call for papers-Metamorphosis of the Arab World-Political Geography and Alternative Maps
by barış çoban
Metamorphosis of The Arab World:
Political Geography and Alternative Maps
Editors: Barış Çoban, Barış Erdoğan
The so-called "Arab Spring", recent social movements in the Arab world, which can also be described as the "return of the oppressed", have attracted international attention on the Middle East and Arab world. The Middle East, North Africa and Turkey have been profoundly affected by this political and social metamorphosis. The objective of this project is to discuss “metamorphosis of the Arab world” in the context of international relations, politics, sociology, economics and communications and so on by the contribution of several academicians, researchers, politicians and journalists.
The geography of the Arab world is in a process of metamorphosis and consequently traditional structure of the Arab world, its power structure, power relations, politics and social relations have been fluctuated by the hand of the global super power(s). In fact, “All that is solid melts into air", this expression summarizes clearly what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa. The possible outcomes and/or result of this ongoing process are vague, and it needs to be discussed with its all aspects.
As a result, our focus is on “metamorphosis” of the Middle East and the Arab world, since it simultaneously means “metamorphosis” of the world. This book project aims to address and discuss transformation and subsequent reformation of societies and changes in the political geographies and mental maps of the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey from past to present with a multi-voice and multi-layer approach.
(Papers can be submitted in English, French and Turkish)
Deadline for Abstracts: June 10, 2012
Deadline for Full Paper: December 25, 2012
(Please use APA style)
E-mail:
barishc@gmail.com
baris.erdogan1974@hotmail.com,
Editors:
Barış Çoban (Assoc. Prof. Dr., Department of Communication Studies, Dogus University, Turkey)
Barış Erdoğan (Assist Prof. Dr., Department of Political Sciences, Yeni Yuzyil University, Turkey)
Métamorphose du monde arabe:
Géographie politique et des cartes alternatives
Editeurs: Barış Çoban, Barış Erdoğan
Les mouvenents sociaux recents apparus dans une large partie du monde arabe, appellés communement «printemps arabe», peuvent également être décrit comme le «retour de l'opprimé», ont attiré l'attention internationale sur le Moyen-Orient et le monde arabe. Le Moyen-Orient, l'Afrique du Nord et la Turquie ont été profondément touchés par cette métamorphose politique et sociale. L'objectif de ce projet est de discuter «la métamorphose du monde arabe » dans le contexte des relations internationales, politique, sociologie, économie et communication et ainsi de suite par les biais de la contribution de plusieurs universitaires, chercheurs, politiciens et journalistes.
La géographie du monde arabe est dans un processus de métamorphose et par conséquent la structure traditionnelle du monde arabe, sa structure de pouvoir, les relations de pouvoir, la politique et les relations sociales se sont gravement écroulés par la main de la(des) puissance(s) mondiale(s). En fait, «Tout ce qui est solide se dissout dans l'air", cette expression résume bien ce qui se passe au Moyen-Orient et Afrique du Nord. Les résultats possible et / ou résultat de ce processus en cours sont vagues, et ils doivent être discuté dans tous ses aspects.
Par conséquent, nous nous concentrons sur la métamorphose du Moyen-Orient et du monde arabe, puisqu'elle constitue à la fois la métamorphose du monde. Ce projet a pour objectif d'aborder et discuter de la transformation et la réforme de ces sociétés ainsi que les modifications de la géographie politique et cartes mentales du Moyen-Orient , de l'Afrique du Nord et de la Turquie du passé au présent, avec un multi-voix et une approche multicouche.
Transmission des propositions et date limite
Vorte propositions doit etre transmise a baris.erdogan1974@hotmail.com ou barishc@gmail.com au plus tard le 10 juin 2012. Les articles peuvent être rédigés en anglais, français ou en turc
ECHEANCIERS
- Date limite de réception des propositions : 10 juin 2012
- Date limite de réception des articles : 25 décembre 2012
Information technique
Les propositions, d’un maximum de deux pages, en format Microsoft Word ou PDF, 12 points, devront contenir: le titre de la proposition; le sujet; le nom de l’auteur ou des auteurs; l’institution ou organisation à laquelle vous êtes attaché
Articles
- les articles ne pourront dépasser, avec leur bibliographie, 30 000 caractères, espaces non compris;
- ils devront inclure un résumé de 150 mots maximum qui devra être présenté en français, en anglais ou en turque;
Editeurs :
Dr. Barış Çoban, maitre de conférence, le département de communication, l’Universite de Doğuş, Turquie.
Dr. Barış ERDOGAN, maitre de conférence adjoint, le département des relations internationales l’Université de Yeni Yüzyıl, Turquie.
Arap Dünyasının Dönüşümü:
Siyasetin Coğrafyası ve Alternatif Haritalar
Editörler: Barış Çoban, Barış Erdoğan
Arap ülkelerinde yaşanan ve “Arap Baharı” olarak adlandırılan, “bastırılmış olanın geri döndüğü” kitle hareketleri sonrasında tüm dünyanın gözü yeniden Ortadoğu ve diğer Arap ülkelerine odaklandı. Ortadoğu, Kuzey Afrika ve Türkiye yaşanan siyasal ve toplumsal bu dönüşümden derin bir biçimde etkilenmekte. Bu sürecin uluslararası ilişkiler, siyaset, sosyoloji, ekonomi ve iletişim vb. alanları bağlamında tartışılmasını amaçlayan bu kitap projesi, farklı disiplinlerden akademisyen, araştırmacı, siyasetçi ve gazetecilerin katkılarından oluşacaktır.
Söz konusu coğrafyada bir yılı aşkın bir süredir küresel iktidar(lar)ın da farklı biçimlerde müdahil olduğu toplumsal hareketler geleneksel iktidar yapılarını, siyaset biçimlerini ve toplumsal ilişkileri parçalamakta. Ortadoğu ve Kuzey Afrika’da “katı olan her şey buharlaşmakta”. Bu coğrafyada kurulma aşamasında olan yeni düzende siyasi ve sosyal aktörlerin bu buharlaşmanın ardından nasıl bir katılaşma süreci izleyeceği ise şimdilik belirsiz ve üzerinde çok boyutlu olarak düşünülmesi gereken bir konu.
Sonuç olarak, odak noktamız Ortadoğu’nun ve Arap Dünyasının dönüşümüdür, çünkü bu dönüşüm eşzamanlı olarak dünyanın dönüşümüdür. Bu kitap projesi Ortadoğu, Kuzey Afrika ve Türkiye coğrafyası bağlamında tarihten günümüze siyasal ve zihinsel haritaların değişimi ve toplumların dönüşümünü çoksesli, çok katmanlı bir yaklaşımla ele almayı ve tartışmayı amaçlamaktadır.
(Makaleler Türkçe, İngilizce, Fransızca dillerinde yazılabilir)
Makale Başlığı ve Özeti Gönderimi Son Tarih: 10 Haziran 2012
Tamamlanmış Makale Gönderimi Son Tarih: 25 Aralık 2012
(Makaleler APA formatına göre yazılacaktır.)
İletişim:
barishc@gmail.com
baris.erdogan1974@hotmail.com
(Barış Çoban, Doç. Dr. Doğuş Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi, İletişim Bilimleri Bölümü)
(Barış Erdoğan, Yrd. Doç. Dr., Yeni Yüzyıl Üniversitesi, İktisadi İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü)
call for papers-
Metamorphosis of the Arab World-
Political Geography and Alternative Maps
Metamorphosis of the Arab World-
Political Geography and Alternative Maps
Métamorphose du monde arabe:
Géographie politique et des cartes alternatives
Arap Dünyasının Dönüşümü:
Siyasetin Coğrafyası ve Alternatif Haritalar
Download (.doc) Lebanese-Syrian soccer qualifier serves as barometer of troubled relations
By James M. Dorsey
A recent Lebanese-Syrian Asia Cup qualifier serves as an ironic barometer of troubled... more
By James M. Dorsey
A recent Lebanese-Syrian Asia Cup qualifier serves as an ironic barometer of troubled relations between the two countries seeking to chart their individual futures as well as that of their uneasy relationship.
Soldiers armed with machine guns controlled the entrances to the Rafik Hariri Stadium where the match was being played in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon named after a prime minister who was assassinated in 2005 allegedly with tacit Syrian complicity if not active participation. A United Nations tribunal last year indicted four members of Syria’s foremost Lebanese ally, Shiite militia Hezbollah, on charges of killing Mr. Hariri in a massive car bombing. Both Syria and Hezbollah have repeatedly denied involvement in the death of Mr. Hariri.
The killing of Mr. Hariri sparked massive anti-Syrian demonstrations that forced Damascus to withdraw its troops after 30 years from Lebanon. It also paved the way for the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries after Syria dropped its refusal to formally recognize Lebanon as an independent state rather than a part of Greater Syria. Syria accredited Lebanon’s first ambassador to Damascus days before the match and welcomed a rare visit to Damascus by the Lebanese defence minister Elias Murr, who blames a failed 2005 attempt on his life on Syrian intelligence.
The massive security operation in a stadium bereft of spectators reflected the near civil war in Syria where a brutal government crackdown has failed to repress a ten month-old popular uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad as well as the ripples of the revolt in Lebanon as a result of Hezbollah’s unqualified support for the Syrian leader.
Nevertheless, the very fact that Syria allowed its national team to travel abroad and that the match was the first in many years to be played on Lebanese soil rather than on neutral ground elsewhere in the Middle East speaks volumes about Syria’s relationship with Lebanon, one of only three Arab League countries to have voted against sanctioning the Assad regime for its brutality. More than 5,000 people are believed to have died in Syria since the uprising began in March of last year.
The fact that Syria allowed its national soccer team to Lebanon contrasts starkly with Syria’s refusal late last year to participate in the Arab Games in Bahrain for fear that some of its athletes might defect and confidence that Lebanon would not welcome any player seeking asylum.
Only two Syrian soccer players – national Under-23 goalkeeper and music composer Abd al Basset Saroot, a leader in the rebel stronghold of Homs, and national team goalkeeper Mosab Balhous who reportedly has been incarcerated since August on charges of sheltering armed gangs and possessing suspicious amounts of money – are known to have joined the revolt against Mr. Assad’s regime.
Syria placed its confidence in Lebanon despite deep-seated distrust between the two countries spilling regularly onto the soccer pitch. Suggesting that the Assad regime was so desperate for a victory in a bid to shore up its tarnished image, Lebanon accused Syria in November of fielding six players in an Under-19 Asian Football Championship qualifier whose ages had been falsified to qualify them for the team. The incident came two months after world soccer body FIFA barred Syria from competing for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil after the country’s national team fielded an unnamed ineligible player in a qualifying match against Tajikistan.
Syria, despite beating Lebanon 2:0 in this week’s Asia Cup qualifier, attacked Lebanon for its lack of hospitality and for having caused eight Syrian players to have food poisoning.
"We were treated with intentional carelessness by our hosts. There is no excuse for it, and brotherly countries should not be dealt in that way," Syrian Football Association executive Bahaa al-Omary told the BBC.
The Syrian defeat of Lebanon put paid to a rare moment of Lebanese unit sparked in a country where almost every facet of life is defined by its sectarian fault lines by the Lebanese team’s defeat in December of South Korea in a 2014 World Cup qualifier. The estimated 60,000 fans in Beirut’s Cite Sportive stadium shifted from sectarian chants to egging on their team with roars of “Minshan Allah, Libnan yallah” – “For God’s Sake, Lebanon Come On” – as soon as the Lebanese scored their first goal.
The fan support boosted Lebanese soccer, devastated by a ban on fans attending league matches in the wake of Mr. Hariri’s killing that was only lifted in October. As a result, Lebanon’s domestic league has all but collapsed and the national team drained of potential talent
“Politics came into football and destroyed it,” said Rahif Alameh, secretary-general of the Lebanese Football Association, who dates the “death of football” to 2001, the year when the government intervened in a murky match-fixing scandal rather than the 2005 ban on fans. That was when Lebanon’s political-religious leaders began treating the association as a pie to be carved up, just as they share power among Muslim and Christian communities.
Mr. Hariri, for example, sponsored several clubs and bought Nejmeh soccer club, Lebanon’s most popular team, which was largely cross-sectarian, but had always attracted much Shiite support. Mr. Hariri initially ventured into sports as a moneymaking venture, but later turned his teams into vehicles for consolidating his Sunni Muslim support.
Similarly, virtually every Lebanese soccer club is identified in sectarian and political terms — Maronite Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Druze or Armenian with certain political factions — even if the team’s players are religiously mixed.
“Football had just (become an extension) of politics. Everything in Lebanon is politicized, the air we breathe is politicized,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Alameh as saying.
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.
Debate questions emir’s powers to shape Qatar’s positioning as a sports hub and sponsor of revolts
By James M. Dorsey
Qatar’s debate about allowing alcohol and the sale of pork amounts to far more than a... more
By James M. Dorsey
Qatar’s debate about allowing alcohol and the sale of pork amounts to far more than a discussion about adherence to the energy-rich Gulf state’s constitution and laws; it is a debate about the powers of the country’s ruler and its national identity.
The outcome of the debate will not only determine the future of Qatar’s effort to become a global sports hub – a key pillar of the national identity Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani is seeking to shape – but also its positioning as a forward-looking sponsor of change in a region stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf that is wracked by anti-government protests and convoluted transitions to more open societies.
It is a debate that is being closely monitored by critics of world soccer body FIFA’s decision to award Qatar the hosting of the 2022 World Cup; a wide-range of sports officials and athletes who anticipate a Qatari bid for the 2020 Olympic Games and the 2019 World Athletics Championships; and policy makers and pundits across the globe.
Caught on camera by CBS News in April of last year, US President Barak Obama described Sheikh Hamad as “a big booster of democracy all throughout the Middle East,” but noted that “he himself is not reforming significantly.” Mr. Obama suggested that Qataris with a per capita annual income of $145,000 felt little urge to rock the boat. Emir Hamad has since Mr. Obama’s quip announced elections next year for a royal advisory body. Qatar’s debate on moral mores nontheless appears to contradict Mr. Obama’s assessment.
The debate attracted international attention following last month’s unexplained banning of alcohol in restaurants on Qatar’s man-made island, The Pearl, which says it aims to “redefine an entire nation” and is popular with Qatar's growing expatriate community, as well as online calls by Qatari nationals for a boycott of state-owned Qatar Airways because of its serving on-board of alcohol and recent introduction of the sale of pork in a shop it owns in the capital Doha.
The debate about the country’s national identity is particularly sensitive given that Qatari nationals account for approximately only one quarter to one third of the country’s 1.7 million inhabitants with foreign labour and expatriates forming a majority at a time that the relationship between rulers, governments and the public across the Middle East and North Africa is being redefined.
“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,” Noora Al Mannai, CEO of Qatar’s bid to win the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games, told a recent brainstorm in Qatar designed to define the role of government, NGOs and business in sports.
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.
The ban of alcohol on The Pearl extends beyond public venues to the kitchen, where one resident, Jenifer Fenton, writing on Arab News Blog, said it could also not be used for cooking.
Restaurateurs and residents have yet to receive a justification for the ban. The ban does not affect major hotels in Doha that are allowed to sell alcohol to non-Muslims or the Qatar Airways shop that sells alcohol and pork to licensed foreign nationals for private consumption.
Speculation about the reasoning includes the ruler and the government wanting to project a more pious image in advance of the country’s first election of a royal advisory body to rumours of a financial dispute between the government and the resort’s developers.
Qatar has long sought to differentiate its interpretation of the teachings of the 18th century puritan warrior priest, Mohammed Abdul Wahhab, from that of strict Saudi Arabia where in contrast to Qatar women are severely restricted and Islamic law is rigorously applied to all not just Muslims and Saudi nationals.
The debate is likely to engender empathy in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa as Islamist forces emerge as winners from the popular revolts sweeping the region.
Nonetheless, it has sparked concern among secularists in Tunisia where the Islamist Ennahada party won the first elections following last year’s overthrow of President Zine el Abedine Ben Ali that the country may focus more on relations with the Gulf than on its traditional ties to Europe. Ennahada officials were quick to assert during Sheikh Hamad’s recent visit to Tunisia to mark the first anniversary of the toppling of Mr. Ben Ali that the country would not jeopardize its relations with Europe but was basing its foreign policy on achieving the revolution’s goals.
Qatari critics of alcohol argue that the emir’s tolerance violates the country’s constitutions and laws which do not grant the emir the prerogative to allow its sale or consumption. In doing so, the critics are implicitly sparking a rare debate about the powers of the ruler.
Hassan Al Sayed, a professor of constitutional law and former dean of the College of Law at Qatar University, says according to Ms. Fenton, that there is no Qatari law that allows for the sale of alcohol and that in fact several laws, including the constitution, criminalize it. Even “if there is any decision coming for example from the Emir or any department here (legalizing alcohol)… no in fact, this is not okay and this is against the law,” Ms. Fenton quotes Mr. Al Sayed as saying.
Mr. Al Sayed says that for Qatar to legally allow the sale and consumption of alcohol it must change its constitution, which in article 1 stipulates that “Islam is the State’s religion and the Islamic Sharia is the main source of its legislations.” Mr. Al Sayed argues that the legal ban applies also to free zones the government said it would create for fans attending the 2022 World Cup.
A majority of Qataris is likely to oppose constitutional reform out of fear that the country would lose its Islamic identity, a key element in the national identity it is trying to shape.
Restaurant executives are optimistic that the ban will be lifted and that Qatar is not on the verge of declaring itself dry. The recent resignation of Khalil Sholy, the managing director of United Development Company (UDC), the developer of The Pearl, has fuelled hopes of a resolution.
That however could take several months. UDC said in a statement posted on the Qatar Exchange that Mr. Sholy will retain his powers as managing director and president for three months “to assist the person who will be elected by the board of directors to fill the position.”
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.
Lebanese soccer unites (briefly) deeply divided nation
By James M. Dorsey
In a country where almost every facet of life is defined by its sectarian fault lines,... more
By James M. Dorsey
In a country where almost every facet of life is defined by its sectarian fault lines, soccer is at least temporarily performing where politicians and religious figures have failed: rallying a divided country scarred by years of bitter civil war around a symbol of national unity.
Soccer’s achievement stems from its defeat of South Korea in a 2014 World Cup qualifier. It took a first goal from defender Ali al-Saadi to convince the 60,000 fans in Beirut’s Cite Sportive stadium to shift from sectarian chants to egging on their team with roars of "Minshan Allah, Libnan yallah'' - "For God's Sake, Lebanon Come On'' – to historic 2-1 win over their favoured Asian opponents.
Tens of thousands of fans poured into the streets of the Lebanese capital waving the country's red and white flags with a green cedar in the middle. Traffic came to a halt and for a moment sectarian differences that have deeply divided the country for decades were superseded by a sense of national pride.
However to cement its achievement on and off the soccer pitch, the Lebanese national team would have to score the one more point it needs against a so far winless United Arab Emirates squad. If that fails, it could still make it to the fourth qualifying round if Kuwait follows its example and upsets South Korea’s apple cart.
"Sports can do what religion and politics can't, gather the Lebanese people around a common thing. The national team changed the point of view to many football fans, and it united them for one goal, to participate in World Cup 2014. This was a very good step to help people to leave their political and religious views behind and watch their team without reverting to riots or gang wars,” The Associated Press (AP) quoted Lebanese supporter Serge Mghames as saying.
If the experience of Iraq whose national team became Asian champion in 2007 at a time that the country was wracked by sectarian bloodshed or Abbas Suan, a devout Palestinian Israeli Muslim who refused to sing the Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem, when it was played before a game but united in 2006 Israeli Jews and Arabs by securing with a last minute equalizer against Ireland Israel’s first chance in 35 years to qualify for a world cup is anything to go by soccer’s unifying effect is lost as soon as the team no longer performs.
For Lebanese soccer to succeed where the game ultimately failed in countries like Iraq and Israel is a tall order against the backdrop of bitter feuds between Lebanon’s four million inhabitants who are divided among 18 Muslim and Christian sects and 15 years of civil war that ended with a fragile peace in 1991.
That peace has this year repeatedly been put to the test with militant Shiite group Hezbollah supporting embattled President Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria and a United Nations-backed tribunal indicting four members of the group on charges of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Hezbollah has denied involvement in the killing and has vowed never to turn over the suspects.
If that were not enough of a challenge, Lebanon’s national team would find it difficult if not impossible to significantly undermine sectarianism which is so deeply rooted in the country’s game that the government banned fans from attending domestic league matches following Mr. Harriri's assassination.
"There are no guarantees in football. We can only guarantee that we will go about our job in a professional manner. We are in good form, but don't write off the Emirates,'' said Theo Bucker, the national team’s German coach, sounding a cautionary noted according to FIFA.com.
The government lifted the ban on fans in October, but by then the damage had been done. The ban devastated the game: its domestic league all but collapsed and the national team was drained of potential talent. As a result, Lebanon fell in world soccer body FIFA’s rankings from 125 to 178 but has rebounded to 111 with its defeat of South Korea.
"Politics came into football and destroyed it," said Rahif Alameh, secretary-general of the Lebanese Football Association, who dates the "death of football" to 2001, the year when the government intervened in a murky match-fixing scandal rather than the 2005 ban on fans. That was when Lebanon's political-religious leaders began treating the association as a pie to be carved up, just as they share power among Muslim and Christian communities.
Mr. Hariri, for example, sponsored several clubs and bought Nejmeh soccer club, Lebanon’s most popular team, which was largely cross-sectarian, but had always attracted much Shiite support. Mr. had Hariri initially ventured into sports as a moneymaking venture, but later turned his teams into vehicles for consolidating his Sunni Muslim support. Virtually every Lebanese soccer club is identified in sectarian and political terms -- Maronite Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Druze or Armenian with certain political factions -- even if the team’s players are religiously mixed. Those identities have been reinforced by the aftermath of Mr. Hariri’s assassination.
"Football had just (become an extension) of politics. Everything in Lebanon is politicized, the air we breathe is politicized.,” Mr. Alameh told AP.
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.
Egyptian battle lines harden as ultras learn from failures of past Arab revolutionaries
By James M. Dorsey
The battle lines between militant soccer fans, the country’s ruling military and the... more
By James M. Dorsey
The battle lines between militant soccer fans, the country’s ruling military and the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) have hardened threatening to disrupt Egypt’s Premier League with authorities and clubs postponing matches in a bid to prevent potentially violent protest against the government and the soccer body.
This week’s cancellation of a match between crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC and Ismaily SC and a request by Ahly arch rival Al Zamalek SC that its game against Arab Contractors SC because of anticipated fan violence follows last month’s pitched battles near Cairo’s Tahrir between security forces and protesters led by ultras, militant, highly politicized, violence prone soccer fans who played an in important role in the protests that early this year toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
As a result, the interior ministry ordered the postponement of the Al Ahly-Ismaily match, which was supposed to be played on Tuesday behind closed doors in line with the EFA’s penalizing of the Cairo club for earlier disruption of matches by Ultras Ahlawy, the clubs militant fan group. Egyptian press reports quoted ministry officials as saying the postponement was necessary to ensure security during the second phase of Egypt’s parliamentary elections scheduled for Wednesday.
For its part, Zamalek said on its website that it had asked the EFA to postpone its match against Arab Contractors scheduled for Wednesday because of the elections. The club said that it feared that security forces may not be able to focus on the match and that incident could jeopardize the “safety of their players and management staff.”
Ultras Ahlawy and its Zamalek counterpart, Ultras White Knights (UWK), have vowed to defy an EFA crackdown on their club support tactics, which involve the use during matches of fireworks, flares, smoke guns, loud chanting and anti-EFA and government banners.
Besides banning spectators, the EFA, acting on instructions of the interior ministry, has warned clubs that they would be fined 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,750) fine whenever fans set off a firecracker in a stadium. The instructions were reportedly handed down in a meeting between EFA president Samir Zaher with the newly appointed Interior Minister General Mohamed Ibrahim and Information Minister Mohamed Abdel Kader Mohamed Salem.
In a statement on their Facebook page that has some 255,000 followers, Ultras Ahlawy said last week that it would defy the spectator ban in the match against Ismaily to deliver a message to “all remnants of the ousted regime” that they would not obey their “manipulated regime.”
In their statement, the ultras said: “The issue is bigger than football. We want to settle the score with remnants of the former regime, under the leadership of Samir Zaher, and their oppression of Egyptian youth.”
UWK issued a similar statement saying that “we suffered a lot from injustice and repression in the past, but we stood up to that with pride. We fought with all our might to maintain our principles and freedom. We thought justice and freedom would come after our revolution. We will continue in our defense of freedom even with our blood. Our war with the EFA will continue until we win and see the corrupt people in prison.”
At the core of the ultras’ defiance is the instinctive learning of the lessons of the failures of Arab revolutionaries in the 1970s and 1980s like prominent Syria poet Adonis and Marxist ideologue Yasin Al-Hafiz whose calls for leaving no stone in society unturned were stymied by autocratic leaders cloaked in the mantle of Arab nationalism.
The ultras alongside other youth groups were determined in the months leading up to the first post-Mubarak elections to foil the military’s attempts at operating on the principle of the emperor is dead, long live the emperor. The military’s mishandling of the transition, crude attempts to undermine a democratic process and intimidation tactics sparked the November protests and pitched battles in which 42 people were killed. “Cairo’s Tahrir Square is in a certain sense the paradigm for all the other Tahrir Squares in the Arab world” said prominent Syrian intellectual Sadik Al-Azm in a recent lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), describing it as resistance to persistent efforts by ancien regimes in the Middle East and North Africa to effectively retain some degree of power.
What began in November as a human barricade predominantly created by ultras responding to a call from protesters in Tahrir Square for protection from the security forces bent on clearing the area escalated into a battle with its own dynamics. Police faced off with protesters, who were armed with rocks, Molotov cocktails and homemade explosive devices using teargas and at times live ammunition. The ultras put their street battle experience, garnered in years of clashes in stadiums, on full display as they went into action resembling a well-oiled machine that played hide and seek with security forces.
As the frontline in the ‘Battle of the Dakhliya (interior ministry)’ or alternatively dubbed the Battle of Mohammed Mahmoud – the epicenter of the confrontation just off Tahrir Square -- moved at times closer to and then further away from the ministry, Chinese-made motorcycles carried the wounded to safety. Shamarikh, the controversial, colored fireworks employed by the ultras during soccer matches lit up the sky at night replacing street lights that had been turned off. Theirs was as much a battle for karama or dignity as it was part of the fight to hold the military to its pledge to lead the country to democracy. Their dignity is vested in their ability to stand up to the dakhliya, the knowledge that they no longer can be abused by security forces without recourse and the fact that they no longer have to pay off each and every policemen to stay out of trouble.
Ironically, there was a shared sense between security forces and ultras that for the first time in five years on-going battles it was the interior ministry forces rather than the soccer fans fighting for their own survival. The police’s tarnished image as enforcers of a brutal regime remained unchanged nine months after Mubarak’s downfall and, if anything, had been reinforced by the military’s refusal to hold police officers accountable for their brutality despite pressure from the public as well as reform-minded security personnel.
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.
Saudi Woman to Be Lashed for Driving, Despite Royal Pardon
by Nivien Saleh
Article about my student Shaima Jastaniah, written for The Atlantic on December 5, 2011.
Remember Shaima Jastaniah, the Saudi woman who made international headlines in September by being condemned to ten... more
Remember Shaima Jastaniah, the Saudi woman who made international headlines in September by being condemned to ten lashes for driving a car through the coastal city of Jeddah? King Abdallah pardoned her personally. But it now turns out that she may be lashed after all. ....
Did Algeria dope its World Cup soccer team to distract attention from protests?
Friday, November 18, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Arab autocratic regimes responded back in the 1980s... more
Friday, November 18, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Arab autocratic regimes responded back in the 1980s to a wave of Islamist-inspired protests with little less brutality than some have done this year, but in the case of Algeria perhaps with greater ingenuity in a bid to engineer an Algerian soccer success that would distract attention from the protesters’ grievances.
While Syria brutally suppressed an Islamist uprising in 1982 in the city of Hama killing at least 10,000 people, members of Algeria’s national soccer team believe that they were secretly doped to enhance their performance. The players who played for Algeria in the 1982 and 1986 World Cups at a time of a series of protests in the country charge that eight of the team’s members have handicapped children that have been born since the tournaments. They are demanding an investigation. Algeria’s soccer federation has yet to comment.
"We have serious doubts over the effects of medication that we were given during training camps. We just want the truth,” said former defender Mohamed Chaib, a father of three girls born with muscular dystrophy, in an interview with Agence France Press.
One of Mr. Chaib’s daughter died in 2005 at age 18. Medical tests found no abnormalities either with him or his wife.
Whether doped or not, the Algerian squad delivered a performance in 1982 at a time that protests erupted in the city of Oran and spread in 1985 to Algiers and Setif in 1986 that many Algerians still cherish. In front of 25,000 fans at the El Molinon stadium in Gijon, Algeria's Desert Warriors turned soccer on its head, defeating favourite West Germany 2-1. Duke University’s Laurent Dubois quotes an Algerian commentator as wondering at the time whether German children were asking their fathers: “Dad, where’s Algeria?”
The match is widely viewed in Mr. Dubois’ words as “the most infamous case of collusion in the history of the World Cup.” Mr. Dubois writes on his blog, Soccer Politics/The Politics of Football that “Austria and Germany made sure Algeria didn’t advance by playing a game that produced exactly the score needed for the two of them to go on. The incident is widely remembered today — FIFA responded by having the final matches in the group stages played at the same time, to try and prevent it from happening again — but the full weight of the action, and its symbolism, is sometimes overlooked. Two European teams colluded to make sure a non-European team was stopped.
Djamel Menad, a striker in the 1986 cup, said his daughter born in 1993 suffered from agenesis of the corpus callosum, a condition that causes seizures and muscle weakness. Mr. Menad said it seemed unlikely to be a coincidence that several other players his age had children with disabilities and blamed the medications doctors handed out. "Since I discovered I was not alone, I began to ask myself questions. They gave us drugs and vitamins to battle for energy loss after training and matches," Mr. Menad said.
Former midfielder Mohamed Kaci Said, the father of a 26-year-old disabled daughter, told Algerian newspaper El-Khabar that “doubts persist until an enquiry has been opened and the truth told." He said he was shocked when his daughter was born and some thought he and his wife, who is of Turkish origin, may have been related. Mr. Said said that foreign medical staff may have used players as guinea pigs to test drugs similar to what Soviet sports doctors were reported to be doing at the time.
Players said they could not recall the medications but suspect that caused their children’s birth defects. Some said doctors never gave them their medical files, El Watan newspaper reported.
Ali Fergani, who captained the team in 1982, dismissed the players’ suspicions. "The number of players who are parents of disabled children is minimal compared to the total number of players selected," he said, insisting that all medical staff had been Algerian nationals and that he recalled being given only Vitamin C.
Mr. Fergani insisted that Algeria had defeated the tournament’s favourite, West Germany, because “we played a different type of football, which had never been seen before. It was a concoction of German, French and Latin styles."
The calls for an investigation come as anti-government protests that erupted in Algeria early this year as part of the wave of uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa have fizzled out on the streets of Algerians towns and cities but are alive and kicking in the country’s soccer stadiums where football fans regularly take on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the military and the Islamists.
Algeria’s political geography of protest has however changed since the street manifestations early this year. Algeria is now surrounded by three nations in transition: Libya, Tunisia and Morocco where the king has pre-empted protesters by pushing forward with constitutional reform. Disgust with the ruling military’s nepotism, corruption and inability to provide sufficient jobs fuelled by the success of their brethren in the region ultimately runs deeper in Algeria than fears of renewed confrontation with the military or uncertainty over the Islamists real aims.
"Our songs focus on current events, on politics and the economy. We sing about politicians, about security, about terrorist attacks. We criticize the current government as well as the extremists of the (outlawed) Islamic Salvation Front. We also criticize the high cost of living in Algeria and the privileges enjoyed by the country’s elite, who send their children abroad to study while so many young Algerians are unemployed and live in poverty," said Amine T., a supporter of popular Algiers club Union Sportive de la Medina d'Alger (USMA).
In a region dominated by autocratic rulers bent on controlling the soccer pitch and benefitting from its popularity to polish their tarnish image, Algeria is among the most advanced in encouraging the emergence of soccer as a professional sport. As a result of the regime's reduced involvement in the sport, soccer fans have a tacit understanding with authorities under which they can say what they like as long as they keep their protests confined to the stadium.
"It’s not so much our slogans that worry the authorities, it’s how many of us there are. For example, when riots erupted in the Algiers neighborhood of Bab el-Oued earlier this year, the Algerian Football Federation temporarily suspended matches.
They did this because they were worried that if the police couldn’t control a few dozen youths in the street, they certainly wouldn’t be able to control 60,000 football fans leaving a stadium. I think that the authorities don't actually have a problem with our chants: if we get our anger out inside the stadium, then that’s it, we don’t cause any trouble outside," Amine T. 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.
Palestine unveils sports plan in effort to further state- and nationhood
Saturday, October 29, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Palestine is scoring points on and off the... more
Saturday, October 29, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Palestine is scoring points on and off the soccer pitch as it seeks to employ sports to further its bid for statehood, ensure international support in its struggle against the debilitating effects of Israeli occupation and initiate a social revolution at home.
The Palestinian effort kicked into high gear this month with the unveiling of an ambitious ten-year plan backed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Palestine Authority to develop sports and a women’s friendly soccer match against world champion Japan.
The plan drafted by Spanish consultants hired by the IOC, which calls for a €61 million investment in sports facilities, was presented this week to donors by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, foreign minister Riyad al-Malki and Jibril Rajoub, who doubles as head of the Palestine Olympic Committee and the territory's soccer association.
"This is a breakthrough. Sports is a Palestine Authority priority alongside transportation and water," gushed Jerome Champagne, a former political advisor to world soccer body FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who now advises the Palestine Authority on sports, after the presentation in Ramallah.
Mr. Champagne said he expected funding for the ten-year plan to be made available at the next meeting of Palestine's donors. That could take a little while with the United States delaying the convening of the meeting to stymie European Union efforts to play a more important role in the Middle East.
Effected by the global financial crisis donors could also
ultimately prove to be less generous than Palestinians hope.
Diplomatic representatives of the United Nations, Spain, France, Italy, Britain and Brazil welcomed the plan but stressed at the meeting in Ramallah what they were already doing to support Palestinian sports rather than what they would do. To be fair, the diplomats were not the ones that control their countries' purse strings.
The Palestine Authority's emphasis on sports and the presentation of its ten-year plan could however not have come at politically convenient time for Palestine Authority.
To be sure, the plan has been long in the making and Palestine has come a long way since becoming in 1998 the first nation without a state to become a member of FIFA. In the last year, Palestine has played its first World Cup and Olympic qualifiers on Palestinian soil. Its national women's soccer team is breaking taboos in a traditionally conservative society.
Nonetheless, President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestine Authority has been politically weakened by its inability to force Israel to make concessions the Palestinians need to agree to a revival of peace talks and Israel's boost of Hamas with this month's swap of Israeli Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit for more than 1,000 Palestinians incarcerated by Israel.
In emphasising sports and identifying with it, the authority is following in the footsteps of other Middle Eastern leaders who saw soccer, the region's most popular sport, as a tool to polish their tarnished images and distract attention from discontent with government policies. But in contrast to those leaders, they are promoting sports on a far more popular and transparent level and in ways that benefit the public and push the social envelope.
"We want this (plan) to be seen as an integrated part of our national development plan, an indispensable component," Mr. Fayyad told the diplomats, describing the sports initiative as "a hopeful enterprise." He said recalling his recent attendance at a soccer match that sports provides "a sense of joy, happiness of the people with just being there."
"We are witnessing a different kind of revolution... We are allowing people to release fears. They have the right to fight to achieve self-determination in sports like in any other field," added Mr. Malki.
The development plan is designed to project Palestine internationally as a nation and a state, strengthen nation-building and social development at home and focus attention on the debilitating effects of Israeli travel restrictions on Palestinian athletes. "For me, sport is a tool to realise the Palestinian people's national aspirations by exposing our cause through sports. I think that the ethics of sports and football is a rational and humanitarian way to convince the international community that we deserve freedom and independence," said Mr. Rajoub who doubles as Palestine Olympic Committee and Football Association czar.
Mr. Rajoub, a former Palestinian security chief with a military bearing who spent 17 years in Israeli prison, met his Israeli Olympic Committee counterpart for a third time this year in advance of the launch of the plan to discuss cooperation in easing the restrictions on athletes as well as the movement of sports materials. The two committees established a hotline to facilitate the movement of athletes stuck at Israeli checkpoints on the West Bank. They also looked at ways of enabling travel between the West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Despite goodwill, the effort has so far produced limited results. Palestinians are waiting to see whether the processing three months ago of their last shipment from FIFA through Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport in less than a week constitutes a change in Israeli attitudes. Until then shipments were held up for up to six months, incurring storage and other costs for the Palestinians that amounted to a multi-fold of the value of the goods shipped.
There has however been only limited improvement in athletes' ability to move around the West Bank or between the Palestine Authority-controlled region and the Gaza Strip. "The problem is the Israeli committee is not the relevant authority for the movement of people and equipment. We are trying, but I don't want to embarrass anyone," Mr. Rajoub says.
Nonetheless, soccer officials and players concede that crossing checkpoints has become somewhat easier this year. They attribute it primarily to improved security with Israel less concerned about the threat of terrorist attacks being launched from the West Bank. In addition, the PFA has created sleeping quarters in the Faisal Hussein Stadium so that players can get together to train without worrying whether they will be able to return home.
The perceived easing has done little for 13 of the 25 members of the Palestinian national soccer team who hail from Gaza. Goalkeeper Assem Abu Assi thinks of his wife and son in Gaza whenever the Palestinian flag is raised at an international match. Mr. Abu Assi has not seen them in four years because of an Israel refusal to grant him a travel permit. Mid-fielders Maali Kawari and Ismail Al Amur too have not been allowed to return for visits to Gaza.
"My dream is to just play football with my family watching in the stadium. It has never happened. Happiness is never complete. I'm always only half happy," Mr. Abu Assi says.
He and his co-players see soccer however as more than just a game. It constitutes their contribution to achieving Palestinian statehood. "Raising the Palestinian flag on the roof of a house in Palestine is a big issue. It is an even bigger issues when we raise the flag as a state outside the country," Mr. Abu Assi says. "Soccer is a way to build a state. When we go to India or Thailand, we put Palestine on the map," adds Mr. Kawari. "The Israelis know that sport is good for Palestinians. That's why they try to limit our success," Mr. Al Amur chips in.
The problems implementing the Palestinian sports development plan are further illustrated by FIFA and Palestinian efforts to get Israeli approval for the import of Jordanian personnel and materials to build two FIFA-funded soccer playing grounds in the Palestinian West Bank towns of Qalqilya and El Bireh. "The Israelis do not allow us to start the project. Our deadline is at the end of the year. Otherwise we lose the project," says Nabhan Khraishi, a PFA media advisor.
Mr. Khraishi says the Israeli authorities are delaying the El Bireh project because it is too close to the Israeli settlement of Psagot. The Israelis fear that the gathering of excited fans so close to one of their outposts could spark anti-Israeli protests at a time that anti-government protests are sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
The struggle for state and nationhood is not only one in which Palestinians confront the Israelis. It is also a struggle for the kind of society Palestinians want their country to be. That is nowhere more true than with the right of women to play soccer.
The national women's team faced two obstacles when it met world champion Japan earlier this month on the soccer pitch in Hebron, the West Bank's most conservative town that unlike Ramallah, Bethlehem or East Jerusalem does not count Christians among its residents. The match moreover underscored differences within the Islamist movement with the city's Hamas mayor supporting the women's team and the local Hizb ut Tahrir movement opposing it.
Hizb ut Tahrir websites denounced the team as "naked bitches" even though they wore leggings and at least one of the squad's players dons a hijab, an Islamic headdress that covers the hair, ears and neck. Hizb ut Tahrir imams denounced the match from the pulpit in their mosques; school principals in Hebron banned their students from attending the match warning them that they would burn in hell if they went to the stadium. The PFA was forced to bus in supporters.
Crowds cheered the team as they left the stadium even though they lost to Japan with a whopping 19:0. The team, which unlike its opponent is made up of university students rather than professionals, recovered in a second match, losing only 4:0 from the world champion. "It was a social revolution. We broke the barrier and taboo when we went to Hebron and Nablus (a conservative city in the north of the West Bank). The whole barrier collapsed" Mr. Rajoub says.
It no doubt was the beginning of a social revolution, however one that has yet to play out. A majority of the players in Palestine's six women soccer clubs as well as its national team are Christians rather than Muslims. Yet, even players from Christian families often fight battles at home to be allowed to play. Claudia Salameh, a 21-year old business administration student, said her family wanted her to stop when she got engaged but that her fiancé had supported her. Other players report similar splits in their families.
"Things are changing. It depends on what area of the country. Lifestyles are changing. Three years ago it was unacceptable for girls to walk in the streets with shorts. It was unacceptable to play soccer, run or ride a bicycle in shorts. Now it is ok in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem," Ms. Salameh said.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer
Israel and Hamas: A new equation for Mid-East peace?
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
Israeli and Palestinian hardliners rather than moderates are... more
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
Israeli and Palestinian hardliners rather than moderates are serving each other's purpose in the Middle East conflict. That is the underlying dynamic of the political calculations of both Israel and Hamas in the recent lop-sided swap of an Israeli soldier for over a thousand Palestinian prisoners.
Commentary
THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN peace process remains frozen with little, if any, prospect of it gaining momentum. President Mahmoud Abbas' effort to achieve United Nations recognition of Palestinian statehood in a bid to break the logjam is mired in diplomatic red tape and likely to be foiled by a United States
veto if it comes up for a vote in the Security Council.
True to form, hardliners on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide are finding common ground where moderates are grasping for straws. In doing so, they are reaffirming a long-standing fact of life of the Israeli-Palestinian equation: hardliners can serve each other’s needs to mutual benefit without making the kind of wrenching concessions that thwart the ambitions of
peacemakers and moderates on both sides.
The prisoner swap in which Israel bought freedom for now Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit after five years in Palestinian captivity in exchange for the release of 1,027 prisoners - many of whom were responsible for deadly attacks on Israelis - is the latest example of sworn enemies finding it easier to do business than those who advocate compromise and living in peace and harmony side by
side.
No peace works for all
Underlying, the swap is a belief on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas that there is no realistic chance for an agreement on peace terms that would be acceptable to both Palestinians and Israelis. Given the nature of his coalition government, Netanyahu has so far been unwilling or unable to give Abbas the bare minimum he would need to push forward with peace without at least the tacit backing of Hamas.
While Netanyahu officially refuses to negotiate with Hamas, for its part, Hamas refuses Israeli conditions for its inclusion in a peace process. These are that it recognises Israel's right to exist, abandons its armed struggle and accepts past Israeli-Palestinian agreements. If anything, the fact that it has achieved a
tangible victory with the release of prisoners belonging to both Hamas as well as Abbas' Fatah movement has reinforced the Islamist movement’s conviction that its hard line is paying off.
Netanyahu has strengthened Hamas in its conviction not only by excluding Abbas from the prisoner swap. He has also done so by undermining the Palestinian president with his decision to build a new Jewish settlement on the southern edge of Jerusalem and granting legal status to settlements established without his government’s approval. Abbas has made an Israeli freeze on settlements his core pre-condition for revival of peace talks with
the Israelis, to no avail.
Temporary arrangements suit all but Abbas
Unlike Abbas, Netanyahu has made his most hardline critics part of his coalition. Netanyahu and Israel’s right-wing moreover agree on fundamentals: a rejection of an Israeli return to the borders prior to the 1967 conquest of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and a perception of a nuclear-armed Iran as the foremost threat to the existence of the Jewish state. Hamas rather than Abbas offers Netanyahu the space to build Israeli policy on those two principles. Hamas’ refusal to meet Israeli conditions for peace negotiations proves the Israeli prime minister’s assertion that Israel has no Palestinian partner with
which it can do business.
At the same time, Hamas has proven that it can and will
make temporary arrangements with Israel like the prisoner swap or a ceasefire that safeguards Israeli towns from Palestinian rocket attacks.
Hamas has moreover, contributed its bit to weakening Abbas by effectively thwarting the Palestinian leader’s efforts at reconciliation so that Palestinians can confront Israel with a unified front.
The possibility of Hamas’ external wing moving its headquarters from Syria, Iran’s closest ally in the Arab world, to post-Mubarak Egypt, which facilitated the prisoner swap, further serves Netanyahu’s purpose of clearing the deck for possible pre-emptive military action against Iran. Lingering in the background is uncertainty of what Israel’s immediate neighbourhood
may look like. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is battling for his survival with no sign of the eight months of mass anti-government protests subsiding despite a brutal crackdown. Jordan’s King Abdullah has so far been able to contain demands for political reform and greater economic opportunity.
Israeli military: the joker in the pack
Ironically, Israel’s military and former senior Israeli military commanders constitute the greatest threat to Netanyahu’s policy designs and may offer Hamas its best chance yet of becoming a player in peace talks with Israel as well as the dominant force in Palestinian politics. While Israel’s military
appears split on the prospect of a pre-emptive strike against Iran, at least half of the retired leaders of Israel’s military and intelligence services have publicly rejected Netanyahu’s strategic thinking.
Perhaps, most vocal among them is Meir Dagan, a former head of Mossad, who has not only criticised Netanyahu’s hard line toward Iran but also called for Israeli acceptance of a nine-year old Saudi peace plan endorsed by all Arab states. That peace plan offers Israel full diplomatic relations in exchange for a
complete withdrawal from Palestinian lands occupied in 1967.
No doubt Dagan, Hamas’ nemesis who is credited with the death of hundreds of its operatives, has political ambitions as well as the military credentials that Netanyahu lacks. His willingness to entertain the Saudi proposal would open the door to Hamas to take its seat at the table. That could well lead to a new chapter in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He has been a journalist covering the Middle East for over 30 years.
Islamists fare well in an Arab world in revolt
By James M. Dorsey
The score is 1:0 in favor of the Islamists in this month’s Arab revolt match.
By James M. Dorsey
The score is 1:0 in favor of the Islamists in this month’s Arab revolt match.
Islamists emerged from Tunisia’s first post-revolt election as the country’s foremost political force set to play a key role in drafting the country’s new constitution. With Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi dead, jockeying for political position has begun in earnest and Islamists who played an important part in eight months of fighting that led to his demise are demanding their share of power.
Hamas, the Islamist grouping that controls the Gaza Strip, has significantly strengthened its position at the expense of its arch rival Al Fatah headed by Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with the freeing of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit from five years in captivity in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prison.
Islamists also stand to gain in Syria as the country moves ever closer to armed conflict between the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and protesters who increasingly feel that turning the other cheek in the face of a brutal government crackdown is neither paying them dividends on the bloodied streets of Syrian towns and cities nor in terms of support from the international community.
The rise of the Islamists in the wake of popular revolts sweeping a conservative swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf hardly comes as a surprise in a world in which the mosque was the only ideological opposition platform that alongside the soccer pitch provided a valve for the release of pent-up anger and frustration.
Gas and oil-rich Algeria, potentially the next Arab state to be shaken by the revolt to its core, could well prove a litmus test for the Islamists. Memories of the bitter civil war in the 1990s that pitted the military against Islamists who emerged victorious from the ballet box has so far dampened enthusiasm for renewed confrontation in a country that is simmering with discontent and that already witnessed initial mass anti-government protests early this year. The protests have since fizzled out on the streets of Algerians towns and cities but are alive and kicking in the country’s soccer stadiums where football fans regularly take on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the military and the Islamists.
For Algeria, however, the political geography of protest has changed. Algeria is now surrounded by three nations in transition: Libya, Tunisia and Morocco where the king has preempted protesters by pushing forward with constitutional reform. Disgust with the ruling military’s nepotism, corruption and inability to provide sufficient jobs fueled by the success of their brethren in the region ultimately runs deeper in Algeria than fears of renewed confrontation with the military or uncertainty over the Islamists real aims.
"Our songs focus on current events, on politics and the economy. We sing about politicians, about security, about terrorist attacks. We criticize the current government as well as the extremists of the (outlawed) Islamic Salvation Front. We also criticize the high cost of living in Algeria and the privileges enjoyed by the country’s elite, who send their children abroad to study while so many young Algerians are unemployed and live in poverty," said Amine T., a supporter of popular Algiers club Union Sportive de la Medina d'Alger (USMA).
In a region dominated by autocratic rulers bent on controlling the soccer pitch and benefitting from its popularity to polish their tarnish image, Algeria is among the most advanced in encouraging the emergence of soccer as a professional sport. As a result of the regime's reduced involvement in the sport, soccer fans have a tacit understanding with authorities under which they can say what they like as long as they keep their protests confined to the stadium.
"It’s not so much our slogans that worry the authorities, it’s how many of us there are. For example, when riots erupted in the Algiers neighborhood of Bab el-Oued earlier this year, the Algerian Football Federation temporarily suspended matches. They did this because they were worried that if the police couldn’t control a few dozen youths in the street, they certainly wouldn’t be able to control 60,000 football fans leaving a stadium. I think that the authorities don't actually have a problem with our chants: if we get our anger out inside the stadium, then that’s it, we don’t cause any trouble outside," Amine T. said.
"The chanting of the fans in stadia has continued to replicate the political situation," adds Loughborough University professor Mahfoud Amara, writing in the July edition of The Journal of North African Studies. "Football is becoming one of the few (allowed) spaces for people to express their frustrations overt the socio-economic and political conditions.”
The question is whether the Algerian government will continue to tolerate the stadium protests as its neighbors forge their way towards a more open society and how much longer the protesters will accept being confined to the stadium. Discontent with the government is already spilling out of the stadiums with small protests occurring on a daily scale over the lack of water, housing, electricity or calling for higher wages. A quarter of the population lives under the poverty line and unemployment is rampant.
"The country is on the edge of an explosion, the regime has only held on by spending billions, but for how long? This is just a postponement," said Sherif Arbi, a pro-democracy activist.
President Bouteflika has long justified his repressive regime with the fight against Al Qaeda’s affiliate in northwest Africa, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. That argument is rapidly wearing thin. For the Islamists, Algeria constitutes an opportunity not only to further spread their wings but also to further demonstrate that pluralism has become an integral part of their political reality.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer
Somali jihadists focus on banning women's sports rather than famine
By James M. Dorsey
While Al Qaeda is projecting a kinder, gentler image by distributing aid to famine... more
By James M. Dorsey
While Al Qaeda is projecting a kinder, gentler image by distributing aid to famine victims, its local Somali affiliate, the Al Shabab, are ensuring strict adherence to a five-year old ban on women's sports.
The emphasis on women constitutes an expanded enforcement of the Shabab's extreme interpretation of Quranic guidelines on sports that in recent years focused primarily on efforts to ban soccer for men as well as women.
The Shabab focus not only contrasts with Al Qaeda's effort to project a different image after having lost much of its appeal with its attacks on Arab residential compounds and luxury hotels in the first half of the last decade and being even more sidelined by this year's Arab revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
It also highlights differing attitudes with Al Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups such as Palestine's Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah with regard to the importance and the role
of sports in Islamist ideology and strategy.
Al Qaeda and Al Shabab represent two sides of militant Islam’s love-hate relationship with ball games. Soccer doesn’t fit into Al Shabab or, for that matter, the Taliban’s vision of an Islamist society. Soccer 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 for the return of the Caliph who would rule the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims as one. It also celebrates peaceful competition and undermines the narrative of an inevitable clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.
Al Shabab mentor and Taliban ally Osama Bin Laden, like many jihadists, nonetheless worshiped the game only second to Allah. He saw it as a useful bonding and recruitment tool that brought recruits into the fold, encouraged camaraderie and reinforced militancy among those who have already joined. The track record of soccer-players-turned suicide bombers proves his point.
Nonetheless, in a break with its indiscriminate shedding of bloodhuman life, Al Qaeda recently sent a representative to a camp of Somali refugees fleeing the famine in their tortured country to distribute humanitarian aid.
Already wracked by an Islamist insurgency whose leaders differ little in with Afghanistan's Taliban, Somalia recently has also been hit by a famine that is worst in areas controlled by the Al Shabab, which five years ago aligned itself with Al Qaeda. The United Nations estimates that thousands have already died in the famine and that some 750,000 more could lose their lives in the coming months.
As a result, Al Qaeda's distribution of aid throws into sharp relief, Al Shabab's refusal to allow Western air groups to help alleviate suffering and its effort instead to ensure adherence to its strict precepts that not only ban women's sports, but soccer for men as well as women as well as bras and music.
The contradictions were most evident when Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri's representative, Ali Abdulla Al Muhajir, recently presided over the distribution of mounds of grain, powdererd milk and dates in an Al Shabab-run camp on the outskirts of marked. The food was marked “Al Qaeda campaign on behalf of Martyr Bin Laden. Charity relief for those affected by the drought," Mr. Al Muhajir told his starving listeners: “Our beloved brothers and sisters in Somalia, we are following your situation on a daily basis.”
Speaking in American-accented English, Mr. Al Muhajir said the aid had been purchased by "brothers in Al Qaeda" who although separated from the refugees by thousands of kilometres had them "consistently in our thoughts and prayers.”
The Al Shahab's revived effort to impose a ban on women's sports harks back to a decision in 2006 by the Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU), an Islamist group that briefly ruled Somalia, that condemned it as "a heritage of old Christian cultures" and "un-Islamic."
Initially an armed wing of the courts, the Shabab emerged as a force in their own right with the US-backed Ethiopian invasion that forced the courts out of power.
Much like they did with soccer officials, Al Shabab operatives have begun threatening women basketball players with death if they fail to give up the sport. The focus on basketball is no coincidence. Basketball is Somalia's second most popular sport after soccer and alongside soccer and handball only one of three sports played by women in Somalia.
Somali national women's basketball team captain Suweys Ali Jama is one of their favourite targets. "I will only die when my life runs out – no one can kill me but Allah … I will never stop my profession while I am still alive. Now, I am a player, but even if I retire I hope to be a coach - I will stop basketball only when I perish," Ms. Jama recently told InterPress Service.
Ms. Jama's deputy, Aisha Mohammed, whose mother once played for the national team, has two strikes against her. Not only is she a woman athlete, but she plays for the Somali military women's basketball team.
Ms. Mohammed, according to IPS, quotes the Shabab as telling her: "You are twice guilty. First, you are a woman and you are playing sports, which the Islamic rule has banned. Second, you are representing the military club who are puppets for the infidels. So we are targeting you wherever you are."
In a feisty retort, Ms. Mohammed asserts that "I am a human being and I fear, but I know that only Allah can kill me."
Together with the national soccer team, Ms. Jama and Ms. Mohammed's basketball team trains behind the bullet-ridden walls surrounding the Somali police academy. Dressed in loose fitting tracksuits, T-shirts and headscarves, women players sprint across the court in the presence of hundreds of policemen. They leave the academy covered to return home from training as a safety measure.
Somali Basketball Federation deputy secretary general Abdi Abdulle Ahmed told IPS that some women had left the national team as a result of the Al Shabab threats. Sport executives estimate that some 200 women stopped playing basketball when the initial 2006 ban was announced.
Somali Basketball Federation president Hussein Ibrahim Ali argues that his national women's team plays for much more than a trophy when it competes internationally.
"The world knows that Somalia has undergone hardships. When our women play internationally, it is great publicity for the whole country and, in particular, for the basketball federation," Mr Ali said.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Middle Eastern power struggle threatens Arab popular revolt
By James M. Dorsey
An allegedly Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington has brought... more
By James M. Dorsey
An allegedly Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington has brought into sharp relief the threat posed to the popular revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa posed by a momentous power struggle that pits the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel against Iran.
The murky plot that US officials admit has the makings of a Hollywood movie offers the United States and its two Middle Eastern allies an opportunity to reassert themselves at the expense of protesters on the streets of Arab cities seeking to ensure a democratic transition in Egypt and Tunisia and an end to autocratic rule in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf.
At stake is the future of the region, with the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia having a vested interest in containing the explosion of popular discontent with repressive, corrupt government and economic mismanagement and Iran struggling to preserve the benefits it reaped from the US invasion of Iraq and the Arab revolt that restored Shiite Muslim predominance in that country and allowed it to project its influence in the region witness post-Mubarak Egypt’s seeking of closer ties to the Islamic republic.
The stick the United States, Saudi Arabia and Iran are wielding involves a Texas used-car salesman allegedly trying to hire a hitman in Mexico to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubair. The salesman claimed that he has ties to Iran’s Quds Force, the covert arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards that is considered a force to be reckoned with. The salesman was nabbed because the hitman he approached turned out to be a US government informant.
Iran has denied the allegation, suggesting they were a pretext for further building an international consensus against the Islamic republic.
The charge, whether or not the allegation is true, is on the mark. The United States is using the alleged plot to further isolate Iran while Saudi Arabia insists that Iran must pay a price. Israel, meanwhile, appears to be clearing its deck by finally agreeing with Hamas on a prisoner swap that would bring captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit home from five years in Palestinian captivity and apologizing to Egypt for the accidental killing in August of five Egyptian when Israeli forces were pursuing militants near the Egyptian-Israeli border.
By the same token, Hamas’ agreement to a deal allows it to claim a victory at a time that Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has little to show for himself. It also enables it to cosy up to Egypt, which mediated the deal, as an insurance policy should the group’s main benefactor, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fail to survive mass anti-government protests demanding his departure and Western economic sanctions.
Saudi-Iranian tensions have been mounting this year with the kingdom accusing the Islamic republic of fuelling anti-government protests in Bahrain as well as in its oil-rich Eastern Province. Saudi-backed efforts brutally quelled the uprising in Bahrain earlier this year but failed to stamp it out. The protests were effectively pushed out of the Bahrain capital Manama and into the villages and this month briefly spilled over into the Eastern Province.
Saudi forces quickly contained the protests that nonetheless drove home the fact that the kingdom is unlikely to remain unaffected if the wave of protests is allowed to continue. Saudi Arabia’s efforts to isolate itself are further compounded by the kingdom’s inability to mediate an end to the crisis in neighbouring Yemen that is teetering on the brink of civil war and disintegration and could send thousands of Yemenis fleeing to the kingdom.
King Abdullah has so far been able to largely insulate the kingdom by investing in excess of $100 billion in social welfare at home and elsewhere in the region. Human Rights Watch called this week on Saudi Arabia to halt the arbitrary arrest of hundreds, if not thousands, on charges of being militant extremists.
The Obama administration increasingly is being cornered by the gap between its declared support for the Arab revolt and the fact that the uprising threatens its strategic relationship with oil-rich Saudi Arabia. The US has a vested interest in ensuring that the revolt does not hit the kingdom full force, a development that would not only significantly undermine its strategic interests regionally as well as globally, but also those of its closest ally in the Middle East, Israel.
Already, the Obama administration is finding it difficult to wield its influence in the region with a more assertive Arab public opinion demanding that it put its money where its mouth is with regard to the revolt as well as its declared support for an independent Palestinian state. US support for the revolt undermines its ties to key autocratic allies like Saudi Arabia while supporting Palestinian independence with deeds rather than words would put it on a collision course with Israel.
The solution to the US, Saudi and Israeli dilemma is focusing attention on Iran at the expense of the Arab popular revolt. The strategy is also designed to prevent power in the region shifting from Israel and the Gulf to Turkey and Iran. Turkey’s star has been rising with its emotional support for Palestine, its deteriorating relations with erstwhile ally Israel and its perceived support for the revolt.
The fact that Turkey is ruled by an elected Islamist government coupled with its pro-Palestinian stance and denunciation of the brutal Syrian crackdown on anti-government protesters has shielded it from criticism that it like the United States has an interest in maintaining the status quo in the Gulf and elsewhere in the region.
Syria could well prove to be a crucial flashpoint in the emerging power struggle in the Middle East and North Africa. The fall of Mr. Assad would deprive Iran of its foremost Arab friend and a key conduit to its Lebanese Shiite ally, Hezbollah. Without Syria, Iran would be left with Iraq, which has joined Iran in supporting Mr. Assad, but is unlikely to be as compliant and strategic a friend as Syria is.
US and Saudi efforts to further isolate Iran on the back of the alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador compounded by calls by Syrian opposition elements to respond with armed struggle to Mr. Assad’s brutality that has so far cost some 3,000 lives could cause the Islamic republic significant pain.
At the same time, the morphing of the Syrian protests into a civil war much like what happened in Libya would put the United States, Europe and the Saudi-led Gulf countries between a rock and a hard place. There is little appetite in the US and Europe for a repetition of the six-month military campaign in Libya that ensured the ousting of Moammar Qaddafi by Libyan rebels. A Western and Arab failure to fully support an armed Syrian revolt would offer Iran a badly needed opening.
Whichever way it goes, the people power revolt across the region has the most to lose and could find itself in the grinder as the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran jockey for power and seek to contain what poses a short-term threat to their interests but long-term offers the best hope for greater stability in a geo-strategic part of the world.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Libyan rebels investigate Qaddafi son for murder of soccer player
By James M. Dorsey
Libya's rebel Transition National Council (TNC) is investigating ousted Libyan leader... more
By James M. Dorsey
Libya's rebel Transition National Council (TNC) is investigating ousted Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi"s soccer-playing son, Al Saadi Al Qaddafi,for the 2005 killing of national team player and coach Basheer Al-Ryani.
The investigation, announced by rebel prosecutor Abdullah Banoun at a memorial for Mr. Al-Ryani in Tripoli follows this month's issuing by Interpol of an arrest warrant for Saadi on charges of "misappropriating properties through force and armed intimidation when he headed the Libyan Football Federation."
The world police body noted that Mr. Qaddafi’s 38-year old son had also been a military commander involved in the brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrators that sparked the United Nations no-fly zone and NATO intervention. Interpol said that Saadi’s assets had been frozen by the UN and that he was subject to a travel ban by the world body.
Saadi, who is under house arrest in Niamey after fleeing to neighbouring Niger, has denied the charges.
Known as player "number nine" because player's names could not be broadcast by Libyan media during the Qaddafi regime in a bid to ensure that they did not become better known than Saadi or Mr. Qaddafi himself, Mr. Al-Ryani, a prominent Qaddafi critic, was tortured and klilled in 2005.
"Two years before he was killed he told Saadi he was part of a dictatorship and had corrupted Libya. After that he was beaten and left outside his house," Reuters quoted Dr. Hussein Rammali, a former Al-Ryani team mate as saying at this week's memorial. Mr. Al-Ryani is said to have made his remark at a time that he was coaching Tripoli's Al Ahly club, which was owned and captained by Saadi.
Mr. Rammali said Mr. Al-Ryani's family had last seen him four days before the player's body was delivered to their home at a seaside villa that belonged to Saadi.
The killing of Mr. Al-Ryani is the latest soccer-related atrocity during the Qaddafi regime to come to light. In a country in which the mosque and the soccer pitch were the only release valves for pent-up anger and frustration prior to this month’s protests, Saadi's association with both the national team and Tripoli's 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 sports competition in which politics rather than performance often dictated the outcome.
A 2009 US diplomatic cable disclosed by Wikileaks described Mr. Qaddafi junior as “notoriously ill-behaved
League matches were fixed to ensure that Tripoli’s Al Ahli club, which Saadi owned, remained on top to prevent a defeat on the pitch from being viewed as a defeat of the regime.
A pile of rubble in Benghazi symbolises Libyan leader stands as a sad memorial to the abuse and manipulation of soccer by Middle Eastern and North Africa autocrats.
The rubble is what is left of Mr. Qaddafi junior’s efforts to bury the historic club lock, stock and barrel. Its red and white colors were banned from public display. Scores of its supporters were imprisoned, some of whom were sentenced to death for attempting to subvert the Qaddafis’ rule.
The story of Al Ahly Benghazi stands out as a perverted twist of efforts by Middle Eastern leaders like Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to identify with their national soccer teams in a bid to boost their lingering popularity.
Backed by Saadi, Al Ahly Tripoli blossomed with its financial muscle that allowed it to buy the best players and bribe bully referees and linesmen to rule in its favor.
A little more than a decade ago, Al Ahly fans had enough of Saadi's subversion of the game. They booed him and his team during a national cup final in front of visiting African dignitaries and dressed up a donkey in the colors of Al Ahly Tripoli.
Mr. Qaddafi junior went ballistic.
“I will destroy your club! I will turn it into an owl's nest!” The Los Angeles times quoted Khalifa Binsraiti, Al Ahly Benghazi’s then chairman, who was imprisoned in the subsequent crackdown, as being told by an irate Mr. Qaddafi junior immediately after the match.
A penalty in an Al Ahli Benghazi match against a team from Al-Baydah, the home town of 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 Saadi engineered Al Ahly Benghazi’s relegation to the second division. A referee in a match against Libyan premier league team Al Akhdar sought to ensure Al Ahly’s humiliation by calling a questionable penalty that would have sealed Al Ahly’s disgrace.
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 Saadi, burnt a likeness of his father and set fire to the local branch of his national soccer federation.
“I was ready to die that day, I was so frustrated,” The Los Angeles Times quotes 48-year old businessman Ali Ali, who was among the enraged crowd, as saying. “We were all ready to die.”
It did not take long for Libyan plainclothes security men to respond. Al Ahly’s 37-hectare clubhouse and facilities were raised to the ground as plainclothesmen visited the homes of protesting soccer fans. Some 80 were arrested of whom 30 for trial to Tripoli on charges of vandalism, destruction of public property and having contacts with Libyan dissidents abroad, a capital offense in Libya.
Three people were sentenced to death, but their penalties were converted to life in prison by the Libyan rule. The three were released after serving five years in prison.
Al Ahli Benghazi was resurrected in 2004, initially as a second-division squad, but later graduated to the country’s premier league.
The story of Al Ahly 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 whose fighters graduated to the front lines once mass anti-government protests began sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Book Review: “Middle Eastern Belongings,” by Diane King, editor
by Edith Szanto
The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 27 no. 3 (2010): 121-123.
Algerian stadiums: hotbeds of anti-government protest
By James M. Dorsey
Mass anti-government protests have for now fizzled out on the streets of Algerians towns... more
By James M. Dorsey
Mass anti-government protests have for now fizzled out on the streets of Algerians towns and cities but are alive and kicking in the country’s soccer stadiums where football fans regularly take on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the military and the Islamists.
"Being in a crowd makes us forget our fears. We know that the police can’t do anything, while if we said just half of these things in the street, we would be arrested right away. Stadiums are the only place where we can express our fury," France 24 quoted Amine T., a supporter of popular Algiers club Union Sportive de la Medina d'Alger (USMA), as saying.
Nicknamed Msam’iyas’, women who sing at weddings because of their 23-year old tradition of turning popular melodies into protest songs, the USMA fans chant: “Bouteflika is in love with his throne, he wants another term."
The chant refers to allegations that President Abdulaziz Bouteflika is behind a spate of recent bombings in a bid to enhance his chances of re-elections in polls scheduled for next year by raising the specter of a threat by Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
http://youtu.be/J6BtlfEH-ps
"Our songs focus on current events, on politics and the economy. We sing about politicians, about security, about terrorist attacks. We criticise the current government as well as the extremists of the (outlawed) Islamic Salvation Front. We also criticise the high cost of living in Algeria and the privileges enjoyed by the country’s elite, who send their children abroad to study while so many young Algerians are unemployed and live in poverty," Amine T. said.
In a region dominated by autocratic rulers, Algeria is among the most advanced in encouraging the emergence of soccer as a professional sport. As a result of the regime's reduced involvement in the sport, soccer fans have a tacit understanding with authorities under which they can say what they like as long as they keep their protests confined to the stadium.
"It’s not so much our slogans that worry the authorities, it’s how many of us there are. For example, when riots erupted in the Algiers neighbourhood of Bab el-Oued earlier this year, the Algerian Football Federation temporarily suspended matches. They did this because they were worried that if the police couldn’t control a few dozen youths in the street, they certainly wouldn’t be able to control 60,000 football fans leaving a stadium. I think that the authorities don't actually have a problem with our chants: if we get our anger out inside the stadium, then that’s it, we don’t cause any trouble outside," Amine T. said.
The question is how long the protests will remain within the confines of the stadium. The chanting comes as the focus in the wake of the downfall of Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi shifts to whether Algeria military-dominated government could be the next to succumb to the mass anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
Discontent with the government pervades the country with small protests inside and outside the stadium occurring on a daily scale over the lack of water, housing, electricity or calling for higher wages. A quarter of the population lives under the poverty line and unemployment is rampant.
Many Algerians however are wary of open confrontation. They recall the early 1990s when the military stepped in to cancel elections and squash burgeoning political freedoms because Islamists were emerging as a major force. Mass protests in 1988 in which some 500 people were killed had forced the military to legalise political parties and allow for free and fair elections. But when the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) emerged victorious from the first round of polling in 199, the generals stepped in sparking a decade-long civil war in which some 200,000 people were killed that has left the country deeply divided.
Memories of the bloodletting coupled with increased subsidies and public sector wages and a lifting of the long-standing state of emergency have so far enabled the government to avert the sustained mass protests that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia, sparked a NATO-backed victory in Libya and threaten to force the embattled presidents of Syria and Yemen out of office.
Reinforcing the government's understanding with the soccer fans and the success of its efforts to buy off discontent is the fact that the Arab revolt has so far produced mixed results. The fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has resulted in political turmoil rather than economic progress while Libya, Syria and Yemen are racked by violence.
The military's reassertion of behind-the-scenes control despite 74-year old President Bouteflika's promises of political reforms ahead of next year's parliamentary elections coud however well turn the tables. Mr. Bouteflika, whose health is failing, has lost several of his closest associates over the past year as a result of a military-inspired corruption investigation.
The military's inclination to reinforce the state's role in the economy is thwarting Mr. Bouteflika's efforts to attract foreign investment and diversify the economy. A return to the very policies that brought protesters on to the streets of Algerian cities early this year could well again tip the balance.
"The country is on the edge of an explosion, the regime has only held on by spending billions, but for how long? This is just a postponement," said Sherif Arbi, a pro-democracy activist, on the day the protest didn't happen.
"The chanting of the fans in stadia has continued to replicate the political siituation," adds Loughborough University professor Mahfoud Amara, writing in the July edition of The Journal of North African Studies. "Football is becoming one of the few (allowed) spaces for people to express their frustrations overt the socio-economic and political conditions.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
An Arab Development Bank: Institutionalising Change in Middle East
Autocratic regimes and pro-democracy protesters in the Middle East and North Africa agree on the need for sustainable economic growth and integration into a globalised world. To achieve that, the region needs an Arab Development Bank like the development engines in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
By James M. Dorsey
TEN MONTHS into a wave of popular protests that are reordering the ... more
By James M. Dorsey
TEN MONTHS into a wave of popular protests that are reordering the Middle East and North Africa, the international community has yet to formulate a coherent, region-wide response to the shaping of the new realities that have buried long-standing assumptions and certainties. With the overthrow of three autocratic leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya this year and the embattled presidents of Syria and Yemen teetering on the brink of demise, almost every other country in the region has been swept along by the tidal wave of protests.
Foreign powers – the United States, Europe, China and Russia – have responded ad hoc to the succession of crises rather than viewing them as a groundswell of demand for change that will shape the region’s political map for a decade to come.
To be sure, the world’s powers have different perspectives on the popular push for greater freedom and more economic opportunity. Moreover, the situation differs from country to country.
Nonetheless, if there is one thing all, including the protesters, agree on, it is the need for development that promotes sustainable economic growth, creates jobs for the region’s huge youth bulge, strengthens the private sector and particularly small and medium enterprises, and integrates the region into an increasingly globalised world.
A regional engine for development
To do so, the region needs an Arab Development Bank much like the engines of growth in Asia, Africa and Latin America that function as coordinating operation centres and knowledge hubs. Creation of such an institution may be one of the few things that all parties – world powers with mutually exclusive agendas, embattled Arab leaders and emerging post-revolt governments – can agree on.
The region has the necessary building blocks: funding from the oil-rich Gulf states, a pool of indigenous talent and institutional models like the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Cooperation in the creation of an Arab Development Bank could help shift the basis on which world powers seek to find common ground on ways to halt the bloodshed in countries like Syria and Yemen and respond to the likely eruption of violence elsewhere in the region as the popular revolts spread.
Fuelling the popular revolts is the fact that two thirds of the Arab world’s 300 million people are under the age of 29 in a region with an average youth unemployment rate of 40 per cent. According to the World Bank, Arab nations need to create some 100 million jobs in the next eight years. However Arab governments have not demonstrated vision or leadership to tackle the problem let alone displayed creativity and innovation in devising their policies.
A development bank to seek solutions
Creating an Arab Development Bank would help to break the log jam and create a basis for tackling the most pressing problem in the Middle East and North Africa. It would provide a vehicle for Arab governments to seek solutions and provide a framework for necessary reform, for example, the way membership of the World Trade Organisation forced Saudi Arabia to take a hard look at parts of its legal system.
It would also streamline efforts to cater to post-revolt expectations of a better life and increased opportunity that run high in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya in the wake of the fall of their erstwhile leaders, Hosni Mubarak, Zine El Abedine Ben Ali and Moammar Ghaddafi.
An Arab Development Bank would give the region ownership of its transition at a time that post-revolt governments are sensitive about ensuring their country’s sovereignty. Egypt, for example, cancelled in June plans to borrow US$3 billion from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank because the terms of the loan allegedly violated the country’s sovereignty and would invite public protests.
International community takes first step
The international community took a first step in the direction of the development bank model when the G-8 that groups the world’s biggest economies recently mandated the EBRD to assist the post-revolt governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya as well as Jordan and Morocco, whose monarchs have initiated a process of change. The EBRD is waiting for the 63 countries and institutions that are its shareholders to ratify the expansion of its mandate. The G-8 countries have pledged US$38 billion in new loans to support the region’s transition to democracy.
The EBRD is the world's one financial institution whose raison d'aitre is and was transition. Created in 1991, its task was to assist eastern and central Europe in building market economies and ensuring growth and development in the wake of the demise of communism. The EBRD has much to offer the Middle East and North Africa, yet it remains a Europe-based, Europe-focused organisation rather than one that is oriented to the Middle East and North Africa.
Similarly, the IFC, the World Bank’s private sector development arm, could serve the Arab bank as an example of how to turn a profit on investments in risky markets and become a beacon that gives private sector investors the confidence to follow suit. This is particularly relevant to the Middle East and North Africa where the state dominates the economy.
Finally, the ADB has demonstrated in the Asia-Pacific that youth bulges are as much an asset as they are a challenge. ADB’s focus on promoting education, the development of small and medium enterprises and regional integration ensured that economic growth was driven by a young population that was gainfully employed.
The wave of popular revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa feed on indigenous determination to force change despite the high price in blood that protesters are paying. They demand to be part of the post-revolt transition after the demolition of the old regimes. By giving Arabs ownership of the process, the Arab Development Bank would function as a catalyst and a bridge in an increasingly polarised part of the world.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.
Gulf states keep winds of change at bay – but for how long?
By James M. Dorsey
Oil wealth and demographics have so far largely shielded a majority of the six Gulf... more
By James M. Dorsey
Oil wealth and demographics have so far largely shielded a majority of the six Gulf Cooperation Council members from the brunt of the Arab revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, but have hardly insulated them from the winds of change.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have until now successfully sought to ring fence themselves by supporting Bahrain's brutal squashing earlier this year of mass anti-government protests, bankrolling Oman, splashing billions of dollars on social spending at home and banking on the fact that a majority in the Gulf prefers reform to revolt and the fears of nationals of the smaller Gulf states that public protest would open a Pandora's box with expatriate majorities putting forward demands of their own.
The measures are likely to at best buy the Gulf states time. Their ring fencing strategy is threatened both from within the GCC as well as by the revolt elsewhere in the region and could be undermined if a drop in oil prices makes it more difficult for Gulf governments to maintain their financial largess.
The crackdown in Bahrain backed by GCC troops has moved the protests out of the capital Manama and into Shiite villages, split the opposition along sectarian lines and enabled the ruling Khalifa family to keep for now keep the opposition in check. It has failed however to generate a credible national dialogue that addresses widespread political and economic grievances The point was driven home this week with jailing by a military court of 36 people, including 20 medics who treated activists wounded during the protests and two handball players, to sentences from five to life for participation in the demonstrations.
If Bahrain’s festering problems could at any time abruptly and radically upset the Gulf apple cart, Oman could break the mould of buying off populations with spending and pro-forma baby steps towards more representation by granting its elected Shura or advisory council greater legislative powers. A third more voters will be allowed to vote on October 15 in elections called after mass anti-government protests earlier this year that focused on higher wages, more jobs, an end to graft and more powers for the council rather than a change of government.
Omani leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who has ruled Oman since he ousted his father in 1970, has yet to announce how extensive the council’s legislative powers will be. Nonetheless, granting the council such powers sets the Omani council apart from similar assemblies elsewhere in the Gulf with the exception of Kuwait and Bahrain whose parliaments have long had legislative powers because they are being granted as a result of the revolt sweeping the region and knocking on the door of conservative Gulf states.
This week’s by-elections in Bahrain intended to fill 18 parliamentary seats left vacant after members of the opposition Islamist Al Wefaq party resigned did little to restore credibility to the island’s political process or the government’s claim that they demonstrated its commitment to political reform. Only 17 per cent of registered voters cast their vote after the party declared a boycott in protest against a constitution that it says disallows equal representation by reorganizing election districts to favor Sunni candidates.
Municipal elections this week in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s second, and, in the United Arab Emirates next week for a powerless federal council, half of whose members are appointed, do little to really advance the political process. In an acknowledgement of the winds of change, Saudi king Abdullah announced that women would be allowed to vote and stand as candidates for the country’s advisory council but only in the next election four years from now. The government earlier this year was able to quell protests in its predominantly Shiite, oil-rich Eastern Province. Turnout in Thursday’s election was low with activists calling for a boycott because the toothless councils demonstrated the government’s refusal to empower the public.
Nationals in the UAE as well as in Qatar have been reluctant to take their grievances public because they constitute a minority of their countries’ populations and fear that protest could inspire expatriates, who form a majority, to demand a greater stake in their adopted homes. Nonetheless, criticism of the UAE federation’s is expressed behind closed doors, including a sense among the northern emirates that they benefit far less from the country’s oil wealth than Abu Dhabi, which has the most significant reserves, and Dubai. The UAE has in recent months cracked down on critical voices and reportedly invested a half a billion dollars in the creation of a mercenary force for the eventuality of public protests.
Nevertheless, the Gulf states have by and large in recent months been able to contain whatever impulse for revolt has reared its head. Social spending and cosmetic change however are unlikely to address widespread simmering discontent, much of which involve the same issues that have this year already sparked protests that overthrew the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and have the regimes of Syria and Yemen teetering on the brink.
With an official unemployment rate of ten per cent, Saudi Arabia has to create 5 million jobs for nationals by 2030. In a report last week, HSBC Holdings Plc warned that the kingdom could cut output if falling prices threaten the financing of its budget and $130 billion social spending and stimulus plan. HSBC said it expected an average $90 a barrel oil price next year, a 15 per cent drop compared to its current price of $105, and the point at which the kingdom could decide to reduce production.
For now, most Gulf leaders, like the monarchs of Morocco and Jordan who have been invited to join the GCC, have the advantage that their populations yearn for reform rather than revolution. The Moroccan and Jordanian kings have responded with political reforms that have stopped protests from escalating but have yet to prove that they meet the calls for change. Most Gulf states have yet to follow suit. Their reluctance to be proactive rather than reactive has so far shielded them from the revolt. The question is for how long and at what price.
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.
Embattled Yemeni leader turns to soccer to polish his tattered image
Monday, September 26, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s... more
Monday, September 26, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s meeting Sunday with his country’s national youth soccer team highlights the importance of soccer as a battlefield in the struggle between Arab autocrats and pro-democracy activists.
Mr. Saleh congratulated team for their qualification for the 2011 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup finals barely two days after returning to Yemen from three months of treatment in Saudi Arabia of severe wounds he suffered in an attack in June on his presidential compound by opposition forces.
The Yemeni leader took time out to bask in the success of the squad in a bid to shore up his tattered image in a soccer-crazy country that is teetering on the brink of civil war as a result of sixth months of mass anti-government protests demanding his resignation from 33 years in office. He did so as troops commanded by his son attacked protesters and clashed with rebel army units in battles that raised the death toll of eight days of violence to more than 100 despite Mr. Saleh’s declaration of a ceasefire.
Associating himself with one of the country’s greatest passions is part of Mr. Saleh’s survival strategy that involves as he announced in a televised speech on Sunday early presidential elections. Mr. Saleh’s proposal is unlikely to curry favor with his opponents who demand his immediate resignation, constitutional reform and only then elections. Mr. Saleh repeatedly agreed earlier this year to a Gulf-Cooperation Council (GCC) deal in which he would resign in exchange for immunity from prosecution only to back out at the last minute.
In associating himself with soccer, Mr. Saleh is following in the footsteps of other Middle Eastern and North African autocrats, including the ousted leaders of Egypt and Libya and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who saw soccer as a way to boost their tarnished images.
US embassy cables disclosed by Wikileaks detail the fuelling of nationalist emotions by Mr. Mubarak’s sons Gamal, who the president was believed to be grooming as his successor, and Alaa, to shore up the regime’s image after riots erupted in the wake of a crucial 2009 World Cup qualifier in which Algeria dashed Egypt’s hopes of playing in the tournament’s finals in South Africa. A November 25, 2009 cable said the only time Gamal displayed emotion during a presentation on healthcare was when he discussed the violence that took place in the Sudanese capital Khartoum where the match was played.
A 2009 cable from the US embassy in Tehran describes how Mr. Ahmadinejad sought with limited success to associate himself with Iran’s national team and soccer’s popularity. The Iranian president went as far as in 2006 lifting the ban on women watching soccer matches in Iranian stadia, but in a rare public disagreement was overruled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The Iranian leader has also been hands-on in the management of the Iranian team. The cable reports that he pressured the Iranian football federation to lift its 2008 suspension of star Ali Karimi so that he could play in 2010 World Cup qualifiers, engineered the 2009 firing of Ali Daei as coach, ensured that Mr. Daei’s successor Mohamed Mayeli-Kohan lasted all of two weeks in the job and ultimately was succeeded by the president’s candidate, Afshin Ghotbi.
Mr. Ahmadinejad justified his interference by saying that “unfortunately, this sport has been afflicted with some very bad issues. I must intervene personally to push aside these destructive issues.”
Mr. Saleh heaped praise on the Yemeni youth team. “Your performance has been excellent. You have proved that the Yemeni sports are continuously developed and able to compete in the Arab, regional and international sports events" the president told them. He said that he had followed the team closely during his recovery in Saudi Arabia and that his government would fully support it.
Mr. Saleh’s meeting with the soccer players echoes rifts in society and the game that emerged during the revolts in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya where managers and players often stayed on the side lines of the battle for greater freedom or even expressed support for the embattled leader. In Egypt, militant fans unfurled a banner during one of the first matches after Mr. Mubarak’s demise that read: "We followed you everywhere but in the hard times we didn't find you."
Player and soccer manager attitudes towards the revolts in the Middle East and North Africa reflect a complex relationship of the ruled with the dictator that is evident across the region. It is an attitude that cannot be reduced to vested economic interest or privilege but constitutes an expression of the dictator’s success in getting those he rules to internalize his positioning as the nation’s father. It is that rupture of the internalization articulated in statements of protesters that they had broken the barrier of fear that constitutes the core of the region’s newly found people power.
The internalization of the dictator as a father figure means that players and managers often support protesters’ demands for an end to corruption, greater transparency and more freedom, but object to the perceived indignity to which they see their leader or father as being subjected to. It is an attitude that resembles that of a child who defends his father irrespective of whether his father is right or wrong.
Mr. Saleh’s focus on soccer highlights the struggle between autocrats and activists for control of the soccer pitch and the credibility that emanates from the one institution and venue that commands the kind of deep-seated passion evoked by religion in a conservative swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Gulf.
For militant soccer fans, who emerged as soccer increasingly became a political football, wresting control of the pitch from autocratic regimes is a battle against the yoke of autocratic rule, economic mismanagement and corruption. It also signifies the quest for dignity; for national, ethnic and sectarian identity and women’s rights.
Fans from Algeria to Iran have resisted the efforts by the region’s autocrats to politically control stadiums by repeatedly turning them into venues to express pent-up anger and frustration, assert national, ethnic and sectarian identity and demand women’s rights. “The battle is on the soccer pitch because there is no freedom and no political competition. Talking doesn’t change things. We fought for our rights in the stadium for four years. That prepared us for the day that the revolt against Mubarak erupted,” said Ahmad Fondu, a leader of militant, highly politicized, violence-prone soccer fans in Egypt.
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.
Middle East teeters on the brink as Palestine and protests converge
By James M. Dorsey
The Middle East and North Africa are on the brink of risky sabre rattling that could... more
By James M. Dorsey
The Middle East and North Africa are on the brink of risky sabre rattling that could erupt into armed conflict as the region's ten-month old wave of anti-government protests converges with stalled efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Mr. Abbas’s request for United Nations Security Council recognition has put Palestine back on the agenda of both the international community and anti-government protesters. It has also put US credibility, US ability to influence events in the region and Washington’s relations with its closest allies on the line.
The United States has vowed to veto recognition despite the fact that it has been unable to square the circle of a veto with President Barak Obama's public support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and warnings by Arab leaders that a veto would substantially undermine US credibility and could affect relations with its closest Arab allies, among whom first and foremost Saudi Arabia.
The diplomatic battle is likely to focus on buying time on the vote in a bid to allow for a revival of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that would justify postponing a vote until the talks produce results or agreement is reached on the terms underlying UN recognition. In effect, by formally requesting Security Council recognition, Mr. Abbas hopes to have bought the Palestinians some leverage.
Mr. Abbas has an interest in stepping up pressure on the United States to put its money where its mouth is but he like President Barak Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu does not want to see US credibility undermined to the degree that it no longer can act as the accepted mediator of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. By seeking Security Council recognition, Mr. Abbas has also earned brownie points by having put his Hamas rivals, who opposed his UN initiative, on the defensive – a fact that US and Israeli officials privately acknowledge but do not want to publicly acknowledge.
Mr. Abbas’ strategy has already put efforts to break the stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian peace into high gear. The Middle East Quartet – the United States, the European Union Russia and the UN – called Friday for Israel and Palestine to meet within a month agree on an agenda for peace talks, table comprehensive peace proposals within three months, achieve substantial progress within six months and reach agreement by the end of next year.
Nonetheless, Mr. Abbas’ strategy is not without risks. Mr. Abbas has yet to accept the Quartet’s proposal, which would effectively put his UN recognition bid on hold. He is likely to question the Quartet’s ability to enforce its timetable with Mr. Obama 13 months away from US presidential elections. Mr. Abbas has moreover said that he would only return to the negotiating table if Israel freezes the building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and agrees to the borders of the Palestinian state being based on the borders prior to the 1967 war in which Israel captured the two territories as well as the Gaza Strip. Israel is demanding talks without pre-conditions.
The US elections mean that Mr. Obama is in no position to engage in the banging of heads needed to force Israelis and Palestinians into genuine negotiations that do not amount to a mere going through the motions and that would entail a bruising domestic battle with supporters of Israel. Mr. Abbas does not have 13 months. He will soon have to show some result to meet public expectations created by his request for recognition and prevent Hamas from being able to justify its rejection of his strategy.
Mr. Abbas’ battle cry is likely to reverberate on the streets of Arab capitals where for much of the past ten months Palestine did not figure in mass anti-government protests but were never far from the surface. Protesters in Egypt, one of two Arab states that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, earlier this month stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo forcing diplomatic staff to be evacuated back to Israel.
The pending Security Council vote coupled with a continued Israeli-Palestinian stalemate or peace talks that amount to motion without movement; deteriorating relations between Israel and its closest Muslim ally, Turkey; strains in the ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia; and the fact that embattled Arab leaders in Syria and Yemen would welcome a foreign policy distraction from popular demands for their resignation offers a perfect recipe for increased brinkmanship that could get out of control.
Embattled presidents Bashar al Assad and Ali Abdullah Saleh, who this week returned to Yemen after months of treatment in Saudi Arabia for severe wounds he suffered in an attack on his presidential compound, have both accused foreign forces of instigating the protests that are rocking their regimes. Mr. Saleh’s surprise return to Yemen followed warnings by a prominent member of the Saudi royal family, former intelligence chief Prince Turk al-Faisal, that a US veto of UN recognition of Palestine could trigger reduced cooperation with the United States on resolving the crisis in Yemen and ensuring stability in Iraq.
Messrs. Abbas and Netanyahu steered well clear of brinkmanship in their addresses on Friday to the UN General Assembly offering each other a hand or an olive branch. Yet, the likelihood that Security Council will not recognize Palestinian statehood any time soon coupled with an increasingly defiant and defensive mood in Israel hardly bodes well for the future. The sooner rather than later realization on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip that Mr. Abbas’ UN initiative is not producing results could well signal the spread of the region’s protests to Palestine, pitting Palestinian demonstrators against Israeli security forces.
Israel is already on alert in advance of the Jewish holiday season and a perceived threat from the Sinai that Jerusalem sees as an increasingly lawless territory where crime gangs, Palestinians and Al Qaeda sympathizers are able to operate with relative impunity. The storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo was sparked by an incident earlier this month in which Israeli accidentally killed five Egyptian soldiers.
Tension is also building on the high seas of the Eastern Mediterranean with Turkey warning that its navy will challenge Israel if it seeks to stop Gaza-bound aid ships in violation of Israel’s unilateral blockade of the Hamas-controlled strip. It has also warned Cyprus if it goes ahead with Israeli-backed oil exploration in disputed waters. Turkey earlier this month expelled the Israeli ambassador and froze all military cooperation after Israel refused to apologize for its stopping last year of a Turkish aid ship during which eight Turks and a Turkish-American national were killed. Turkey has further threatened to freeze relations with the European Union if Cyprus next year assumes as scheduled the EU presidency for a period of six months.
All in all, there is no lack of flashpoints and sufficient interest across the region in escalating tension. To prevent increased brinkmanship from getting out of hand, progress in Israel-Palestinian peace talks is a sine qua non. The Quartet’s initiative may be a first step but with doubts that its tight timetable can be achieved it may at best temporarily delay escalation of tension in the Middle East but unlikely to pull it back from the brink.
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
Arab autocrats ignore social media at their peril
By James M. Dorsey
(Text of remarks at Singapore Global Dialogue)
If there is one event or... more
By James M. Dorsey
(Text of remarks at Singapore Global Dialogue)
If there is one event or series of events or region that has fuelled the debate about the impact on policy and policymaking as well as on social movements and protest of technology in general and social media in particular, it is the Arab revolt that has been sweeping the Middle East and North Africa since December.
Many have dubbed the popular revolts in Egypt and Tunisia the Facebook revolution. Indeed, in Syria social media and mobile telephony play a key role in circumventing news blackouts and censorship to get news of the brutal crackdown by the government of President Bashar al Assad to the outside world.
Yet, despite the perception of many, it is not technology that is sparking the revolts. No doubt technology helps, facilitates and accelerates the speed and breadth of communication. New technology and social media impact politics, social movements, communications and flow of news. But the question one has to ask oneself is whether the Arab revolt would have erupted without Facebook and I would think that the answer to that question is a resounding yes. To dub the Arab revolt a Facebook revolution would require revisiting our explanations and understanding of past revolts starting just over the last century Russia and moving on to Iran, the Philippines and for example Indonesia.
To be sure, technology plays a role and indeed a very important role in protest and revolt. In Iran in 1979, it was the cassette that helped Ayatollah Khomeini to gain and wield power and inspire millions to overthrow the Shah, at the time one of the most powerful symbols of US influence in the region In the very initial phase of Tunisia in December it was the mobile phone video of a young many whose humiliation by the regime of President Zine el Abedine Ben Ali persuaded him to set himself on fire that sparked the protests that led to the president's downfall.
Cassettes and mobile telephony are technologies that autocrats understand by and large. Social media, however, is in many ways a game changer, primarily because it involves a degree of engagement and connecting with one another that works in the favour of activists. Activists employ the medium at a time that autocrats have ignored it and failed to understand its power.
Social media constituted and constitutes a window of opportunity for activists. But even when autocrats attempt to engage, they are up against people who understand social media and its opportunities in ways autocrats have yet to grasp and structurally will find difficult if not impossible to grasp. Social media changes in ways earlier technologies did not the way one has to manage communications and public affairs, particularly in a crisis. That requires a degree of sophistication that many but particularly inflexible, ossified autocratic governments often find difficult, if not impossible, to marshal. In fact, marshalling that degree of sophistication would mean a far more far-reaching revision of the way most autocrats do business, a skill Arab autocrats certainly have yet to put on display.
Perhaps most frustrating and most fundamental to autocrats is the fact that the combination of mobile telephony, the Internet and social media has rendered censorship futile. It fundamentally changes the ground rules of communications policies. It turns the shaping of the narrative into something much more complex, in which governments and institutions, autocratic or not have to engage in ways they did not have to in the past. For one communication has truly become a two-way street. Shaping the narrative no longer means control, instead it means engagement. And that is an approach that in the best of circumstances is a difficult one. That is certainly true for autocrats, particularly embattled ones. It requires a mind shift few autocrats, certainly
those that are on the defensive, can easily make.
Just how difficult that process is evident in the problems the Western media have had in adjusting to technological change. It took the media years to understand that format shapes content, that when several years ago broadsheets moved to tabloid formats, the nature of the story changed. Similarly, simply moving the print edition of newspapers lock, stock and barrel on to the Internet was not a workable formula. It failed to recognise changes in terms of interactivity and the way news is consumed and the changing expectations the public empowered by new technology has of what news organisations offer.
As a result, governments and institutions irrespective of the political environment they operate in have to rethink the way they approach communications. They have to pay greater attention to the way they project themselves, their policies and the way that they relate to the public in a new and increasingly complex communications landscape. It also means that, ultimately, governments and institutions will have to become more attentive to public opinion, because whether or not that opinion is blocked from being expressed, it is still there.
The world looked to the Arab street in the wake of 9/11 for change that would eradicate the feeding ground on which extremism feeds. When the Arab street did not come through, government officials, analysts and journalists wrote the Arab street off. Fact of the matter is, widespread discontent continued to simmer at the surface. One only needed to put one's ear to the ground. If the current Middle Eastern revolt or series of revolts and its embracement of technology teaches us anything, it is that where discontent exists but cannot be expressed openly, it will be expressed elsewhere in what constitutes a truer reflection of reality. It is a reality enhanced but not sparked by technology that one ignores at one’s peril. Thank you.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He also is the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.