Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Joe Fathallah
The final whistle blew just before 7pm on Sunday June 5th. Along with 33,000 other supporters at the Cardiff City Stadium, I leapt out of my seat in ecstasy. Wales had beaten Ukraine 1-0 in the World Cup playoff match, and qualified for our first World Cup in 64 years, taking place this autumn in Qatar. The playoff game itself had been postponed since March due to Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and was played in tremendous spirit. We hugged and swapped shirts with Ukrainian fans outside the ground after the game.
Whilst I’m ridiculously excited about cheering the team on in the tournament, I’ve got no plans to make the trip to Qatar. For a start, I probably wouldn’t be able to get tickets for the matches. The Wales supporters’ club, known as Y Wal Goch (the Red Wall), has been allocated just over 2000 tickets for each of our three group matches, against England, Iran, and the USA. Supporters of other teams have similar allocations, with the English FA advertising 2500 tickets. The stadiums hosting the tournament have seating capacities between 40,000 and 80,000! What has happened to all these tickets? Are we not allowed to go to support our teams?
Frankly though, even if I was able to get into the matches, the trip wouldn’t appeal to me – a travesty really considering we’ve been waiting so long for this. Qatar, a country with little-to-no football tradition or culture, was awarded hosting rights to the 2022 tournament by FIFA, the sport’s world governing body, in 2010. During the selection process, two members of FIFA’s executive committee were suspended under suspicion of accepting money for votes, and similar allegations were made after Qatar’s win was announced. The Qatari national team is ranked one of the lowest in the tournament and has never previously appeared at a World Cup. FIFA has a chequered history in this regard. In 2015, fourteen people connected with FIFA were indicted by the FBI in relation to fraud, racketeering and money laundering.
Qatar has a very poor human rights record. The Al-Thani family has ruled the Arabian Peninsula as a near-absolute monarchy for almost 200 years. Seven of the eight stadiums scheduled for use in the World Cup have been build or rebuilt specifically for this purpose, in a short time frame, and in slave-like conditions. A report published in the Guardian in 2021 stated that since construction work started, over 6500 migrant workers have died in Qatar, having come to work from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Homosexuality is illegal in the country, and on paper could even carry the death penalty. Alcohol consumption is also forbidden – an essential part of an away trip for many supporters! It’s true that Qatari officials have stated, under pressure, that LGBTQ supporters, or those drinking alcohol, will not face persecution during the duration of the tournament. However, can we simply take their word for this? And even if it’s true, it’s not acceptable to simply leave the LGBTQ community in Qatar living in fear again once the World Cup has finished!
I’m half-Arab myself and feel a real emotional connection to this part of the world. But unfortunately for working-class people in the region, capitalist imperialism has always had a real financial connection to it as well, sitting as many of the Arab countries are on plentiful supplies of oil. This means that regimes such as Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships, exist in harmony with US capitalism, which supplies weaponry for the brutal war in Yemen. Human rights go out of the window as far as imperialism is concerned where there is a profit to be made. But the magnificent uprising of the Arab masses in the 2010-2011 Arab Spring, showed their huge power and the potential to fundamentally change society across the Middle East and North Africa, overthrowing dictatorships and imperialist stooges and laying the basis for a voluntary democratic socialist confederation of the Arab world.
To change how the World Cup is run, FIFA needs to be fully democratised and brought under the control of supporters’ associations and professional footballers’ trade unions. All corrupt officials must be immediately removed, and decisions such as bidding for tournaments should be held with fully open public scrutiny of the bids received and the process by which a decision is arrived at. Supporters’ clubs of all the teams participating need to show up the brutal nature of the Qatari regime, and support the struggles for human rights, democratic rights, workers’ rights, and LGBTQ rights in the region. We need to make FIFA’s corrupt decision into an opportunity to fight back, support the Arab masses in their heroic struggles. The Arab working class has enormous power to overthrown capitalism and imperialism, and international socialist solidarity is key to bringing that to fruition.