Zahir Belounis has spent the best part of the last two years without wages, a club or any prospect of returning home but the French Algerian footballer now faces his immediate future without the most basic of commodities.
Food.
"I will stop food, a hunger strike, I want to do that," explained the 33-year-old striker.
"It's going to start next week. They treat me like a dog but I will fight. I will die here in Qatar," he said in an interview with CNN last week.
Belounis, who had played in the lower reaches of French football, now plays for the Qatari first division club El Jaish, the army club.
The so called Kafala system -- which ties employees to a specific employer -- has, according to Human Rights Watch and the International Trade Union Confederation, been open to systematic abuse and created a de facto form of slavery for the more than one million migrant workers living within its borders.
"Qatar has been quite successful at giving off a progressive image when, in fact, the [labor] system is exploitative," said Nicholas McGeehan of Human Rights Watch.
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