Qatar's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Jassim Al-Hamad Al-Thaiba, joins me in this episode to talk about the impact of the World Cup on Qatar's society, as well as the challenges faced by hosting a world-class football tournament.
00:03:47.680Well, I think it's mainly driven by an agenda that these are the things that we would like to see in countries that they are not accepting it,
00:04:01.300you know, and societies that they are not accepting it.
00:04:07.140Second, a lot didn't accept the fact that Qatar is a small Arab country, can host a world-class tournament.
00:04:20.020Basically, they were like, you know, how a lot of attacks that why Qatar won the World Cup, like they don't have even the culture of the World Cup.
00:04:32.040I don't know what's, you know, what does it mean if I am a country, like a marginal country, I don't have the right to host a world tournament.
00:04:42.620And this is more about, honestly, like, I see it like more racism and superiority.
00:04:47.060And that's basically, I think, the main driver for this.
00:04:50.640So an official here told me a funny story, and I want to check to see if it's true.
00:04:54.660This person told me that some bureau or commission in the United Nations was raiding the human rights here in Qatar and said,
00:05:05.220in order to score higher, you have to build nursing homes for your old people to live.
00:05:10.760And this person tried to explain, you know, we don't have nursing homes because old people, parents live with their children.
00:05:16.640But you built them anyway in order to get a higher score on this, and they remained empty.
00:08:07.080And that's, that's, I think, the main issue that we are facing and the main threat that we are facing.
00:08:12.740And you have seen, Taker, you, you spent now a few days in Qatar and you have seen, you came to my home and you have seen that my home is surrounded by my family homes.
00:08:24.280And it's not, I'm not really living in an isolation from, from them.
00:08:29.740I'm the family, the nuclear family, the bigger family.
00:08:33.920And it's like, it's all one, one community, one, one family.
00:08:41.360And basically you can apply this and magnify it to the entire country.
00:08:51.060People, even when they move temporarily to another neighborhood or to another place, 10 minutes away from their family, they feel homesick.
00:08:59.600So it's, it's, we believe that this is supposed to be the case for all the countries where families, families, bonds, matters, families, bonds, really create from you, from your society, a strong society that's not easily penetrated.
00:09:18.940And that's what create the national unity as well in face of external threats and everything.
00:09:24.420So that's kind of the key is that when you are cut off, when you're alone, you are powerless and you can be controlled.
00:11:02.880A lot of enemies who wants to undermine it for political reason, who wants to undermine it for economical reason,
00:11:11.120who wants to demonize your effort in order to make sure that every step you will take will be suspicious in order to control also the parties that you are helping in that.
00:11:31.900And basically, they don't know, by doing such a thing, they are not harming us, but they are harming the region,
00:11:43.200and they are harming our friends, including the United States.
00:11:47.440And having an ally, like, and partner and friend like Qatar, with the airbase as one example,
00:11:57.140and working together very closely on a lot of issues, a lot of files,
00:12:03.540helping bringing Americans' homes from different countries,
00:12:07.460whether it was in the evacuation of Afghanistan,
00:12:10.360whether it's in American hostages all around the world,