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A country that might never have existed. A monarchy that could have remained among the poorest on the planet. After the discovery of gas three decades ago, Qatar, a secretive state and emirate with only 300,000 citizens, embarked on the conquest of the planet. We are a small country, don't deny our size, but the ambition was always big. The phrase that pundits always used in the '90s and early 2000s is Qatar punching above its weight. Ended up becoming the subject of conversation in the media world, in the art world, in the diplomatic world, in the sports world.
The winner to organize the 2022 FIFA World Cup is Qatar. This moment we're waiting for the envelope when it says Qatar. I think this is I mean, it's unforgettable moment for us. as fascinating as it is frightening, is a dynasty and absolute monarchy, the House of Thani. Khalifa, the grandfather, declared the independence of Qatar. His son, Hamad, turned the country into the wealthiest in the world per inhabitant. The grandson, Tamim, wants to impose his emirate at the center of the world stage. I don't think what Qatar is doing is because of vanity. It's not that the Qataris they require that the global attention. It's more about a
fundamental understanding of where Qatar is situated in this part of the world. With its capital, Doha, the peninsular state, about the size of Corsica, has been swept up into the tensions of the Persian Gulf, between the two great rivals of the Muslim world, Iran and Saudi Arabia. I mean, the reality, it's uh geopolitically, it's a small state. The fact that you are wedged between powers, and you have to navigate your way all the time. We look into the paradoxes of this tiny emirate, seemingly schizophrenic, torn between opening up to the West and the religious conservatism of Bedouin society. To understand the small emirate's contradictions, we must go back to the
nomadic caravans that crisscrossed each other for centuries. Today, the inhospitable tracks are the playground of powerful four-wheel drives. This pack is chasing a falcon, which in turn has been trained to hunt pigeons. The competition, aired live on TV, rewards the best falcon trainers in Qatar. Until the middle of the 20th century, this form of hunting helped to feed the people who lived in one of the most hostile deserts on the planet.
It has become a prestigious sport, and the winners go home with mind-boggling prizes. And everyone he catch the pigeons today, he win uh 100,000 riyals. In the final, they win Lexus 4x4 car. The rewards are offered by the royal family, which supports the traditions of the Bedouins, the nomadic herders of the Arabian Peninsula. The official commentator, Hamad Al Jameel, is one of the fiercest upholders of this heritage. This is my father. The falconer has even become a star of Qatari social networks.
Our government, led by His Highness, the Emir, Sheikh Tamim, supports this tradition, just as it supports sports, health, and the popular customs passed down by our ancestors. And our bond with our falcons is part of this history. Cuz I don't want to be seen as just having oil, or just having LNG, just having assets. They want to show that there is this primordial Badu identity. So, it's a sort of combination of old and ancient and modern. You've got the old harking back to the days of Bedouin in the desert, um but with all the modcons um attached to it. In this folkloric version of Bedouin society, women are not to be seen.
The Qataris have inherited a strict Muslim culture, Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative religious branch that was born in Saudi Arabia in the 18th century. Still today, many Qatari laws are inspired by Sharia or Quranic law. The Qatari population is mainly made up of large Sunni Muslim tribes, which have forged a strong sense of kinship between them. Qatari society is very conservative and the people are very united. We've lived in very difficult conditions, so we stick together and our bonds have grown even closer over time.
Today, the Qatari people live as one family, sharing the same house. In just 30 years, hydrocarbon billions have transformed this society at a speed and scale rarely seen in human history. In Doha, social life is arranged around luxurious air-conditioned malls, temples of consumption. As an influencer, Hamad has been invited this morning to do a social network promotion for some perfumes, a passion in the Gulf states. I mean, I love perfumes. And I adore the scent of this one. It's called Forget-Me-Not. Qatari's are often described as the richest people on Earth.
Is that true? I don't know. I hope so. What do you think? I don't think there are any poor people in Qatar. And the social welfare and social protection systems are excellent. Qatar isn't a providential state. It's a profusion state. Qatari's don't worry about expenditure. If you're sick and you want to go for surgery in the best American hospital where it costs $50,000 a day, no problem. The state provides free education and health care. Along with other utilities like electricity and water. These services are free for all Qatari citizens.
80% of Qatari's work as state functionaries and employ numerous servants. It's a monarchy in which the subjects of the royal family thank their leaders whenever they get the chance. It's a way of showing their loyalty. I never imagined we'd reach this level of growth. But thanks to God, His Excellency the Emir and His Highness the Emir's father have built Doha and the new Qatar. This accelerated modernization has been achieved in just one generation. On the 23rd floor of this tower, which belongs to him, Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani is considered to be one of the builders of modern Qatar.
The prince belongs to one of the branches of the impressive Al Thani dynasty. Islam allows men to have several wives, and they all have a large number of children. This is me. Above are my father and grandfather. It's a very restricted family tree. Otherwise, there would be thousands of people on it. We form one of the biggest families in the Arab world. The Al Thanis came to power in the late 19th century. Back then, the emirate was a far-flung province of the Ottoman Empire. In one of his palaces, the billionaire Faisal bin Qassim opened
a museum that bears his name to preserve and promote his cultural heritage. It's composed of nine spearheads, one for each tribe. This became the emblem that has united us for more than 200 years. Most of the 300,000 Qataris descend from these nine original tribes. Nationality is passed on through right of blood, and in this patriarchal society, solely through that of the father. At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was disbanded, and Qatar became a British protectorate. At the time, here's what one of the Al Thani tribe houses looked like.
This is a reconstruction that I commissioned. It's a replica of our village before oil. Everything is built in clay. I lived in a house like this until I was 10. This was my grandmother's bedroom. And here's the men's sitting room. This almost timeless existence was turned on its head in the 1930s and 40s with the arrival of foreign engineers in search of oil. With members of the royal family, the British founded the first oil company. My father was the prince in charge of the oil company. I was still a child and I always accompanied him to well digging sites.
I wanted to be there when the oil sprang from a well for the very first time. When it surged out in a large quantity, it was like a miracle. The first cargo of oil was exported in 1949. It marked an important step in Qatari history and changed the national economy forever. In the 1950s, Qataris discovered Western consumer society. But oil reserves turned out to be fewer than in neighboring countries, which were enjoying more rapid growth. In the late 1960s, the British, in the full throws of decolonization, no longer wanted to ensure the security of the Gulf principalities. In 1971, Qatar, like its
neighboring emirate Bahrain, had to choose between independence or joining the Federation of the United Arab Emirates, which was being created by the ruling families of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. In the 1970s, Qatar cut a lowly figure compared to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Bahrain. It was considered fairly unimportant. And this left Qatar feeling bitter at being looked down on by the others. For fear of falling under the rule of its neighbors, Qatar chose to go it alone. It was Khalifa, the current emir's grandfather, who announced independence on TV. This announcement was seen as a betrayal by the other Gulf monarchies and has never been forgiven.
Especially when, in the 1970s, a vast undersea gas field was discovered. At the time, the Emir Khalifa was wary of over-rapid growth and did not believe too much in the future of gas. He preferred spending his oil money on long trips overseas while he left his ambitious son Hamad in charge. He was always described as a larger-than-life character. With an incredible personality which automatically drew the attention whenever he walked into a room. He was someone with very clear ideas who knew what he wanted. He very soon found himself with the task of running Qatar. His father, who was always off here and there, was much less interested.
It was quite clear that with his father in power, no major developments would take place. So, in 1995, he took advantage of his father's absence abroad to stage a bloodless coup and seize power. He didn't overthrow his father merely to seize power. He did it with a very real idea of what Qatar could and must become. So, there is this anecdote that Sheikh Hamad arrived a I don't know whether it was in the UK or in France looking at the passport and the immigration officer was saying, "Where's this passport from? What is Qatar actually? And that kind of is a is an anecdote to illustrate after that Qatar was Sheikh Hamad was really pressured to transform Qatar and put Qatar on the map.
To realize his ambition, Hamad launched drilling for natural gas in North Field, which straddles the territorial waters of Qatar and Iran. This economic relationship between the great Shiite power and the small Sunni monarchy drew suspicion on Qatar from the other states of the Arabian Peninsula. But Hamad didn't care. The new Emir borrowed heavily from Western banks and invested billions of dollars to construct floating gas terminals, ships that store gas in giant domes at a temperature of minus 167° C. It's what is called liquefied natural gas or LNG.
There were at that time fears that there wouldn't be a massive market for gas, that this could all be, you know, a bubble that would burst and it would be money that was wasted. The demand for gas exploded in the late 1990s. Thanks to its earlier investments, the small emirate was years ahead of its competitors and started playing with the Russian and American big boys. Qatar became the biggest supplier of gas in the world, exporting to influential countries on the political stage and in the world economy.
Notably in Asia, like South Korea and Japan, but also in Europe. Qatar's economy became the fastest growing in the world with a rate of 10% per year. I mean, the face of Doha changed very drastically. When I first arrived here, there was nothing but sand dunes. This road didn't exist. It was only sand. The only thing constructed was the Sheraton, the hotel in the shape of a pyramid. There were no towers. So, between 2003 and 2008, they built around 30 towers, and after that, it just exploded. With unlimited funds now available,
Hamad Al Thani brought in companies and labor from across the globe. He launched his country into a series of pharaoh-like construction sites, This complex of buildings was constructed on artificial islands symbolizing shells with pearls at their center, luxury hotels. A specialist with more than 40 years experience in public works, Christian Dumont has taken part in the development of several of these huge projects. This subway station is impressive as it's one of the largest in the world, but surface area doesn't matter much in Qatar.
What really counts for Qataris is prestige. From the signing of the construction contract to the inauguration, fewer than 10 years passed, something unprecedented in underground transport. French, German, and Japanese companies shared the dizzying contract to build the world's most luxurious subway. They had only one thing on their minds, to build the best. Something with no equivalent, and I think they did it. The seats are kind of velvet with leather headrests. The ticket costs five times more than normal class at the rear of the train.
There are three classes, golden class, family class, and normal class. Is it like that in Qatari society? You could say that, yes. Qatari society is very com- compartmentalized. At the top of the ladder are the Qataris. They form a parallel society in a bubble above everything else. You won't go into a store and find a Qatari at the cash desk. That doesn't exist. You'd be hard-pressed when you go to Doha um to meet a Qatari. With the arrival of foreign workers, the country now has around 3 million inhabitants. But the Qataris form a minority, accounting for barely 10% of the population.
Aurelian Colli worked as a journalist in Doha in the early 2000s. Just below the Qataris, you have upper management. These are mostly Westerners. They have very high salaries and a luxurious lifestyle. Generally, it comes as a package. They have the salary, but also the children's school fees included, the car, the house. Conditions are truly idyllic. And then have the bottom of the ladder. Qatar is one of the most unequal societies in the world.
Workers from poor countries carry out all the lowly tasks. Like all foreigners, they have a residence permit that's only valid if they work and can be expelled at any moment. In the capital's souk, the vendors wear traditional Bedouin clothes. In appearance, they might pass for Qataris, but they come in fact from other Arab-speaking countries often at war like Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. My name's Khaled Al Khaja. I'm from Syria, but I've lived in Qatar for 22 years. This Muslim man speaks Arabic and has a very sought-after job, that of a falconer. And yet, he will never be accorded Qatari nationality.
I run the store that specializes in the buying, selling, and training of falcons, which come from all over the world. The rich life is need more people, more help helper. To live and work in Qatar, Khaled must have a local sponsor. It's what is called kafala, a system of social control which foreigners cannot criticize in front of a camera. Of course, you need a Qatari to sponsor you. Whatever kind of work you do. But on the good side, they often bring you business. And that's the argument that actually the Qatari government or Qatari officials will speak openly about it is that we are a minority in our country because they fear of being taken over by the by the foreign nationals in the
country and the kafala system is a way to control this workforce. The kafala system is a system for finding and retaining expatriate labor. It is common throughout the Gulf. It often also has meant that um it's very difficult for workers to leave the country without their employers uh consent. In the early 2000s, whatever the plight of these foreign workers, the royal family underwent a cultural revolution. Hamad took as his second wife Sheikha Mozah, the daughter of a former political rival. For the first time in a Gulf monarchy, a woman became a front-line political figure.
Until then, the people of the region and of the entire world had no idea what an emir's wife looked like. Sheikha Mozah was visible in terms of traveling with her husband on state visits. Not just that she was visible, but also that she had power. She did have power through Qatar Foundation. She had a vision. The emir entrusted her with running Qatar Foundation, making her the de facto education minister. With the gas money, Sheikha Mozah opened branches of the world's top universities in Qatar.
Classes are in English and students obtain, in theory, diplomas equivalent to those of the original universities. There is a description of one of the opening ceremonies of a new campus in Doha and instead of Sheikh Hamad taking a a leading role by giving the speech, the opening speech, it's his wife who steps up to the podium and gives the speech. On their overseas visits, this emancipation is reflected in the couple's dress. Sheikha Mozah wears glamorous outfits while respecting Islamic dress codes, not showing her hair or wearing anything low-cut.
She broke the code of the abaya. The austere-looking black robe adding touches of fashion and fantasy. It's still like quite a fashionable figure and tended to wear on state visits some of the like best kind of newest designer. There are several Instagram pages dedicated to Sheikha Mozah's fashion. Sheikha Mozah hugely facilitated this emancipation and the opening up of a Qatari society that has always been ultra-conservative.
Some of her daughters have become uh pretty visible figures in Qatar as well. Among the couple's seven children, the one who seems to be following most in her mother's footsteps is Princess Mayassa. Okay, we can start. Both of our parents, they empowered their daughters like their sons. Sometimes they pushed us even further and more because it was very important that every person in society participated in the economy. When she completed her studies, Mayassa was appointed head of Qatar Museums. In the middle of Doha Bay stands the most emblematic building, the Museum of Islamic Art, designed by the Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei, who was responsible for the
glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris. Just next to it, Mayassa oversaw the construction of the new National Museum of Qatar. This desert rose is the work of French architect Jean Nouvel. With an estimated budget of a billion dollars a year, American magazines regularly place the princess among the most influential women in the art world. With its investment fund, the Qatari monarchy functions like a family business with a name that sells like a brand. And the emirate dreams of becoming a tourist destination.
We're not the only hydrocarbon country in the world, uh but we decided to invest it in developing our economy. Cultural tourism is expected to bring over 1.25 billion dollars to Qatar a year. And um it's just the beginning. At ease with artists and sports stars like David Beckham, Mayassa embodies this new globalized Qatar. In public in Doha, she combines the veil, and abaya, the traditional long robe of the Gulf. But, as her Facebook page shows, she abandons this dress code when overseas. Mayassa, who studied in Paris and New York, sees no contradiction in this. I think that's a Western perception because a woman in Qatar, at least, I can only speak about Qatar.
Uh women in Qatar have had leading roles from the very beginning. I remember when I was studying in Paris in 2004, I did a year at Sciences Po, and one of our teachers, who was French at that time, they had introduced the laïcité law, and she was saying how poor she feels and helpless she feels that women have to wear the hijab. And I said to her, "That's actually not the case. That women, you know, there are some women who are forced to wear it, but the majority choose to wear it. And that choice is really important. We like to define ourselves by ourselves and not to be defined by others." In the 2000s, the royal family has introduced reforms to Islamic law, notably to phase out men's guardianship of women.
But, within a still strictly religious society, this wave of liberalism is faced with fierce opposition. On paper, sexual relations outside marriage and homosexuality are still punishable with prison sentences. But, in reality, the authorities turn a blind eye, especially for foreigners. Fight! These paradoxes are laid bare in sports. Improving a nation's image through sport is an age-old propaganda technique. To increase the atmosphere in stadiums, most often empty. The Emirate has encouraged the forming of supporters clubs. Hardly any of them are Qatari. Most are just foreign residents. And on the field, it's the same. For its national sports teams to hold their own, the Emirate naturalizes foreign players as teenagers, often from
poor Arab countries. Today, it's one of the rare ways to earn a Qatari passport. In the race for recognition through sport, the Al Thani clan is far from alone. Since the late 2010s, the monarchies of the Gulf have been in an ownership battle in European soccer. The United Arab Emirates treated itself to Manchester City. Saudi Arabia has recently purchased Newcastle. While Qatar has banked on Paris Saint-Germain. The Gulf countries investment into sports is always seen as somewhat as a means of sport washing, where you're creating an appeal around a brand that's
already existent to kind of distract from criticism or over these countries, creating a more positive brand. Qatar wants to be a global influence player, and part of that is obviously branding, and Paris Saint-Germain and other sport investments are a way of showing to the world how important Qatar is. In this war of influence, in 2010, Qatar stood as a candidate to organize the soccer World Cup. Its competitors, the United States, Australia, and South Korea, appeared the big favorites. But the hydrocarbon monarchy deployed considerable financial means to convince the members of FIFA.
Until today, no legal action has proved that Qatar bought the World Cup. But in an internal investigation, FIFA itself admitted to what it called shady dealings. Within an hour of Doha citizens that this is to give FIFA the chance to attend more than one game per day. That's pretty special. à l'époque At the time, it was so important to them. It became quasi-existential. So there were no limits. They had to exist, exist everywhere. And so what if it failed? On December 2nd, 2010, the small emirate was chosen amid widespread surprise.
Flanked by their children, Hamad and Sheikha Mozah savored victory. Qatar was now definitively on the world map. Thank you for giving Qatar a chance. And we will not let you down. You will be proud of us. You will be proud of the Middle East. And I promise you this. Consecration was global. But the moment of grace would not last. Two weeks later, the Arab Spring began. Very, very fast, the winds of revolt sweeping through the Middle East were used to settle scores between the monarchies of the Gulf.
This has come after a decade of the early 2000s of Qatar going from victory to victory in terms of influence, soft power, potentially even hard power. It is achievable with the financial power that Qatar had, with the networks that Qatar had developed, um and also, you know, a bit of hubris of thinking, you know, we can whatever we start, we will finish and we will do so successfully. In late December 2010, Tunisian protesters demanded the resignation of the dictator Ben Ali. In the weeks that followed, rebellion spread from Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and even Qatar's small emirate neighbor, Bahrain. For a few days, the Qatari monarchy held its breath. As a caution, the authorities raised the salaries of civil servants.
As the country bans all form of political opposition, nobody knew what might happen. So, I was here during the Arab Spring and I remember every day watching Al Jazeera to see what would happen next in Tunis and in Cairo and uh the question was really whether there would be protests here and I remember there was one Facebook page saying there would be a protest because it seemed you know, like protests were just everywhere in the region and would erupt everywhere. Um and I remember a friend and I went there to where this protest was meant to happen and no one was there. The first reason for that is the redistribution of wealth. Colossal wealth is shared by 300,000 Qataris.
300,000 Qataris who own 1/3 of the world's gas reserves. Money simply flows there and Qataris have all they want. Reassured at home and convinced it was an enlightened monarchy, the royal family seized on the occasion to shake up the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world. Qatar wanted to be a history maker and decided to support the Muslim brothers. This Islamist movement, conservative but non-violent, is the best organized party in the Middle East and often a winner in the region's elections. In opposition to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and its allies supported the return of military rule whenever possible.
Egypt soon became the main battlefield. In 2012, the Muslim brother Mohamed Morsi, backed by Qatar, won Egypt's first free election. One year later, the Egyptian army, financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, retook power with a coup d'état. The West, terrified of rising Islamism, merely stood by and watched. Qatar found itself totally isolated on the world stage.
Seeing how the counter-revolutionaries, and particularly uh in particular the United Arab Emirates, were able to kind of push back and reverse some of the achievements of the Arab Spring and Qatar being unable to do anything against it. And since then, the Qataris realized in 2013, summer 2013, that their policy in the Arab Spring was failing or had failed. Between 2011 and 2013, the Syrian and Libyan revolutions evolved into civil wars. In the two countries, Qatar lost control of the movements it had armed and financed, and Islamist groups became increasingly radical as the wars wore on.
The episode fed accusations of financing terrorism, and this argument would be used for years against the Al Thani family. Did this international tension contribute to the Emir's diabetes, or was his illness a pretext for an honorable way out? On June 25th, 2013, Hamad abdicated in favor of Tamim, his fourth son of the 24 children he'd had with his three wives. He came to power in an unusual way, and he stepped down in an unusual way. So, I think he had a he had in his mind uh things that he wanted to achieve, and once he achieved it, he was happy to transfer to the future the next generation, which is my brother.
It was a really surprising decision because this is in this part of the world, I mean, mostly power is passed, you know, after the Emir dies. He wanted Qatar to have someone a fresh start under his son. Tamim was not first in line to the throne, but he was a graduate of the same military academy as his father, and had proven his worth with success in Qatar's sporting diplomacy, notably the purchase of Paris Saint-Germain. With his ideal son-in-law smile, his fluency in foreign languages, and his very thick checkbook, he soon won over his Western partners. But, I have wanted Emir as a He became the Emir in his early 30s.
Overnight, he became the youngest head of state in the Middle East and probably one of the youngest in the world. His first task was to make the World Cup a success. Doha became a vast construction site fueled by delusions of grandeur. On the outskirts of the capital, new towns sprang up to host the teams and their fans. The emirate has invested 200 billion dollars. That's 150 times more than for recent World Cups in France and Germany. Six brand new stadiums have been inaugurated like this immense Bedouin tent which can seat 60,000 spectators.
After the awarding of the event to Qatar, the searing summer temperatures became a heated topic of debate. Images of laborers toiling away in scorching sunlight for hours on end spread across the world. To obtain reforms, human rights defense groups and even certain soccer players began calling for a boycott of the World Cup. The Emirates response to criticism was to organize visits for journalists to model laborers camps. For my opinion, this is the best camp in ever Qatar. The location-wise, cleaning, everything, very good maintenance here. So, I am very happy and very satisfied for this management.
There is a toilet. You pay for housing or No, no, no, no. Our company. Our company paying everything. Means accommodation, fooding, transportation, uh laundry, everything. To silence accusations of mistreatment, the Qatari authorities even constructed a wall of gratitude. This mosaic made up of photos of each employee who contributed to the construction of the stadium where the final will be held. Every type of work is represented from carpenters and masons to the engineers and so on. Of course, when you know of the controversy surrounding the construction of the World Cup stadium, the wall of gratitude sounds a bit phony.
Of course, when you arrive in front of the stadium and see all these faces, the first thing that springs to mind is, are these the guys who died building it? Since 2010, a war of figures has been ongoing between the Qatari government and the international NGOs. In the emirate, there are no trade unions or right to strike. During this decade of large-scale construction, no independent organization has been able to defend the workers' rights or officially record the number of deaths.
The only figures available are those from the Qatari authorities, from the statistics agency and the World Cup organizing committee. Qatar do publish the data and according to their data, there are over 15,000 migrant workers who died in Qatar in the past 10 years. But they died from all range of causes. The data available is does not give you the real reason. Fatma Al Nuaimi is the Qatari government spokesperson for everything concerning the World Cup. It's like here or it's showing, so I know.
Okay. It's not only uh workers. I mean, like this number is actually include all of different professions. You might find like kids or like let's say doctors, teachers, and So, when you see I mean, like this number over the uh period of 10 years. So, it is has been taken out of context. Fatma and her team only count the deaths on the stadium work sites overseen by the organizing committee. At the peak of construction, this only represented 1 to 2% of all workers employed. Um for us when it comes to uh fatality that we have in our project, um unfortunately, we had uh three deaths in our project that is work-related and we have Sorry, the 36 or this season. But this is for the non-work non-work What is non-work related?
Non-work related means people like actually maybe they were at their homes or they're outside or it's outside their work It wasn't they were not working on the project. If you look at the at these deaths, half of them are young men who died from either cardiac arrest or natural deaths or respiratory failure which are not cause of death. There must be an underlying cause of death. Sunstroke, dehydration, exhaustion. Many men in their prime even died of heart failure in their sleep. The exact number will never be known.
Perhaps 37 for the stadiums. Without doubt, thousands when you count every work site in Qatar. To discover the living conditions of the laborers, we must head to the outskirts of the capital at nightfall. It is in these buildings on the edge of the desert that most of the foreign workers live. They're not employed by the World Cup Organizing Committee but by private highway, hotel and shopping mall construction companies. And all of them have stories to tell of co-workers who have fallen on the work site. This Nepalese worker has agreed to testify with his face revealed as long as we don't give his name or that of his employer.
His story illustrates the fate of hundreds of thousands of nameless forced laborers. I work as a painter and earn a monthly salary of $400 to $450. Laborers who work in sunlight sometimes faint with the heat. When you work outdoors, it's difficult to find water to rehydrate your body. And high on the scaffolding, if your brain stops working due to the heat, you risk slipping and falling to your death. In Nepal, I could never earn money like this. My salary there couldn't feed my family.
Here, I save $250 a month so I can afford to send my kids to school. This is the kitchen We have some chicken and a few vegetables, but Yeah, it's dirty, but what can we do? We sleep eight to 10 in a room. We're not paid that much, but we get by. In this apartment without air conditioning, 40 men cram in and share the rent. This is my room. Six of us cram into this room. We each pay $100 for food and board, so that's a total of $600. The exploitation of these men earns good money for Qatari companies, but also for foreign middlemen, often as the workers.
So, the argument sometimes used is that these are the employers. So, these are not the Qatari government, these are not our problem. But, I think what the issue is that the government allowed this culture of impunity to take place. Under pressure from the international community, Qatar announced reforms. The introduction of a minimum wage of $250 and the opening of an ILO, International Labor Organization, and in 2020, the authorities abolished kafala, compulsory sponsorship for foreign workers. But, in reality, these laws have come late and are rarely applied. The problem is that we're finding is that the reality is not matching these promises. The progress hasn't been as promising as the laws itself and
their implement implementation was weak and fragmented. But, also, I mean, like if you look at the rest of the world, there is no country that have a perfect labor system. So, if you see Qatar and what we have developed or what we have actually progressed across the 10 years, it is a lot. No country is perfect. There's a lot of work to be done yet, but I think progress takes time and it takes time for somebody to experience it. In the end, none of the qualified teams have announced their intention to boycott the World Cup, which is already a form of success for the Qatari monarchy. The emirate's gas reserves are estimated to last for another 100 years. For the Al Thani dynasty, it's a guarantee of remaining at the center of
world diplomacy for a long time to come.
