Hugh MacDonald

IT is two years since I last was in Qatar. The journey from the airport into central Doha on Sunday offered visible proof that much had changed in the country in the interim.

The roads that will transport fans to matches in next year’s World Cup are all but completed. The stunning, high-rise skyline reflects on stadiums already hosting an international tournament in the shape of the FIFA Arab Cup.

This correspondent has changed, too. Older, of course, slower, naturally, but certainly better informed.

My last visit was in the wake of criticism of Qatar over its stance on workers’ welfare and LBGT rights. This controversy has not abated.

My learning, though, has increased. Qatar in 2019 drew me towards Arabia in its culture, history and economics. I embarked on a period of study. It was a largely pleasant task, consisting of consuming the works of, among others, Edward Said, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Justin Marozzi, Wilfred Thesiger, Freya Stark and Jonathan Raban.

I learned much, some of it about myself. The danger in observing another culture is that we do so through the prism of our own culture. The views of that other culture can also be tinted by the stereotypes inflicted on us in the past.

The Arab in the Gulf has moved in crude depiction from the shifty individual, slyly seeking backsheesh without labour, to the absurdly rich being who has no care, but 10 cars, no worries, save how to spend the carbon-fuelled windfall.

Raban wrote in the 1970s of the antipathy and distrust directed towards the Gulf. It has also not abated. The reasons for it have become clearer in my mind.

Yes, there might be the righteous anger over wrongs done or sins committed by commission and omission, but there is more.

It involves geography, culture and politics. On Monday, I visited a sanctuary for thousands of Afghanistan refugees in Qatar. It reminded me that many are victims of geography while others are beneficiaries of it.

The Afghans have always been in the former category. The Great Game of East/West machinations has placed Afghanistan in the line of fire. Some of its latest victims, or at least the survivors, could be seen in a specially constructed township about 30 minutes from Doha. Here lived the battered and the bruised, the escapees hoping for a better life.

Geography offered Qataris a release from the uncertainties of pearl fishing and rudimentary farming. There was oil and gas, and plenty of it. The inhabitants are financially secure. There is every likelihood (Qatar is already preparing for life post-fossil fuel) that their children and grandchildren will be too.

This leads to politics. The Gulf Arab was once a victim of Western imperialism and robust capitalism. The latter is now its friend, the former has disintegrated, at least in this region.

The Qatari is rich, educated and a master/mistress of personal destiny. The same cannot be said for the vast majority of the inhabitants of the colonial, Western powers. This has produced resentment. The disposed and the disenfranchised now do not roam the deserts but the rundown cities of much of Britain.

There is that disconnect in culture, too. Many fail to recognise that a perceived superiority in culture is largely a distorted construct. The Arab culture, rich in learning and spiritual values, has been reduced by some as the preserve of the greedy, the bigoted and the fanatic.

It did not take a volume of reading to realise this was absurd but dogged investigation has reinforced the belief that the Arab world cannot be dismissed with such facile and erroneous observations.

Yes, there has been an awful toll of migrant workers in Qatar, though figures are harder to substantiate on both sides of the argument. Yes, workers are paid pitifully by our standards but also well by the rates of their native countries.

As a Ugandan taxi driver told me, “Yes, it is not good. But it is better than my home. Why else would I be here?”

Yes, the illegality of homosexuality is abhorrent and not made any more palatable by those saying prosecutions are rare.

But what if the World Cup is not seen as rewarding such behaviour as but is viewed as a means of changing practices because of the light that has been shone on them by worldwide scrutiny?

It is a possibility. The certainty, though, is criticism has been made in ignorance as well as good faith. There has also undoubtedly been a backlash from post-imperial forces.

So where lies the precise truth? This is always elusive and any reporter saying otherwise is a victim of self-delusion.

This is a speedy world and travelling in it can cause images to blur and perceptions to be inaccurate and unfocused.

There is much to question, investigate and observe in Qatar and the rest of the Gulf. As the journey from the airport ends at the foot of a towering hotel, I promised to do my best.

It may be a feeble response but it is more responsible than declaring that any definitive judgment can be made after the reading of a dozen books and the spending of a cumulative total of no more than a dozen days.

I will seek the truth, accepting that I cannot find the whole truth.