Ever since Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup, it has been the target of an unfair campaign casting doubt on its ability to organise the international event. The country is also accused of having greased the palms of people with the right to vote on its bid.
All efforts were and are still being made at the highest levels in Britain and other countries to prevent Qatar from hosting the tournament.
Some people said the weather in Qatar was not suitable for organising soccer matches, particularly during the summer. Qatar managed to solve this problem, meaning that the weather cannot be considered a problem anymore.
Some other people, meanwhile, said there will be no fans in Qatar to support the teams participating in the World Cup. This, too, was nullified as an excuse.
Then those who want to stop Qatar from organising the event started focusing on labour rights and human rights in Qatar. They said foreign workers were working in inhuman and intolerable weather conditions.
In saying this, they presumed that Qatar was the only country in the world that had such hot weather in summer. Some Fifa officials had come to Qatar to see for themselves the condition of workers in Qatar, but they found that the issues raised by the media had nothing to do with the facts on the ground.
In Qatar, workers enjoy better conditions than their peers in other GCC countries. Foreign ambassadors in Doha have said that the condition of workers from their countries here is far better than that of workers from their countries in other states in the region.
Qatar’s bid for hosting the tournament was the best among all the bids. The Qatari bid met the conditions and standards required by Fifa for organising the World Cup. This was why Qatar was chosen as the host of the event.
In alleging that Qatar bribed some members of the Fifa committee that selected the host country, Western newspapers claim that Qatar offered bribes to committee members from Africa and the Caribbean. They think that this lie would be easily believed if they point fingers at officials from these two regions.
What is strange is that the United Kingdom has thrown its weight behind this. The country’s largest newspapers have launched an unjustified campaign against the Qatari bid, circulating unfounded accusations in this regard.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, even before a commission investigating the charges levelled against Qatar makes public the results of its investigation, announced his country’s willingness to replace Qatar as the host of the 2022 World Cup.
What is strange is that Britain could not secure enough votes to win the right to host the 2018 World Cup. It lost the competition to Russia. Yet, the British did not wage a similar campaign against Russia. They did not accuse it of bribing the Fifa committee as they did in the case of Qatar.
We need to understand that Britain and some other countries, including Arab countries, are paying writers in some of the largest newspapers in Europe, the United States and Australia to tarnish the reputation of this country and claim that it encourages corruption and does not respect human rights.
These countries can easily fabricate documents, emails and phone conversations and cite them to argue for taking the event away from Qatar. Britain does this by publishing unfounded claims against Qatar and Fifa leaders and officials. That country also submitted a petition saying that it had the right to host the event. Other countries, such as Australia and Japan, have also called for a revote on the host country from the beginning.
This campaign against Qatar harms the integrity of Fifa and its leaders and also tarnishes their reputation. All these things contradict what is known as sports ethics.
In contributing to this campaign against Qatar, some Arab countries forget that they will also benefit if the tournament is held in Qatar. When Qatar won the right to host the World Cup, it brought nothing but honour to the GCC countries. It is important to note here that none of the Gulf states competed against Qatar to host the event.
As the Arab political weight has moved from northern Africa to the GCC countries, why should the same not happen in the sports field?
Qatar did not compete against any Arab or GCC country to win the right to host the 2022 World Cup, believing that it should not run against its Arab brothers in this regard, even though it has confidence that it can host such competitions better than other countries.
In sum, to our Arab brothers near and far: Qatar’s success in hosting the 2022 tournament would be a success for all Arabs, who have not got the chance to organise such an event so far. Let us all cooperate so that we can make it a success.
