Ever since winning the right to host the 2022 World Cup, Qatar has been the source of an
almost constant and negative stream of press.
From high level political gas deals and allegations of corruption surrounding the vote back in
2010 to widespread reports of human rights abuses concerning the migrant work force that
is building the stadiums and infrastructure of the tournament.
So far, Qatar's teflon World Cup has managed to survive.
But Qatar's tournament is still under threat, and not because of any of the things we have
mentioned before, at least not directly.
The tournament has become the central pawn in a global political battle between Qatar
and its neighbours Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE – where Manchester City's owner Sheikh Mansour is
one of the most powerful economic and political figures – were the leading countries in
a five nation coalition that cut all ties with Qatar.
All trade was banned.
Borders were closed.
Flights between the countries stopped.
Families were separated.
Qatar called it a “blockade”.
The move brought temporary chaos to Qatar.
Supermarket shelves were emptied, and the country's vast reserves were used to counter
any damage.
The country spent billions of dollars, and re-routed supply chains to keep construction
on the World Cup going.
What brought Qatar's neighbours to such a drastic course of actions?
The official explanation was Qatar's alleged support for terrorist movements in the Middle
East and its close links to Iran, a Shia theocracy viewed as a historic enemy and an existential
threat to Sunni Saudi Arabia in particular.
But the truth is much more complex, and opaque.
It is a story of jealousy and greed.
Of Trump and failed deals.
Of hacking and propaganda wars.
Of Al Jazeera and the competing whims and thin skins of a new generation of Arab leaders.
Of pirated football streams and a trench full of nuclear waste.
More on that later.
The case against Qatar, that it funds terrorism, is a strange charge to levy, given that Saudi
Arabia has been accused in the past of using its financial clout from owning the world's
biggest oil reserves to spread its unwavering form of Islam across the world.
But Saudi Arabia has taken a new, more muscular path with its foreign policy, under its young
Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.
Since rising to power he has shaken up Saudi society, lifting the ban on women driving
in the Kingdom as well as the ban on women watching football.
On the other hand, he has also cracked down on dissent, locking up dozens of the country's
richest men in a five star hotel until they handed back some of their wealth as well locking
up dozens of feminist activists who have long campaigned against what has been described
as Saudi Arabia's “gender apartheid”.
In the UAE, another crown prince, Mohamed bin Zayed – the brother of Sheikh Mansour
– has also been cracking down on dissent.
The UAE has virtually no democracy and some of the harshest social media laws in the world.
The country's best known human rights activist, Ahmed Mansoor, was arrested, held incommunicado
and jailed for ten years for using his social media accounts to publish “false information”
and “spread hatred and sectarianism.”
The roots of the conflict can be found in the Arab Spring, the series of uprising across
the Middle East that began in Tunisia in 2010 and spread across the region.
In Egypt the longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak was removed from power after hundreds of thousands
of people filled Tahrir Square.
After Egypt's first free elections, Mohamed Morsi became president, a candidate aligned
with the Muslim Brotherhood but who was also a member.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a popular political Islamic organisation banned in much of the
Middle East as it poses the biggest threat to the Gulf's conservative monarchies.
The election of Morsi terrified the Gulf Arab states who feared that they would be next.
So much so that when Mohamed bin Zayed met the British prime minister David Cameron in
2012, he raised the issue of the UK banning the Brotherhood.
If they didn't, British businesses would find difficulty in getting business from the UAE,
especially when it came to arms and security contracts.
When that didn’t work, the UK’s ambassador to the UAE was summoned to a meeting with
Manchester City chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak, who is also Mohammed bin Zayed’s right-hand
man and at the heart of the UAE government.
“The UK will need to consider the political implications when three of its most important
allies in the region [Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE] have taken a clear decision regarding
the Mbs [Muslim Brotherhood],” the Guardian reported Mubarak as saying.
“Difficult conversations we've been having, will become far more difficult.
We are raising a red flag.”
Qatar, meanwhile, supported the Muslim Brotherhood and loaned Egypt billions of dollars to help
prop up the Morsi government.
There was also support for other Islamic groups in the Middle East, including some that were
fighting Bashar Al Assad's government in Syria's civil war, a complicated patchwork of armed
groups that were being funded by various outside actors including the US and the Saudis, sometimes
on the same side, sometimes against each other.
But what has really antagonised Qatar's neighbours over the years is Al Jazeera, the freewheeling
state-funded TV network based in Qatar that aired views from dissidents that openly criticised
the policies of Saudi and Emirati leaders (whilst, of course, refraining to criticise
Qatar's own royal family who bankroll it).
They accused Qatar of using Al Jazeera to agitate opposition in their own backyards.
There had been various fallings out before, including a diplomatic break in 2014.
But the election of Donald Trump as US president presented an opportunity.
The Saudis and the UAE – who had been supportive of a Trump presidency after becoming enraged
with President Barak Obama's softening of ties with Iran and the signing of a deal designed
to stop it developing nuclear weapons – convinced him that Qatar was the bad guy.
Shortly after the blockade was announced, Trump tweeted:
“During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding
of Radical Ideology.
Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!”
Since then an information and economic war has been raging, alongside some more petty
moves, like the Saudi announcement that it would build a huge trench that would separate
Qatar and make it an island.
It was announced that Saudi Arabia would fill the trench with nuclear waste.
There was the case of beoutQ, a TV network that emerged over night and has brazenly been
bootlegging Premier League and World Cup football matches in Saudi Arabia.
The Middle Eastern rights are held by beIN, a Qatar owned sports network that was spun
off from Al Jazeera.
But Qatar's opponents have realised the biggest way to hurt Qatar is to take away its World
Cup, in which it has invested huge resources and political capital.
When the emails of the UAE's ambassador to the US – Yousef al-Otaiba, a well connected
scion of Washington's political elite – were leaked it laid bare a trail of plans aimed
at diminishing Qatar's ability to host the World Cup, including one that would force
the Qatar to share the World Cup with its neighbours.
Although apparently unconnected, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has raised the prospect of
bringing forward an expanded 48 team World Cup for 2022.
Such a move would be impossible for Qatar to accommodate, and would force them to share
the finals.
It is unclear whether that move will go ahead still.
But Saudi Arabia and UAE may be deepening its ties with FIFA.
A new revamped Club World Cup that would challenge the Champions League and bring in a staggering
$25 billion was recently proposed and enthusiastically backed by Infantino.
It is believed that investors from Japan, the US, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are behind
the proposal.
There have been several astroturfed human rights groups and Twitter accounts set up
to seemingly disparage and amplify Qatar's human rights record.
Consultancies and think tanks – the provenance of their funding unknown – have published
critical reports on Qatar's World Cup.
Often, their claims have ended up being reported in respected media outlets like the BBC and
the Sunday Times.
And then there was the recent launch of the Foundation For Sports Integrity, a new anti-corruption
organisation, at a glitzy event in London full of celebrity speakers.
The event focused primarily on Qatar and generated thousands of column inches in the international
media criticising Qatar 2022.
But the organiser refused to say who was providing the funding for it.
Nicholas McGeehan, a worker rights activists who has long been a critic of Qatar's World
Cup was invited to speak.
“I asked for assurances it wasn’t Gulf money – it was clear there was a lot of
money behind it,” he told The Guardian.
“Those assurances were given and then two days later I was uninvited.
They couldn’t give a reason as to why I wasn’t appearing.
It just yells Saudi and UAE money.”
Qatar has largely managed to weather the storm so far.
It has repatriated hundred of billions of dollars to refill its reserves and has deepened
economic ties with Turkey, Iran and Oman to make up for the loss of trade with its neighbours.
The royal family has even managed to win back Trump's affections.
A new $1 billion arms deal was announced last year.
The country's young Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani was invited to the White House earlier
this year and warmly welcomed by Trump.
But that is unlikely to be the end of it.
In a few months time qualification for Qatar 2022 is slated to begin.
A decision on the 48 team World Cup will have to be made before then.
Qatar's World Cup has had plenty of legitimate criticism when it comes to human rights and
worker abuses.
But there is also a bigger game at play, involving two countries whose human rights records are
perhaps even worse.
The only thing we know for sure, is that the bad news stories on Qatar 2022 will continue.
The question is, from where are they really coming from?