DOHA: Of all the problems faced by Qatar’s World Cup, rainfall was probably the very last issue tournament organizers in the desert state expected to deal with.
But severe flooding caused by a year’s worth of rain has again raised questions over the ability of Qatar’s infrastructure — much of it being put in place for 2022 — to cope with such conditions.
Extreme weather conditions on October 20 made roads impassable, flooded tunnels, universities, schools, clinics, embassies, the new national library and closed shops, some for several days, as 84 millimeters of rain fell.
Average rainfall for Qatar is 77mm. For the month of October, the average is just 1.1mm.
In Education City, a Doha suburb where a 2022 World Cup stadium will be located, official figures showed an astonishing 98mm rain fell.
The ministry of municipality and environment’s “rainfall emergency committee” said 287 million gallons of rainwater were subsequently removed.
Social media showed rainwater running down staircases inside buildings, parked cars all but submerged and people using jet skis on main roads usually used by cars.
One widely-shared image showed a central Doha football ground, not a World Cup venue, resembling a lake.
A contrite public works authority, Ashghal, tweeted its apologies saying it was “sorry for the effects caused by the recent heavy rainfall.”
The extreme conditions were exacerbated by Qatar’s terrain, causing drainage problems.
“If you get heavy rain in the desert it often floods quite quickly because the sand is baked hard in the sun and there’s not much vegetation (to help with drainage),” Steff Gaulter, senior meteorologist with Al Jazeera told AFP.
She added more research was needed to see if the weather experienced by Qatar was down to climate change or weather patterns caused by El Nino.
Undoubtedly the conditions were extreme for Qatar.
However, the worry for tournament organizers is that neither the weather nor the impact on infrastructure, in a country spending $500 million a week to prepare for 2022, were unprecedented.
In November 2015, Qatar’s prime minister launched an investigation after heavy rains exposed poor construction during similar amounts of rainfall, some of it falling inside Doha’s Hamad International Airport.
Exactly a year later, Qatar was hit again.
This year’s floods were the third in four years, close to or at the time when it will host the World Cup in 2022.
Governing body FIFA moved the tournament from its traditional June/July date to take place between November 21 and December 18, 2022.
This was, ironically, because of concerns over the extreme Qatari heat, which regularly top 40-plus degrees Celsius (100-plus Fahrenheit) during its summer.
Any matches taking place in 2022 confronted by similar conditions to last weekend, could be delayed or postponed because of transport access to the grounds, despite a still-being-built Metro system.
The only World Cup venue so far completed, Khalifa International Stadium, was not badly impacted by the floods, workers there told AFP.
A spokesman for Qatar’s World Cup organizing body, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, said “the proposed venues for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar were largely unaffected with minimal disruption.”
But he added the rain has helped organizers “identify areas for necessary improvements.”
The chances are that Qatar’s World Cup will emerge unscathed when it comes to rain in 2022.
The conditions were extreme, but they were extreme for Qatar, where the average rainfall during November and December is still only 15mm.
But having dealt with concerns over corruption, human rights, diplomatic, heat and an expanded World Cup, Qatar 2022 now finds itself worrying about rain.
Qatar World Cup confronted by yet another problem — rain
Qatar World Cup confronted by yet another problem — rain
Sites that remind Syrians of Assad brutality become sets for TV series
- Show to be aired in February during Ramadan, primetime viewing in the Arab world
DAMASCUS: At a Damascus air base once off-limits under Bashar Assad, a crew films a TV series about the final months of the ousted leader’s rule as seen through the eyes of a Syrian family.
“It’s hard to believe we’re filming here,” director Mohamad Abdul Aziz said from the Mazzeh base, which was once also a notorious detention center run by Assad’s air force intelligence branch, known for its terrible cruelty.
The site in the capital’s southwestern suburbs “used to be a symbol of military power. Now we are making a show about the fall of that power,” he said.
Assad fled to Russia as an opposition-led offensive closed in on Damascus, taking it without a fight on Dec. 8 last year after nearly 14 years of civil war and half a century of Assad dynasty rule.
The scene at the Mazzeh base depicts the escape of a figure close to Assad, and is set to feature in “The King’s Family” filmed in high-security locations once feared by regular Syrians.
The series is to be aired in February during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, primetime viewing in the Arab world, when channels and outlets vie for the attention of eager audiences.
Dozens of actors, directors and other show business figures who were opposed to Assad have returned to Syria since his ouster, giving the local industry a major boost, while other series have also chosen to film at former military or security sites.
“It’s a strange feeling ... The places where Syria used to be ruled from have been transformed” into creative spaces, Abdul Aziz said.
Elsewhere in Damascus, his cameras and crew now fill offices at the former military intelligence facility known as Palestine Branch, where detainees once underwent interrogation so brutal that some never came out alive.
“Palestine Branch was one of the pillars of the security apparatus — just mentioning its name caused terror,” Abdul Aziz said of the facility, known for torture and abuse.
Outside among charred vehicles, explosions and other special effects, the team was recreating a scene depicting “the release of detainees when the security services collapsed,” he said.
Thousands of detainees were freed when jails were thrown open as Assad fell last year, and desperate Syrians converged on the facilities in search of loved ones who disappeared into the prison system, thousands of whom are still missing.
Assad’s luxurious, high-security residence, which was stormed and looted after he fled to Russia, is also part of the new series.
Abdul Aziz said he filmed a fight scene involving more than 150 people and gunfire in front of the residence in Damascus’s upscale Malki district.
“This was impossible to do before,” he said.
The series’ scriptwriter Maan Sakbani, 35, expressed cautious relief that the days of full-blown censorship under Assad were over.
The new authorities’ Information Ministry still reviews scripts but the censor’s comments on “The King’s Family” were very minor, he said from a traditional Damascus house where the team was discussing the order of scenes.
Sakbani said he was uncertain how long the relative freedom would last, and was waiting to see the reaction to the Ramadan productions once they were aired.
Several other series inspired by the Assad era are also planned for release at that time, including “Enemy Syrians,” which depicts citizens living under the eyes of the security services.
Another, “Going Out to the Well,” directed by Mohammed Lutfi and featuring several prominent Syrian actors, is about deadly prison riots in the infamous Saydnaya facility in 2008.
Rights group Amnesty International had called the facility a “human slaughterhouse.”
“The show was written more than two years ago and we intended to film it before Assad’s fall,” Lutfi said.
But several actors feared the former authorities’ reaction and they were unable to find a suitable location since filming in Syria was impossible.
Now, they plan to film on site.
“The new authorities welcomed the project and provided extensive logistical support and facilities for filming inside Saydnaya prison,” Lutfi said.
As a result, it will be possible “to convey the prisoners’ suffering and the regime’s practices — from the inside the actual location,” he said.
