Qatar’s quagmire: existential fears and missed opportunities
By James M. Dorsey
Walking around Qatar’s monumental Aspire Dome sports academy,
coach Fred Engh noticed kids playing soccer on an indoor field big enough to accommodate
four teams simultaneously during a break in an annual gathering of hundreds of
sports leaders designed to project the Gulf state as an innovative, socially
responsible global sports hub.
Mr. Engh’s initial impression that the government was
catering to the whole of its population, a majority of whom are poorly paid
migrant workers whose restrictive labour and working conditions have become a
focal point of criticism since Qatar won the hosting rights for the 2022 World
Cup were however quickly dashed.
“It looked great and I was happy to see that the Qatar
people cared enough to allow kids to come in and play in this magnificent
facility. I was wrong. Not every local kid was allowed. It was open to only
those that had money,” Mr. Engh said in a recent Huffington
Post column.
Chatting with a group of nearby migrant workers recruited to
keep Aspire Dome clean, Mr. Engh quickly discovered that neither they nor their
children had access to the soccer field. In response to Mr. Engh’s question
whether any of their children were among those, the workers “looked at me as if
I were some kind of world-class comedian trying my best to humour them,” he
wrote. Asked what facilities were available for poor kids, the workers replied:
"Nowhere."
Nobody seemed bothered by Qatar’s segregation of rich and
poor and marginalization of a majority of the population when Mr. Engh recited
his experience during one of the gathering’s many sessions that are often
geared to projecting Qatar’s support for the disadvantaged. It was, he wrote, “Business
as usual. The haves and the have-nots, Qatar style.”
Mr. Engh’s encounter with the workers happened three years
ago. Qatar has since announced lofty standards for the working and living
conditions of migrant workers, including the
construction of seven new cities to accommodate those working on World
Cup-related construction sight. It has also said that reforms of its
controversial kafala or sponsorship system that puts workers at the mercy of
their employers would be enshrined in law by the end of this year.
For now, Qatar’s promises remain just that, promises.
Credibility Qatar built in recent years by announcing the standards in for a
conservative, autocratic Gulf state unprecedented collaboration with human
rights and labour activists has been thoroughly wasted.
Qatar’s credibility has been undermined by its failure to
take meaningful steps that would have enhanced confidence even if in some
instances they would have broached the existential issues underlying Qatari
resistance to change or addressed material concerns. It was further jeopardized
by seeming Qatari backtracking on baby steps that held out the promise of
change, and its repeated detention of foreign journalists seeking to report
independently and unfettered on the plight of migrant workers.
At the core of Qatari resistance, is the fear of the Gulf
state’s citizenry, who account for a mere 12 percent of the population, that
granting foreigners any rights risks opening a Pandora’s Box that could lead to
non-Qataris gaining political rights and easier access to citizenship.
Similarly, many Qataris are anxious that engagement with the non-Qatari
majority that could give it a stake in society would amount to acknowledging
that their multi-ethnic, multi-religious demography is in fact a multicultural
society in more than just a slogan – a step that would threaten to delude the
Gulf state’s conservative, tribal, mono-culture.
Mr. Engh put his finger on the problem but appears to have
overlooked these real life issues underlying effective segregation at the
Aspire Dome. His observations did however put a hole in Qatari rhetoric of the
value it attributes to foreigner that are helping it build a state-of-the art
infrastructure.
They highlighted the fact that Qatar like other Gulf states at
best views foreigners as guests obliged to leave when their professional
contracts expire. Rather than adhering to universally accepted concept of a
guest who is made to feel at home, Qatari policy is designed to ensure that
non-Qataris do not develop ties that could persuade them to want to make Qatar
their permanent home.
To be fair, Qatar is not unique in this. Even traditional
immigration societies like Australia appear hostile to migrants and the mood in
Europe has soured as tens of thousands of refugees from conflicts in the Middle
East and repressive regimes in Africa force their way onto the continent. Yet
Qatar in line with all Gulf states has preferred to fund aid to the refugees
rather than open its own doors.
Nonetheless, Qatar two years ago appeared to be tinkering
with its non-integration policy when it organized its first ever tournament for
soccer teams of foreign workers in which 16 teams participated. Qatari
officials at the time said they were considering a competition in which foreign
worker teams would play their Qatari counterpart.
The plan never materialized and the chances of foreign
workers and their kids being allowed to play in the Aspire Dome are without a
demonstration of political will to introduce real reform virtually zero. Qatar’s
credibility was further damaged by its crude efforts in the last year to fill
stadia during international matches by bussing in foreign workers who were paid
to attend a match rather than given the opportunity and access that spectators
would expect to have.
An announcement earlier this month by California-based big
data software company Sysorex that it had concluded a contract to deploy in
Qatar a mobile “worker locationing and asset management platform” that would
track migrant workers in their living quarters as well as in living quarters,
recreation, healthcare, and retail facilities that they frequent sparked
criticism from human rights and labour activists.
They denounced the move despite Sysorex’s effort to project
the platform as a tool that would provide “insight into how residents flow
through the community, which facilities are most popular, and where
improvements can be made” as well as a technology that would improve first
response in cases of emergency.
Citing the multiple problems with the sponsorship system,
Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas McGeehan quipped: “Passport confiscation,
recruitment fees, sponsorship-based employment, the prohibition of trade
unions, and absence of grievance mechanisms combine to a toxic effect in Qatar.
The last thing we need is yet another control mechanism.”
James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute
of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the
same title.
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