Qatar close to the end of 12-year journey

GENEVA (AP):

The first World Cup in the Middle East is less than one month away, nearing the conclusion of an often bumpy 12-year journey for Qatar that has transformed the nation.

Qatar has faced scepticism about how it persuaded FIFA to vote for the country in 2010; criticism of how migrant workers were treated building stadiums and tournament infrastructure; and derision from the football world for changing the dates from the traditional June-July period to November-December.

The small Arab country jutting out into the Persian Gulf has overcome all of that, as well as hostility from neighbouring states which imposed a three-year economic and diplomatic boycott that ended in January 2021.

On November 20, the biggest tournament in football will finally get started a couple hours after sunset at the 60,000-seat Al Bayt Stadium – a new venue north of Doha built for the World Cup. The maroon-and-white clad national team from the host country will open a tournament that has come to define the gas-rich emirate’s image against the team from Ecuador – probably.

All 64 games over the course of 29 days involving 32 teams will be held in the Doha area, with many more shows and cultural events planned for a football-led party in the conservative Muslim society.

For one month, Qatar will relax its strict limits on where alcohol can be bought, including serving beer from World Cup sponsor Budweiser at the eight stadiums and at the official big-screen viewing site in Al Bidda Park.

BEST WORLD CUP EVER

Promises of “the best World Cup ever, on and off the field” were made on Monday by FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who said the same in Moscow four years ago when Russia hosted the tournament.

However, since the decisions in 2010 to pick Russia and Qatar as future World Cup hosts, 21 of the 24 men on the FIFA executive committee were variously convicted in criminal or ethics cases, indicted, acquitted at trial or implicated in wrongdoing.

The president of FIFA at that time, Sepp Blatter, is one of them, still banned from the sport he led for 17 years for various misdeeds. Blatter, however, has said he didn’t vote for Qatar.

About 1.2 million visitors are expected in Qatar for the first World Cup to be played in the middle of the traditional European football season, a move made to avoid the oppressive desert heat in the Middle East.

“We are opening our doors in Doha to them without discrimination,” the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, told the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month.

There is one bit of unprecedented late doubt, however, with the actual line-up of the tournament still under appeal. Chile and Peru have gone to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to challenge Ecuador’s qualification, claiming it used an ineligible player.

This year’s tournament will be among the most expensive World Cups for fans to follow and certainly the most political in modern times. Currently, players from Brazil are being used as political weapons in an election campaign and players from Iran have been supporting protests at home following the death of a 22-year-old woman after being detained by the morality police.

Eight of the 13 European teams said last month their captains will wear an armband with a heart-shaped, multicoloured design at games to support the ‘One Love’ campaign against discrimination.

The gesture is a clear breach of FIFA rules. It also reflects unease at home about taking football’s biggest event to Qatar, where homosexual acts are illegal and labour and human rights have been a decade-long controversy. Qatar points to changes in its labour laws in its defence and says LGTBQ fans won’t face arrest.

This week, the United States Soccer Federation joined six European federations in backing calls by rights advocates to create a compensation fund for workers, many from south Asia, who have been killed or injured.

“With the World Cup looming, the job of protecting migrant workers from exploitation is only half done, while that of compensating those who have suffered abuses has barely started,” said Steve Cockburn, the head of economic and social justice at Amnesty International.

FIFA deputy secretary general Alasdair Bell said last week it is open to talks on remedy and reparations. It is unclear if any money would come from FIFA’s $6 billion World Cup revenues; the Qatari government, which has reformed many labour laws faster than its regional rivals; or construction firms, which employed the workers in physical and contractual conditions decried by activists as modern slavery.

The migrant workers have helped transform Doha into a futuristic city whose ambitions to rival regional hubs like Dubai and Singapore will be given a showcase by the World Cup.

“As you look around the country today, at the state-of-the-art stadiums, the training pitches, the metro, the wider infrastructure, everything is ready and everyone is welcome,” said Infantino, who moved from Zurich to live in Doha for the final year of preparations.

The infrastructure is there. The challenges for Qatar are on the human scale for a country of only 350,000 citizens in a population swelled to 2.6 million by migrants working in construction, domestic and service sectors, as well as in white-collar jobs.

“The world will see that medium-sized and small countries are able to host global events with great success,” the emir told UN delegates.

As for security, Qatar will rely on expertise and hardware from allies, including sniffer dogs, an anti-drone system and a surveillance airplane from France, and a warship and riot police from Turkey. The US military’s Central Command has its forward headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base.

This year’s World Cup will be hosted on the smallest territory since Switzerland in 1954 and will uniquely have most of the fans living together in one city.