After 16 months of indignity and pain, three teens from West Africa finally escape the deathtrap of Qatar 2022
The latest grotesque footnote to the most controversial sporting event of recent times continues to highlight the indifference of FIFA, and the tournament's organisers, to human rights
The story you are about to read below, by freelance journalist Sam Kunti, is a grotesque footnote to the World Cup of 2022, which concluded almost 16 months ago when the Emir of Qatar draped a bisht over Lionel Messi’s shoulders in celebration of Argentina’s victory.
It is a hugely important story, about what happened when FIFA and the global media and fans from so many countries packed up and went home and football moved on from arguably the most controversial sporting event in modern history. It was an event built on the suffering of countless migrant workers.
We won’t ever know precisely how many thousands of lives, mostly from the sub-Continent, were lost in the construction of Qatar 2022’s infrastructure. In September 2022, I published a deep-dive assessment using Qatar’s official government data estimating a figure of between 2,800 and 8,400; the image below contains a tiny fraction of the workers whose cases I documented. A backgrounder appears in this thread from the time.
Sam went to Doha many times in the build-up to the 2022 World Cup and has returned there three times since the tournament ended to report on the legacy - or lack thereof - of the first World Cup in the Middle East.
What follows is the story of three boys from the west African nation of The Gambia who went to work at the tournament. They were boys, aged 15, 17 and 18 when they left home. Sam first met them in the Spring of 2022. Their Qatar journey - actually their Qatar nightmare - concluded just last week, when the last of them, Saikou Colley, finally made it home.
Sam does not mention in his piece his own significant role in their eventual emancipation. But he reported on their ordeal, time and again over the past two years, and in doing so attracted the attention of others who could bring pressure to bear.
I’ll let Sam take it from here. What follows is journalism that matters, by a writer whose persistence actually helped to make a difference.
By Sam Kunti
Last week, Saikou Colley, 17, ate his mum’s ‘Durango’ again, a local dish of fried fish, okra, cashew nut and spicy pepper, so favoured by his Mandinka tribe. He rediscovered the joy of simple home cooking. Not much had changed after his two-year stay in Qatar. His village, Bansang, in the eastern stretches of The Gambia, was still a backwater, the people were still poor and opportunities were scarce.
At least he had, eventually, brought home 21,500 Qatari Riyals (£4,678) from the 2022 World Cup, albeit more than a year late. His salary at Stark Security, an arm of the Qatari conglomerate Estithmar Holding, (slogan ‘Legacy of Excellence’), was 2,700 riyals (£587.50) per month. Or it should have been, if actually paid regularly.
That sum pales in comparison to the recently revealed 33% pay rise that FIFA president Gianni Infantino got himself to lift his total package to £3.6m a year. Saikou would have had to work for Stark, and actually get paid, for 510 years to earn what Infantino makes in 12 months. Saikou wonders why that man is still football’s boss.
In July 2022, Saikou, 15 at the time and a Real Madrid fan, had travelled to Qatar, following in the footsteps of his two friends Ebrima, 17, and Jatta, 18, in search of a better life and in the hope of providing for his family.
In Bansang, the trio had worked for a Chinese company that exploited the area for timber. The boys had to load the harvested wood into containers. It was hard work, often 12 hours a day, but with few other opportunities in the village, almost all the boys and men of Bansang lined up for the chance of earning 100 Gambian dalasis (£1.16) a day. “You know, Chinese, they have been in my country, they give us some little money,” explained Saikou. “That's how we survive with our families.”
When that employment dried up, the families decided to send the boys abroad in search of an income and sold their land to pay around 150,000 Gambian dalasis (£1,749) to a recruitment agent to help the boys find work.
“The agents falsified our IDs so we could get out of the Gambia,” said Jatta. “It’s illegal for underage children back home to work abroad. We were told their actions were basically human trafficking.”
Qatar represented the promised land: a World Cup host nation with ample opportunities and money to burn. When Saikou and his two friends arrived in Doha, the jobs they had been promised didn’t exist. For months, the teenagers were left to fend for themselves in the Qatari capital before Stark Security took them on as security guards in September 2022.
Suddenly, they were to become part of football’s pinnacle event, serving at World Cup venues, including Stadium 974, (below) the main ticketing hub and the main media centre.
Up until this point, after their initial promised jobs had failed to materialise, they had survived by tagging along with fellow Gambians already in Qatar, sleeping and eating where and when they could, earning a few pounds here and there via walk-up day labour.
The host nation was showing off state-of-the-art venues. Doha’s West Bay, with its glitzy skyline, and the souk, its traditional market, became a melting pot of football fans from every corner of the world.
The plight of migrant workers was simply relegated to the sidelines.
For much of a decade, Qatar had been battered by media criticism over their human rights record but as the tournament progressed some UK journalists came to think Qatar wasn’t that bad after all.
The number of migrant worker deaths in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup remained contentious. Qatar often issued death certificates for migrant workers without conducting proper investigations, instead attributing deaths to ‘natural causes’ or cardiac failure.
In 2021, The Guardian wrote that 6,500 migrant workers had died since Qatar was awarded the World Cup in 2010. Official statistics showed that over 15,021 non-Qataris died between 2010 and 2019. At the 2024 Play The Game Conference, Argentinian journalist Federico Teijeiro calculated that 10,000 migrant workers had lost their lives.
During the tournament, World Cup boss Hassan Al-Thawadi revised the number of deaths to “between 400 and 500”. This showed a callous disregard for human life and dignity. Qatari authorities and local organisers had long contended there were only “three work-related deaths and 37 non-work-related deaths” on stadiums.
Saikou, Jatta and Ebrima were afforded little dignity either. They lived in squalid conditions in the notorious labour camp of Al-Shahaniya and toiled every single day of the tournament on long shifts. Whether their working conditions met the welfare standards set by the Supreme Committee of Legacy and Delivery was highly questionable even as the local organising committee and FIFA trumpeted that the kafala system - handing companies unchecked powers over their workers - had been abolished. It was only on paper that kafala belonged to history.
Saikou told me: “FIFA do not care about the impact their poor decision-making has on workers that have no other choice but to obey Qatar’s law because that is where their livelihoods come from.”
The boys could never have imagined what was to happen next: two days after Messi lifted the World Cup, their contracts were terminated, alongside those of hundreds of Stark Security workers, prompting rare protests in the Qatari capital.
Worker contracts typically stated they would remain employed into 2023. The boys didn’t go to the protests because they couldn’t afford the bus fare. Migrants pleading for their wages were offered a paltry sum to abandon their claims. The local authorities reacted in trademark fashion: they deported hundreds of migrant workers.
“It was like a scene from a horror movie,” said Jatta. “It defied all human rights. Qatar is not a democratic country where you can take a stand for your rights. This has been happening for decades and so many innocent people go through this.”
On the eve of Christmas 2022, Stark Security ceased to provide food to the workers and in January 2023 the three teenagers were evicted from their accommodation and left homeless.
They were completely abandoned until they were moved into a government-run shelter with bolted windows in Abu Hamour on the outskirts of Doha.
Saikou, Jatta and Ebrima rallied and decided to not give up without a fight. The teenagers tried to sue Stark Security, claiming around 8,000 Riyals (£1,741) in unpaid salary, bonuses and end-of-service benefits.
Without legal representation, they found themselves hopelessly entangled in Qatar’s legal system in a Kafka-esque back and forth between the courts, the shelter and the sponsor.
The shelter was run by Fatima Al Kuwari. The Al Kuwari family holds two seats on the board of Estithmar, the holding group that owns Stark Security. She tried to gaslight the teenagers, telling them that Stark Security didn’t exist. “We wanted to file a complaint against the company we worked for during the FIFA World Cup, but those in authority insisted that there is no company such as Stark,” said Saikou.
‘Madam Fatima’, as the boys called her, played a peculiar role. With or without a valid Qatar ID, she hardly ever allowed the teenagers to leave the shelter. But their regime became draconian after they met Norwegian FA president Lise Klaveness, who was just about the only football official to take an interest in their case. They felt as if they were being held hostage. Saikou likened the shelter to a “glorified prison”.
Jatta explained: “It’s depressing and it brings nothing but depression. Being away from your family and being locked up. They tell us they are here to help us but in reality, they are keeping us locked up until they decide what to do with us. Sometimes, we fear for our lives.”
At court, they felt helpless - a representative of the prosecution told the boys that they were ‘worthless’. This was a casual racism and condescension they were subjected to so often. It was hard for them to understand whether their case was progressing at all because hearings were in Arabic. Sometimes, friendly security guards provided a translation.
The three boys from The Gambia had the courage to tell their story, sharing it with me and others. By bringing this to a wider audience, that story attracted attention, unwelcome to those who had oppressed them but ultimately attention that led to payment.
Human rights organisation Equidem, as well as Amnesty International and other stakeholders monitored their case, keeping up the pressure on local authorities, including the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Justice.
In September 2023, Ebrima finally received 9,000 Riyals (£1,958) and returned home. Saikou and Jatta remained behind in the shelter, waiting in limbo, more precious teenage time stolen from them.
Jatta eventually received 26,500 riyals (£5,766) and Saikou, the last to return home, 21,500 riyals (£4,678).
But make no mistake, the story of Saikou, Jatta and Ebrima is an exception in Qatar, a nation that transformed itself for FIFA’s World Cup at the cost of the lives of untold numbers of migrant workers.
FIFA and the International Labour Organisation had remained mute. At no point did either organisation show a genuine interest in intervening in or solving the teenagers’ case. At one point in the saga, I went to the FIFA hotel in Doha and spoke to a senior advisor to Gianni Infantino. He told me: “This is a humanitarian issue. It’s nothing to do with FIFA.”
The boys were brave and never gave up. In Qatar, migrant workers still get deported without getting paid. They live in fear of retaliation from their employers and lack both knowledge of the court system and legal support. Those who resist often give up, worn out by Qatar’s opaque legal system and a tangled web of holding groups, subcontractors, sponsors and agents.
“FIFA have failed,” said Saikou. “They have failed to uphold the key thing which is human rights. Abuse has been happening here longer than one can remember. The way things are going now, I don’t ever see it changing in the near future.
“It is something that those who witnessed it will never forget. I fear the same will happen in Saudi Arabia. They share so much in common with Qatar and it’s the people behind the scenes that face hardship.
“FIFA just hide behind their claims that they care about human rights, but in reality, they do not. It’s all about the money for FIFA. It is never about human rights.”
Back home, life is returning to a semblance of normalcy. Saikou still takes a keen interest in the fortunes of Jude Bellingham and Real Madrid. The Gambia is the 40th poorest country in the world. The employment rate is low and Gambians often survive through subsistence farming.
Saikou, whose family pay £13.50 rent per month for a home without electricity (below), and Jatta are growing onions, salad and tomatoes at a community farm in a nearby school but they nurture bigger plans.
Saikou wants to complete his education and Jatta dreams of starting a bakery to sell baguettes - first in the village and then beyond.
And Ebrima? He went home, then left for Algeria, seeking to cross the Mediterranean in a bid to reach Europe. He hasn’t been heard from since.
Sam Kunti is a football reporter from Leuven, Belgium. He writes for World Soccer, The Blizzard, Ekstra Bladet and Forbes, and contributes to BBC Persian. His investigative work on human rights abuses in Qatar has been featured in Josimar magazine. He is also the author of ‘Brazil 1970: How the Greatest Team of All Time Won the World Cup’, a book that explores the sporting merits and historical backdrop of that victory. It was shortlisted at the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards 2023. You can find Sam on @samindrakunti.
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