‘It’s Like Jail Here’

DOHA, Qatar — Half an hour before Germany faced
off against Argentina in the World Cup final, Indra and his friend Kesar sit on
the steps of the portacabin they share with eight other men. They watch as the
gravel courtyard before them fills with soccer fans. Red and white construction
safety tape divides the courtyard in half; paper signs marked "Argentina" and
"Germany" hang at the entrances, directing each team's fans to their section.

Hundreds of men wait in anticipation, seated on
large squares of industrial carpeting or on the rocky ground. The pregame
festivities are projected on a huge screen rigged out of construction
scaffolding and plastic tarp, raised between two giant plastic water
tanks. This labor camp in the Qatari desert houses roughly 200 men, but hundreds
of workers from neighboring camps have poured in to watch the free screening of
the final here.

Indra, a slight, 24-year-old man wearing a khaki T-shirt and shorts, left his town of Jhapa in the eastern Terai plains of Nepal
for Qatar nearly four years ago. He started as a cleaner, he says, earning $150 a month -- or roughly 60 cents an hour
-- for the last three years, before he was promoted. As he and Kesar, another
Nepali worker with a permanent wry smile, wait for the match to begin, they are
frank about the problems they have faced. Both men paid agents in Nepal about $1,100
to get their jobs; the agents told them they'd earn nearly twice the monthly salary
they ended up receiving. They said it was pointless to complain about the
broken salary agreement to their embassy, which would not do much to help them,
and that they couldn't get better-paying jobs because Qatari law didn't let
them. It took them over a year of work to pay off their loans.

"If the World Cup comes to Qatar in 2022, of
course I'd welcome it," Indra said. "I want it to be here, but they should
improve our conditions."

Indra and his friends are among the 1.3 million
migrant workers in Qatar, mostly from South and Southeast Asia, who make up 94
percent of the country's workforce and are often forced to work in
dangerous and dismal conditions, without the ability to quit or change their
jobs. Over the next eight years, it is the labor of migrants like them that
will build eight
new state-of-the-art stadiums from the ground up in preparation for the
2022 World Cup. They will pave the country's roads and dig a $34 billion metro
and rail system to transport fans around the country. They will raise dozens of
new hotels, and they will wait upon
the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans who will descend on the country in the cafes and restaurants yet to be built.

If the Cup, that is, actually makes it Qatar at
all.

* * *

Over the past several months, the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has faced increasing public
pressure to move the tournament to another country. By the end of July, FIFA's
ethics committee is due
to report back on corruption allegations surrounding Qatar's bid to host
the 2022 World Cup. It's not only corruption but the conditions of workers in
Qatar that have raised international criticism: The International Trade Union
Confederation, a workers' rights lobbying group based in Brussels, began a "Rerun the Vote" campaign in
April 2013 asking for the World Cup to be moved from Qatar due to egregious
labor rights violations. "More than 4,000 workers will die before a ball is
kicked in 2022," General Secretary Sharan Burrow has repeatedly told the media.

Working in Qatar is
dangerous business. The high temperature on the day of the World Cup final was
a staggering 116 degrees Fahrenheit -- and workers often toil for 12 or more
hours a day, spending long periods in the glaring desert sun. Many survive on
meager meals, while others say employers don't provide them with proper drinking
water. Labor camps can be overcrowded, some have broken air conditioning or
irregular water and electricity supply, and some employers don't even provide
bedding or cooking equipment. According to official government data, the main
cause of migrant worker deaths was "sudden cardiac arrest" -- unusual among
young and physically active men. Worker advocates have speculated that the
combination of grueling working conditions and little rest have resulted in
what Nepali migrants call the "sleeping death."

Indra knows well how risky it can be to depend
on employers in Qatar. His brother suffered a serious kidney condition, causing his employers to send him back to Nepal because they had not purchased the health insurance coverage required by law.
Unable to afford proper care, he died. Indra's cousin also died, in a car
accident on the job in Qatar -- but the company did not provide them with death
compensation, he said, though Qatari law requires them to do so. Yet he and
Kesar fear that if the tournament is moved, the government will not deliver on
its promises for labor reform. In particular, they say, they're waiting for
changes to the kafala, or sponsorship system. 

In mid-May, Qatari government officials held a
press conference in which they announced that the country would soon abolish the
kafala, which ties a worker's
legal residency to a single employer. If a worker quits or leaves without his
employer's permission, the employer must report him to the nearest police
station for "absconding," which automatically cancels the worker's visa. Human rights groups have criticized the system
for enabling forced labor and perpetuating human trafficking.

Workers reported as absconding cannot simply
purchase a plane ticket and head home. They need an exit permit from their
employer; without one, they must go through deportation proceedings that can
take months, sometimes years. Meanwhile, they have already paid huge
recruitment fees back home to get their jobs, and face pressure to start paying
off those debts immediately. "If I don't start sending money, the [loan agents
in Nepal] will take my house," Kesar explained. Their situation is hardly
uncommon -- according to a 2013 survey
of nearly 1,200 workers in the country, low-income laborers paid on average
over $1,000 to get their jobs in Qatar, often mortgaging family homes or
selling their wives' jewelry just to get there. It can take a year or more just
to pay back the cost of getting these jobs, making their journey a huge gamble.
These fees are illegal in Qatar, but workers continue to pay them.

"It's like jail here," Kesar said. "The law
forces us to do everything. They say, if you want to work, work, but if you
don't like anything, we can't help you."

These feelings are not limited to low-wage
workers: French soccer player Zahir Belounis spent nearly two years trapped in
Qatar after he took a claim for unpaid wages against the owners of the local
team he played for to court. In order to leave the country, he needed his
employer's permission. "I have been living a nightmare for several months
because of the kafala system. This system is slowly killing me and many other
people risk suffering in the same way," he wrote in an open
letter to soccer stars Zinedine Zidane and Pep Guardiola. 

* * *

In the stifling courtyard, World Cup fever is
underway. Over 1,500 men have packed into the space -- crowded on the ground,
against the cinderblock line of toilet stalls, and perched on top of buses and
the 8-foot-high perimeter wall. By 11 p.m., halftime has come and gone and it's
still 91 degrees. Men shake plastic bottles filled with gravel, and cheers in
English, Arabic, Nepali, Hindi, and Vietnamese fill the air. The Germany and
Argentina sections are equally packed, but Germany's fans cheer louder.
Somewhere, one of them has found a vuvuzela.

In the break before overtime, Mohammed Ibrahim,
a 32-year-old construction worker and Germany supporter from Bangladesh,
explains that he moved to Qatar because he's such a huge World Cup fan. He
admires Germany for the way they bulldozed Brazil in the semi-finals. "I used
to work in Kuwait, but I had to leave, so I came here," he explains. "I didn't
think about any other place -- I only wanted to come to Qatar, because of the
World Cup."

Ibrahim paid about $3,900 to get to Qatar, yet
he only earns $275 a month -- half of the salary he made in Kuwait, and far
less than he was told he'd make. Now, he's cynical about prospects for
improvement. "Whether the World Cup comes here or not, I don't see any benefit
to me," he says. "Maybe I'll get to see a game or two, but that's it."

Indra is more cautiously optimistic. "They
announced they would change the sponsorship law. If they make the change, I'll
stay another 10 years. If not, I'll go," he says.

No matter where the first ball is kicked off in
2022, workers in the world's richest country will continue to suffer serious
abuses of their rights unless the Qatari government follows through on its
promises. Moving the tournament alone will not save their lives, nor will it
protect them from the dangers and exploitation many currently face. "Even if
there is no World Cup, development will never stop in Qatar," a Nepali migrant community
organizer in Doha told me. "That is how
people have to understand the problem."

In the game's 113th minute, Germany's Mario Götze collected a crossing pass in front of Argentina's goal and, with one
swift kick, buried the ball in the back of the net. The left side of the yard, Germany's supporters, leapt up and erupted in
long cheers. "Messi, khalas!" one
Nepali fan yelled in Arabic -- a message directed to Argentina's star player,
Lionel Messi, that "it's over."

Soon enough, it was. After the winning goal, before
the trophy celebrations had even begun, the men were streaming out of the courtyard;
within minutes, it was mostly empty. It's past 1 a.m., and they'll have to wake
up in less than five hours for another hard day of work.

EPA/STR