Shifting 2022 World Cup to winter encourages political and legal actions

Michel Platini – A culprit or a saviour?

Mr. Platini’s denial rang hollow given that his vote is widely believed to have been part of a three-way deal with Nicolas Sarkozy, when he was president of France and former Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

As part of the deal, QSI acquired Paris St. Germain (PSG), Mr. Sarkozy’s favorite team and pledged to step up already substantial investments in France. Qatar’s state-owned Al Jazeera television network would gain rights to France’s Ligue 1 in another element of the deal that was forged over lunch at the Elysée Palace.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Qatar’s ambassador to France, Mohamed Al Kuwari, explained at the time Qatar’s interest in France by saying that: “You invest in France, you build partnerships and you go elsewhere, to Africa, to Asia. We are looking for strong partners like Total, Vinci, Veolia.”

Moreover, he said, France, like Qatar, charts its own course internationally. It “has an independent policy, plays an important role in the world, diplomatically and politically,” he said.

The World Cup so far has failed to pay Qatar the reputational dividend it had expected. Legal challenges and calls for depriving it of its hosting right could cause it further damage at a time when international trade unions and human rights groups are exploiting the tournament to pressure the Gulf state into substantially altering a migrant labor system which the former denounce as modern slavery. Foreign labor constitutes 94 percent of the Qatari labor force.

The risk of reputational damage and a rift over perceived anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias is magnified in Qatar’s case by the fact that its sports investment strategy is key to its defense and security policy. Qatar, no matter how many sophisticated weapons it purchases, will never be able to defend itself.

The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait taught it two lessons. For one, big brother Saudi Arabia, unable to ensure its own defense, was an unreliable guarantor that depends on a US defense umbrella. Confidence in the reliability of the United States has however been called into question by the United States’ economic problems, its reluctance to engage militarily post-Iraq and Afghanistan and its likely emergence within a decade as the world’s largest oil exporter.

Equally important, the international coalition that came to Kuwait’s aid demonstrated that soft power and embedment in the global community at multiple levels earns one friends when in need.

For Qatar, the message was clear. It vested its soft power in sports and particularly soccer, even if it was a late convert to the beautiful game. Qataris first saw British oil workers in the 1940s play, what they thought was an odd but amusing spectacle. “We had no idea of sports like that … But we used to enjoy watching the strange spectacle,” recalled Ibrahim al-Muhannadi, a government official and member of the Qatar Olympic Committee.