This is a story about oppression, tyranny, and the hunger for power. It's yet another testament to Western leaders' willful blindness, purchased with staggering wealth. Donations, investments in sports and academia, polished English – all of these have made it remarkably easy for Americans and Europeans to forget. Memory proves more flexible than one might think. Beneath Qatar's international PR apparatus lies a brutal reality. A reality of persecuting political rivals and regime opponents, a reality of a draconian legal system that crushes the little guy, and a shameful, ongoing exploitation of foreign workers. In conversations with Israel Hayom, people who lived in Qatar for years shed light on what happens behind the masks.
Let's start with the fact that Qatar operates under a rather unusual situation. Migrant workers constitute approximately 90% of the population, which includes around 3.1 million people, and remain subject to a system known as Kafala (sponsorship). According to human rights organizations, this system grants employers disproportionate power. Changing workplaces, for instance, is an almost impossible task. Moreover, this power leads to salary delays, forcing workers to strike or protest despite the risk of arrest or deportation.
Most are workers from poor countries like Egypt, Pakistan, India, and the Philippines. However, sometimes these are workers who come from Europe or North America to staff positions in the healthcare system. To be fair, other Gulf states also employ foreign workers under the same system. They explain that this represents an opportunity to earn a high salary relative to what they would earn in their home country. However, it seems that only in Qatar do they receive treatment as modern-day slaves.
Ahmad Awwadallah, for example, was a regular guy looking for work in Qatar. Many young Egyptians like him fly to the Gulf after completing academic studies to secure a livelihood. But after years of hard work, he got entangled in an ugly legal proceeding. This affair turned his life upside down.
"I always called Qatar home, and now it's the most hated place in the world for me because of the racism, xenophobia, and injustice I experienced. I always excused racism and xenophobia in Qatar by saying there are uneducated people. But my story shows how the educated elite behaves in the same way," he accused in a letter he sent to none other than Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, mother of current Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and one of the most powerful figures in the state.
"I received approval to become a permanent resident in Qatar around 2008, while I was studying in Egypt. My father was also a foreign worker there since the 1980s, and he managed over time to establish a small company, so he was my first sponsor," Awwadallah tells Israel Hayom about his early days in the emirate. "After I completed my academic degree, I was accepted to a small construction company that worked on a gas and oil project for almost a year and a half. After that I had issues with the manager and I left."
Awwadallah joined another company in the gas and oil sector, but eventually became entangled with the manager again. However, because of sponsorship from his father's company, he was relatively protected. "That scared them," he says. At the last company, he was forced to change his sponsor, and within its framework, he worked on the construction projects for the 2022 World Cup that Qatar hosted. Doha didn't earn the great honor thanks to good fortune, but because it bribed senior officials at FIFA. Those who exposed this corruption scandal testified that they remain afraid to this day.
From his current residence in Egypt, Awwadallah describes working conditions in the state: "At the first company we worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. At the second company, in a standard position you had to work 8 hours a day for six days. At the last company that dealt with World Cup projects, I remember that in some cases we worked three consecutive months without a single day off, even during the COVID pandemic. Although on government projects we worked normal hours. In these areas, I don't remember working so much with locals (Qataris), they're not involved in such a hard industry."
Hassan Abd al-Sadiq, a foreign worker from Sudan, tells Israel Hayom about similar abuse. Like many citizens of his country, he was forced to migrate and came to Qatar in search of work. According to the contract with his employer, he was supposed to receive comfortable accommodation and medical care in exchange for work as an accountant at a sewing company – a respectable position by all accounts. Nevertheless, he found himself living in a room that served as a garbage collection point, without basic equipment like a refrigerator or a washing machine. He was forced to pay for medical services out of pocket. Shifts lasted 12 hours each day, six days a week, and workers who dared use their phones were charged fines.
According to him, at one point, he was forbidden from praying at the mosque. "When I went to the Qatari labor office and filed a complaint, on that same day, my residency permit expired, and I was removed to Doha airport. No one even asked me about my story. I spoke with intelligence at the airport and told them I had filed a complaint, and I was supposed to stay until it's decided, so they answered that they can't change anything and I need to return to Sudan," al-Sadiq says. Finally, his employer threatened to file a complaint against him if he ever returned to Doha.
Back to Ahmad Awwadallah. He still managed to survive through hard work, but, ironically, a romantic relationship in the emirate entangled him with the authorities. In 2018, he encountered a foreign worker from one of the hospitals at a club. Samantha (pseudonym) was an African-American Christian, a US citizen, and he's a Muslim from Egypt. They danced a bit, went on a few dates, and their paths separated. Awwadallah had no plan for a serious relationship. Samantha flew to America. Only in 2021 did she return to Doha and begin working at the university's science and technology department. Suddenly, the relationship resumed at her initiative, and the two spent one night together.
Not much time passed, and Samantha informed him that she had become pregnant. They decided to get married and flew to Georgia for a civil ceremony. Awwadallah says he didn't want to bear the shame of a birth outside marriage, even though from the start he wasn't sure he was the father. Only after the wedding, he recounts, when they arrived for a routine checkup, did the doctor say that Samantha had been pregnant weeks before, and had only recently renewed contact with him.
This was Awwadallah's breaking point. The suspicion that Samantha initiated the meeting between them so he would bear responsibility as a father gave him no rest. He estimates she feared getting entangled with the Qatari authorities. "She once told how the Qatari police would escort women who gave birth outside marriage to the hospital, and how terrifying that was."
According to Qatari law, a woman who becomes pregnant outside the framework of marriage is sentenced to prison along with her partner. Indeed, foreign female workers often get entangled with the authorities. For example, the German network Deutsche Welle reported on the story of Ann, a Filipino housekeeper who gave birth at her employer's home. In 2015, when she arrived in Qatar, she knew generally about "the prohibition of sexual relations between unmarried partners." Because of this, she was forced to marry her partner to avoid being sent to prison. As expected, many of these marriages end very badly.
After the baby girl's birth, tensions between Samantha and Awwadallah intensified. According to him, he managed to perform two DNA tests through shipment, which confirmed his paternity, but these didn't remove his doubts. On the contrary, they only made him suspect they were forged. Finally, Samantha filed a lawsuit with the local Sharia court in 2022, demanding a divorce. She demanded that the court annul the marriage and order him to pay her compensation and alimony in a cumulative amount of tens of thousands of Qatari riyals. In addition, she demanded custody of the child.
The Sharia court sought a compromise but was unsuccessful. According to court documents, the marriage was annulled in a May 2023 ruling. Awwadallah was obligated to pay tens of thousands of Qatari riyals cumulatively for his ex-wife's living expenses and court costs, and the child was transferred to her custody. His request to conduct an official DNA test for him and the child was rejected. He hasn't seen the girl for about three years now.
"After I again tried to do a DNA test, I fought with the mother, and she told me, 'You won't be with the child alone.' Later, she contacted me to meet at the US embassy for a passport appointment. I met with her only to argue about the rights of the child as an American citizen. Afterward, she contacted me for the sake of a Qatari ID, and I refused as long as we don't conduct an official DNA test," Awwadallah says. "The last time I saw the child was in August 2022. Obviously, I feel bad that the child will live in a lie."
In late 2023, Awwadallah fled to Egypt after staying there a year without work. He doesn't pay the alimony imposed on him.
The Qatari politician Khalid al-Hail was forced to go into exile in Britain in the previous decade. In the past, he was part of the ruling elite and, in the local media, was called "The Joker" due to his proximity to the former emir, Hamad bin Khalifa, who was deposed in a palace coup in 2013. During this period, he also maintained relations with the former Qatari prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim.
However, in 2010, al-Hail turned his back on the ruling family and established the first opposition movement in the emirate – "The Youth Movement for Qatar's Salvation." And not just any movement, but one aspiring to turn Qatar into a constitutional monarchy – a democracy. In other words, a state with a functioning legislature and citizen involvement. The movement's founding core, which included only six people, initially worked to gather 612 signatures. The challenge was to get hundreds of citizens to sign in support of the reform movement, without security mechanisms that would identify them and crush the movement in its infancy. However, according to al-Hail, the mechanisms had already planted agents among them at this stage.
Following this, al-Hail and others were arrested, tried, and sent to prison. When he was released in 2014, he claimed the movement represented about 30,000 Qatari citizens out of 300,000 at that time (the rest of the residents are migrant workers). He even revealed that the movement had been involved in a failed coup attempt in 2011.
Beyond that, the Qatari politician leaked thousands of documents that shed light on the family's deep corruption under the new emir, Tamim bin Hamad. This step led to a fatwa (religious ruling) issued against him by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the then-spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and a confidant of Tamim.
After escaping, al-Hail turned the youth movement into the National Democratic Party, which he currently heads. "The movement is not limited to exile," al-Hail told Israel Hayom from his residence in Britain. "We are active on the ground, organized and growing. Our goal is clear: to return sovereignty to the Qatari people through constitutional reform, an elected parliament with real authority, an independent judicial system, and an end to rule by decree. We work through structured political organization, international contacts, and internal mobilization to make change inevitable rather than hypothetical. This is not a distant vision, the process has already begun."
It's easy to take his words with a grain of salt, but according to him, the Al Thani family's money will only be effective in the short term. In the long term, he believes, they won't be able to hold out.
Al-Hail also makes many promises regarding the degraded status of foreign workers in the state, which Awwadallah and al-Sadiq described. "The situation of foreign workers in Qatar exposes the reality of the system we're challenging. Despite PR efforts, exploitation remains entrenched in law and practice," he tells Israel Hayom. "Workers continue to face limited freedoms and legal inferiority, and in many cases they experience 'criminalization' regarding personal life. Our movement doesn't treat this as a secondary issue but as one of our top priorities. A state that claims to be modern while denying basic protections to millions is fundamentally unstable. Our reform will include binding legal protections for everyone who lives and works in Qatar."
And also in the Israeli context, he has a promise: "To remove from our soil the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the extremists."
How far the tyranny of the Al Thani family knows no bounds can be learned from the story of Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami, who in 2013 was sentenced by the appeals court to 15 years in prison. The charge? "Incitement to overthrow the regime" and insulting the former emir. Al-Ajami "got off easy," since before the appeal, he was sentenced to life in prison. The assessment is that he was punished for a poem he wrote at the beginning of the previous decade, in which veiled criticism was leveled at the then-emir, Hamad bin Khalifa.
Inspired by the Arab Spring protests in Tunisia, he wrote in the poem: "Arab governments and those who rule them, all without exception, are thieves. And there is one question that troubles the questioner's mind – no official body will be found to answer it – since he (the Arab ruler) imports everything from the West, why doesn't he import law and freedom?"
Following this, he was arrested in November 2011 and has since served a prison sentence, during the trial and after it. Only after about 4 years in prison did Emir Tamim bin Hamad grant clemency to the poet and release him. Very quickly, al-Ajami preferred to leave Qatar for Kuwait, to continue writing poems without fear.
From there, he feels safe to say what's on his mind. In November, for example, he turned to the Qatari ruler on social media and exposed what he went through in prison: "Your Highness, the Emir of Qatar, what motivated me to write this message is a story that occurred between us, and you weren't aware of some of its details. I was kept in solitary confinement from the moment I entered prison until I left. I was forced to shower with cold water in winter and hot water in summer from the bathtub's bottom faucet. This was an act of injustice toward the citizen, in the complete absence of human rights – or what is falsely called 'human rights in Qatar.'"
Al-Ajami sought to raise awareness about the situation of Dr. Hazza, another regime opponent serving a life sentence: "A group of compatriots opposed an unjust decision that harmed our rights as citizens. As a result, many of us were sentenced to imprisonment periods of months and years. Dr. Hazza was sentenced to life imprisonment, while others received unjust sentences because of false accusations. Some were released, while Dr. Hazza remained in prison. This, even though you disbanded the fake council that represented neither justice nor patriotism."
The council al-Ajami refers to is the Shura Council (advisory council), which many Qataris opposed the elections to in 2021. This is the place to emphasize: According to a 2005 law, native-born Qataris are defined as those who lived on the peninsula before 1930 and retained citizenship until 1961. Those who received citizenship in the decades afterward, or under other circumstances, could not vote or be elected to the council. Qatari citizens pointed out the discrimination in the law in real time, but they were arrested and tried under various pretexts. "Annulling this council constitutes an implicit admission of injustice, and it is a moral and legal duty that should apply to all those convicted because of their opposition to its establishment," the poet wrote. "It's not logical that the ruler – whoever he may be – should enjoy hills and hunting grounds in Europe with his wife, children, and brothers, while he oppresses Allah's servants, or witnesses injustice and doesn't strive for change. Whoever doesn't give respect, won't receive respect."
And so, about a year ago, a referendum took place in the state, within which it was agreed to cancel the elections to the Majlis (parliament) of the emirate. In any case, this was a small and toothless body composed of 30 elected members and 15 additional members appointed by the emir. Since the referendum, Qatar has returned to a system of full appointment of all Majlis members. Because if you're already going to prevent the right to vote, then from everyone – except one.
