World Cup Host Qatar Tries to Build Its Way Out of Covid
Doha is dotted with cranes as it prepares to host the soccer showpiece two years from now. But what will come next?
Just 12% of Qatar’s 2.7 million residents and 5% of its workforce are local.
Photographer: Hassan Ammar/AP Photos
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It’s pretty much business as normal at Lusail, a half-built metropolis north of Doha’s main corniche. At least 20 cranes dot the dusty skyline as a dozen workers toil on the roof of a hotel site overlooking a new artificial island. Trucks ply around a giant mound of sand.
If the coronavirus, global economic squeeze and the future of hydrocarbons are raising questions about the viability of projects across the Gulf, you’d never know it from the scene in Qatar.