Qatar World Cup: 400 Nepalese die on nation's building sites since bid won

More than 400 Nepalese migrant workers have died on Qatar's building sites as the Gulf state prepares to host the World Cup in 2022, a report will reveal this week.

The grim statistic comes from the Pravasi Nepali Co-ordination Committee, a respected human rights organisation which compiles lists of the dead using official sources in Doha. It will pile new pressure on the Qatari authorities – and on football's world governing body, Fifa – to curb a mounting death toll that some are warning could hit 4,000 by the time the 2022 finals take place.

It also raises the question of how many migrant workers in total have died on construction sites since Qatar won the bid in 2010. Nepalese workers comprise 20% of Qatar's migrant workforce, and many others are drafted in from countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

A focus on the Nepalese deaths has seen Fifa and Qatar battling a PR crisis that threatens to cast a long shadow over the event. Last week, appearing before EU officials, Theo Zwanziger, a senior Fifa executive who has publicly criticised the decision to award the tournament to Qatar, pledged that his organisation would be carrying out "on-the-spot visits" to ensure that workers' rights were being respected.

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Qatar World Cup: 185 Nepalese died in 2013 – official records

The extent of the risks faced by migrant construction workers building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been laid bare by official documents revealing that 185 Nepalese men died last year alone.

The 2013 death toll, which is expected to rise as new cases come to light, is likely to spark fresh concern over the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar and increase the pressure on Fifa to force meaningful change. According to the documents the total number of verified deaths among workers from Nepal – just one of several countries that supply hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to the gas-rich state – is now at least 382 in two years alone. At least 36 of those deaths were registered in the weeks following the global outcry after the Guardian's original revelations in September.

The revelations forced Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, to promise that football would not turn a blind eye to the issue following a stormy executive committee meeting. Qatar's ministry of labour hired law firm DLA Piper to conduct an urgent review and Hassan al-Thawadi, chief executive of the World Cup organising committee, said the findings would be treated with the utmost seriousness, vowing that the tournament would not be built "on the blood of innocents". The DLA Piper report is expected to be published in the coming weeks.

The Nepalese make up about a sixth of Qatar's 2 million-strong population of migrant workers. Verified figures for the 2013 death rates among those from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere have yet to emerge.

"Fifa firmly believes in the positive power that the Fifa World Cup can have in Qatar as a platform for positive social change, including an improvement of labour rights and conditions for migrant workers."

Full story on The Guardian

Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar's preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.

This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022.

According to documents obtained from the Nepalese embassy in Doha, at least 44 workers died between 4 June and 8 August. More than half died of heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents.

Full story on The Guardian

Qatar's Agenda in Syria

Situation: Qatar continues to funnel weapons and facilitate other assistance to Syrian rebels and Salafi jihadists fighting the Assad regime in Syria.

Bottom Line: Determining the outcome of the conflict in Syria is very difficult due to the sheer number of private players in this theater and the varying agendas. Determining the extent to which Qatar is willing to go is made easier by understanding what it wishes to achieve: Global stature—and a pipeline through Syria.

Analysis: Right before the conflict in Syria broke out, Iran had cut a deal with Iraq for an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline to pump natural gas from the world’s largest gas field, South Pars, which is shared by Qatar and Iran. Qatar could not allow this to happen. It would have given Iran the upper hand in its perceived quest to form a “Shi’ite crescent”. Qatar wanted the pipeline first. Qatar’s original plan was a pipeline from South Pars through Iraq and on to Turkey, and then to European markets. This pipeline, however, would have to traverse southern/central Iraq and Northern Iraq. This has become problematic due to the oil-resources power struggle between the Kurds of Northern Iraq and the Iraqi central government. A pipeline through Syria would be much easier. It would also be convenient for Jordan, which has apparently been promised free Qatari gas for its help in training Syrian rebels on its territory and allowing them to use Jordanian territory to launch offensives…

Oilprice.com

Dutch Queen Visits and Praises Two Arab Dictators

Last week, Queen Beatrix visited Sultan Qaboos of Oman and Emir Hadad of Qatar. During a conversation with the Dutch journalists who accompanied her, she expressed her appreciation for these two dictators. She praised the vision of the Emir and the wisdom of Sultan Qaboos. Both countries are ranked by Freedom House as non-free countries, the lowest of its three categories. [The other two are free and partly free.]

Bad News from the Netherlands - Pictures of the visit here