Wikki Commons / Credit - Ministry of Culture, Sports & Tourism Official Photographer: Heo Manjin
Former Qatari emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, father of the Gulf state’s current ruler, Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani, set a precedent after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Mr Al Thani, recognised his Qatar like Kuwait, who had been liberated by a US-led military coalition, would never be able to fend off a conventional military attack on its territory, no matter how sophisticated its weaponry.
The conclusion, to ensure relevancy to the international community and acquire necessary public empathy to support intervention on the Gulf state’s behalf was to focus on a soft power defense strategy.
In the 30 years that have followed Qatar has mushroomed into one of the world’s top gas producers, with the former British protectorate transforming into a diplomatic powerhouse under the monarchy of the Al Thani family.
The FIFA World Cup, the most prestigious tournament in the world, was the apogee of the emirate’s ambitious development strategy.
The 2022 World Cup laid the ultimate soft power platform for Qatar with the opportunity to bolster its reputation and reproduce its geopolitical success.
Accustomed to hosting mega sporting events including the 2006 Asian Games and the 2011 Asian Cup, the World Cup promised to transcend Qatar onto a global stage formulating the image as an innovative technological leader and peacebuilder.
The positioning of the FIFA World Cup as a soft power defense strategy while providing Qatar an opportunity to de-construct stereotypes and foster a desired image which champions its Arabic culture, also garnered an unprecedented examination of the Gulf States malpractices.
The aim for Qatar hosting the World Cup was to keep focus on the football event and show success in a first for a Muslim host by creating the most memorable spectacle of a tournament.
Qatar learnt a very valuable lesson, which is the unpredictable and multifaceted nature of soft power. In controversially securing rights in 2010 as the first Middle Eastern country to host a World Cup, they could not have anticipated the onslaught of criticism they had opened their country up to.
An analysis by social media and mis information expert Marc Owen Jones highlighted the centrality of the World Cup in reporting on Qatar within British Media in the 12 years between Qatar’s winning of its bid in 2010 and the tournament in 2022.
Of the 1,735 Qatar-related headlines in newspapers such as The Guardian, The Times, Daily Mail and The Telegraph, 685 referred to the World Cup.
The study found 66 per cent, 454, were critical mostly focused on the human rights issues and just five per cent, 33, were positive.
It emphasised a clear message, Qatar were not going to be able to use the FIFA World Cup as a tokenistic veil to shroud their corruption behind the grandeur of virtue signalling.
They faced the highest odds of any country in endearing itself to football fans, but in adopting a soft-power policy it aligned itself with Western policies to give itself the best chance at winning the hearts and minds of the world.
The Qatar World Cup became synonymous with the visual of Lionel Messi adorning the traditional Arab Bisht at the World Cup final. It epitomised the fulfilment of Qatar’s World Cup prophecy, imagery of the West embracing Qatari and Arabic culture.
However, through-out the tournament its legacy was tainted by its inability to tame the amorphous nature of soft power. In order to achieve this ideal visual aforementioned they had to tackle the ceaseless issue of historic human right concerns.
The Qatar World Cup’s representation in Western media was inextricable from the migrant crisis where the Guardian reported 6,500 worker deaths, while the “Kafala system” was demonised for exploitation including wage theft and unpaid overtime.
Credit - Twitter
Players featuring in the tournament; Joshua Kimmich, Harry Kane and Toni Kroos lambasted migrant conditions on social media, while football federations such as the Netherlands and Denmark wore training tops stating “football supports change”.
The World Cup became a pilgrimage for migrant workers who saw the tournament as a gateway out of poverty for them and their families.
Stories dominated headlines of workers being exposed to extreme heat reaching up to 44.4 degrees and becoming accustomed to bloody noses, headaches, muscle cramps and vomiting.
Many workers suffering from undetected kidney disease were laid off for two weeks without pay to gain strength and if they didn’t improve their contracts were terminated.
Workers were forced to sacrifice their dream of a better life by paying recruitment agencies between $1,933 to $3,845 for a Qatari visa.
Since 2010, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International among a group of human rights organisations have documented these inhumane conditions of migrant workers at the infrastructure projects.
It became apparent at what costs was Qatar going to deliver the World Cup no matter how unforgettable a tournament it was.
They executed a historic World Cup which boasted the third highest attendance in the tournaments history and attracted 1.4 million fans globally, but despite delivering a well-oiled machine the journey of how it was delivered was under constant scrutiny.
Tamin Bin Hamad Al Thani believed soft power was the key to puppeteer the West into doing what he wanted and producing an unchallenged World Cup championing Qatari customs.
The Qatari government believed they could reproduce their geopolitical success, just prior to the World Cup they defeated a 3.5 year long economic and diplomatic boycott with the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Wikki Commons / Credit - Alex Sergeev
Al Thani envisaged the image of Saudi Arabia prince Mohamad Bin Salman wearing a Qatar flag around his neck at the opening ceremony for Western leaders to perpetuate a worshipping of Qatar as the outward image to the world.
This was a chimera; the West and Qatar were antithetical. Qatar’s attempts to use soft power such as increasing leniency towards violators of Qatari law, referring to their country as “free to all” and introducing reforms were its way of Westernising itself to gain credibility.
However, it didn’t work initially because the Western perceptions saw hard power defense strategies engrained into Islamic culture, meaning the world were cognizant to its soft power disguise where Islamic culture is alien to Western audiences.
It meant there was always trepidation with going to Qatar, because it was so easily linked with Middle Eastern hostilities.
What they did was take one step further and address the human rights concerns with action and legislation, it de-constructed this perception of Qatar as this primitive and authoritarian regime.
Qatari World Cup chairman Hassan Al Thawadi labelled the FIFA World Cup as an “accelerant to improve the conditions on labour reforms”.
In 2019, the government made it a priority undertaking an extensive investigation with representatives from ILO into labour conditions on Qatari work sites.
Overnight a country associated with worker oppression ended the Kafala sponsorship system and turned recommendations into laws adopting the world’s most progressive heat-protection strategy.
Despite, being a reactive measure which came nine years after their successful World Cup bid Qatar had demonstrated its ability and willingness to reform.
It showed a co-operation with Western pressures, and a tolerance for activism. It showed Qatar in a different light; the legislation showed a prioritisation for its people and created a catalyst for worker recognition.
Al Thawadi described the labour conditions as previously “unacceptable”, “despite the best of intentions”, showing a consciousness from Qatar and intent to change.
However, the slow prioritisation from the government implied they viewed the human rights crisis as a derisory concern, but the noise became too overpowering to ignore that they acted as a preventative measure to protect the image.
It was a perfect strategy from Qatar despite uncertainty over its motivations, it alleviated a lot of the backlash from the Human Rights organisations and media as well as projecting fairness and justice. It offered the perfect distraction tactic, the historic human rights reform as a win for Qatar took precedence over issues of worker exploitation which were still needing to be tackled.
Wikki Commons / Credit - Simon Dawson: No 10 Downing Street
The International Labor organisation commended the reforms with Qatar also introducing a minimum wage and a labour regulation, meanwhile Western leaders including President Macron, Rishi Sunak and President Biden acknowledged the efforts Qatar had made to improve labour practices thanking them.
Despite this, groups like Amnesty International declared weak regulations and a lack of enforcement insisting more work was needed.
“Although Qatar has made important strides on labour rights over the past five years, its abundantly clear that there is still a distance to go. Thousands of workers remain stuck in the familiar cycle of exploitation and abuse thanks to legal loopholes and inadequate enforcement.”
Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s Head of Economic and Social Justice
The main concern was commitment to Qatar’s reforms, their swift U-turn on human rights implied they wanted to sweep the growing issue under the carpet which is indicative of a regime who make anyone who speaks out disappear.
Right groups called for a special fund to compensate workers who died during World Cup projects, Qatar rejected it.
It was clear Qatar’s human rights reforms were perfunctory; everything was the base line of what was considered acceptable as a token of action. Qatari officials accused continued criticism as a double standard on the first Arab host nation, this showed they wanted to use the reforms to their advantage to villainise Western media and human rights organisations as ungrateful and prejudice. They successfully limited critics impact because they could respond with facts and figures showing action such as the 450 migrant sites Qatari officials closed.
World Cup Chairman, Hassan Al-Thawadi announced plans to distribute £350 million from an existing fund as compensation for injuries and deaths. The pressure Qatar faced was to commit to these promises, but it conveyed the image of being ‘seen to do good’ which was an over-bearer of the criticism and encouraged positive connotations of the legacy of the World Cup.
Amnesty International claimed “a year on from the tournament, too little has been done to right all these wrongs, but the workers lost their money, their health and even their lives while FIFA and Qatar tried to deflect and deny responsibility”
They stated “inaction” from Qatar and FIFA on worker’s rights is “tainting the legacy” of the 2022 World Cup.
It was reported that courts were dealing with a severe backlog of claims from labourers seeking redress for malpractices and there were even suggestions that the abolished Kafala system is still operating under the radar in Qatar.
But does this “inaction” from Qatar since Al Thawadi insisted on a pledge to distribute compensation to aggrieved families beyond the World Cup highlight the success of their soft power strategy?
It shows the ephemeral nature of the media, two years on from the World Cup with accountability towards Qatar within the mainstream media minimal.
For a World Cup which faced “an unprecedented campaign no other country has faced”, experiencing scrupulous impairment by western liberal media Qatar boasted victory.
This was a World Cup that should never have happened, disgraced former FIFA president Sepp Blatter admitted “Qatar was a mistake” because “it’s too small a country”.
From the moment Qatar was born it was doomed, and yet despite the habitual desperation for its downfall, micro-examination to exploit it and widespread threat to boycott it the numbers show it as the most successful World Cup ever.
It silenced the tidal wave of discontent; highest ever viewership (5.4 bn), highest viewed soccer match in American history (19.65m USA v England), Second Highest viewership in UK history (20m World Cup Final), average ticket holder satisfaction of 4.5/5.
Canva / Credit: Lewis Eadie
FIFA President Gianni Infantino hailed it as the “the best world cup in history”, FIFA wouldn’t complain pocketing a record $7.5bn worth of revenue.
It produced a plethora of milestones, it was the most diverse round of 16 in the events history and it witnessed the first FIFA men’s World Cup to be presided over by a woman referee, Stephanie Frappart.
Qatar lit the torch for the Middle East, they had shown FIFA and the world the potential to hosting in a Muslim-country. This was the catalyst which influenced Saudi Arabia's plot to become the first single nation to host a 48 team World Cup in 2034, Qatar had shown it was capable of creating a mega sports event which conformed to Western concerns.
While, the mainstream scepticism and negative publicity was warranted it unintentionally heighten the achievement of Qatar, because against greater adversity it had risen to win over spectators.
The football took precedence, the overriding legacy of the Qatar World Cup was that it was one of the best tournaments ever. The perfect ending for Qatar happened, Lionel Messi arguably the greatest player ever lifting the World Cup, this became the image not the compensation dispute, worker deaths or the inhumane laws.
WikkiCommons - Credit: @M10GOAT
Qatar perfectly created a utopic outward image of reality which undermined the noise from Western media. It created a disparity between the experiences out in Qatar and the speculation, which falsified external claims largely from people not at the tournament.
But actually, if you separate the two – the World Cup and Qatar, you find that Qatar were beneficiaries of the World Cup.
Qatar as a host nation and Qatar as a country are two very different perceptions. Qatar as a host may have won in winning the hearts and minds of the world, and it could fool you that the World Cup, a success it was, turned the wheel away from negativity on the Gulf state.
But the truth is Qatar as a host nation made many spectators forget momentarily Qatar as a country because we are indebted to them for the World Cup.
A YouGov Political Research Survey post-World Cup revealed in Britain 72% of Britons had a negative view of Qatar a figure which rose from before the World Cup.
It shows that while Qatar perfectly executed the World Cup, it’s soft power strategies did not work on the West.
Al-Thani brought praise from the West for showing signs of learning and modernising but never won their hearts because they were awake to the under-lying motivations concealed behind the act.
The countless stories from migrant workers who suffered exploitation, and a multitude of abuses will always linger around the narrative of this World Cup and while Qatar did well to hide them, post-World Cup has only brought out more damning truths.
The precedent his father set in 1990 to adopt soft power techniques, has worked in improving the nations image but it shows a very important lesson which is that soft power strategies are not a fast-track to power and credibility, it is a commitment.
If Qatar is scratching it’s head bemused by what more it needs to do to gain the world’s support, it needs to realise that the FIFA World Cup was the start of the conveyor belt of changes it must be make, not the completion.
Qatar gave itself a platform to be heard through its conviction to change through diplomacy at the World Cup, but has failed in seizing the opportunity to build on this by refraining from continuing this stance after the tournament.
Did 2022 Qatar World Cup change your perception of Qatar?
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