When they came, a Qatar World Cup was unthinkable. Now it’s here

Doha, Qatar – Shehar Bano Rizvi moved from the effervescent, ever-expanding metropolis of Karachi to a calmer Doha quickly after her marriage in 2004.

The then-23-year-old Pakistani expat was not impressed when she arrived within the Qatari capital, pondering she had landed in the course of a desert in additional methods than one. The streets have been empty and the buying choices scarce. A solitary five-star resort, a fundamental mall and a smattering of workplace buildings stood in West Bay.

“My husband had a really fundamental driving rule for me: for those who get misplaced, observe the instructions to the Corniche [waterfront promenade] and it is possible for you to to navigate your means dwelling,” Rizvi mentioned, recalling her first experiences getting round Doha at a time when apps have been unprecedented.

Quick-forward 18 years and West Bay is buzzing. It’s Doha’s prime enterprise district and residential to an ever-busier skyline populated by increasingly skyscrapers. Shiny new buildings alongside the shores of the Gulf bask within the solar all day and placed on a glittering gentle present at evening.

Doha’s metamorphosis extends past right here although, with new districts, cultural hubs and state-of-the-art venues having reworked the cityscape.

Human rights organisations and media studies have mentioned Qatar’s improvement has come at the price of labour rights. Issues about low wages, poor dwelling circumstances and employee security have been persistently raised by rights teams and critics of the Gulf nation internet hosting the World Cup.

Hitting again, Qatari officers level to current reforms to labour legal guidelines, together with a common minimal wage and an easing of restrictions on overseas employees who wish to change employers. Officers have additionally criticised Western media for what they name biased and inaccurate protection of Qatar and its preparations for the match.

Qatar, an energy-rich nation that declared independence solely 5 many years in the past, received the precise to host the World Cup in 2010. Its transformation has additionally coincided with a fast improve in its inhabitants – at the moment, almost three million folks – the overwhelming majority of whom are migrant employees, largely from South Asian international locations.

“Qatar’s independence was in 1971, so we ha[d] sure insurance policies that don’t match now,” Faisal al-Mudakha, editor-in-chief of the Gulf Occasions, instructed Al Jazeera.

“Now we’ve the World Cup,” he mentioned. “We’re speaking about 12 years of reform of coverage … [that is being] executed due to the World Cup  -but it [has been] fast-forwarded. And I believe after the World Cup, it’s going to additionally proceed primarily based on wants and to satisfy worldwide legislation.”

Concentrate on sport

Six-lane highways, a sparkly-clean metro prepare system and commuter buses that now kind Qatar’s transport hub have been a distant dream within the early 2000s, when the considered a tiny nation like Qatar internet hosting a soccer World Cup was past imagining.

“I keep in mind attending the opening ceremony of the 2006 Asian Video games in disbelief {that a} nation of Qatar’s dimension might host such a giant occasion,” mentioned Rizvi, a photographer and an creator of a ebook on Pakistani delicacies.

“On that chilly, wet December evening on the model new Khalifa Worldwide Stadium, it grew to become clear that Qatar was shifting its focus in direction of sports activities, tradition and training.”

The nation formalised that change within the following years below its Nationwide Imaginative and prescient 2030, an formidable improvement plan geared toward diversifying its economic system, slashing its carbon footprint and reaching social progress.

Sports activities are a key pillar of that imaginative and prescient. Since 2012, Qatar has celebrated an annual sports activities day each February. The event is marked as a public vacation, permitting residents to take part in sports activities and fitness-related actions.

Again then, in response to Rizvi, the variety of girls and ladies in sports activities was negligible.

“My daughter took up soccer as a toddler however left it after some time as a result of there have been no all-girls groups,” she mentioned. “However now, as a young person, she performs in an academy that has introduced her worldwide publicity and given her an opportunity to satisfy her soccer idols.

“And it’s not simply her, so many Qatari feminine youngsters flip as much as observe classes and video games with their fathers, who appear genuinely proud and might be seen cheering them on from the sidelines.”

Nonetheless, there was lackadaisical progress in girls’s soccer on the larger stage. The Qatari girls’s soccer staff has not performed a aggressive match in just a few years and has dropped out from FIFA’s rankings, whereas many youngsters and younger girls cease taking part in as they become older.

‘It wasn’t nearly Qatar’

Regardless of the gradual progress on the soccer pitch, girls have been on the forefront of academic and cultural progress within the nation.

Sheikh Moza bint Nasser, the second spouse of former Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, was pivotal in establishing Qatar’s Schooling Metropolis in 2003, the place a number of famend worldwide universities have arrange native campuses.

Sheikha Mayassa bint Hamad, the present emir’s sister, heads the humanities and tradition scene within the type of the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA).

The organisation has established a number of museums throughout the nation that target Arab and Islamic artwork, Qatar’s nationwide historical past, sports activities and an interactive kids’s museum which is about to open quickly.

The cultural centres have turn out to be a well-liked leisure possibility for a lot of who, for years, had few leisure alternate options.

“It was very fundamental,” Eeman Abed, a Palestinian who has been dwelling in Qatar for greater than 20 years, mentioned. “Go to the park, have a stroll on the Corniche or eat out on the weekend,” she added with a shrug.

However because the nation moved ahead and Doha grew to a thriving hub of arts and tradition, Abed added, it took a lot of its expats alongside.

“We used to dwell in a small home in previous Doha and after transferring throughout the town over time, we’ve now settled in The Pearl,” she mentioned, referring to the upmarket synthetic island with Mediterranean-inspired housing and seashores.

That’s the place Rizvi lived together with her husband, who works for Qatar Inventory Trade, when the nation received World Cup internet hosting rights.

Rizvi remembers a festive evening as folks got here out with their maroon and white Qatari flags and nationwide songs thundered out of automobiles.

“It wasn’t nearly Qatar,” she says. “It was about an Arab Muslim nation internet hosting the world’s greatest occasion and that’s precisely what the West is unable to fathom,” she provides, referring to the continuing criticism that Qatar has confronted since that evening in December 2010.

However with the occasion now below means, each a part of Doha’s vacationer hotspots has been crammed up by worldwide followers – from the West and past. They’re making an attempt on native meals and style, indulging in banter with native followers, and bringing their festivities to the Gulf shores.