Likely cancellation of Egyptian league sparks violence debate and fears for club solvency
By James M. Dorsey
The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) is likely to cancel this season’s suspended... more
By James M. Dorsey
The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) is likely to cancel this season’s suspended Premier League in a move designed to prevent further violence in the wake of this month’s riot in Port Said that left 74 militant soccer fans dead but threatens to put the country’s clubs in financial jeopardy.
Concern that the league will be annuled has been fuelled by the cancellation of the Egyptian national team’s scheduled friendly matches against Uganda, Guinea and Niger and the postponement until June 30 of an African Cup of Nations qualifier against the Central African Republic on instructions of the interior ministry. Once new dates have been agreed, the qualifier may be played in Qatar to ensure security.
The decision on the national team’s matches suggests that the interior ministry and the EFA have backed away from an earlier plan to allow resumption of league matches behind closed door on March 15 when the 40-day period of mourning for the dead soccer fans ends.
Club officials are pressing the EFA to follow the example of the Tunisian soccer association that earlier this month ordered its league to play behind closed doors. The federation reversed its decision days later under pressure from its members and has since authorized resumption with fans attending matches. Some argue that cancellation of the Egyptian league would hand a victory to the instigators of the Port Said incident.
"The Interior Ministry's letter, which demanded that Egypt's friendly games be cancelled, came as a killer punch to our plans to resume the competition. We have no option but to follow the instructions of the authorities. We will wait to see whether security will improve. I hope the authorities will reverse that decision soon, because cancelling the league will have dire consequences on Egyptian football on all fronts,” said acting EFA president Anwar Saleh in an interview with state-owned newspaper Al Ahram.
The fate of the Premier League season has been hanging in the balance since early this month when 74 people, mostly militant fans of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC, were killed in a riot immediately after a match against Port Said’s Al Masry SC.
The fans or ultras – well-organized, highly politicized, street battle hardened militant groups modelled on similar organizations in Serbia and Italy – believe that security forces failed to intervene in the brawl as punishment for their key role in last year’s overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak and their hard line opposition since then to military rule. Ultras battled security forces on a weekly basis during the soccer season in the last four years of Mr. Mubarak’s rule in a bid to deprive his regime from controlling the beautiful game.
An Egyptian parliamentary inquiry into the deaths in Port Said blamed fans and lax security for the worst incident in the country’s sports history. The inquiry’s preliminary report also suggested that unidentified thugs had been involved in the violence.
Egyptian judicial sources said they expected that security officials would be among 50 suspects who will be referred for criminal proceedings in connection with the incident.
Several key Al Ahly players, including Mohamed Abou Treika, Mohamed Barakat, Ahmed Fathi and Emad Mete'b, have said they will not play until the results of the official investigation are announced.
Some players favour cancellation of this season’s league despite the financial risk to clubs on the grounds that the risk of renewed violence is too high and that they won’t have sufficient time to recover from the trauma of the Port Said incident and to prepare for matches.
"It's impossible to resume the Premier League this season,
because there won’t be time to clear the backlog of matches. I’m not against the resumption of sports activities after the end of the mourning period, but resuming the Premier League will only cause more chaos,” said Al Ahly goalkeeper Ahmed Naggi.
Egyptian clubs as well as the fans fear that the clubs which last year suffered financially because of a three-month suspension of the league in the walk-up to and aftermath of Mr. Mubarak’s downfall could be bankrupted by a cancellation of the leagues.
The clubs which have yet to be professionally restructured so that they can become truly financially independent are currently dependent for their revenues on advertising and sponsorship.
The Mubarak regime, which saw soccer as a tool to shore up its tarnished image, distract attention from unpopular policies and a means to manipulate national emotions, had little interest in allowing clubs to be independent, self-sufficient entities.
In an alliance of strange bedfellows critics of the interior ministry’s apparent intention to cancel the league include both clubs owned by the police and the military as well as Al Ahly which sees the cancellation as handing victory to the security forces whom it holds responsible for the deaths of its supporters .
"Life must go on, despite this catastrophe. But I don’t mean that resuming the Premier League means forgetting the victims of Port Said. Rescinding the League will cause Egyptian clubs many technical and financial problems. Resuming the League is something urgent for all the workers in local sports associations,” Helmi Toulan, coach of Ittihad al-Shorta, the Premier League team owned by the police, whom many Egyptians despise as the enforcers of Mr. Mubarak’s regime and hold responsible for the Port Said incident, told Melody Sports TV.
Farouq Gaafar, coach of El-Jaish, one of several clubs owned by the military, suggested in an echo of Mr. Mubarak’s approach that "the resumption of the Premier League will help people overcome their grief, provided that there is adequate security.”
Underlying the debate about the fate of the league and the political implications of the Port Said incident is the growing gap between Egyptian public opinion and the youth and soccer fan groups that were at the core of last year’s protests that toppled Mr. Mubarak. A majority of Egyptians eager to see their almost bankrupt country return to normalcy and economic growth have come to see the youth and soccer fan protests in support of an end to military rule and the dismantling of the Mubarak order that often escalate into vicious street battles with security forces as an obstacle.
“Our young people would not have reached this feeling of desperation, if they had not been abandoned by others, who, a year ago joined them in celebrating the toppling of the Mubarak regime. Although they shared the same aspiration that this moment would be the start of building a free, democratic and progressive country, the majority of the Egyptians seem not to have the strong will and persistence to continue the momentum until their dream comes true.
It is only those youthful enthusiasts that launched this revolution, who were eager to continue their efforts to fulfil its goals Instead of appreciating their exertions and the great sacrifice they have continued to pay for the welfare of the whole nation, we have allowed some malicious campaigns to distort their image and depict them as thugs some of the time and rioters most of the time. What is even worse is to accept the accusations being directed to them as agents of some foreign powers seeking the downfall of Egypt and its divisions into small states, without thinking of the price young Egyptians might pay in confronting the military or civil police. They are subjecting themselves to the risk of death or serious injuries that might disable them for the rest of their life,” said Manal Abdul Aziz writing in The Egyptian Gazette.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Alcohol ban raises specter of problems for Qatar’s hosting of 2022 World Cup
By James M. Dorsey
A ban on alcohol on Qatar’s man-made The Pearl Qatar island coupled with the naming of a... more
By James M. Dorsey
A ban on alcohol on Qatar’s man-made The Pearl Qatar island coupled with the naming of a large mosque after the founder of a puritan strand of Islam and online protests against various state-owned companies highlights domestic opposition to some of the Gulf state's more forward looking policies as well as freedoms for soccer fans it is expected to host during the 2022 World Cup.
Qatari officials have said that the 500,000 soccer fans expected to descend on their country during the World Cup will be allowed to consume alcohol in designated zones. Alcohol is currently served exclusively in hotels and sold in a Qatar Airways–owned shop only to expatriates who hold a license.
The banning of alcohol on the island, whose restaurants are popular with Qatar's growing expatriate community, was introduced in advance of the Al Kass International Cup, a ten-day
Under-17 soccer tournament, involving top world clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain, Brazil's Vasco De Gama (Brazil), Juventus, Ajax, FC Barcelona, Japan's Kashima Antlers and Egypt's, Al Ahly. It also came as senior international figures gathered in Doha at Qatar's invitation to brainstorm over the role of sports in society and what governments, NGO's and the private sector should do to promote sports.
Business at restaurants on the Pearl has dropped as much as 50 percent as a result of the ban. “Obviously the business has dropped; by half… for some restaurants, probably even more,” said Sumeet Jinghan, country manager of Foodmark, whose brands include Carluccio’s, The Meat Company and Mango Tree.
Mr. Jinghan said Foodmark had suspended plans to open two more restaurants and a club on the Pearl, home to an estimated 41,000 residents, until it became clear whether the ban was permanent or not.
The ban did not immediately affect the Al Kass tournament which attracted primarily only local spectators. The competition offers Aspire Qatar, the Gulf state's youth team, whose players include young Qataris as well as youths from Africa, Asia and Latin America selected in a yearly talent search from among some 500,000 aspiring soccer playing kids to compete against some of the world's best teams.
The tournament is one initiative in Qatar's emphasis on sports as a cornerstone of its foreign policy, development and effort to shape the energy-rich nation's national identity at a time that youth-driven popular revolts have toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and pushed embattled autocrats in Syria and Yemen to the brink. Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network has played an important role in the revolts with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accusing it of instigating and encouraging the protests against his regime.
“Our goal is to create a dialogue that resonates with and talks to the youth. This is an opportunity to inspire and engage young people…. Sports are at the heart of Qatar’s development… Sports like education and arts are part of our national identity,” said Noora Al Mannai, CEO of Qatar’s bid to win the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games. Ms. Al Mannai said “empowering young people” was one reason for the bid alongside Qatar’s efforts to mediate conflicts and reduce regional obesity and diabetes levels.
If sports are for Qatar’s leaders a key tool in forging national identity, banning alcohol is its equivalent for more conservative and nationalist forces in the Gulf state.
"I don't see a reason to have alcohol. It impacts very negatively on locals. Locals are not happy with it," The Wall Street Journal quoted Qatari writer Abdul Aziz Al Mahmoud as saying.
Conservative Qataris worry that an increasing number of their compatriots, often dressed in full-length robes, the Gulf's national dress, drink publicly in hotels and bars. "It is a taboo in Qatar to see somebody wearing the national dress and drinking," said Hassan Al Ibrahim, a Qatari commentator, according to the Journal.
Conservative fears in a nation where locals account for at best one third of the population were further inflamed when the Qatar Distribution Company, a Qatar Airways owned-retail shop, introduced pork alongside the alcohol it was already selling to expatriates. The introduction was one spark of an online call to boycott the airline.
Qatar’s The Peninsula daily reported that a group of some 500 Qataris had called for a boycott of the state-owned airline, a major tool in the positioning of the Gulf state as a global travel hub, in protest against its serving of alcohol on flights, high fares and failure to allocate more jobs to Qatari nationals. The protesters’ campaign featured the Qatar Airways logo with a no entry sign superimposed on it. It followed a similar protest in recent months decrying telecommunications services.
Qatar Airways has declined to comment on why its store had started to sell pork.
"I never thought the day would come that I have to ask the waiter in a restaurant in Qatar what kind of meat is in their burgers," said a Qatari on Twitter.
"Ppl don't get it. Its not about the pork—its about us feeling more & more like a minority—in our own country,” tweeted another Qatari.
The banning of alcohol as well as the shutting down of a weekly party on the Pearl, a development that bills itself as the Arab Riviera; the naming of a mosque in memory of Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th century warrior priest whose austere, puritan interpretation of Islam life shapes life in Saudi Arabia and inspires Qatari cultural traditions; and the online protests are likely issues that opponents of Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup will seize on in so far failed attempts to get the awarding by world soccer body FIFA reversed.
Al-Wahhab’s puritanism created the cradle of Salafism – an Islamic trend that propagates a return to the way of life at the time of Islam’s first 7th century caliphs and has emerged as a power political force in post-revolt Egypt. Saudi Arabia recently officially embraced Salafism as a key element in its soft power strategy aimed at countering Iran’s perceived revolutionary Islamic appeal as well as the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. The embrace also constitutes a response to Qatar’s idiosyncratic foreign and domestic policies.
That response is likely to sharpen the battle lines within Qatar as the Gulf state prepares to host perhaps not only one but two of the world’s biggest sporting events in the next decade.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Observing Football Supporters: An Investigation into the Relationship between Collective and Personal Identity
by Neil Cook
A participant observation was conducted at four Premier League football matches and data was collected concerning the... more A participant observation was conducted at four Premier League football matches and data was collected concerning the participants estimated age as well as their gender, styles of dress, location in stadium, small group composition and details of their interactions both individually and collectively. These details included reactions to other crowd members, verbal and non-verbal communications, normative and anti-social behaviour before and after the game and reactions to the stages of play. Data was coded initially and patterns highlighted from which interpretations were made using hermeneutical analysis informed by Psychological theories about group behaviour and identity with relation to crowds in particular. It was found that there was strong evidence supporting social identity theory, in particular the self-categorisation aspect, and role conflict theory in the behaviours of participants suggesting that their individual identities were transformed into a collective identity by virtue of their involvement in a crowd environment.
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Download (.docx) French women groups protest FIFA decision to endorse hijab
By James M. Dorsey
Three French women’s organizations have expressed concern and disappointment with world... more
By James M. Dorsey
Three French women’s organizations have expressed concern and disappointment with world soccer body FIFA’s endorsement of a proposal to lift the ban on women players wearing a hijab, an Islamic hair dress, on the pitch.
“To accept a special dress code for women athletes not only introduces discrimination among athletes but is contrary to the rules governing sport movement, setting a same dress code for all athletes without regard to origin or belief,” the three organizations said in an open letter to FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
Anne Sugier, president of the League of International Women’s Rights (LDIF) founded by Simone de Beauvoire, said in an email that she had sent the letter together with the heads of FEMIX’SPORTS and the French Coordination for the European Women’s Lobby, following publication on December 19 of the FIFA executive committee decision in The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
FIFA endorsed at its December 16-17 executive committee meeting in Tokyo the proposal to lift a controversial ban on women wearing a hijab in a move that brings closer a resolution to demands by religious female Islamic soccer players that they be allowed to wear a headdress in line with their interpretation of their faith.
FIFA said it would submit the proposal put forward by Asian Football Confederation (AFC) vice president Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, a half-brother of Jordanian King Abdullah, to the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which governs the rules of association soccer.
IFAB is expected to discuss the proposal that calls for the sanctioning of a safe, velcro-opening headscarf for players and officials at its next scheduled meeting on March 3. England alongside FIFA, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland form the secretive IFAB.
The FIFA endorsement follows an earlier approval of the AFC proposal that resulted from a workshop convened in October in Amman by Prince Ali that was attended by prominent soccer executives, women players and coaches, including head of FIFA’s medical committee Michel D’Hooghe, AFC vice president Moya Dodd, members of FIFA’s women committee and representatives of the soccer bodies of Jordan, Bahrain, Iran and England.
The dispute over observant Muslim women player's headdress led in June to the disqualification of the Iranian women’s national team after they appeared on the pitch in the Jordanian capital Amman for a 2012 London Olympics qualifier against Jordan wearing the hijab. Three Jordanian players who wear the hijab were also barred.
The three women’s organizations said FIFA’s acquiesce in the AFC’s assertion that the hijab, a headdress that complies with Islamic law that obliges women to cover their hair, ears and neck, as a “cultural rather than a religious symbol” and therefore did not violate IFAB rules was unacceptable.
The letter suggests that FIFA and AFC efforts to reach a compromise between world soccer rules and Islamic law followed by conservative female Muslim players was, likely to meet resistance from non-Muslim women’s and feminist groups. It is a battle between value systems in which conservative female Muslim players demand a right and non-Muslim women activists seek to impose what they see as a universal value.
Ironically, the two opposing groups may find common ground when it comes to Iran, which welcomed world soccer’s efforts to seek a compromise, but is likely to remain in the firing line because of its imposition of the hijab on its players rather than allowing it to be an individual voluntary decision. Iran is further likely to run afoul of world soccer because of its insistence that visiting foreign women soccer teams dress in accordance with the Islamic republic’s interpretation of Islamic law.
The three women’s organizations charged that the FIFA decision constituted an effort to kowtow to the most conservative Islamic states, presumably a reference to Iran and Saudi Arabia, which effectively bans women’s sports.
“To pretend that hijab is a cultural and not a religious symbol is not only preposterous, but untrue… You neither can put aside the fact that the conflict that has opposed FIFA to the Iranian regime is linked to Tehran’s will to impose its own religious law to women’s sport,” the organizations said in their letter.
They charged that Iran rather than seeing the hijab as a cultural symbol was seeking “to impose a political religious outfit for women, that covers entirely their body… Sport must stay clear of political and religious interfering. Its aim also is to eliminate all forms of discrimination. FIFA ruling is about to abandon this noble aim and FIFA will be accountable for that,” the organizations said.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Labour unions threaten Qatar with global anti-World Cup campaign
By James M. Dorsey
Labour organizations are warning world soccer body FIFA and by extension Qatar that they... more
By James M. Dorsey
Labour organizations are warning world soccer body FIFA and by extension Qatar that they will launch an international campaign to deprive the Gulf state of its hosting of the 2022 World Cup if it fails to get its act together on workers’ rights.
Representatives of international trade unions issued their warning in a letter to FIFA President Sepp Blatter. The letter advised Mr. Blatter that their campaign would be launched with the slogan,
'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights'.
The letter and a meeting on Thursday with Mr. Blatter follows a union report issued earlier this year that condemned the working conditions of migrant workers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as "inhuman."
Entitled ‘Hidden faces of the Gulf miracle,’ the multi-media report issued in May by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the world’s largest trade union, and Building and Wood Workers International (BWI) demanded that Qatar prove that migrant workers building infrastructure for the tournament are not subject to inhuman conditions.
It charged that the working and living conditions of mostly Asian migrant labour being used to build nine stadiums in 10 years as Qatar seeks to be the first Arab country to host the World Cup are unsafe and unregulated.
“A huge migrant labour force, with very little rights, no access to any unions, very unsafe practices and inhuman living conditions will be literally putting their lives on the line to deliver the 2022 World Cup,” ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow said at the time of the report’s release.
BWI secretary general Ambet Yuson charged that Qatar’s “ability to deliver the World Cup is totally dependent on severe exploitation of migrant labour, which we believe to be barely above forced labour conditions.” Mr. Yuson noted that "just six per cent of the working population of Qatar is Qatari.”
The report stressed that FIFA requires soccer manufacturers to respect workers' rights in its licensing program, but has no such standards for companies building World Cup venues
Qatar expects to invest $88 billion in infrastructure for the games, according to Enrico Grino, Qatar National Bank’s assistant general manager and head of project finance.
The vast majority of Qatar's workforce consists of foreign migrant workers, many of whom hail from South and East Asia. Nepal's Department of Foreign Employment told local media earlier this month that Qatar had become the biggest foreign employer of Nepalese workers as a result of World Cup-related construction projects.
Qatar and other oil-rich Gulf states have long been on the target list of labour organizations for their treatment of particularly un- or low-skilled workers. The issue touches a raw nerve in countries like Qatar and the UAE where the local population constitutes a minority. Gulf states are concerned that improving labour conditions would not only have economic consequences but also give foreigners a greater stake in a society which ensures they are forced to leave the country once their contract has ended.
Nonetheless, an international campaign would tarnish Qatar’s international image carefully crafted with the launch in the 1990s of the Al Jazeera television network, the creation with Qatar Airways of a world class airline and the positioning of the Gulf state as an international sports hub with the hosting of tournaments like the World Cup.
An international labour campaign would revive some of the controversy that has overshadowed Qatar’s success in becoming the first Middle Eastern state to host a World Cup. That success has been mired by allegations of corruption that so far have proven unsubstantiated; the downfall of Mohammed Bin Hammam, the Qatari national who was FIFA vice-president and has been suspended as president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) on charges of bribery, and concern that Qatar’s searing summer temperatures will impede performance during the tournament.
In its letter to Mr. Blatter the ITUC said the ITUC and BWI as well as Swiss Union Unia were "continuing to receive reports of unsafe working conditions and abuse of workers' rights as Qatar sets out to build nine stadiums in 10 years using mostly migrant labour."
Qatar’s failure to act in the wake of the report prompted the letter to Mr. Blatter and the planned campaign. "FIFA has the power to make labour rights a requirement of the Qatari authorities who are hosting a World Cup," Mr. Burrow said.
In a statement the ITUC said that the labour organisations "would mobilise workers and football fans to target each of FIFA's football associations and the international body to stop the World Cup in Qatar if labour rights are not respected. With 308 national trade union centres in 153 countries, the international trade union movement has the members, the power and the mandate to take action to stop the Qatar World Cup."
"We urge FIFA to include labour rights as a prerequisite to any future country wanting to host the World Cup. Support from countries with decent labour rights will be used to pressure the Qatari authorities and FIFA to protect workers' rights, particularly migrant workers who are the majority of the construction work force in Qatar," Mr. Yuson said.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Soccer: A Middle East and North African Battlefield
For much of the past three decades, soccer constituted the only major battleground that rivalled Islam in the creation... more
For much of the past three decades, soccer constituted the only major battleground that rivalled Islam in the creation of alternative public space in a swath of land stretching from the Gulf to the Atlantic coast of Africa. Away from the glare of the international media, soccer provided a venue to release pent-up anger and frustration and struggle for political, gender, economic, social, ethnic and national rights. By the time the Arab revolt erupted in December 2010, soccer had emerged as a key non-religious, non-governmental institution capable of successfully confronting security force-dominated repressive regimes and militant Islamists.
Increasingly over the past two decades, soccer became a high-stakes game, a political cat-and-mouse contest between fans and autocrats for control of the pitch and a counterbalance to jihadi employment of soccer as a bonding and recruitment tool. All participants in the game banked on the fact that only soccer could capture the deep-seated emotion, passion and commitment evoked by Islam among a majority of the population in the Middle East and North Africa.
As a result, professional soccer inevitably emerged as an early casualty when protests spilled into the streets. Suspending league matches is one of the first steps embattled Middle Eastern and North African leaders take when mass anti-government protests erupt. They understand the soccer pitch's potential as an opposition rallying point.
Syria's indefinite suspension of professional soccer in early 2011 in advance of the government's violent crackdown pushed anti-government protests back into the mosque. With soccer stadiums inaccessible to the public and serving as detention centres and staging points for security forces, protests more often than not start at a mosque, the only remaining place where people can gather in numbers.
The suspension of professional soccer when protests initially erupted in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria meant that militant, highly politicised, violence-prone soccer fans shifted their protest from the stadium to the square. They often played a unique role in helping protesters seeking to rid themselves of the yoke of repressive rule, economic mismanagement and corruption to break through the barrier of fear erected by neo-patriarchal autocrats that had condemned them to silence and passivity until then.
Neo-patriarchy is what makes Arab authoritarianism different from dictatorships in other parts of the world. Dictatorial regimes are not simply superimposed on societies gasping for freedom. Arab autocracies may lack popular support and credibility but their repressive reflexes that create barriers of fear are internalized and reproduced at virtually every layer of society. As a result societal resistance to and fear of change contributed to their sustainability.
In a controversial book published in 1992 that is still banned in many Arab countries, Palestinian-American historian Hisham Sharabi argued that Arab society was built around the “dominance of the father (patriarch), the centre around which the national as well as the natural family are organized. Thus between ruler and ruled, between father and child, there exist only vertical relations: in both settings the paternal will is absolute will, mediated in both the society and the family by a forced consensus based on ritual and coercion.” With other words, Arab regimes franchised repression so that society, the oppressed, participated in their repression and denial of rights.
The regime is in effect the father of all fathers at the top of the pyramid. In the words of Egyptian journalist Khaled Diab, Egypt’s problem was not simply an aging president with little to show for himself after almost thirty years in power, but the fact that “Egypt has a million (president Hosni) Mubaraks.”
As a result, the patriarchal values that dominate soccer in addition to its popularity made it the perfect game for neo-patriarchs. Their values were soccer’s values: assertion of male superiority in most aspects of life, control or harnessing of female lust and a belief in a masculine God.
In breaking through the neo-patriarchal barriers of fear, militant soccer fans extended the tradition of soccer’s close association with politics across the Middle East and North Africa that is evident until today in derbies in Amman, Tehran, Riyadh and Cairo, home to the world's most violent encounter on the pitch.
Their battle on the pitch is not just about the political and economic future of the region. It is also a battle that challenges gender prejudice in asserting women's rights to play the game against the odds of legal restriction, social pressure and religious dress codes. And it is a cornerstone in efforts by the stateless -- Palestinians and Kurds -- to obtain a state of their own or by minorities like the Berbers, Iranian Azeris and Israeli Palestinians to assert their identity.
In this essay, I discuss the role of the soccer pitch as a venue for resistance to autocratic regimes and a battlefield for greater political freedom and economic opportunity, statehood, identity politics, and gender rights as well as an arena of competition with militant jihadists. This positions soccer as a platform on which multiple political battles are fought in both autocratic Middle Eastern and North African societies as well as those that enjoy some degree of political openness.
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“Telegol” ve Futbolun “Marka Değeri” Üzerine Bir Sınıf Analizi (A Class-Based Analysis on the TV Show "Telegol" and the "Label Brand" of Football in Turkey
Published at Bianet, 30.04.2011.
... Futbol nesnel bir gerçeklik halinde var olmaya devam ederken ve kulüpler, yayın ihalesinden gelen pay ile futbolu... more
... Futbol nesnel bir gerçeklik halinde var olmaya devam ederken ve kulüpler, yayın ihalesinden gelen pay ile futbolu ne kadar güzelleştirdigi sorguya açık yüzlerce futbolcu ithal eder, yatırımlarla kulüp gelirlerini artırmaya çabalarken, seyirciden beklenen lüks bir tüketim maddesi haline gelen futbolu, korsan gibi yanlış yollara sapmadan tüketmeye devam etmesi oluyor ve seyirciyi futbola parasal açıdan bağımlı hale getiren bu ilişki, esasında seyircinin ilişki kurduğu futbolun nesnel gerçekliğiyle hiçbir alakası olmayan ve tamamen kapitalist market ilişkilerini yeniden üretmeye yönelik "marka değeri" söylemiyle meşru kılınmaya çalışılıyor.
Bundan dolayıdır ki muhtemelen, LigTv hegemonyasına direnç gösteren Telegol'un reytingleri, "masum" bir çocuk üzerinden yapılan duygu sömürüsünden öte, tam olarak da bu marka değeri fetişizmini bozan bir söylem tutturmasından ve bu açıdan popüler kültür ile empati kurabilmesinden ileri geliyor.
2022 World Cup spotlights strains in Qatari society
Thursday, September 15, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
A recent article in Cornell University’s... more
Thursday, September 15, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
A recent article in Cornell University’s student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, questioning whether Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the wife of the ruler of Qatar, should be a member of the Weill Cornell Medical College Board of Overseers after establishing a clinic that describes homosexuality as a “behavioural disorder” and seeks to treat people who are gay spotlights complex issues the conservative Gulf state is confronting as it prepares to host the 2022 World Cup.
The stir in both the United States and Qatar caused by the article also puts into sharp relief tensions between the ambitions of the Qatari ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and Qatar’s elite to position the energy-rich Gulf state as an enlightened and important international political and financial player and a global sports hub, and the aspirations of significant segments of its conservative population.
If any Arab state has so far remained untouched by the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa it is Qatar whose tiny population has benefitted from a cradle to grave social safety net, the country’s energy wealth and the emir’s policies that have put Qatar on the map. To the degree that there is criticism of the emir’s policies, their likely impact on Qatari society and the adjustments Qatar is under pressure to make as a result of its successful bid to host the World Cup, they are expressed quietly in private conversations and diwaniyas where local men gather.
Much like in the United Arab Emirates, Qataris are reluctant to rock the boat in a country in which they constitute a majority and that is forced to tolerate a majority of expatriates to compensate for the local population’s lack of numbers. As a result, both Qatar and the UAE have not been hit by mass anti-government protests as occurred in Bahrain, threaten to erupt in Kuwait and earlier this year racked Oman. The region’s protest wave has already toppled the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and is tearing Syria and Yemen apart.
Nevertheless, Qatar’s bid to be a global player is putting stressful demands on a society that is rooted in deep-seated conservative tribal and Islamic values. To host the World Cup, Qatar has already had to expand the areas during the tournament in which alcohol can be consumed from beyond the relatively few bars in luxury hotels.
Trade unions are demanding that the Gulf state prove that migrant workers building infrastructure for the tournament are not subject to inhuman conditions. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the world’s largest trade union, and Building Workers International (BWI) charged in a report earlier this year that the working and living conditions of mostly Asian migrant labour being used to build nine stadiums in 10 years are unsafe and unregulated.
“A huge migrant labour force, with very little rights, no access to any unions, very unsafe practices and inhuman living conditions will be literally putting their lives on the line to deliver the 2022 World Cup,” said ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow ITUC..
BWI secretary general Ambet Yuson charged that Qatar’s “ability to deliver the World Cup is totally dependent on severe exploitation of migrant labour, which we believe to be barely above forced labour conditions.”
David Roberts notes on The Gulf Blog that a majority of Qataris are concerned with the overhaul of the Qatari education system by Rand Corp. that involved changing curricula, the language of instruction and the lifting of gender segregation in classrooms in Education City, an education-focused free zone. Cornell is one of the foreign universities that has a campus in Education City.
Similarly, Sheikha Moza’s very public role and presence constitutes a divisive issue. To young women, the Sheikha serves as a role model, yet many Qataris describe it, according to Mr. Roberts, as “undesirable or problematic” in a conservative country like Qatar.
Many Qataris take issue with Sheikha Moza’s mandatory introduction of DNA tests before marriage in a society where marriage among cousins is customary.
The Cornell student newspaper article re-focuses attention on apprehensions raised from the day Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup last December about the status of gay rights. Qatar like most predominantly Muslim nations bans homosexuality and gay groups have raised concerns about the status of gay fans during the tournament.
The website of Sheika Moza’s says that Al Aween clinic specializes in the treatment of disorders such as addiction to alcohol, drug and Internet use, as well as deviant and unusual sexual behaviour. The website hosts a document that lists homosexuality as one of several “behavioural disorders and negative tendencies.”
To treat its patients, the clinic offers a variety of “therapeutic units” and counselling. The website includes samples of counselling provided to patients. For example, a woman seeking advice on her relationship with another woman was told to stop her “unhealthy sexual behaviour” and end communication with her partner.
To be sure, Qatar is but one of many countries in the region struggling to balance conservative, traditional values with the demands of a globalized world. The hosting of the World Cup, however, puts it more than any other society in the Gulf under the international magnifying glass and emphasizes differences in perceptions of the country’s ruler and the traditional, conservative instincts of his subjects.
Says Mr. Roberts: “I repeat what I said on the day that they won the prize (the World Cup): they don’t have a clue what they’ve let themselves in for.”
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Detention of Qaddafi scion spotlights the soccer pitch as a platform of resistance
By James M. Dorsey
NATO-backed Libyan rebels have captured Colonel Moammar Qaddafi’s soccer playing son, Al... more
By James M. Dorsey
NATO-backed Libyan rebels have captured Colonel Moammar Qaddafi’s soccer playing son, Al Saadi Al Qaddafi, the third of the Libyan leader’s seven sons to have been apprehended since the rebels late Sunday launched their final offensive on the capital Tripoli.
Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, head of the rebel National Transitional Council, told the Associated Press that the rebels had detained Al-Saadi on Sunday night along with his brother Saif al-Islam.
Al Saadi together with his brothers Mutassim and Khamis headed a key brigade of the Libyan military, but made his name as a brutal yet failed soccer player and executive.
His soccer career highlights the use of the soccer pitch by Middle Eastern and North African autocrats as a tool to improve their tarnished images and control popular discontent.
A pile of rubble in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi bears witness to how serious Al Saadi took the threat of the soccer pitch as a platform for dissent.
The rubble is what is left of the headquarters of the Al-Ahly Benghazi soccer club. It tells a story that is extraordinary even by the standards of the bending of the beautiful game to their will by autocratic leaders in the Middle East and North Africa. The story of Al Ahly’s battle with the Qaddafis also goes a long way to explain why Benghazi has emerged as the capital of the revolt that is about to definitively defeat the Qaddafi regime.
What makes Al-Ahly’s story different from the battle on soccer pitches between autocrats and militant fans elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa was the desperate ambition of Al Saadi, who headed the Libyan football association, to be recognized as a top soccer player and the brutality with which he responded to expressions of dissent. Al Saadi owned and managed Tripoli’s main soccer club, which is also called Al Ahly.
He also captained and played on its team. A 2009 US diplomatic cable disclosed by Wikileaks described Al Saadi as “notoriously ill-behaved.”
The rubble in Benghazi is what is left of his effort to bury the city’s historic club lock, stock and barrel. The club’s red and white colours were banned from public display. Scores of its supporters were imprisoned; some were sentenced to death for attempting to subvert the Qaddafis’ rule.
It was a heavy price to pay for challenging the regime in a country in which sports broadcasters were forbidden to identify players by name to ensure that they did not become more popular or have greater media exposure than Al Saadi himself.
The story of Al Ahly stands out as a perverted twist of the abuse of soccer by other Middle Eastern leaders like Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who publicly identified with their national soccer teams in a bid to boost their lingering popularity.
In a country in which the mosque and the soccer pitch were the only release valves for pent-up anger and frustration prior to the seven-month old revolt against the Qaddafis, Al Saadi’s association with Al Ahly meant that the prestige of the regime was on the line whenever the team played. As a result, soccer was as much a political match as it was a competition in which politics rather than performance often dictated the outcome.
A little more than a decade ago, Al Ahly Benghazi fans had enough of Al Saadi’s subversion of the game. They booed him and his team during a national cup final in front of visiting African dignitaries and taunted him by dressing up a donkey in the colours of Al Ahly Tripoli.
Al Saadi went ballistic.
“I will destroy your club! I will turn it into an owl's nest!” Khalifa Binsraiti, Al Ahly Benghazi’s then chairman, who was imprisoned in the subsequent crackdown, quotes an irate Al Saadi as telling him immediately after the match, according to The Los Angeles Times.
A penalty in another Al Ahli Benghazi match against a team from Al-Baydah, the home town of Al Saadi’s mother and the place where this year’s first anti-government demonstrations against corruption in public housing were staged, again so outraged Benghazi fans that they invaded the pitch, forcing the game to be abandoned.
Things came to a head a decade ago when Al Saadi engineered Al Ahly Benghazi’s relegation to the second division by having a referee in a match against Libyan premier league team Al Akhdar ensure the team’s humiliation by calling a questionable penalty.
Al Ahly’s coach confronted the referee, allegedly shoving him. Militant fans stormed the pitch. The game was suspended and Al Ahly’s fate was sealed.
Al Ahly fans didn’t leave it at that. They headed to downtown Benghazi shouting slogans against Al Saadi. They burnt a likeness of his father and set fire to the local branch of his national soccer association.
It did not take long for Libya’s secret police to respond. Al Ahly’s 37-hectare clubhouse and facilities were raised to the ground while plainclothesmen visited the homes of protesting soccer fans. Some 80 people were arrested; 30 were put on trial on charges of vandalism, destruction of public property and having contacts with Libyan dissidents abroad, a capital offense in Mr. Qaddafi’s Libya.
Three people were sentenced to death, but their penalties were converted to life in prison by the Libyan ruler. They were released after serving five years in prison.
Public outrage over the retaliation against Benghazi forced Al Saadi to resign as head of the national soccer federation, only to be reinstated by his father in response to the federation’s alleged claim that it needed Mr. Qaddafi’s son as its leader.
The brutal and demonstrative destruction of Al Ahly kick started Al Saadi’s inglorious attempts at making it in Italian soccer.
He initially signed up with the Maltese team Birkirkara, but never showed up.
Three years later, he joined Italy’s Perugia but was suspended after only one game for failing a drug test. The incident earned him the reputation of being Italian Series A’s worst ever player.
His dismal record did not stop him from enlisting in 2005 with Italy's Udinese team, where he was relegated to the role of bench warmer except for a 10-minute appearance in an unimportant late-season match.
Riccardo Garrone, the president of Sampdoria and head of the oil company Erg, subsequently invited Saadi Qaddafi to train with his team in the hope that it would open the door to Libyan oil contracts.
Libyans joke that Al Saadi is the only soccer player who paid to play rather than was paid to play.
The story of Al Saadi and Al Ahly Benghazi is a study in the use of soccer by authoritarian Arab regimes to distract attention from economic and political problems and of Arab autocrats’ divide and rule approach to governance.
It is also the untold story of soccer in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf as a platform of resistance against repression, nepotism and corruption with soccer fans often moving into the front lines once mass anti-government protests began sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Soccer binds jihadists in Russian terror plot
Friday, August 19, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Islam Khamushev played soccer as a kid with Muradom... more
Friday, August 19, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Islam Khamushev played soccer as a kid with Muradom Edilbiyev and Muradom Umayev. As adults, the three childhood friends with roots in the northern Caucasus, a hotbed of Islamist militancy, planned to blow up the high speed Sapsan railway linking Moscow and St Petersburg.
Messrs Khamushev, Edibilyev and Umayev together with Fyarit Nevlyutov, the fourth member of their group, were arrested last month in Moscow but the charges and details of their plot were only released this week.
Russia’s Federal Security (FSB) detained them after following their preparations for the attack that could have resulted in a high number of casualties by tapping their telephones. Russian press reports quoted FSB director Alexander Bortnikov as saying that explosives, weapons and maps of targets were seized when the four were arrested.
Russian media reports said that 22 year-old Mr. Khamushev moved last year to a forest training camp in Dagestan to prepare for the attack where he linked up with Messrs. Edilbiyev and Umayev, with whom he played soccer in Moscow’s amateur Daimokkh and Darul Arkam teams. The team met Mr. Nevlyutov at a local Moscow mosque.
Darul-Arqam’s players are members of a Muslim society with the same name to which Mr. Edilbiyev belongs. Mr. Umayev’s club, Diamokhk, is predominantly Chechen.
Mr. Khamushev first broached the idea of the attack in June and the others quickly agreed, according to Russian daily Kommersant. The paper quoted Mr. Edilbiyev as agreeing because he recalled seeing as a 10-year old in 1999 in his native Chechnya federal forces “kill his mate” and how soldiers “grossly violated the rights of citizens of the republic.”
The arrest of the four men highlights jihadists’ love hate relationship with the beautiful game. Soccer has served jihadists as an important recruitment and bonding tool. It brings recruits into the fold, encourages camaraderie and reinforces militancy among those who have joined.
Jihadists like Messrs Khamushev, Edibilyev and Umayev often start their journey as members of groups organized around soccer. The perpetrators of the 2003 Madrid subway bombings played soccer together. Saudi players made their way to Iraq to become suicide bombers. Similarly, several Palestinian Hamas suicide bombers traced their routes to a mosque-sponsored soccer team.
Men like Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who was killed by US Navy Seals in May, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh learnt the significance of soccer early on. They hail from a part of the world populated by authoritarian, repressive regimes in which soccer offered for much of their lives a rare opportunity for the expression of pent-up anger and frustration.
As a child, Mr. Bin Laden organized soccer games in poor parts of Jeddah, his hometown. In the 1990s, when he based Al Qaeda in Sudan, the group reportedly had two competing teams that maintained regularly scheduled practices and played weekly matches after Friday prayers. Back in Afghanistan during the US-backed Islamist war against the Russians, the Afghan guerrillas and their foreign fellow travellers fought boredom in between battles with their own soccer tournament in which fighters competed in teams representing their countries of origin. Once the Soviets withdrew and foreign jihadists returned home, soccer matches offered an opportunity to stay in touch.
Ironically, Islamist leaders like Messrs Bin Laden and Haniyeh occupied a middle ground in the militant theological debate about soccer that runs the gamut from passionate advocacy to murderous rejection. Their enthusiasm for and endorsement of the game put them at odds with radical clerics who condemn the sport as un-Islamic and more in line with mainstream scholars who argue that the Prophet Muhammed advocated physical exercise to maintain a healthy body.
Soccer doesn’t fit into, for example the vision of an Islamist society advocated by Somalia’s Al Shabab or Afghan Taliban. In their view, it distracts the faithful from worshipping Allah, competes with the militants for recruits and lends credence to national borders at the expense of pan-Islamist aspirations. It also celebrates peaceful competition and undermines the narrative of an inevitable clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.
Despite their passion for soccer, men like Mr. Haniyeh or for that matter Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as more mainstream, non-violent, ultra-conservative Muslims recognize a kernel of truth in the militant cleric’s religious rulings. Only soccer was until the eruption of the Arab revolt in December 2010 able to spark the same deep-seated emotion, passion and commitment that Islam evokes among a significant segment of the population of the Middle East and North Africa.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Syria’s Latakia stadium joins long list of region’s politically abused soccer pitches
By James M. Dorsey
Syrian president Bashar al Assad has highlighted the symbolic role of soccer pitches in... more
By James M. Dorsey
Syrian president Bashar al Assad has highlighted the symbolic role of soccer pitches in the Middle East and North Africa with the herding this week of hundreds, if not thousands, of anti-government protesters into the stadium of the country’s main port city of Latakia where their identification papers and cell phones were taken from them.
The herding into the Latakia stadium as well as Mr. Assad’s use of stadiums as detention centers in other beleaguered Syrian towns evokes memories of his father’s 1982 assault on Hama to crush an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in which at least 10,000 people were killed. A 1983 Amnesty International report charges that the city’s stadium was used at the time to detain large numbers of residents who were left for days in the open without food or shelter.
In employing stadiums as detention centers, Mr. Assad joins a list of the region’s brutal rulers who have turned soccer stadiums into potent symbols of political struggle, killing fields and memorials to those who were abused, tortured and often killed for anything from having failed to perform on the soccer pitch to demanding their political rights.
US and Iraqi forces discovered mass graves in several Iraqi stadiums after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam. Uday Hussein, the deposed Saudi dictator’s sadistic son, humiliated players for a missed penalty or errant pass by having their heads publicly shaved in Baghdad’s Stadium of the People. Football legend and former Iraqi goalkeeper Hashim Hassan recalls being forced after losing a 1997 World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan to lie with his whole team on the stadium’s grass where they were beaten by Uday’s goons with sticks on their feet and backs before being imprisoned for a week.
Amnesty International quotes an Iraqi army deserter as describing how he was one of a number of deserters who was taken to a soccer stadium in Basra for execution in 1986. The deserter lost consciousness and was assumed to be dead. He was the only survivor. He regained consciousness in a van transporting the bodies of the victims. He escaped but was later recaptured and sent back to his army unit where he deserted for a second time.
US-led international forces played shortly after their 2001 overthrow of the Taliban soccer against an Afghan team in Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium to highlight the change they were bringing to the war-ravaged country. The stadium had been used by the Taliban for public executions. Afghans believe it is still haunted by the dead and are afraid of entering the stadium after dark. Even the night watchmen limit their patrol’s to the stadium’s parameter.
Christian militia men responsible for the 1982 massacres in the Beirut Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla to which Israeli invasion forces turned a blind eye converted a local soccer stadium into an interrogation center and execution ground. Some 800 Palestinians were killed in the two camps.
Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi adorned his country’s stadiums with quotes from his Green Book that explains his idiosyncratic theories of democracy. Slogans like ‘Sports and Arms Belong to the People” and “Parties Abort Democracy” greeted visitors at the entrance to stadium in Benghazi until anti-Qaddafi rebels took control of the city earlier this year.
Somali jihadist used the capital of Mogadishu’s stadium -- once one of East Africa’s most impressive filled with 70,000 passionate fans during games – as an Islamist training and recruitment center until they were recently forced to abandon the city by African Union-backed government forces.
Resisting efforts by the region’s autocratic rulers to politically control stadiums in a bid to shore up their tarnished images by associating themselves with soccer and prevent the pitch from becoming opposition rallying points, fans from Algeria to Iran have turned them into venues to express pent-up anger and frustration, assert national, ethnic and sectarian identity and demand women’s rights. Weekly battles in Egyptian stadiums with security forces and rival fan groups prepared Cairo’s militant soccer supporters for clashes on the city’s Tahrir Square that forced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office in February.
Syrian activists said residents of Latakia, particularly in the city’s A l-Raml district, which has been pummelled with tank, gunboat and automatic weapons, were forced to leave their homes and go to the stadium because the military was preparing to launch a major operation and possibly flatten the area. A refugee camp that is home to more than 10,000 Palestinians is part of the neighbourhood that has been a focal point of anti-government protests in the city. The United Nations agency responsible for overseeing Palestinian refugee camps has expressed concern and demanded unhindered access to the camp and the stadium.
The use of the Latakia stadium as a detention city after huge anti-government protests rocked the city on Friday follows mass detentions in soccer stadiums in Dera’a, where the five-month old uprising against Mr. Assad's rule began, and the coastal city of Baniyas. New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch quotes witnesses as describing some executions of prisoners in the Dera’a stadium.
"It's a continuation of a deliberate policy of the military crushing the protest movement. We've seen it now in so many cities," said Nadim Houry, Human Rights Watch's senior researcher for the Middle East and North Africa.
Syrian activists fear that Mr. Assad’s regime may use the detainees in the Latakia stadium as political pawns by either portraying them as proof of its claim that the military is fighting foreign-supported armed groups rather than a popular uprising or by forcing them to stage a demonstration in favour of the Syrian leader.
Latakia and the assault on the Palestinian camp has particular significance because Mr. Assad hails from a village southeast of the city. Mr. Assad has built his reputation on championing the Palestinian cause. His family and closest associates control the city's port and its finances.
"Syria is being targeted... by different means, to weaken its role in the resistance (to Israel) and in defending legitimate Arab rights," Mr Assad was quoted by the official state news agency on Wednesday as telling officials of his ruling Baath Party.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Bahrain: A headache for Obama and Blatter
Friday, August 12, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
US president Barak Obama and Sepp Blatter, the head... more
Friday, August 12, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
US president Barak Obama and Sepp Blatter, the head of world soccer body FIFA, share the same headache: what to do about Bahrain?
So far, Messrs. Obama and Blatter have essentially shied away from confronting the issue of a ruler who employs mercenaries to violently suppress pro-democracy demonstrators, including some of the country's most prominent soccer players.
The protests in February and March that started with Shiites and Sunnis standing shoulder to shoulder were an expression of frustration about years of failed dialogue over the need for more equitable housing and land policies, fairer representation in parliament and constitutional reform.
The crackdown and the government’s insistence that Iran had instigated the protests aided by a Shiite fifth column transformed the situation into one of sectarian tension. To be sure, there was violence on both sides of the sectarian and political divide during the protests but healing of the wounds is likely to prove difficult if not impossible without a genuine dialogue and members of the security forces being held accountable.
The US has been quietly but unsuccessfully urging King Khalifa for years to engage in a dialogue that would lead to democracy. Mr. Obama in May cautioned that it was difficult to conduct a national dialogue with people who have been incarcerated. Bahrain has since released a number of its detainees, including opposition members of parliament and national team players, but referred some of them to security courts.
Mr. Blatter has questioned the Bahrain Football Association (BFA) about credible reports of retribution against the soccer players and officials who allegedly had participated in the anti-government demonstrations as well as predominantly Shiite Muslim clubs. The FIFA president however appears to have accepted at face value the BFA's statement that no sports players or officials were disciplined or harassed because of their association with the people power uprising earlier this year that was brutally crushed - a statement that flies in the face of reporting in Bahrain's state-controlled media and reports by people involved in Bahraini soccer.
For both Mr. Obama and Mr. Blatter, the issue is what is the price of postponing the inevitable? The widespread sense of discontent remains with a deeper than ever sectarian divide that makes the status quo in Bahrain unsustainable. The crackdown has pushed the uprising out of the capital and reduced it to street skirmishes in villages. A government-inspired national dialogue has all but failed. An independent investigation into the crackdown has yet to prove its integrity and independence but is credited for some of the prisoner releases.
Mr. Obama's reluctance is strengthened by the fact that he does not want to put at risk the US Navy's Fifth Fleet base on the Gulf island. Nor does he want to cross what is a red line for Saudi Arabia: a push for the introduction of a constitutional monarchy in one of the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the spread of people protests in the Gulf and last but certainly not least, the emergence of a Shi'a majority government.
Similarly, Mr. Blatter has seldom sought to rock the boat in the Middle East and North Africa despite the region's violation of multiple FIFA rules and regulations. The wearing of the hijab or Islamic headdress by Iranian and deeply religious Muslim women players has been the one exception, and only because, according to Western FIFA officials, it clashes with Mr. Blatter's strong Catholic beliefs.
The coming months are likely to highlight the pitfalls of the choices Messrs. Obama and Blatter have so far made with regard to Bahrain.
The trials against members of parliament, medics, and democracy and human rights activists put on public display the government’s repressive measures as well as the lack of straightforwardness on the part of Bahraini institutions like the BFA and raise serious questions about the choices made by Messrs. Obama and Blatter.
The recent recruitment of additional Sunni Muslim Pakistanis for Bahrain’s special forces, riot police and particularly the National Guard that led the crackdown, can only serve to deepen cleavages in a Sunni-ruled predominantly Shiite society. Shiites are reportedly barred from joining the security forces - a clear sign of the regime's lack of confidence in its own citizens. That is reinforced by a widespread belief that the Pakistani recruits will ultimately be granted Bahraini citizenship.
The cleavages are visible across society and nowhere more so than in soccer. They cut, for example, straight through Al-Ahli SC, the one Bahraini club that was non-sectarian, neither Sunni nor Shiite, and won the kingdom’s top league title last year.
The government’s decision to suspend the island’s league during the protests to ensure that the soccer pitch did not become an opposition rallying point didn’t stop players and others involved in soccer from taking sides in a confrontation that has left Sunnis and Shiites deeply divided about the relationship between their communities and the future of their country.
Shiite brothers A’ala and Mohammed Hubail, who also played for Bahrain’s national team, joined the protests. Two of their Sunni fellow players meanwhile hooked up with pro-government gangs that roamed the streets attacking the protesters with clubs and pickaxe handles.
Al-Ahli is owned by Bahrain’s wealthy Sunni merchant Kanoo family. Most of its players and its fans are Shiite, “We are one family. We never thought about whether you are Sunni or Shia,” said Al-Ahly chairman Fuad Kanoo in an interview with The Economist.
Once the protests had been violently suppressed, some 150 Shiite players, referees and officials were dismissed or arrested on the orders of a committee led by King Kahlifa’s son, Nasser bin Hamad al-Khalifa, in a bid to root out athletes who had participated in the protests. Among those penalized were six Al-Ahli players.
The Hubail brothers were detained as they were training and allegedly mistreated in prison after first being denounced on state-run television. Muhammed Hubail was sentenced in June to two years in jail, but released on bail after FIFA questioned the Bahrain association.
Mr. Obama’s dilemma has been for much of this year his struggle to reconcile US principles and values with his country’s short-term interests. So far, he has been able to reasonably manage that in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Bahrain, however, could well prove to be his litmus test. For Mr. Blatter too, Bahrain could turn out to be a public display of failing to in the words of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton get on the right side of history.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Saudi women campaign for recognition of right to play soccer
By James M. Dorsey
Two Saudi women have established a women’s soccer and basketball team in the port city... more
By James M. Dorsey
Two Saudi women have established a women’s soccer and basketball team in the port city of Jeddah in a bid to persuade the government to allow and support women’s right to engage in competitive sports in a country that officially bans women from competitive sports.
In a rare airing of debate on the issue, soccer team captain Rima Abdallah and basketball player Hadir Sadqa appeared on a Saudi television sports program risking a confrontation with authorities that severely curtail women’s rights, according to a transcript of the program released by Washington-based Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI).
Their battle highlights the soccer pitch as a battlefield for women’s rights across the Middle East and North Africa, a part of the world where resistance to gender equality and women’s exertions in sports is deeply rooted.
Women soccer players confront the toughest obstacles in Saudi Arabia, ruled by one of Islam’s most puritanical sects. Physical education classes are banned in state-run Saudi girl’s schools and female athletes are not allowed to participate in the Olympics. Women's games and marathons are often cancelled when the clergy gets wind of them.
Some clerics condemn women’s sports as corrupting and satanic and charge that it spreads decadence. They warn that running and jumping can damage a woman's hymen and ruin her chances of getting married. In defiance, women have quietly been established soccer and other sports teams with the backing of more liberal members of the ruling Al Saud family as extensions of hospitals and health clubs. The International Olympic Committee has threatened Saudi Arabia with suspension if it does not create frameworks for women’s sports.
“When we first appeared in public, we were attacked. One of the most vehement attacks against me was during a Friday sermon. The entire sermon was about Rima Abdallah as if
I were pushing Saudi women towards promiscuity, or something,” Ms. Abdallah said.
Saudi authorities looked the other way as long as Ms. Abdallah and Sadqa and their team mates played in secret within the confines of their walled homes or on an out-of the way sports field. Their appearance on television however is sparking renewed debate about women’s rights to engage in sports and could put them on a collision course with conservatives who appear to have gained ground as a result of fears that the Arab popular revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa could spread to Saudi Arabia.
The government’s recent upholding of a ban on women driving hardly bodes well for women wanting to play soccer and defend goal posts. A Saudi woman, Manal al-Sharif, was jailed for nine days in May for defying the ban on driving in the eastern town of Khobar.
Commenting on Ms. Abdullah and Sadqa’s campaign to achieve recognition and secure funding, Abdel Rahman al-Azdi quipped on the website of Al Arabiya: "What is happening to you, women of Saudi Arabia? You want to have the same lifestyle as men, something that is not appropriate for you? In Allah's name, all that is left is that you will request to be tank drivers and pilots."
Ms. Abdallah said the idea for their soccer team, Kings United, emerged from their playing the game as a pastime.
"We used to play soccer, and the girls were good at it. At first, we treated it as a hobby, and we would play together in our spare time. During these sessions with my friends, I realized that there was a cadre which it would be a shame to waste, as long as this could be made official and the girls could play at a young age. We decided to tackle this matter head-on and devote ourselves to it, investing all our energies into filling the void in our lives with a hobby that we love. We decided to start training three times a week, each session two or three hours long,” Ms Abdallah said.
"At first we would play in closed areas behind fences, so nobody would know. At some point, I realized that this must be developed, so I turned to the media to make the authorities see that there are women who have the right to represent the country one day, in a manner pleasing to Allah, in keeping with our traditions and the Shari’a. We kept on playing this way. We paid all the expenses out of our own pockets. We did not have our own soccer fields, so we had to rent them. We looked only for secluded soccer fields, so that men would not go there,” Ms. Abdallah said.
To adhere with Saudi rules that grant men virtual custody over their women, Ms. Abdallah said players were only admitted to the team’s training if they had been granted permission by male members of their family.
"Everything of course will be according to religious rules, modesty and accepted social customs in the kingdom" Ms. Abdullah said. "When it all began, I drew up a document, for any girl who wanted to join Kings United. She had to get her guardian to sign that he had no objection to his girl being a player in the club. That way, I absolved myself of responsibility and protected myself.”
Ms. Sadqa, captain of basketball team Jeddah United said a company sponsored her team and decided their appropriate sportswear. Saudi women are obliged to be fully covered in public. "We dress according to the nature of the audience and of the rival team. Sometimes we wear long pants and cover our heads during the games," she said.
Ms. Abdullah said the promotion of women’s sports was not only an issue of women’s rights but also one public health. "The women of Saudi Arabia are the most obese in the world and encouraging sport is likely to help in reducing the phenomenon. But beyond that, there is no reason why the women of the kingdom should not represent the Saudi nation in exactly the same way as the men do," she said.
“94% of Saudi women suffer from diabetes. They tell us there are gyms where women can go, but not every Saudi woman can afford to pay 5,000 ($1,300) or 10,000 ($2,600) riyals in order to train with equipment … I hope with all my heart that one day, I will participate [in a soccer tournament] and raise my country’s flag, in a manner pleasing to Allah. There are Arab women’s teams in which they all play with hijabs and long clothing, which fully covers the body, but does not affect their performance on the field,” Ms. Abdallah said.
Ms. Abdallah suggested that the team’s prospects were limited not only because of government and conservative resistance to the notion of women’s sports but also because of lack of support by world soccer body FIFA. She said FIFA’s failure to recognize the women’s team had reinforced a decision by the Saudi football association to ban them from participating in a women’s soccer tournament last year in neighbouring Bahrain.
One reason FIFA has steered clear of the Saudi women’s teams is likely mounting problems the organization has with a minority of Muslim players who demand the right to wear the hijab, an Islamic hair dress that covers women’s hair, ears and neck. The ban led in May to the disqualification of Iran for the 2012 London Olympics after the team appeared on the pitch for a match against Jordan wearing the hijab. FIFA bans the wearing of religious and political symbols. The ban was lifted earlier this month after Iran in a meeting with FIFA president Sepp Blatter agreed to replace the hijab with a cap.
James M. Dorsey, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer
Football and Conflict in a New Century
Co-authored with Pierre McDonagh. Presented at the Irish Academy of Management Conference 2008.
‘Heads in the Sand’: Football, Politics and Crowd Disasters in Twentieth-Century Britain
Pre-publication print from: Paul Darby, Martin Johnes & Gaivin Mellor (eds.), Soccer and Disaster: International Perspectives (Routledge, 2001), 10-27. There maybe slight textual differences between this version and the one published but please reference the published version.
This chapter explores the policy responses to crowd disasters in UK football stadia. Despite repeated calls from the... more
This chapter explores the policy responses to crowd disasters in UK football stadia. Despite repeated calls from the police and disaster inquiries for the legal regulation of safety in football grounds it was not until 1975 that limited legislation was implemented. The chapter argues that the limited and piecemeal responses were rooted in an apathy towards safety amongst the football authorities, central government and fans. This apathy was underpinned by a desire to exclude sport from legislation, by the terrace culture of the game, by the characterization of fans as hooligans and by the exclusion of the safety of soccer fans from the concerns of central government.
The disasters of the 1980s saw the safety legislation extended but it was not until the horrors of Hillsborough that approaches to safety were revolutionised within the football industry. Even then, the financial implications meant there was a reluctance amongst the football authorities to embrace the required measures, while the motive of the Conservative government was more underpinned by a desire to fight hooliganism than to protect the interests of fans.
What's the Story Morning Glory? Perth Glory and the Imagining of Englishness
Sporting Traditions, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1998, pp. 53-66, http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/SportingTraditions/1998/st