The Qatar World Cup: Footballing for soft power
By James M. Dorsey
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A US-led military coalition liberated
Kuwait while many conservative Kuwaitis fled to Saudi Arabia. Less conservative
Kuwaiti nationals sat the war out in the casino of the Cairo Hilton hotel.
Mr. Al Thani recognized that, like
Kuwait, his country with a citizenry of 300,000, sandwiched between two
regional behemoths, Iran and Saudi Arabia, would never be able to fend off a
conventional military attack on its territory, no matter how much and how
sophisticated the weaponry is that it acquires.
To ensure that Qatar was relevant to
the international community and had the necessary public empathy to support
intervention on the Gulf state's behalf in a time of need, Mr. Al Thani
concluded that Qatar's defence strategy would have to focus on soft rather than
hard power.
In more than 30 years since, Qatar,
one of the world's top gas producers, has developed a highly sophisticated,
multi-pronged soft power policy.
It involves ensuring a diversified
customer base for its gas; a fast-paced, mediation-driven foreign policy; and
the Al Jazeera television network that competes with the likes of the BBC and
CNN.
Qatar's creation of an air transport
hub with an award-winning airline and airport, the opening of world-class
museums, and high-profile investments in real estate in world capitals and
blue-chip companies were also part of the strategy.
But none of these building blocks
attracted more attention and more controversy than the sports leg of the Qatari
strategy, with next month's World Cup at the top of the list.
The positioning of sports as part of
defense strategy shines a different light on controversies over the integrity
of the Qatari bid, conditions of predominantly Asian migrant labour that built
World Cup-related infrastructure, and potential risks for members of the LGBT
community visiting a country where same-sex relationships and pre-marital sex
constitute criminal violations of the law.
As a result, the stakes for Qatar,
against the odds, in endearing itself to soccer fans, are high. It hopes to do
so by being lenient towards violators of Qatari law, including activists wanting to make a point during the World Cup.
This week, in an indication of what
that could mean, Qatari police stopped British activist Peter Tatchell from protesting the country's anti-LGBT laws but did not detain him.
Mr. Tatchell said in a video clip on Twitter that he had been interrogated for 49
minutes.
The activist stood outside Qatar’s
national museum for at least 35 minutes wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with
"#Qatarantigay" and holding a placard that read “Qatar arrests and
subjects LGBTs to conversion” before uniformed and plainclothes policemen
arrived.
The police folded up Mr. Tatchell’s placard, took photos of his passport, questioned him, shook his hand, and left
him standing on the sidewalk.
The handling of Mr. Tatchell
contrasts starkly with the treatment of LGBT Qataris as described in a Human Rights
Watch report, denied by Qatari officials.
The report asserted that at
least six LGBT Qataris had been arrested and abused since 2019 and as recently
as last month, two months before the World Cup. The six Qataris interviewed by
the human rights group included four transgender women, one bisexual woman, and
one gay man.
The group said they were held in an underground
prison in Doha and forced to sign pledges indicating that they would 'cease
immoral activity.’
The transgender women detainees were ordered to
attend conversion therapy sessions at a government-sponsored clinic. A Qatari
official insisted that the Gulf state does not "license or operate 'conversion centres.'”
From a Qatari and Kuwaiti
perspective, the stark reality is that little has changed in their hard power defence
capabilities in the more than 30 years since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
"Unfortunately, as Gulf
countries, we do not have options. Our capabilities do not deter Iran, do not
deter other powers… We do not have other practical solutions," Kuwaiti
international relations scholar Abdullah al-Shaji told a recent conference in
Doha.
Speaking against the backdrop of the
worst crisis in US-Saudi and potentially US-UAE relations since the 1973 Arab
oil boycott, Mr. Al-Shaji noted, "Russia is not going to be here, neither
China. They do not have the intention or the capability. The US knows that the
US is the only kid in town. Take it or leave it."
This is where Qatar's image among
soccer fans takes on national security and geopolitical significance.
How Qatar handles issues such as
activists seeking to capitalize on the opportunity to make a point, potential
fan rowdiness, and culturally sensitive issues such as intoxication, public
expressions of affection, and sexual diversity will shape how fans perceive and
remember the 2022 World Cup, the most controversial in the history of world soccer
body FIFA.
In a world of rising nationalism and
popularism, in which Americans are war-weary after two decades of fighting in
the greater Middle East, fan attitudes could make or break public support if
Qatar ever needed the international community to come to its aid.
An analysis by social media and
mis-and disinformation expert Marc Owen Jones illustrated the centrality of the
World Cup in reporting on Qatar in British media in the 12 years between
Qatar's winning of its hosting rights in 2010 and the tournament itself in
2022.
Forty per cent of 1,735 Qatar-related
headlines in newspapers such as The Guardian, The Times, Daily Express, The
Sun, Daily Mail, The Telegraph, and Metro UK referred to the World Cup.
Of the approximately 685 World
Cup-related articles, 454, or 66 per cent, were critical, 201, or 29 per cent,
were neutral, and 33, or five per cent, were positive. Most of the negative
articles focused on human rights.
By contrast, at most three per cent
of articles about Russia in the period between Russia's winning of its hosting
rights alongside Qatar in 2010 and the Russian World Cup in 2018 focused on the
tournament. In Russia's case, the country’s 2014 intervention in Ukraine and
its annexation of Crimea dominated media coverage.
If public opinion surveys are
anything to go by, Qatar is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of fans
in the United States and Europe, despite having enacted far-reaching reforms of
its erstwhile labor system that put workers at the mercy of their employers and
seeking to assure fans and activists that all irrespective of sexual
orientation or marital status would be welcome.
Qatar may also have a mixed
reputation in labour-supplying nations, although there is a dearth of data
available from those countries. Equally, there is a lack of data on fan
attitudes toward Qatar in much of Africa and a large swath of Asia.
However, a recent US survey suggested
that 41 percent of Americans, 51 percent of American sports fans, and 61
percent of avid fans said Qatari human rights violations reduced their interest
in the World Cup.
In addition, a YouGov poll commissioned by Amnesty
International found that 67 per cent of the 17,477 participants in the survey
in Europe, Central and Latin America, the United States, and Kenya wanted their
national soccer associations to speak out publicly about human rights issues
associated with the Qatar World Cup.
To counter negative perceptions, Qatar has
invested heavily in making its World Cup an unforgettable experience.
However, New York Times soccer correspondent Rory
Smith cautioned that the Qatari investment might miss the plank.
“It is not the soccer that
makes the World Cup, not really… The
World Cup, at heart, is a feeling… What made Russia
2018…was Nikolskaya, the street in central Moscow that
became a hub for fans from all over the world, full of flags and
bunting and song. It was the sight of thousands upon thousands of
Peruvians on the streets of Saransk, a red sash across
their hearts. It was the sense that, even in a vast land of
steppe and mountain and forest, you were never more than six feet
from a Colombian,” Mr. Smith said.
That feeling that touches not only
those who travel to the World Cup but also those who follow it on screens at
home “cannot be forced. It cannot be commanded into an existence. It has to
gestate, develop, ferment.”
That is where Qatar’s apparent
targeting of a high-end audience with its emphasis on pricy, luxury
accommodation during the tournament could backfire and undermine its goal of
engendering empathy for the Gulf state.
Many of those sitting at home,
particularly in Europe, Africa, and Asia, may feel that cost and regulated
access prevented them from attending.
“It is hard not to worry that many of
those fans will have been priced out of Qatar or excluded by virtue of not
being allowed into the country without a ticket for a game and that with them,
the feeling will change, turning the tournament into an ersatz version of
itself, a tribute to all the things money can buy…and all of the things that it
cannot,” Mr. Smith warned.
In the final analysis, the litmus
test of Qatar's sports strategy will be whether the World Cup helps Qatar
reproduce its geopolitical success, achieved as much on its own steam as with
the unintended help of its erstwhile detractors, the United Arab Emirates, and
Saudi Arabia when it defeated a 3.5-year-long economic and diplomatic boycott.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia lifted the embargo in early 2021.
Ultimately, to fully benefit from the
tournament's reputational value, Qatar will, post-World Cup, have to push
forward with social, economic, and political reform, even if activist attention
moves on and focuses on countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt that are
likely to bid for forthcoming sports megaevents such as the 2027 Asian Cup and
the 2030 World Cup.
Qatar's ability and willingness to
move ahead with reforms may make the difference in how the tournament is
remembered, particularly in the United States and Europe, which are likely to
be crucial to the Gulf state’s military defence when the chips are down.
The problem is that human rights,
labour, and LGBT groups may lose leverage. Qatar may not remain as receptive to
criticism as it was in the run-up to the World Cup.
In a speech this week, Qatar’s emir,
Sheikh Tamim, lamented that since
winning hosting rights, Qatar had been “subjected to an unprecedented campaign that no host country has faced.”
The emir went on to say that “we
initially dealt with the matter in good faith, and even considered some of
criticism as positive and useful… (But) it soon became clear that the campaign
tends to continue and expand to include fabrications and double standards that
were so ferocious that it has unfortunately prompted many people to question
real reasons and motives behind this campaign."
An earlier version of this story
appeared as a RSIS Commentary
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an
award-winning journalist and scholar, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang
Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and
the author of the syndicated column and blog, The
Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
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