AP – DUBAI, United Arab Emirates The World Cup hosting represents a turning point in Qatar’s efforts to leave behind its larger neighbors in the larger Middle East, where its politics and upstart ambitions have drawn both international and domestic criticism.
The country’s rise to one of the top natural gas exporters has driven the run-up to the competition and Qatar’s rising importance on the world stage. The stadiums that spectators will fill for the competition were erected with this newfound money, and Doha’s diplomatic outreach to the rest of the world was made possible.
But there has been mystery around that rise. After a palace takeover in 1995, Qatar had a more assertive ruler who utilized the country’s wealth to support Islamist groups that had grown more powerful during the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations, groups that his other Gulf Arab leaders had considered as challenges to their reign. Four Arab countries have been boycotting Qatar for years; it almost started a war.
Despite the fact that there are fewer overt tensions in the area, Qatar undoubtedly believes that the World Cup will help to improve its reputation as it manages its relations with other countries to protect it from any threats in the future.
Gerd Nonneman, a professor of international politics and Gulf Arab studies at Georgetown University in Qatar, stated that “they realize there are these possible risks; they know they are quite vulnerable.” “They will do everything they can to build a global network of, if not allies, then at least a sympathetic element.”
Qatar is a peninsular country that protrudes out into the Persian Gulf like a thumb and is only slightly bigger than Jamaica or somewhat smaller than the state of Connecticut in the United States. Only 60 kilometers (37 miles) separate it from Saudi Arabia, a country 185 times larger, and it is located directly across the Gulf from Iran.
Qatar owns the renowned Harrods department store in London, the sports team Paris Saint-Germain, and enormous amounts of real estate in New York City through its sovereign wealth fund. The majority of the liquified natural gas sold by this country—which it shares with Iran—goes to Asian countries including China, India, Japan, and South Korea—where it is sold through an offshore field.
In 1997, immediately following two significant events that shook Qatar, that faucet of money started to flow. Doha and other Gulf Arab countries first realized the necessity for a long-term American military presence as a hedge after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and the ensuing Gulf War, according to Kristian Ulrichsen, a research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
Qatar constructed the enormous Al-Udeid Air Base, which presently houses around 8,000 American service members and serves as the forward headquarters of the Central Command of the U.S. military.
The second incident that rocked Qatar occurred in 1995 when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani overthrew his father, who was in Switzerland, without using any blood. Later, Sheikh Hamad crushed his cousin’s attempt at a coup in 1996.
With plenty of funds and under Sheikh Hamad’s leadership, Qatar established Al Jazeera, a satellite news network that gained international fame for airing quotes from Osama bin Laden, the commander of al-Qaida. Even though it gave the Arab world something more than tepid state-controlled television for the first time, the U.S. screamed against the channel after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Qatar earned the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in December 2010. A Tunisian fruit vendor burned himself on fire in protest just two weeks later, eventually succumbing to his burns and setting off the 2011 Arab Spring.
It represented a critical time for Qatar. The nation doubled down on its backing of Islamists in the area, notably Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who would become Egypt’s president after the longtime tyrant Hosni Mubarak was toppled. Doha poured money into Syrian opposition groups to Bashar Assad’s administration, including some funding for groups the United States ultimately labeled as extremist, including the Islamic State group.
