March 25 – Not a fan of Qatar and aware of numerous potential and obvious downsides (debilitating summer heat above all), we have always kept an open mind about a World Cup in the Middle East, once the hosting rights were allotted.
The opposition towards the tiny Emirate has always been virulent. Even during the bidding phase, critics from all sorts of corners crept out from all sorts of rocks built on bias. Others, genuine ones without an agenda, voiced their concerns openly, understandably and with genuine points that did make sense.
Eight years. The Qatar World Cup is slated for 2022 – not this year, or 2018 where another favourite foe of many, Russia, is about to crumble under the newly invented ‘Cold War 2.0’. Or, is it?
Eight years from now, the Middle East is to host a football World Cup. Meanwhile – ever since that fateful day in December 2010 – the opposition against the small State has grown to a level that is best described as hysteria. At a time when the next World Cup is facing serious issues, and at a time when the subsequent World Cup – in four years – would possibly be the next-best topic of football discussion, the focus is again on an event that is scheduled for 2022. Interesting.
The reasons to deny Qatar the right to host the biggest sports event in the world, the FIFA World Cup, are as multiple as the pundits who voice them: excessive heat (true, but didn’t apparently matter when the hosting rights were awarded), the worry that homosexuals will not be welcome (a bit like Sochi where LGTBs were quite happy after all), the lack of drinking holes where fans can get properly drunk before and after each game (apparently that is a key point of concern for some), the international calendar (in case the World Cup is moved to winter, which is pretty much what will happen), the kafala system which apparently treats workers like slaves (just like England, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Italy and the US did for five hundred years), alleged bribes having been paid (none proven so far, no facts even presented as yet, no credible evidence in sight – but hell, why does that matter?), and with increasing intensity: the apparent fact that the ruling family allegedly has ties to rather unsavoury people who “want to kill us” (the “us” part, we guess, means Americans and Brits above all because the rest of Europe has not engaged in wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq etc. at quite the same level they have).
One cannot but note an ever-increasing escalation of topics that appear to have a single objective: to drag Qatar around the block so many times that the country either a) gives up, lies down and gives back the rights to host the World Cup, or b) is forced, by FIFA’s ExCo and its Congress, to give back the hosting rights.
Considering that Qatar has followed a policy of gaining international respect by promoting itself as a nation of major sports events, one would exclude the first option, namely that the country would abandon its rights to host the World Cup.
So that leaves point b): take it away from them. This is a loud cry that is presently being openly voiced all over the place. Until a few months ago, only a handful of self-righteous and self-appointed ethics fans (really?) felt the urge to focus on something that was nothing (nothing as yet, if one goes by the legal concept that everybody must be proven guilty before one can convict).
Today, all that has changed.
It was in this publication (and many others), that Mr Don Garber, American, head of the MLS and active participant during the bidding phase to win the 2022 hosting rights for the US, spelt it out, once and for all when he said: “We certainly would be happy to host it (the FIFA World Cup) here and have a lot of big stadiums that could turn it around and host on a very short notice”. There you have it. A clear and fair offer. Since we didn’t win the bid, let us have the hosting rights. Really? And Australia? And Korea? And Japan? And what about Qatar who won it?
Indeed, what about it?
So far, and despite many trying hard to find that smoking gun, nothing has been found by Garcia (another American who is investigating America’s competitors, or rather whether they committed any untoward acts) nor FIFA nor anybody else.
The most recent attempt at creating a link between unexplained flows of funds and the Qatari bid, was an English daily newspaper’s tale of money having been paid from one Member of FIFA’s Executive Committee to another. And since the recipient is the awful Jack Warner, and the sender is Bin Hammam, the case is closed before it was opened: guilty of bribing to get the hosting rights. But wait: was it investigated, prosecuted and ruled upon? Ah, I see. It wasn’t. OK then, but don’t we all know the inevitable result already anyway? Do we really need an investigation (despite the fact that Warner and Bin Hammam were the closest of buddies for well over a decade and had dealings way beyond – and possibly not including – the World Cup bid)? Can’t we just luxuriate in our righteous knowledge and assume that Arabs are bad by definition and the West is good by default? Is it? The West is good? Probably best not to go there at the moment.
As long as there is no evidence of wrongdoing, there was no wrongdoing. Simple.
As long as somebody is not convicted of a crime, he/she is not guilty of a crime. As long as a person is not guilty, we, the so very civilised West, should either put up or shut up.
Brings me to the next point. Kafala. A system of hiring people and taking their passports, controlling every aspect of their life and – as is proven in many cases – treating them like cattle.
Besides the fact that the Western outrage is really driving an agenda here, with its colonial and post-colonial conduct, displayed for centuries, where people were actually named chattels and treated like objects, not humans, besides the fact that the so glorified US – which humbly offers its good services now to host the World Cup literally over night – has a rampant racism problem to this day, we need to consider two things.
Firstly, is it really acceptable for people who live in drone houses, sorry: glass houses, to throw stones (see above).
Secondly, and this may be a tad unconventional argument, were it not for FIFA having awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, nobody would a) know what, where and why Qatar is, and b) nobody – except a few Gutmenschen – would talk about kafala or the rights of Nepalese workers in the UAE, Saudi, Bahrain, and of course Qatar.
The good thing that may come of all of this is that the world takes note of a system that needs to be reviewed and changed. The world will follow carefully what the Supreme Committee for the World Cup Delivery and Legacy is doing, how human rights are being observed. Without FIFA having awarded the World Cup to Qatar, we would have happily continued to indulge in what the West is best at: wars of aggression by military means and wars of attrition by saving the perpetrators (huge banks) instead of protecting the victims (us all).
Now that the eyes are on Qatar for many more reasons than one, the small State can show the world that it adheres to Western principles (any idiot who thinks that Qatar is all alone in its treatment of workers would be seriously delusional and forgetting the scale of mistreatment of workers in Bangladesh’s tanning factories, the child labour in Asia that help produce the biggest brands of sportswear, fashion and the exploitation of women through a nasty caste system which has not succumbed to the values we all hold so very high – except if we choose to abandon them when our pockets are concerned).
It took good old Europe centuries to start respecting human rights. There are dominant world powers where still to this day human rights are treated with total disrespect. Or do we believe that racial profiling is a fabulous aspect of human rights? Really?
It took “the West” centuries to reach the higher levels of Maslows’ pyramid. Yet we demand from others – in this case Qatar – to change centuries of culture (no matter how we may dislike it with our enlightened selves) over night. Why not observe a bit longer, offer support for a change and see how the next few years take shape. Why not wait and see whether Qatar actually does do better and treat workers like humans, like people who deserve respect? Why not stop the hypocrisy that we are so good at and give somebody a chance as the 30 million Africans have given the US and Britain a chance to change after centuries of slavery and humiliation?
If we can change, so can others. And if we demand change while we continue to slaughter innocent women and children with incessant drone strikes and fascist wars, then our arguments – no matter how good they are – are useless. And hypocritical. At best.