Continental shifts

Middle East

Events in the Middle East will make global headlines again in 2022 – for positive and negative reasons. A cause for optimism is football’s World Cup, which kicks off in Qatar in November. It is the first time an Arab or a Muslim country has hosted the tournament and is expected to provide a major fillip for the Gulf region in terms of future business and tourism – and, possibly, more open, progressive forms of governance.

But the choice of Qatar, overshadowed by allegations of corruption, was controversial from the start. Its human rights record will come under increased scrutiny. Its treatment of low-paid migrant workers is another flashpoint. The Guardian revealed that at least 6,500 workers have died since Qatar got the nod from Fifa in 2010, killed while building seven new stadiums, roads and hotels, and a new airport.

Concerns will also persist about Qatar’s illiberal attitude to free speech and women’s and LGBTQ+ rights in a country where it remains dangerous to openly criticise the government and where homosexuality is illegal. But analysts suggest most fans will not focus on these issues, which could make Qatar 2022 the most successful example of “sports-washing” to date.

More familiar subjects will otherwise dominate the regional agenda. Foremost is the question of whether Israel and/or the US will take new military and/or economic steps to curb Iran’s attempts, which Tehran denies, to acquire capability to build nuclear weapons. Israel has been threatening air strikes if slow-moving talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal fail. Even football fans could not ignore a war in the Gulf.

Attention will focus on Turkey’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose neo-Islamist AKP party will mark 20 years in power in 2022. Erdoğan’s rule has grown increasingly oppressive at home, while his aggressive foreign policy, rows with the EU and US, on-off collusion with Russia over Syria and chronic economic mismanagement could have unpredictable consequences.

Other hotspots are likely to be Lebanon–tottering on the verge of becoming a failed statelike war-torn Yemen – and ever-chaotic Libya,where a presidential election scheduled for lastweek was cancelled 48 hours before polls weredue to open. Close attention should also be paidto Palestine, where the postponement of electionsby the unpopular president,