatar in 1867 is that just as the al-Khalifa family had branched off from the Bani Khalid, this alliance of various Arab states. So in 1867, you have Qatar staking a claim for independence. Or more specifically, you have another dynasty, the Al-Thani family, declaring that they are independent of the Al-Khalifa dynasty and setting up as a kind of sub-shakedom in Qatar. And the war lasts for two years. It gets settled by the British, who basically force the Al-Khalifa family to accept that Qatar has a kind of shadowy independence. They force the Al-Fahani family to accept a measure of sovereignty

from the from the al-kalifa dynasty um and from that point on the al-thani family are british clients so they entirely depend on british support to uphold the degree of independence that they that they have so the al-thani is running qatar and the am i right in thinking the al-Farnis are running Qatar. Am I right in thinking the Al-Khalifas are running Bahrain? Is that basically the divide? Yes. So there's a huge – I had never realised the extent to which there's this long history of sort of animosity and rivalry between Bahrain, which is an island, and Qatar, which is a peninsula. Well, yes, but also, I mean, there have been long periods. So under the Al-Khalifa dynasty, initially, they're ruling Qatar.

I mean, there is a kind of natural synergy there. And to this day, of course, they're still, you know, they get bundled together very, very naturally. And, you know, these dynasties put down very deep roots. So the Al-Khalifa family still rule Bahrain, and the Al-Fahni family are still very much the big cheeses in Qatar. Right. So Britain is really the midwife of both those dynasties,

ensuring that they stay in place. Because, of course, throughout the 19th century, as in previous centuries, there are predatory great powers lurking along, you know, beyond the borders. So the Ottomans come back and they retreat again. There's always a threat from the depths of Arabia. The Wahhabis are still very much a presence. And it's not until 1916, so in the middle of the First World War, that Qatar becomes officially a British protectorate. And just before we take a break, Tom,

Qatar at this point is, I mean, it's still reliant on what? I mean, pearls, trade, a little bit of trade. Pearls and trade.

Yeah. So, so basically there are, there are very few people who live there. I mean, very, very few that it's, there are no major settlements really. And to the degree that there are settlements,

they are waystops for ships going up the Gulf and back again. And that is its role. I mean, you know, it has no greater salience than that. And then, of course, everything changes, doesn't it? And we should probably take a break now, Tom, and then come back with this extraordinary transformation in Qatar's fortunes, without which they wouldn't now be hosting the World Cup. They definitely wouldn't. We'll come back to that after the break.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. Welcome back to The Rest is History. We are delving deep into the history of Qatar. We've reached 1916, and Qatar has formally become a British protectorate. So the Qataris have given up their autonomy in foreign affairs,

and they can't make treaties or do anything like that. But the British will let them run their own domestic affairs, won't they? Yeah, I think the British are really reluctant to get involved in anything approximating to domestic affairs. So again, everyone is basically happy. The Qataris can do what they like. The British can ensure that it doesn't fall into the hands, say, of the Ottomans who are enemy competence in 1916 when this relationship is officially established.

And yeah, everyone's happy, basically. But as we said before the break, Qatar is really, I mean, it's a nothing place. It's kind of Hicksville. But then as you hinted, everything changes because just before the Second World War, they strike oil. And it is discovered that Qatar, this flea-bitten nowhere place, has control of the third highest reserves of natural gas and oil in the world. And this is the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, isn't it, that gets the first concession? And that's basically the ancestor of BP, I think it's fair to say. Yes.

And so as late as the 1950s, the Qataris remember that decade as the years of hunger because they are not benefiting from this at all. It's still very much Western oil companies that are profiting from it. But that obviously changes. It starts to change in the 60s and definitely changes in the 70s and what happens in the 70s is first of all um in the late 60s as you will know better than me uh the british decide that they can no longer afford to offer protection to these various uh gulf protectorates east of suez so they and that and that actually was a massive so philip larkin

wrote a poem about this didn't he did um the statues will still stand the same in squares but we are a country that pulled back our navies because we had no money or something because we had no money exactly uh and and uh i mean we'd actually ended up fighting a sort of rearguard action in aden in the late 1960s and i think it's fair to say the british were very keen to just basically yeah get out of this get out you know as long as they could as long as we could preserve Sweden in the late 1960s. And I think it's fair to say the British were very keen to just basically get out of it. As long as we could preserve our economic interests. I mean, we had no interest in leaving bases and all these kinds of things. Yeah. And this is actually, the Qataris don't welcome this at all. They needed the protection that the Royal Navy had provided.

And so they're aware that they're going to have to forge an entirely new relationship to the broader world, both the world in general, of which they're now going to be an integral part because they have oil, but also obviously their near neighborhood where there are numerous large powers of which Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two largest and the most predatory. And so Qatar becomes officially independent in 1971. A year later, one of the great themes of Qatari history kicks in, which is rulers of Qatar going on holiday and everything going unstuck. I think one of the lessons of the entire Rest Is History podcast series has been that if you're the ruler of a country, you must never, ever go on holiday because terrible things will follow yes so the the man who does not who has not mastered this lesson

is Ahmed bin Ali Al Thani who is the ruler of of Qatar and he's always going on holiday he absolutely loves a holiday um and so much so that he actually issues the formal announcement of Qatar's uh independence not in Qatar, but from his villa in Switzerland. That's true patriotic dedication. It really is. It really is. And, you know, I mean, even among the Al-Thani dynasty, who by this point are kind of starting to get into the whole idea of foreign holidays, now that the oil money is flowing in. This is pretty poor behavior. It blocks his copybook. The following year, he goes on holiday again. He goes to Iran for a hunting trip.

While he's on holiday, he's deposed by his cousin, a man called Khalifa bin Hamid. And it's completely a bloodless coup. So Ahmed goes to, I think he goes to Dubai. He ends up dying in London. And Khalifa bin Hamid, he takes over Qatar. And it's under him that you have the OPEC crisis, the oil crisis, so boom times for anyone who has controls, you know, the third largest reserves of oil and gas. And it's all great. And suddenly Doha, from being a sleepy village, kind of occupied by pearl fishers, becomes this increasingly large and significant hub

where oil ministers from Western countries are constantly jetting in and looking polite. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Meanwhile, of course, if you're the ruler of, say, a few hundred thousand people and you control the third largest oil and gas reserves in the world, that is a bit like kind of walking down a very dark alley with a large quantity of diamonds sticking out of your back pocket. I mean, it's kind of asking for trouble. And so Khalifa bin Hamid's solution to this problem is basically to suck up all he can to Saudi Arabia. So he

completely sucks up to the Saudis. I mean, the Saudis are the, you know, they're on his, literally on his doorstep. They're vast, they're incredibly rich. They have even more oil and gas than the Qataris does. And so Qatar's relationship to Saudi Arabia pretty much replicates what previously has been its relationship to Britain. So the Saudis essentially keep out of Qatari internal affairs, and they're happy to do that because Qatar has Sharia law. There's nothing going on there that would be particularly offensive to the Saudis. But the Saudis run their foreign policy.

And this lasts throughout the 70s, throughout the 80s, through the first half of the 90s. And then in 1995, Dominic, Khalifa bin Hamid makes a fatal mistake. Don't tell me he goes on holiday, Tom. He goes on holiday and he goes on holiday to Switzerland again. Oh, no. Have they not learned their lesson? A terrible, terrible mistake. And he gets deposed again in a bloodless coup, this time not by his cousin, but by his son, Hamad.

That's very medieval, isn't it? Very. It's very Richard the Lionheart and Henry II. So Hamad is, he's very much a military man. So he went to Sandhurst, I'm proud to say. So the British Military Training College. Yeah. He becomes the army chief of staff

and then he becomes the defence minister. And this is essentially what enables him to stage the coup. So hold on. Am I right in saying, Tom, and I think I've got this right, and this is essentially what enables him to stage the coup so hold on am i right saying tom when i think i've got this right that khalifa bin hamad has been toppled by hamad bin khalifa correct yes crikey well don't get those two mixed up i mean that could be well because bin means son of of course yeah so yes of course yes it is confusing yes so hamad bin khalifa is now the big man and khalifa hamad yeah yeah so khalifa bin hamad yes so he moves to france and then he comes Yes, it is confusing. Yes, it is. So Hamad bin Khalifa is now the big man. So they call him Hamad.

Yeah. Yeah, so Khalifa bin Hamad, yes. So he moves to France and then he comes back to Qatar, I think, in 2004 or something like that, and then he dies maybe a decade later. So basically, I mean, this is, yeah, on one level, as you say, it's all quite medieval, but on another, it's, I mean, you know, there are worse things

than retiring to France. Yes. Presumably with an enormous amount of money. Yeah, enormous amount. Yes. other it's i mean you know there are worse things than retiring to finance and yeah i mean it's presumably with an enormous amount of money i mean yeah enormous amount yes so yeah i think i think you know it's it's there are worse things that could happen anyway so hamad is a very very um ambitious man and he has very very big plans for q. And these plans do not involve being a Saudi licks battle. He wants to make Qatar essentially into such a geopolitical big beast that the Saudis won't be able to keep Qatar under their thumb. And obviously, this is a very, very startling ambition, considering how small Qatar is, how vulnerable it is, and how large Saudi Arabia is. And so the spectacle of Hamid setting out to establish a completely independent foreign policy

is very, very alarming to the Saudis, and also actually quite alarming to its other neighbours as well. And so it's a very, very bold policy. And it's essentially astonishing that he's pulled it off. And the fact that the World Cup is going on in Qatar is in a way the kind of the cherry on the cake of his success. So it's an astonishing, astonishing feat. I mean, I think one of the great feats of recent geopolitics. So Tom, Al Jazeera, the media network is part of that story, isn't it?

It is. This is part of his project. So the question is, how does he do this? How does he make this fabulously rich? I mean, the wealth is the given. But even so, if you only have kind of 300,000 people and no real army, and you're next to Saudi Arabia, and you want to strike out on a novel course, how do you do this? How do you exploit your wealth? So there are a number of ways in which he does it. Basically, he sets out to make Qatar the kind of the center of gravity for the whole of the Arab world. That's his aim.

And he does it in all kinds of ways. So he sets education as an obvious one. So he sets up this kind of incredible complex called Education City. All the water jets are keeping the manicured lawns absolutely green and exquisite. He invites Americans, British, French to set up a kind of sub-departments of their own universities there. So it becomes a great educational hub. He establishes Doha as a transport hub. So, you know, planes from across the world. It becomes, I think, one of the largest transport hubs in the entire world. And then, as you say, he possibly the most kind of decisive step that he takes.

And one that really shows a kind of understanding of how the world is going to work kind of ahead of a lot of people is that he sets up this new service called Al Jazeera, which is initially Arab language, then English and then various other languages designed to be a kind of an Arab CNN, so an international news service. And he does this, it's pre-internet. And so the effect of this essentially is that it enables Qatar to seize control of the news agenda across the Middle East, wherever Arabic is spoken as the main language. It is Al Jazeera that is setting the agenda. That is a huge, huge source of power. I think the assumption is that by raising the profile of Qatar, by establishing Al Jazeera as the equivalent of CNN or the BBC, it will give it a global brand that in turn will ensure that Qatar can't just be snuffed out. Right.

Because it will have a kind of global resonance. Yes. People will have heard of it. Everybody will know about it. And you can't just suddenly send in your troops and crush it because it'll be a big story, which it wouldn't be if no one had heard of Qatar. Exactly. So the question is, does this work?

There are definitely downsides to it because I think that Hamad's assumption was that making Qatar a center of world attention would only be good. But obviously, it isn't only good, because the more that attention is paid to Qatar, the more people are aware of problems with it that the Qatari government might want to sweep under the carpet. So it's got the World Cup. It's the center of world attention. Here we are doing an episode about it. Qatar is all over the, you know, I mean, people will be watching the football from Qatar across the globe. But the process by which Qatar got the World Cup and the way in which its stadia were built has brought a lot of very very negative publicity so it's focused attention on

on corruption on boat rigging on bribery and perhaps particularly on the kind of the human rights offenses so uh qatar you know has this very small native population it's entirely dependent for uh large infrastructure projects on migrant labor and there have been all kinds of stories reports saying that basically this is a kind of modern form of slavery. Right, Indians, Nepalese, and so on. Yeah, that they're brought over, they have their passports taken away, and essentially if they complain, they have no recourse at all. So they're sort of working in horrendous conditions.

And, you know, if some stories are to be believed, quite a high death toll. Absolutely. And so that hasn't redounded entirely to its credit. The other problem that it has is that on the Al Jazeera theme, is that, again, it doesn't entirely redound. It's not entirely a positive. Because if you're controlling the news agenda,

then again, that makes you an object of criticism. So CNN is criticized, Fox News is criticized, the BBC is criticized, precisely because they have the reach that they do, because they have the kind of reputation that they do. Therefore, if people feel that they're not accommodating themselves to their own political perspectives, then they come to hate them. And much the same thing happens with Al Jazeera, and particularly because Qatar deliberately sets out to be friends essentially with everyone. So the classic example of this is that it invites Hamas to come and talk, but at the same time, it's playing host to Israeli trade delegations. And it doesn't go down well with radical Muslim

opinion. And Tom, what about the Arab Spring? So the Arab Spring starts in what, 2010 or so? Yes, exactly. So prior to the Arab Spring, among those Arab states that regard any contact with Israel, the fact that it's prepared to sup even with a long spoon with trade delegations, it's not entirely a positive from the Arab point of view. And it's seen as too accommodating to Israel. But then with the Arab Spring, you get criticism from the other side, which is that it's an ally of Islamic terrorism, of Muslim terrorism. Because what happens in the Arab Spring is that Al Jazeera is not just a kind of objective reporter. It's absolutely a player.

Spreading news, spreading information, all that stuff. Exactly. And particularly what the Qataris do, and therefore Al Jazeera, which is under the Qatari thumb, is that they back the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood are, well, they're condemned. So it's all very complicated. I mean, they're quite a kind of venerable organization. Their origins lie in Egypt. And so the Muslim Brotherhood come to power in Tunisia and they come to power in Egypt and more specifically in Egypt. And I say specifically because Egypt is, you know, it's one of the kind of the great political and cultural centers of the Arab world, much more than Tunisia and um there's a lot of nervousness from the saudis from the americans um from basically from any from anyone in the arab world who has suspicions of the muslim brotherhood and

basically that's everyone in power um so the muslim brotherhood come to power in egypt under the uh under the rule of a guy called morsi and and he very rapidly gets toppled. And the Saudis accuse the Qataris of backing terrorism. And you may feel that that is a pot calling a kettle black, and you'd be right to do so. But hypocrisy is very much a feature of politics in the Middle East. And it doesn't stop. Soudi united arab emirates bahrain qatar's near neighbor and in due course egypt from first of all recalling their ambassadors to qatar and then severing all ties with qatar and closing all transport links with qatar they try to blockade qatar yeah so they they they blockade it this is 2017 or so? Yes. Trump piles in.

He's very much on the side of the Saudis, inevitably. And a resolution isn't brokered until 2021. Crikey, only last year. Yeah. And that is under the aegis of the US and Kuwait. And Trump very much claims the credit for it. But of course. Of course.

So he says it was all him. So, you know, obviously there are kind of dangers for Qatar in this path. I mean, it hasn't been, you know, entirely without – and also the fact that it has very good relations with Iran as well. I was about to say, there's a colossal superpower – superpower is the wrong word. Kind of regional power. Yeah, regional great power rivalry, isn't there, between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

And Qatar is trying to play them off and find its role within that. But it may well be that it's bust up with the Saudis actually boosted its relations with Iran. And the counter view to this is that actually there are know, there are upsides to it as well, that it hasn't all been down, because otherwise they wouldn't be adopting this policy and it wouldn't have been so successful. So Qatar does have a kind of channel of communication to Iran, for instance. So that is something that can be activated if needs be. And it has definitely played a pretty positive role in certain regional conflicts. So in Lebanon, for instance, it's been an honest broker. And you see banners in Lebanon saying, thank you, Qatar. sense, with Al Jazeera, the Qataris have slightly been riding a tiger. It's definitely raised their profile.

It's definitely given them power, but that power is quite a treacherous thing. And on its own, I think it would be insufficient to secure their independence. And this was something that was very, very much brought home to the Qataris. And in fact, it may well have played a crucial role in the deposition of Hamad's father, which was the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, because it really brought home to everyone along the line of the Gulf that they needed military protection and they needed more solid bulwark than um than even al jazeera could provide and so basically they have they've adopted two policies to ensure that they have great power protection the first of those is economic so they have this vast sovereign wealth fund and they've invested they they own the shard for instance in in london london's tallest building. They own Paris Saint-Germain. So that's another football investment.

The ultimate plastic football team, Tom. Various German car companies. So they've invested in iconic properties investments within individual Western countries that helps to raise their profile. But also, of course, what they have done with their reserves of liquefied natural gas is that they have supplied it to the UK. The UK has been drawing on natural gas from Qatar, relying on its long-term relationship with Qatar. And that's something that obviously is- Yeah, very timely. But they've also been supplying liquefied natural gas to China, to Japan, to all kinds of countries that will therefore have a stake in upholding its independence.

And the other thing that they have done is from 1996 onwards, they started building a huge airbase at a place called Alia dade a vast vast air base and it was very much a kind of come hither you know wiggling of the bottom towards the united states uh because they knew the united states you know its air force needs it it needs a base um it had previously been in saudi arabia obviously relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia because of 9-11 and in due course and everything. Very, very rocky. And so the U.S. moves its air base to Al Udeid. And it's actually, it's the largest overseas, U.S. overseas air base anywhere in the world. So you would think that would be the ultimate protection, I suppose, wouldn't you?

Well, it's a base and the the raf station there as well other other western air force the the us have 10 000 troops there uh it's it's a regional command so that is really the kind of yeah the underpinning of uh qatari independence they had they they have they're indispensable to the global economy and absolutely at the moment i mean you know it's kind of such an odd coincidence that the world cup should be going on at the same time as its supplies of liquefied natural gas to the world is they're essentially keeping the global economy ticking so as i say i think that qatar is think that Qatar is a really astonishing state. It's played all the various elements of late 20th and early 21st century politics very, very cleverly.

And unless it had done so, it simply wouldn't be in the position that it is today of hosting the World Cup. Tom, you wonder whether the World Cup will be a blessing or a curse for Qatar. Because, of course, as you said earlier, the World Cup has brought a level of scrutiny that it's never had before. So there's two ways of looking at that. One is to say, well, let's look back to when Russia had the World Cup in 2018. Actually, you know, Vladimir Putin was able

to kind of get away scot-free. Everybody actually turned up and said, oh, Russia's lovely, you know, and nobody talked about human rights or any of these kinds of things. And any sort of criticism was kind of drowned out by excitement at the organization of the tournament and the spectacle and all that stuff. On the other hand, there has already been quite sort of bad publicity

for Qatar with the deaths of migrant workers, with the environmental costs of playing the tournament in somewhere that's so hot. Well, and also I think, I mean, don't you think, I mean, among football fans who will obviously be the people who will be paying closest attention to it, a feeling that this is a country without any football culture really. Yeah.

And it's in the middle of the European season. Yes, I mean, it feels... Lots of people are mildly resentful of it. I mean, that's not crucial. There's a sort of sense, isn't there? But I think... It's a sporting tournament. I mean, that's not crucial. There's a sort of sense, isn't there? But I think it's a sporting tournament. I mean... That's been bought.

That's been bought. And unlike... It's a rich man's toy. Of course, all sporting tournaments are like that. And the World Cup has always had, you know, its political dark side in Argentina in 1978, for example. Well, we discussed that in our episodes. Yeah, absolutely.

But this does feel like... Well, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. You know, if the tournament... I sort of think if the tournament passes off triumphantly and everybody says it was brilliantly organized and they had a whale of a time and it was a fantastic sporting spectacle, then the truth, unwelcome as it may be, will probably be a lot of the criticism just dies down. Don't you think? I mean, that's what happened in Russia in 2018. I mean, I think, I mean, ultimately, Qatar's security doesn't depend on Western public opinion. It doesn't really matter. It's definitely useful.

I mean, it helps. It helps that, you know, people in the West associate it with prosperity, with wealth, with progress, with bling, with nice things, with, you know with fancy island developments, all that kind of stuff. I mean, it does help. And therefore, a successful World Cup will obviously do a huge amount to raise its profile. But ultimately, the basis of Qatar's security remains that American air base and the need that the world has particularly over this winter for the um for the gas that it can supply i think that's all true that's all true but that

all of that said i think a few future historians will undoubtedly mention this the fact that because it's the most extraordinary symbol isn't it of the sort of changing balance of economic and political power in the world, that the World Cup is now being held in a country like Qatar, which would have been inconceivable even 40 or 50 years ago. And you could... Well, I mean, I think, yeah, I think it serves as a kind of unsettling emblem of the modern economy, where you do have this tiny minority of qataris you have

you know subsection of western expats and then you have a kind of vast heritage uh kind of almost slaves laboring beneath them which i get you know you could say is uh you know that's the way the global economy is organized now and all you know and and and with the um the current energy crisis you know the sense that the whole thing is so fundamental to the functioning of the global economy you know it's not just a kind of you know a peripheral side show i mean this is really central to to keeping our lights on over the winter you know all kinds of things so there's a lot to reflect on but before we end tom um and and by the way that was um as you would say that was an absolute tour de force i can't thank you enough but tom we should say a little bit about the next uh few weeks for us

because not only will you and I be watching the football, but also we will be releasing podcasts every day so that we get through the 32 – well, the 31 left, because we've done Qatar. There are 31 more countries to go. And with those 31 countries, we won't be focusing – we won't be doing potted histories. We'll be focusing on individual aspects.

So do you want to give us a couple of highlights of your highlights of the weeks ahead? I think what's been wonderful about doing these is that we've been able to fix on aspects of various aspects of history, and perhaps particularly regions of the world that we otherwise perhaps wouldn't have looked at, and come up with some really extraordinary episodes, events, characters. And I've certainly learned a huge amount. So what have I learned? I've learned more than I ever knew about Russia's most famous Cameroonian 18th century general. From a huge pool there, Tom. Obviously, there are lots of them, uh astonishing story um and i've learned that

costa rica i literally knew nothing about the history of costa rica i've learned that um a really remote a really remarkable story which i thoroughly commend to listeners who who may think costa rican history i'm not interested in that you will be listen to it and yourself i enjoyed listening to you talking about dido the great carthaginian queen um on whether or not she did exist uh so that's for two yes i like this i enjoyed hearing you were very good on the ashanti wars in the history of ghana uh and but my favorite and that if there's one podcast i think people should listen to is the podcast about australia um and the story of summerton man which is I mean basically the best murder mystery story I think I've ever heard so people have got that to look forward to yeah so lots to come and I just

hope that you don't get bored of our voices Tom I don't believe anyone no one could possibly get bored I think so enjoy the World Cup enjoy the Rest is History's World Cup extravaganza. And we will see you soon. Goodbye. Very soon. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to the Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just

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