"Qatar: Sand, money and games" by Nicolas Fromm: How Qatar rules the world

Qatar. Criticized, much discussed, feared, but above all one thing: unknown. Despite numerous headlines and a huge discourse surrounding human rights and soccer tournaments in Qatar, for many people there is still a great veil of uncertainty over the Arab emirate. Nicolas Fromm wants to lift this veil in Qatar: Sand, Money and Games and show the background to how a medium-sized peninsula on the Persian Gulf has become one of the biggest players in the global politics of the 21st century.

Hardly any other country has succeeded in raising its international profile in recent years like Qatar. Since the middle of the 20th century, but at the latest in 1995 with the rise of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani as Emir, the country has made great efforts to increase its own status, be it in terms of financial resources or international prestige and reputation. These efforts are driven by immense profits from oil and gas all over the world. The competition is mainly with larger neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia, which pursue a similar strategy and also invest in various European sports clubs, which is why Fromm also speaks of "proxy wars on the pitch".

The book provides a good and understandable account of how Qatar came to have these financial resources despite having a territory that is almost entirely made up of arid deserts, which corresponds to around half of the German state of Hesse, and how the country was originally fought for by the current ruling family in a war with various Arab states and finally founded as a state in 1878 with the help of the British crown (full independence followed in 1971). Especially this look at the beginnings of Qatar and the nomadic origins of the population, who eventually settled mainly on the coasts and earned their living there by diving for pearls, brings you much closer to this region than pictures and figures of today's skyscrapers and multi-billionaires ever could. The whole thing is done in a way that makes any prior knowledge optional. Even those who know nothing about the region or the countries and cultures there will find it easy to follow Fromm's explanations.

Fromm also wonderfully demonstrates how Qatar has been trying to diversify its assets, which are primarily linked to global oil and gas prices, for several decades - but at the latest since a major development plan in 2008 - by actively investing in countless Western companies in a wide range of sectors. This has been the case with Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Tiffany & Co. and Volkswagen, among others. Partnerships with Deutsche Bahn, for example, are also commonplace here. The Emirate's influence is no longer only felt in the oil industry, which is probably rather foreign and distant for many people, but also very directly on local German companies that are part of everyday life for all of us.

Particular attention is being paid to the purchase and management of the French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain - also with regard to the World Cup. Qatar has been the sole owner of the club since 2012 and has since invested around 2 billion dollars in transfer fees alone in order to attract world-famous stars such as Messi, Mbappé and Neymar and turn them into advertisements for Qatari companies and therefore the state of Qatar itself.

In this sense, Fromm also clearly and impressively summarizes how guest workers who are lured to Qatar by the relatively high wages - compared to their home countries - fall victim to the industrial growth mania of Qatari industry and the construction of countless luxurious skyscrapers and soccer stadiums. And even those who escape with their lives and physical integrity must live in constant fear, as they have hardly any rights in Qatar and can even be arrested for being absent from work, not to mention rights for women or people from the LGTBTQ+ community.

Throughout all of these observations and classifications, Fromm always takes a level-headed yet clearly critical stance towards the Qatari government and always questions and refutes its claims and propaganda with academic professionalism. He also succeeds in this, despite the fact that the work is "only" an overview with a correspondingly small number of pages. This makes it all the more irritating when, at the end, after he has dealt with the awarding and hosting of the World Cup in relatively brief detail, he talks about how locals and travelling fans now have it in their hands to "depoliticize the World Cup and [...] make it a model of cosmopolitanism and cultural exchange". It seems as if Fromm himself had not understood the conclusions he had reached in the previous chapters or as if the conclusion had been written by someone else. The previously described oppression of migrant workers, women and people from the LGBTQ+ community seem to have been forgotten. The oppression of the press and human rights activists is suddenly irrelevant. And it seems even more ignored that this naive and optimistic approach to the World Cup is exactly what the Qatari royal family wants in order to further establish itself in global world politics and to ensure recognition and acceptance among the populations of Western countries, who are supposed to bring their money to Qatar via tourism in order to ski in air-conditioned halls in the middle of the desert, for example. A "role model of cosmopolitanism" is simply impossible in a place where things like "blasphemy" and homosexuality are still punishable and can result in up to seven years in prison.