Gulf rivalries spill onto the soccer pitch
By James M. Dorsey
With the 2018 World Cup in Russia behind it, the soccer
world’s focus shifts to the 2022 tournament in Qatar. Politics and the Gulf’s
internecine political and legal battles have already shaped debate about FIFA’s
controversial awarding of World Cup hosting rights to Qatar. The battles
highlight not only the sport’s dominance in the Middle East by autocratic
leaders but also the incestuous relationship between politics and sports that
is at the root of multiple scandals that have rocked the sports world for much
of this decade and compromised good governance in international sports.
Three men symbolize the importance of soccer to Gulf
autocrats who see the sport as a way to project their countries in a positive
light on the international stage, harness its popular appeal in their cultural
and public diplomacy campaigns, and leverage it as a pillar of their efforts to
garner soft power: Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and his nemeses,
United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed and Saudi sports czar,
Turki al-Sheikh, one of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s closest
associates.
To be sure, tension between Qatar and its Gulf detractors
was spilling onto the soccer pitch long before the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain
and Egypt took their opposition to Qatari policies to a new level with the imposition
in June 2017 of a diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar. Since
then, debate about the Qatari World Cup has been further politicized with the
Gulf crisis driving efforts to deprive Qatar of economic and soft power
benefits it derives from its hosting of the tournament, if not of the right to
host the mega-sports event.
The UAE-Saudi efforts took on added significance as Qatar
and its detractors settled in for the long haul. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain
and Egypt will likely face difficult choices if the Gulf crisis persists when
the World Cup, the first such mega-tournament to be held in the Middle East,
kicks off in Doha in late 2022.
Difficult choices
The choice would involve potential political risk. It would
be between maintaining the boycott that has cut off all air, sea and land links
between Qatar and its detractors at the expense of fans in a soccer-crazy part
of the world in which little evokes the deep-seated emotions associated with
religion and football or effectively breaching the embargo to evade political
backlash and ensure that supporters have access to a sports milestone in the
region’s history. The starkness of the boycotting states’ dilemma would be
magnified if any one of them were to qualify for the Qatar World Cup and would
be enhanced if they were to play the host country or, for example, Iran.
The issue of ability to attend is magnified by expectations that
the demography of fans attending the World Cup in Qatar may very well be a
different from that at past tournaments. Qatar is likely to attract a far
greater number of fans from the Middle East as well as Africa and Asia. The
Asian Football Confederation’s Competition Committee has already urged
governments to exempt football teams from travel bans and would
almost certainly do the same for fans.
As a result, the UAE-Saudi effort to undermine the Qatar
World Cup is about more than seeking to deliver a body blow to Qatar. It is
also about avoiding being further tied up into knots in an anti-Qatari campaign
that has so far failed to break the Gulf state’s resolve, force it to concede,
and garner international support. The campaign is multi-pronged and doesn’t shy
away from violating laws as is evident in Saudi
bootlegging to deprive beIN, the sports franchise of Qatar’s state-owned Al
Jazeera television network, of the fruits of acquired rights to broadcast
World Cup tournaments and European competitions at the risk of being penalized
and/or taken to court by the likes of FIFA and the English Premier League.
Saudi media reports that the government has launched an anti-piracy campaign, confiscating
more than 4,000 illegal receivers that hacked beIN failed to put an
end to the bootlegging.
Signalling the political importance that men like the crown
princes and Sheikh Tamim attribute to sports, a former top UAE security
official, Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan, suggested that the only
way to resolve the Gulf crisis would be for Qatar to surrender its World Cup
hosting rights. "If the World Cup leaves Qatar, Qatar's crisis
will be over ... because the crisis is created to get away from it," Mr. Khalfan
said.
Mr. Khalfan spoke at a time that leaked documents from the
email account of Yousef Al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador in Washington and a close
associate of the country’s crown prince, revealed a
UAE plan to undermine Qatar’s currency by manipulating the value of bonds and
derivatives. If successfully executed, the plan would have allowed
Qatar’s distractors to argue that the Gulf state’s financial problems called
into question its ability to organize the World Cup.
Serving national interests
Mr. Al-Sheikh, the chairman of the kingdom’s General Sport Authority,
makes no bones about harnessing sports to serve the kingdom’s interests. With a
career in security rather than sports, he was unequivocal in his assertion on
the eve of Saudi Arabia’s debut in the 2018 World Cup in Russia that he made
decisions based on what he deemed “Saudi Arabia’s best interest,”
reaffirming the inextricable relationship between sports and politics.
Barely 24 hours before the World Cup’s opening match, Saudi
Arabia made good on Mr. Al-Sheikh’s assertion that the kingdom’s international
sports policy would be driven by former US President George W. Bush’s post 9/11
principle of “you are either with us or against us.”
With Morocco’s bid for the 2026 World Cup in mind, Mr. Al-Sheikh
had warned that "to
be in the grey area is no longer acceptable to us. There are those
who were mistaken in their direction … If you want support, it'll be in Riyadh.
What you're doing is a waste of time…," Mr. Al-Sheikh said. Mr. Al-Sheikh
was referring to Morocco’s refusal to join the anti-Qatari campaign. Adopting a
Saudi Arabia First approach, Mr. Al-Sheikh noted that the United States “is our
biggest and strongest ally.” He recalled that when the World Cup was played in
1994 in nine American cities, the US “was one of our favourites. The fans were
numerous, and the Saudi team achieved good results.”
Mr. Al-Sheikh was manoeuvring at the same time to ensure
that the kingdom has greater say in international soccer governance, including
issues such as the fate of the Qatari World Cup and a push to extend international
isolation of Iran to the realm of sports. To do so, Saudi Arabia backed a
proposal to
speed up the expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams from 32, which
is scheduled to kick off in 2026, by making it already applicable to the 2022
World Cup. Saudi Arabia hopes that the expansion would significantly complicate
Qatari preparations for the event. Implementing the expansion in 2022 would strengthen
UAE and Saudi efforts to petition FIFA to force Qatar to agree to co-hosting of
the World Cup by other Gulf states, a proposal that was incorporated in the UAE
plan to undermine Qatar’s currency.
In an indication of things to come, the Asian
Football Confederation (AFC) in early 2018 thwarted a UAE-Saudi attempt to get
Asian tournament matches that were scheduled to be hosted by Qatar moved to a
neutral venue. The AFC warned the two countries that they would be
penalized if they failed to play in Doha or host Qatari teams.
Mr. Al-Sheikh’s moves were part of a two-pronged Saudi-UAE
effort. Global tech investor Softbank, which counts Saudi Arabia and the UAE
among its largest investors, is believed to be behind a
$25 billion proposal embraced by FIFA president Gianni Infantino to revamp the
FIFA Club World Cup and launch of a Global Nations League tournament.
If approved, the proposal would give Saudi Arabia a significant voice in global
soccer governance.
Complimenting the Saudi FIFA bid is an effort to expand the
kingdom’s influence in the 47-nation AFC, the largest of the world soccer
body’s constituent regional elements. To do so, Saudi Arabia unsuccessfully
tried to create a new regional bloc, the South West Asian Football Federation
(SWAFF), a potential violation of FIFA and AFC rules. The federation would have
been made up of members of both the AFC and the Amman-based West Asian Football
Federation (WAFF) that groups all Middle Eastern nations except for Israel and
is headed by Jordanian Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, a prominent advocate of
soccer governance reform.
The initiative
fell apart when the Asian members of SWAFF walked out in October
2018 in the wake of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi
consulate in Istanbul. The killing could also jeopardize Saudi efforts to gain
control of the AFC with the Al-Sheikh-backed
candidacy of Saudi Football Federation chief Adel Ezzat, who resigned
in August 2018 to run for the office..
Benefits outstrip reputational risk
Mr. Al-Sheikh and his boss, Prince Mohammed, share with the
crown prince’s UAE counterpart and namesake, a
belief that the public diplomacy and soft power fruits of harnessing sports
outstrip reputational risks. Simon Pearce, Abu Dhabi’s director of
strategic communications and a director of Manchester City, the British club
bought by UAE Crown Prince Mohammed’s brother but controlled by the de facto
Emirati ruler’s men, said as much in leaked emails to Mr. Al-Otaiba, the UAE
ambassador in Washington.
The emails discussed the UAE’s registration of a new soccer
club, New York City Football Club, as the United States’ Major League Soccer
newest franchise. Mr. Pearce argued that Abu Dhabi’s interests in the US
political environment are best served by associating New York City FC with City
Football Group, the Abu Dhabi government’s soccer investment vehicle, rather
than the government itself to evade criticism stemming from the Emirates’
criminalization of homosexuality, its less than stellar record on women’s
rights and its refusal to formally recognize Israel despite maintaining close
security and commercial relations with the Jewish state.
The UAE’s sports-related investments, guided by the crown
prince, much like the acquisition of important Qatari sports stakes on the
behest of Sheikh Tamim also give Gulf states political leverage and create additional
commercial opportunity. The investments constitute the flip side of large
amounts of Gulf
money being channelled to influential think tanks, particularly in
Washington. In a series of notes in 2012, Mr. Pearce advised Prince Mohammed, a man obsessed
with perceived threats posed by any form of political Islam and a driving force
in the campaign against Qatar, to tempt than British prime minister David
Cameron to counter what he described as Islamist infiltration of the BBC’s
Arabic service in exchange for lucrative arms and oil deals.
To illustrate the UAE and Qatar’s sway in European soccer,
Nicholas McGeehan, an independent researcher and former Human Rights Watch
executive focussed on the region, looked at recent
bookies odds for the Champions League. Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester
City was the favourite followed by Qatar’s Paris Saint-Germain. Third up was Bayern
Munich, whose shirts are sponsored by Qatar, fourth was Barcelona, which recently
ended a seven-year sponsorship deal with Qatar, and fifth Real Madrid that sold
the naming rights to its new stadium to Abu Dhabi.
Saudi and UAE public relations efforts to generate public
pressure for a deprival of Qatari hosting rights were at times mired in
controversy. The launch in May of the Foundation for Sports Integrity by Jamie
Fuller, a prominent Australian campaigner for a clean-up of global soccer
governance, backfired amid allegations
of Saudi and UAE financial backing and Mr. Fuller’s refusal to
disclose his source of funding.
Saudi and UAE media together with UK
tabloid The Sun heralded the launch in a poche London hotel that involved
a reiteration of assertions of Qatari wrongdoing in its successful World Cup
bid. Media like Abu Dhabi’s The National and Saudi
Arabia’s Al Arabiya projected the launch as pressure on FIFA to
deprive Qatar of its hosting rights. “It is no secret that football’s
governing body is rotten to the core. (FIFA) will rightly come under
renewed pressure to strip Qatar of the competition and carry out an internal
investigation in the wake of the most recent allegations. The millions of fans
eagerly anticipating 2022’s festival of football deserve better,” The National
said. Saudi-owned Ash-Sharq Al Awsat newspaper reported that a
June 2018 FIFA Congress would hold a re-vote of the Qatari hosting.
The Congress didn’t.
Qatar remains vulnerable
Despite so far successfully having defeated efforts to
deprive it of its hosting rights, Qatar remains vulnerable when it comes to the
integrity of its winning bid. The bid’s integrity and Sheikh Tamim’s emphasis
on sports as a pillar of Qatari soft power is at stake in
legal proceedings in New York and Zurich involving corruption in FIFA and
potential wrongdoing in the awarding of past World Cups. Qatar has
suffered reputational damage as a result of the question marks even if the Gulf
crisis has allowed it to enhance its image as an underdog being bullied by the
big boys on the block.
To Qatar’s credit, it has introduced reforms of its
controversial kafala or labour sponsorship system that could become a model for
the region. In doing so, it cemented the 2022 World Cup as one of the few
mega-events with a real potential of leaving a legacy of change. Qatar started
laying the foundations for that change by early on becoming the first and only
Gulf state to engage with its critics, international human rights groups and
trade unions.
Even so, Qatar initially suffered reputational damage on the
labour front because it was relatively slow in embracing and implementing the
reforms. Qatar’s handling of the Gulf crisis suggests that it has learnt from
the failure of its initial response to criticism of its winning 2022 bid when
it acted like an ostrich that puts its head in the sand, hoping that the storm
will pass only to find that by the time it rears its head the wound has festered,
and it has lost strategic advantage.
The integrity issue remains Qatar’s weak point. For activist
critics of the awarding of hosting rights to Qatar, there are two questions.
One is, who do they want to get in bed with? Qatar’s detractors, the United
Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia hardly have stellar human and labour rights
records. If anything, their records are worse than that of Qatar, which
admittedly does not glow.
The second question critics have to ask themselves is how best
to leverage the World Cup, irrespective of whether the Qatari bid was
compromised or not. On the assumption that it may have been compromised, the
question is less how to exact retribution for a wrong doing that was common
practice in global football governance. Leveraging should focus on how to
achieve a fundamental reform of global sports governance that has yet to emerge
eight years into a crisis that was in part sparked by the Qatar World Cup. This
goes to the heart of the fact that untouched in efforts to address the
governance crisis is the corrupting, ungoverned, and incestuous relationship
between sports and politics.
Siamese twins: sports and politics
The future of the Qatar World Cup and the Gulf crisis speaks
to the pervasiveness of politics in sports. The World Cup is political by
definition. Retaining Qatar’s hosting rights or depriving the Gulf state of the
right to host the tournament is ultimately a choice with political
consequences. As long as the crisis continues, retaining rights is a testimony
to Qatar’s resilience, deprival would be a victory for its detractors.
As a result, the real yardstick in the debate about the
Qatari World Cup should be how the sport and the integrity of the sport benefit
most. And even then, politics is never far from what the outcome of that debate
is. Obviously, instinctively, the optics of no retribution raises the question
of how that benefits integrity. The answer is that the potential legacy of
social and economic change that is already evident with the Qatar World Cup is
more important than the feel-good effect of having done the right thing with
retribution or the notion of setting an example. Add to that the fact that in
current circumstances, a withdrawal of hosting rights would likely be
interpreted as a victory of one side over the other, further divide the Arab
and Muslim world, and enhance a sense among many Muslims of being on the
defensive and under attack.
The silver lining in the Gulf crisis may be the fact that it
has showed up the fiction of a separation of sports and politics. FIFA, the
AFC, and the Confederation of African Football (CAF), seeking to police the ban
on a mixing of sports and politics, have discovered that it amounts to banging
their heads against a wall. Despite their attempts to halt politics from
subverting Asian tournaments, domestic and regional politics seeped into the
game via different avenues.
As a result, FIFA and its regional confederations have been
tying themselves up in knots. In a bizarre and contradictory sequence of events
at the outset of the Gulf crisis, FIFA president Infantino rejected involving
the group in the dispute by saying that “the
essential role of FIFA, as I understand it, is to deal with football and not to
interfere in geopolitics." Yet, on the same day that he made
his statement, Mr. Infantino waded into the crisis by removing a Qatari referee
from a 2018 World Cup qualifier at the request of the UAE. FIFA, beyond
declaring that the decision was taken “in view of the current geopolitical
situation,” appeared to be saying by implication that a Qatari by definition of
his nationality could not be an honest arbiter of a soccer match involving one
of his country’s detractors. In FIFA’s decision, politics trumped
professionalism, no pun intended.
Similarly, the AFC was less principled in its stand towards
matches pitting Saudi Arabia and Iran against one another. Iranian
club Traktor Sazi was forced in February to play its home match against Al Ahli
of Jeddah in Oman. It wasn’t clear why the AFC did not uphold the
principle it imposed on Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia in the case of Iran.
“Saudi teams have been able to select host stadiums and cities, and Saudi teams
will host two Iranian football representatives in the UAE and Kuwait. In
return, Iranian
football representatives should be able to use their own rights to choose
neutral venues,” said Mohammad Reza Saket, the head of the Islamic
Republic of Iran’s Football Federation in a letter to the AFC.
Soccer governance bodies have long struggled to maintain the
fiction of a separation in a trade-off that gave regulators greater autonomy
and created the breeding ground for widespread corruption while allowing
governments and politicians to manipulate the sport to their advantage as long
as they were not too blatant about it. The limits of that deal are currently
being defined in the Middle East, a region wracked by conflict where virtually
everything is politicized.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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