Drive from Hamad International Airport to the center of the Qatari capital Doha. When you first let your gaze wander over the skyline, you might mistake the city for a mirage. Where until the 1960s there were little more than adobe houses in the desert landscape, today skyscrapers shoot into the sky, luxury cars drive through the streets, the kilometre-long Corniche beach promenade presents itself, football stars and the emir of Qatar wave LED-decorated facades.
The center represents the well-known side of the city: the modern, future-oriented, representative Doha.
Qatar will host the Men’s World Cup from November 20. Around 30 degrees, in air-conditioned stadiums. It is the first World Cup in an Arab country. And the first to take place in winter. To that end, the country has been conducting a massive PR offensive for years and has dressed up. Blick researched the site for a week and also looked behind the facade. Despite all the pomp and circumstance, Qatar often has two faces: progressive and conservative, rich and bitterly poor, cosmopolitan and hermetically sealed.
The World Cup starts in Qatar in three weeks. For the first time, the most important football tournament will take place in the winter – and in an Arab country. A country that has two faces, but only wants to show one to the world: glittering skyscraper facades, prosperity, progressiveness. If you look behind these facades, you see less impressive things: hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, human rights violations, total surveillance. Blick TV reporter Ramona Schelbert and Blick reporter Tobias Ochsenbein therefore report this week about the desert state that the whole world will soon be watching.
The hidden shadow side
For example, the industrial area in Doha. Driving nearly 20 kilometers south of the city center, you’ll fall out of the glittering life of the capital into a dusty parallel world. A place where you should not be seen as a tourist. There are no skyscrapers here, no glass facades, no luxury shopping malls. All buildings are walled and guards stand at the entrances to the workers’ settlements. Access prohibited to outsiders. If you don’t work here, you should stay out.
The industrial area is arguably the most important district of the thriving Gulf state of Qatar, the heart of this country. Only: it is nowhere to be found in the country’s PR offensive and – as the government wants it – should not attract visitors. It’s the hidden dark side of the Qatari megacity.
From the streets you can see nothing here but unadorned barracks. Clothes hang in front of the windows. Street 39, Street 40 – the streets here no longer have names, only numbers. You will not find such places in any travel guide, you will find out by accident.
A large proportion of Doha’s residents live in the industrial area. Hundreds of thousands of workers, some of them women, from mainly Asian and African countries are crammed into overcrowded accommodations. Far from the rich neighborhoods of the Qatari capital. There, downtown, where rich Qataris buy status symbols in pompous shopping malls, they only clean streets, yachts or marble toilets. Build glass and steel towers – and mansions. In short, they ensure that Doha’s facade always shines. They have few chances of comparable prosperity.
Present-day Doha originated from the settlement of Al Bidda, which was first mentioned in historical documents towards the end of the 17th century. An insignificant coastal town on the edge of the desert. A nest from which the people lived from fishing and pearl diving. Until they first discovered oil and later gas here in the 1930s. The rise of the oil industry brought rapid population growth and unprecedented expansion to the city. Today, Doha is one of the most influential capitals in the Arab world, a power.
“Doha is like a beehive”
Ibrahim Mohamed Jaidah (61) is someone who lives from this rapid development in Qatar. The architect gave the city his signature with his buildings. He built, among other things, the al-Thumama Stadium, one of the eight football stadiums where the World Cup will be played from November 20. He too benefited from the hundreds of thousands of workers from the industrial area. He openly criticizes the conditions under which these people suffer. “That’s why I’m doing my best to improve the conditions for these people here in the country,” he says.
Jaidah stands in his office on the 22nd floor in front of a huge window that offers a breathtaking view of the Katara Towers. A newly constructed six-star hotel with two domed towers built as an architectural tribute to Qatar’s national coat of arms with the two crossed scimitars. The “VVIPs”, the “very, very important people”, should stay there during the World Cup, says Jaidah. It is one of the newest showpieces in the Qatari megacity.
“Since the oil boom, but especially since the World Cup was awarded to Qatar, Doha has been like a beehive. What has been built here over the past ten or twenty years is enormous. This growth changed much more than just the appearance of the city: the economy, population growth, culture. It all happened very fast,” says Jaidah. Maybe too fast.
“For too long we have only copied western cities, paid little attention to sustainability and our culture was not reflected in urban design,” says the architect. Building laws are much stricter these days, and awareness of one’s own heritage and sustainability is much greater.
Lots of landscapes
When Jaidah talks about the influence of culture on the architecture of Qatar, he also means the National Museum of Qatar. The spectacular structure is modeled after a sand rose, a rose-shaped structure made of sand and salt crystals that forms on the hot desert floor.
The construction of the French star architect Jean Nouvel (77) cost more than 400 million dollars. Inside there is a 40,000 square meter exhibition space, a 1.5 kilometer trail leads through the history of the country. There you listen on large screens to people of older generations, who tell about a former life as a Bedouin, about fishing and pearl diving. Of a simple world long gone in Doha.
But the sand rose, the beautifully gleaming facades, the man-made islands and the multi-lane roads draw attention away from the industrial district with all its workers, who have made Qatar what it is today: a land of superlatives – for better or for worse.
Ramona Schelbert and Tobias Ochsenbein from Qatar
Source: Blick
I’m Tim David and I work as an author for 24 Instant News, covering the Market section. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, my mission is to provide accurate, timely and insightful news coverage that helps our readers stay informed about the latest trends in the market. My writing style is focused on making complex economic topics easy to understand for everyone.
