State Formation and Sovereignty in Middle East
Egypt election offers youth and soccer fans second chance
By James M. Dorsey
The Arab world’s first free and fair presidential elections pose a dilemma and a wake-up... more
By James M. Dorsey
The Arab world’s first free and fair presidential elections pose a dilemma and a wake-up call for militant Egyptian soccer fans and revolutionary youth groups as the two surviving candidates seek to win their votes in a run-off next month in which a majority of the votes are up for grabs.
To many analysts, the results of the first round of the elections that produced ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi as the two surviving candidates, illustrate the marginalization of the revolutionaries and the soccer fans. Yet, a closer look shows that the result constitutes both a narrow defeat and an opportunity for those in Egypt yearning for real change rather than an immediate restoration of stability in the face of growing unemployment and rising street crime.
In a country that 15 months after Mr. Mubarak’s departure has grown protest weary and yearns for a return to economic growth and security, Messrs. Morsi and Shafiq’s victory reflects the fact that they represent the two Egyptian forces with an institutionalized political machinery and political experience. Mr. Shafiq moreover benefitted from a state-owned media that portrayed the youth and soccer fan groups as responsibility for the post-revolt instability and economic decline.
Nonetheless, the two candidates favored by the revolutionaries – independent Islamist Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh and Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi – together won 40 per cent of the vote. They failed to make it into the run-off because they split the vote for change. “The Mubarak camp understood that for them this first round was now or never. They had to win. We were divided in the spirit of democracy. We would have won had we decided to support one candidate,” said a militant soccer fan.
In a potentially explosive move, Mr. Sabahi has called for a partial vote recount, citing violations that he says could change the outcome given that he failed to make the cut for the run-off by a margin of only 700,000 votes. For their part, Messrs. Morsi and Shafiq secured 49 per cent of the vote in a first round in which 13 candidates stood for office. Mr. Morsi’s 25 per cent is a far cry from the 46 per cent the Brotherhood won in last year’s parliamentary election.
As a result, Messrs. Morsi and Shafiq focused barely 48 hours after the first round on seeking to convince youth groups and soccer fans that they stand for change rather than for preserving as much of Mr. Mubarak’s repressive regime as possible or an accommodation that would secure the role, privileges and perks of Egypt’s transitory military rulers. Theirs are campaigns that are already shaping up ones that play on people’s fears – the fear of the restoration of the Mubarak regime versus the fear of Islamic rule. Nonetheless, swaying the youth and soccer fan groups is likely to prove a tall order, albeit one that may be easier for Mr. Morsi than for Mr. Shafiq.
For the youth groups and soccer fans who were at the core of last year’s mass protests that toppled Mr. Mubarak and since then fought pitched street battles against security forces in a bid to force the military to return to its barracks Mr. Shafiq is unpalatable. Mr. Morsi, with youth groups and militant, highly politicized, well organized violence-prone, street battled-hardened soccer fan groups or ultras debating whether to rally behind the Muslim Brotherhood leader or boycott the next election, stands a reasonable chance of securing at least a segment of the revolutionary vote. Nonetheless, it remains for the youth and soccer fan groups a choice between two evils.
Mr. Shafiq, who was forced to resign shortly after the toppling of Mr. Mubarak defended the former president’s regime long after his departure and made criticism of the revolt a pillar of his first round election campaign, sought this weekend to assure the youth groups, soccer fans and undecided voters that he intended to realize the goals of their revolt. He vowed that there would be no "recreation of the old regime" and said he was “fed up with being labeled 'old regime’. All Egyptians are part of the old regime," he said.
That is unlikely to cut him much slack with youth groups and soccer fans who see him as co-responsible for the bloody street battles with security forces and pro-Mubarak thugs in which hundreds of people were killed in the walk-up to the ousting of the president. Mr. Shafiq was appointed prime minister by Mr. Mubarak four days after last year’s protests erupted in a last ditch attempt to squash the demonstrations and left office barely two weeks after the president was ousted.
Addressing the youth groups and soccer fans in an about face at a news conference this weekend, Mr. Shafiq said: "Your revolution has been hijacked. I pledge to bring its fruits between your hands. Egypt has changed and there will be no turning back the clock. We have had a glorious revolution. I pay tribute to this glorious revolution and pledge to be faithful to its call for justice and freedom."
If Mr. Shafiq’s legacy is one that he will find hard to live down, Mr. Morsi will have to alter the perception that youth and soccer fan groups believe that the Brotherhood’s repeated willingness to accommodate the military in the post-revolt phase, including its backing for last year’s March 19 referendum on constitutional amendments, helped derail their revolt aimed at achieving social justice and greater freedom.
That referendum among others contributed to a situation in which decisions of the five-member Elections Committee, headed by an obscure judge originally appointed by Mr. Mubarak to oversee his son’s succession and whose deputy is a judge believed to be close to the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, are final and cannot be appealed. It also has led to a president being elected without his powers being defined by a constitution that has yet to be drafted.
“Morsi has a lot to answer for. He nonetheless stands a fighting chance to convince at least some of us that he is the better of two evils. Shafiq will appeal to those who want a return to stability and an end to the revolution. But he won’t find any buyers among the youth and the ultras,” said one militant soccer fan who is a yet undecided whether he will vote in next month’s run-off.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.
Turkey and Tehran: Caught between a rock and a hard place
Turkish Review
BY JAMES DORSEY, S. RAJARATNAM SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL... more
Turkish Review
BY JAMES DORSEY, S. RAJARATNAM SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, SINGAPORE
Turkey’s besting Iran in the contest for the hearts and minds of advocates of change in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa is proving to be both a blessing and a curse. With tension mounting over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the
perceived window of opportunity for a military strike closing, Turkey faces increased challenges and the threat of a proxy war with Syria and the Islamic republic. This is compounded by the fact that the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia need Turkey in their
effort to further corner the regime in Syria and to isolate Iran, but want to prevent a shift in regional power away from the kingdom and the Israeli state to Ankara -- increasingly held up as the model of an economically successful, Islamist-led democracy.
A concerted effort by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia to further isolate Iran has laid bare the challenges facing Turkey against the backdrop of an ever more severe sanctions regime, increased debate regarding a military strike to prevent the Islamic
republic from developing a nuclear weapon and popular revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
The challenges are evident in the anti-Iranian campaign’s little noticed subtext, with the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel seeking to prevent a shift of power in the region from Israel and the Gulf to Turkey and Iran. All three see benefit in Turkey’s rising star as a result of its emotional support for Palestine, its deteriorating relations with its erstwhile ally Israel, its perceived support for the Arab revolt, an impressive economic performance and the fact that it is ruled by an elected Islamist government. (The Justice and Development Party (AK Party), despite its Islamist origins nd appeal as well as a continued widespread perception of the party as Islamist, rejects this label, arguing that it has put its Islamist past behind it.) However, the trio does not want Turkey’s ascendance to be at the expense of either the kingdom or the Jewish state.
Turkey has so far largely been shielded from criticism that it, like the US, is seeking to maintain the status quo in the Gulf and has failed to match words with deeds in its condemnation of the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters,
one which has already cost more than 5,000 lives. The veil shrouding contradictions in Turkish -- as well as US, Israeli and Saudi -- policy could well soon be lifted, with Syria emerging as a crucial flashpoint in the mushrooming power struggle in the Middle \ East \ and North Africa (MENA). Increasingly it is looking like a matter of when rather than if the wave of protests truly spreads to the energy-rich Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia first and foremost among them.
The gradual morphing of the 11-month old Syrian protests into a civil war, much as was the case in Libya, leaves Turkey stuck between a rock and a hard place. With little appetite for military intervention despite its support of the revolt and warnings
that there would be consequences if Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad failed to engage with his detractors and initiate political and economic reform, Turkey risks being perceived as a paper tiger. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu insisted
Turkey was “ready for all possible scenarios” but had as yet not considered military intervention and didn’t want to. Similarly, he suggested that Turkey could create a military buffer zone within Syria, should tens of thousands of Syrians seek refuge in
Turkey, all the while insisting that such a zone was “not on the agenda.” This reluctance to put its money where its mouth is from Turkey is not a stance it is likely to be able to maintain for much longer, with the failure of Arab League monitors in
Syria, tightening economic sanctions and an Arab League-backed move to get UN Security Council endorsement of its call for al-Assad to step down.
Turkey could end up in the same boat as the US, which has seen its influence and credibility in MENA wane because of its inability to match its words with deeds. Despite its denunciations of al-Assad, Turkey has -- like the US -- remained silent on the need
for change in the Gulf.Like the US it has a vested interest in ensuring that the revolt does not hit the region, Saudi Arabia in particular, with full force.
Consequently, the struggle of US President Barack Obama is one Turkey may well face.The US administration is finding it difficult to wield its influence in a region with a more
assertive Arab public opinion, one demanding that Washington make good on its promises in terms of both the revolution and declared support for an independent Palestinian state.
Obama’s inability to do so, particularly in an election year, means that the US is finding it increasingly hard to perform its past balancing of diametrically opposed demands and
expectations from its allies in the Middle East and North Africa. US support for the toppling of leaders like Egypt’s Gen. Hosni Mubarak has damaged its ties to key autocratic
allies like Saudi Arabia, while the need to be seen to be make real steps in furthering Palestinian independence threatens to put it on a collision course with Israel.
Turkey’s potential policy dilemma is complicated by continued fallout from the 2010 killing by Israeli Special Forces of nine Turkish nationals aboard the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish aid ship seeking to run Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Israel imposed its naval blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in June 2007, with Tel Aviv saying it was necessary to prevent weapons being supplied to
militants in the strip. Critics of the sea and land blockade describe it as collective punishment of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants.
Turkey has painted itself into a corner with its refusal to reverse the downgrading of diplomatic relations with Israel to the level of second secretary and the suspension of all military cooperation. Ankara is adamant that these measures will continue as long
as Israel fails to apologize or offer compensation for the death of the Turkish activists,and maintains its blockade of Gaza. Short term, Turkey’s attitude has garnered it popular support across the Arab and Muslim world, but longer term it has complicated
Turkey’s efforts to shield itself from being drawn into the region’s multiple conflicts.
Turkey’s stance on Israel means it has little (if any) ability to bring Israel and Iran back from the brink of a military confrontation at a time that escalating tension between the two countries threatens to impair Turkey’s efforts to project itself as a regional Islamic,democratic, economic and military power.
While Turkish defense and military officials have little doubt that Israel would prevail in a military confrontation with Iran, even if it is unlikely to fully destroy Iran’s decentralized and heavily fortified nuclear facilities, they worry that likely Iranian retaliatory attacks against Israel, as well as against US targets in the Gulf and
Afghanistan, would escalate confrontation with Iran. As a result, members of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AK Party have criticized him for responding emotionally to Israeli policies. While they remain critical of Tel Aviv, they have urged
Erdoğan to repair relations with Israel in a bid to ensure that Turkey can truly act as a bridge across the West-East divide as well as MENA’s fault lines. The key to Turkey’s role may indeed lie partially in Israel, but Turkey has only a limited window of opportunity to keep the door open as Western nations and Israel increasingly rattle their sabers.
In the event of a pre-emptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, any effort by Ankara to remain on the sidelines risks Turkey’s being portrayed in Tel Aviv and Washington as having not only turned on Israel -- often a yardstick in the West for assessing Turkish foreign policy -- but also sided with the enemy. Already
Tehran eyes Ankara’s condemnation of al-Assad, as well as its mounting popularity in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf, with suspicion. Tehran views these developments as a US-Saudi conspiracy designed to prevent the
Islamic Revolution of over 30 years ago getting the credit it deserves as an inspiration for the Arab revolt and to stymie the appeal of the Islamic republic for states in the turbulent region.
In a series of messages, Iranian leaders warned Turkey that Turkish support for an international campaign against Syria, the Islamic republic’s foremost Arab ally, and Syrian opposition groups would constitute a red line -- warnings Turkey has so far
ignored. Without Syria, Iran would be left only with Iraq as its foremost interlocutor in the Arab world. Iraq lacks Syria’s relationship with groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon
and Hamas in Palestine and is unlikely to be as compliant and strategic a friend as Syria is. Turkey compounded Iran’s narrowing options by not only setting its warnings
aside but going a step further with its agreement to install on Turkish soil a NATO radar system believed to constitute a shield against Iranian ballistic missiles. In recent weeks, it has also started looking at reducing its dependence on imports of Iranian oil as Western powers crack down on Iran’s oil sales and the Islamic republic threatens to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Turkey sought to soften the blow by suggesting that majority state-owned Halkbank would continue to handle Iranian oil payments as long as that does not run afoul of the sanctions regime.
Turkish officials and analysts fear that mounting tension with Iran could produce a covert proxy war, with Iran and Syria supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has stepped up attacks on Turkish military targets in the southeast of the country.Syria and Iran have already halted their security cooperation with Turkey with regard to the Kurds. Conservative Iranian columnists have denounced Erdoğan’s government in
recent months as a Sunni Muslim dictatorship that does not represent half the country’s population -- a reference to Turkey’ large Kurdish and Alevi communities. They warned that Turkey’s minorities constituted its Achilles’ heel and a potentially destabilizing factor.
In a strange twist, Iranian soccer, pockmarked by nationalist and environmental protests in Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province, offers a perspective of how Turkey could respond in a proxy war with Syria and Iran -- one using ethnic minorities as pawns. The soccer protests in the Bagh Shomal and Yadegar-e-Emam stadiums in Tabriz, the capital of the province, signal a rise in Azeri nationalism. This trend would enable Turkey to exploit
secessionist sentiments among its Turkic brethren in the predominantly Azeri East Azerbaijan Province, which borders the Turkic former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, a close Turkish ally.
In the latest soccer incident in Tabriz, fans of Tabriz soccer club Tractor Sazi Tabriz F.C. -- a focus of Iranian Azerbaijan’s identity politics owned by the state-run Iran Tractor Manufacturing Co. (ITMCO) -- wore shirts bearing Turkey and Azerbaijan’s flags and
raised the latter emblem during a match against Fajr-e Sepasi F.C. of Shiraz. “[The] Iranian regime will […] charge them with separatism and even arrest them. The main [Iranian concern] is that the idea of Turkism is strengthening in South Azerbaijan,”
Azeri news website news.az quoted Saftar Rahimli, a member of the board of the World Azerbaijanis Congress, as saying. Rahimli was referring to the East Azerbaijan Province by its nationalist Azeri name.
A conservative, pro-Iranian website, Raja News, confirmed the incident in November, charging that the soccer fans had employed “separatist symbols” and shouted separatist
slogans during the match. Raja News accused the fans of promoting “pan-Turkish” and “deviant” objectives. It urged authorities to ban nationalist fans from entering soccer
stadiums.
The protests during the match against the Shiraz-based club followed similar protests in September and October sparked by the Iranian parliament’s refusal to fund efforts to save
the threatened Lake Orumiyeh and by anti-government protests in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium.The latter occurred both during last month’s 2014 World Cup qualifier against Bahrain and
at a ceremony in May following the death of Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed Iranian defender and outspoken critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
A decision by security forces in early October to bar fans’ entry into the stadium during a match against Tehran’s Esteghlal sent thousands into the streets of Tabriz shouting “Azerbaijan is united!” and “Long live united Azerbaijan with its capital in Tabriz!” Scores were injured as security forces tried to break up the protest. Cars honking their horns choked traffic.
“Wherever Tractor goes, fans of the opposing club chant insulting slogans. They imitate the sound of donkeys, because Azerbaijanis are historically derided as stupid and stubborn.
I remember incidents going back to the time that I was a teenager,” said a long-standingobserver of Iranian soccer.
Mounting Iran-focused tension serves, at least in the case of Israel and Saudi Arabia, multiple purposes that go beyond the nuclear threat. It puts Turkey on the spot and shifts
attention away from the wave of revolts sweeping MENA.
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. This story first appeared in Turkish Review
UAE cancels soccer match amid mounting tension with Iran
By James M. Dorsey
Increasingly strained relations between Iran and oil-rich Arab Gulf states spilled on to... more
By James M. Dorsey
Increasingly strained relations between Iran and oil-rich Arab Gulf states spilled on to the soccer pitch this weekend with the United Arab Emirates cancelling a friendly match against the Islamic republic and recalling its ambassador in Tehran.
The move against the backdrop of a war of words between Iran and Qatar and a regional battle for influence with Saudi Arabia was in protest against a controversial visit by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to two disputed islands in the Gulf 60 kilometres off the UAE coast, Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Iran occupied the two potentially oil-rich islands as well as a third one, Abu Musa, located near key shipping routes at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz in 1971 on the eve of the formation of the UAE as an independent state. The visit was part of tour by Mr. Ahmadinejad of the Iranian Gulf coast. Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if Iran or the United States were to attack its nuclear facilities.
The UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan denounced the visit as a "flagrant violation of the UAE's sovereignty'". His ministry said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Oman would meet on Tuesday, the day the match was scheduled to be played, to discuss the Iranian president's visit. The UAE immediately after cancelling the soccer match withdrew its ambassador from Teheran.
Iranian soccer officials said they would file a protest against the cancellation of the match that with world governing soccer body FIIFA. They noted that Nigeria was ordered to pay $300,000 to the Iranian football federation after cancelling in 2010 a friendly against the Islamic republic on political grounds.
It is not immediately clear why Mr. Ahmadinejad chose to provoke the UAE at a moment that Iran is engaged in six-party talks about its nuclear program in a bid to weaken international sanctions and reduce the risk of an Israeli and/or US military strike. A second round of the talks which resumed in Istanbul this weekend for the first time in more than a year is scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad.
The UAE last year emerged in remarks made by its ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, as the first Gulf state to publicly endorse military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, should peaceful efforts to resolve the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program fail. The UAE at the time also restricted Iran’s use of Dubai to imports goods sanctioned by the United Nations and the United States. The ambassador's remarks reflected the Emirates' mounting frustration with Iran’s refusal to resolve the dispute over the islands.
Mr. Otaiba described a nuclear-armed Iran as the foremost threat to the UAE, and one that needed to be neutralized at whatever cost. His remarks suggested that in case of military action, the UAE would prefer a US to an Israeli strike because that was less likely to fuel popular anger, particularly among Shiites, at a time of widespread civil unrest in the Middle East and North AFRICA
Mr. Otaiba described the UAE as the country most threatened by Iran. Contrasting the threat against the UAE with the danger a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to the US, Mr. Otaiba said that a nuclear Iran would “threaten the peace process, it will threaten balance of power, it will threaten everything else, but it will not threaten you. . . . Our military . . . wakes up, dreams, breathes, eats, sleeps the Iranian threat. It's the only conventional military threat our military plans for, trains for, equips for. . . . There's no country in the region that is a threat to the UAE [besides] Iran."
Satellite imagery last year revealed Iranian installations on Abu Musa that included three missile launch pads, an elaborate underground market, and a sports field with the words “Persian Gulf” emblazoned on it -- a provocative reminder of Iran’s hegemonic view of a region the Gulf states describe as the Arab Gulf. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Zayed last year stopped short of comparing Iran’s occupation of the islands to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. “Iran refuses to allow us to send teachers, doctors and nurses. I am not comparing Iran to Israel, but Iran should be more careful than others,” Sheikh Zayed said.
The UAE has worked to ensure that its security is closely linked to U.S. and European security interests. French President Nicolas Sarkozy last year inaugurated in Abu Dhabi France’s first military base in the region. The base, which comprises three sites on the banks of the Strait of Hormuz, houses a naval and air base as well as a training camp, and is home to 500 French troops. Alongside other smaller Gulf states, the UAE has further agreed to the deployment of U.S. anti-missile batteries on its territory. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are expected to spend up to $100 billion on arms procurement in the next five years.
With his remarks, Mr. Otaiba signalled further that the UAE was willing to pay a price for stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation, and could afford to do so now that Abu Dhabi had cemented its predominance among the UAE emirates following the financial crisis in Dubai.
“There will be backlash, and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and [being] very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country,” Mr. Otaiba said. “That is going to happen no matter what.”
But he added, “If you are asking me, 'Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran,' my answer is still the same: We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.”
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.
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) The struggle for Syria: Iran-Qatar Ties Come under Stress
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
The struggle by Syrian opposition... more
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
The struggle by Syrian opposition forces to topple the Assad regime is sharpening tensions between Iran and Qatar and threatens sectarian fault lines elsewhere in North Africa and Middle East. Qatar increasingly becomes a potential target for retaliation should the US and/or Israel attack Iranian nuclear
facilities.
Commentary
RELATIONS BETWEEN Iran and Qatar, once the closest across the Persian Gulf next to Oman, have deteriorated in recent months to the point that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cancelled a planned trip to Doha in November 2011. Iran has also embarked on a campaign of anti-Qatari rhetoric usually reserved for its most bitter rivals, the United States and Saudi Arabia.
For much of the past decade, Qatar’s foreign policy aimed to maintain good relations with all parties by positioning itself as a mediator in multiple disputes including Iran’s troubled relations with the US and a majority of Gulf states as well as between rival Palestinian factions and warring factions in Sudan.
Fraying close ties
Qatar’s lead however in isolating internationally the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s closest Arab ally, and arming his opponents has broken the back of traditionally close Qatari-Iranian relations. It has ended years of Iran bending over backwards to avoid animosity with Qatar despite the Gulf state’s increasingly open backing of US and European efforts to force the Islamic republic to halt its nuclear enrichment programme and Saudi-led efforts to stymie Iranian influence in the Middle East and North Africa.
Among the smallest of the Gulf states, Qatar is particularly exposed because of its joint ownership with Iran of the South Pars/North Field gas field in the Gulf. Tehran has recently accused Qatar of pilfering the field and poaching Iranian skilled personnel to exploit the fact that it is far more advanced than the Islamic republic in developing its part of the field because of the debilitating impact of the UN sanctions. The accusation echoes Saddam Hussein’s justification for Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and recalls disputed occupation of three islands belonging to the United Arab Emirates.
A potential target for retaliation
Iran is unlikely to repeat Saddam’s disastrous adventure that sparked a US-led allied attack on Iraq. Nonetheless, the assertions raise Qatar’s ranking on the list of potential targets for retaliation should Israel and/or the US decide to use military force to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme. They also significantly undermine Qatar’s role as a back channel to reduce tension between Iran and its US and Saudi detractors.
Iranian media and political leaders have denounced Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and his ruling family as illegitimate. They have accused the emir of being in league with the West and Saudi Arabia to ensure that pro-Western regimes emerge from the popular revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. They have condemned him for allowing the sale of alcohol and pork to expatriates in violation of Islamic law. The allegations echo criticism of the emir’s policies by conservative segments of Qatari society but are unlikely to curry favour with regime opponents in a country that adheres to Saudi Arabia’s austere Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, even if it’s in a more liberal fashion.
Iran’s stepped up attacks on Qatar underline the importance it attributes to the survival of the Assad regime. The Islamic republic had consistently looked the other way in the past five years as Qatar realigned its policy toward Iran in line with US and Saudi pressure on Teheran.
Close Qatari-Iranian relations, only rivalled in the Gulf by those between the Islamic republic and Oman, date back to Qatar’s refusal to back Iraq in its war against Iran in the 1980s; its rejection as a member of the UN Security Council of a resolution in 2006 that imposed initial sanctions on Iran against its nuclear enrichment programme; and its 2007 invitation to Ahmadinejad to attend an Arab summit in Doha, to the consternation of some of its closest Arab allies.
Bending over backwards
As a result, Iran was willing to ignore Qatar’s subsequent support for ever harsher UN sanctions against Iran as well as its participation last year in the Gulf Cooperation Council’s intervention in Bahrain to suppress a predominantly Shiite Muslim uprising against the island’s minority Sunni Muslim rulers. In fact, the two countries went significantly further in cementing their relations with the conclusion of a defence agreement two years ago and a subsequent Iranian naval visit.
The reversal in Iranian willingness to indulge Qatar also underscores the rise of the country’s hardliners who last month won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. The voices in Tehran that continue to see virtue in Qatar’s ability to be a back channel are being drowned out by the anti-Qatari rhetoric.
Iran, squeezed by the damaging of Assad as an effective ally and increasing US pressure as manifested in President Obama’s decision to sanction buyers of Iranian crude, appears to be signalling that it sees offence rather than negotiation and compromise as its best chance to beat ever harsher efforts to force it to reverse course.
Mounting anti-Qatari rhetoric narrows Iran’s ability to keep communication lines open to its detractors and sharpens sectarian fault lines in the Middle East and North Africa at a time that Syria is increasingly becoming a proxy war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the region.
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.
EFA cancels Egyptian league for security and political reasons
By James M. Dorsey
The Egyptian Football Association (EFA), acting on instructions of the interior... more
By James M. Dorsey
The Egyptian Football Association (EFA), acting on instructions of the interior ministry, has cancelled the rest of this season's league matches in the wake of rioting at a match last month that killed 74 people and injured hundreds of others in a move that is apparently designed to further isolate militant soccer fans and fails to hold the police and security forces to their responsibility to maintain law and order.
The league has been suspended since February 1, the day that 74 people, mostly militant soccer fans of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC, were killed in Port Said immediately after a clash with supporters of the Suez Canal town’s Al Masri SC in the worst incident in Egypt’s sporting history, the most lethal since last year’s overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak, and the deadliest soccer incident worldwide since 1996.
Many believe that the incident in which security forces failed to intervene was an attempt to punish the Ahly fans and send a message to other groups of ultras – well-organized, highly politicized, street battle-hardened soccer fan groups modeled on similar organizations in Serbia and Italy – for their key role in last year’s toppling of Mr. Mubarak and opposition since to Egypt’s military rulers. It came as registration started for candidates for Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential election in May.
EFA spokesman Azmy Megahed said the season would not resume because there was not enough time to play the league games before the national team begins training for the 2013 African Cup qualifiers and this year's London Olympics.
Mr. Megahed said that 18 teams, divided into two groups, would compete in a friendly Martyrs Cup tournament in empty stadiums later this month intended to raise money for families of those killed in the Port Said violence and to appease sponsors. He said Al Masri would not be participating in the cup.
“This tournament is aimed at lessening the effects of the league’s cancellation on the clubs and sponsors. Some clubs initially objected to the proposal to cancel the league but they eventually accepted it after the interior ministry said it would not secure the matches,” Mr. Megahed told Al Ahram newspaper.
The EFA, whose board was dismissed after the Port Said incident, is expected to announce within days how it will penalize Al Masri for the violence. Prominent soccer figures have called for the relegation of the team to a lower division.
The decision ends weeks of debate on whether the league should be resumed. Various clubs as well as media organizations campaigned for resumption of the league because they feared the financial consequences of a suspension. Egyptian soccer clubs have suffered significant financial losses as a result of last year’s suspension for three months in the walk-up and aftermath of Mr. Mubarak’s overthrow and repeated orders to play matches behind closed doors as a result of clashes between the ultras and security forces.
Al Ahly, one of Africa’s most crowned clubs which traces its roots to opposition to the government to when it was founded more than a century ago as a meeting place of opponents of the British colonial administration and the monarchy, favored cancellation of the league. A number of Al-Ahly players, including Mohamed Abou Treika, Mohamed Barakat, Ahmed Fathi and Emad Mete'b, said they would not play matches because of low morale and because no one had yet been brought to justice for the bloodshed in Port Said.
Egypt's lawmakers are investigating who was behind the deadly violence. Preliminary results blamed fans and lax security for the incident and suggested that unidentified thugs had been involved in the violence, fueling reports that the violence had been planned rather than spontaneous.
Senior interior ministry officials said last week that those suspected of responsibility for the Port Said violence, including security officials, would be formally charged within days. Authorities have so far detained 54 people on suspicion of complicity.
The EFA decision may have been the soccer body’s only option but raises significant questions. It highlights the deteriorating security in the Arab world's most populous country as instability continues nearly a year after Mr. Mubarak was swept out of power in a popular uprising.
The lack of security is fueled by the reluctance of the police and security forces to enforce law and order in a bid to change the image of law enforcement agencies, which are widely perceived as henchmen of the Mubarak regime. As a result, the police over the past year have been more interested in avoiding clashes with groups that played key roles in the overthrow of the president, including the incident in Port Said, than in carrying out their duties in the belief that this would help them reposition themselves and that insecurity would emphasize the need for a police force to prevent the country from drifting into chaos and anarchy.
The league suspension spotlights the military rulers’ failure to reform the police and security forces and ensure that they carry out their responsibility to ensure law and order. Some in Egypt believe that the suspension in a soccer-crazy country is also designed to further isolate the ultras and youth groups that were at the core of the popular uprising that toppled Mr. Mubarak. The groups have lost popularity in recent months in a country that has become protest weary and yearns for a return to normalcy and economic growth. Anti-government protests and violent clashes with security forces stand in the way of focusing on the economy.
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
The Archaic Polis of Azoria: A Window into Cretan ‘Polital’ Social Structure
by David Small
Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology Vol 23, No 2 (2010) 197-217
This article seeks to build a structural model for the development of the Cretan polis through an analysis of... more
This article seeks to build a structural model for the development of the Cretan polis through an analysis of the civic structure of Archaic Azoria. Azoria’s civic structural network is compared to that of the early polis on mainland Greece. Insights gained from comparative modeling of elite-sponsored civic structure in these two regions are applied to Crete, allowing us to construct a more robust network of early ‘polital’ structure for that island. Results of this analysis indicate that Cretan elites constructed their positions within the Cretan polis through methods such as exclusion. They additionally show that the unique relationship between civic institutions and those of the Cretan inter-polital sanctuary highlights the role that the institutions within the andreion and within civic cult play in polis development, as well as elucidating the unique character of the family–community interface
Algeria bans soccer matches during parliamentary elections
By James M. Dorsey
Fears that anti-government protests in Algerian soccer stadiums and provincial towns... more
By James M. Dorsey
Fears that anti-government protests in Algerian soccer stadiums and provincial towns could again spill into the streets of the capital Algiers have prompted the government to ban matches in early May when Algerians go to the polls.
The ban follows failed efforts by the government to persuade soccer officials to speed up this season’s premier league so that it would end no later than May 10, the day of the parliamentary election, rather than on May 22, the scheduled end of the soccer season. Efforts to rush teams through the season’s schedule in a bid to end this year’s league early were in part thwarted by the cancellation of several matches as a result of unusually heavy snowfall this year.
"We're doing our best to accommodate for the obligations of league and clubs. We believe that it is impossible to end the season before May 10th, the date set for holding the election. We've agreed with the public authorities not to schedule any activities during the week of election, provided that the league and clubs are allowed to resume their activities after the election," Professional Football League (LFP) president Mahfoud Kerbadj told the Maghrebia news web site.
The suspension of matches during election week, a period in which rallies and assemblies are banned by law, is designed to free security forces from having to police stadiums where football fans regularly take on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and the military ever since anti-government protests fizzled out in early 2011.
The suspension reinforces a fragile, tacit understanding between soccer fans and security forces that allows the fans to raise their grievances as long as it is contained to the stadiums. The government fears that militant soccer fan groups or ultras associated with a host of teams, including MC Algiers, Mouloudia Club D'Oran and Jeunnesse Kabyle, while less organized than their Egyptian counterparts, could emerge as a force if the protests again spill into the streets of Algerian cities.
The understanding between the security forces and the fans was made in part possible by the fact that Algeria has been among the most advanced in the Middle East and North Africa in encouraging the emergence of soccer as a professional sport rather than a policy tool for the government.
“In a context of political closure, a lack of serious political debates and projects for society and of a weakened political society, football stadia become one of the few occasions for the youth to gather, to feel a sense of belonging (for 90 minutes at least), to express their frustrations over their socio-economic condition, to mock the symbol of the state’s authority and to transgress the boundary of (imposed) political order and institutionalized language, or the narrative of the state’s political and moral legitimacy,” cautions Mahfoud Amar in a recently published book, ‘Sport, Politics and Society in the Arab World.’
With discontent over lack of water, housing, electricity and salaries pervading the country and erupting almost daily in protests inside and outside of stadiums suspension of soccer matches has become a fixture of Algerian life. The government early last year suspended the league for weeks after protests erupted in Algiers and other cities in the wake of the toppling of Tunisian President Zine el Abedine Ben Ali.
A quarter of the Algerian population lives under the poverty line and unemployment is rampant. Recent protests in Laghouat and other oil and gas cities are symbolic of simmering discontent and have gone viral in social media. The government again suspended soccer matches last year after riots erupted in the Algiers neighbourhood of Bab el-Oued.
“Bouteflika is in love with his throne, he wants another term," is a popular anti-government chant in stadiums, referring to allegations that 74-year old Mr. Bouteflika is behind a spate of recent bombings in a bid to enhance his position in advance of a presidential election in 2014 by raising the spectre of a threat by Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
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. His efforts at political and economic reform designed to attract foreign investment and diversify the economy have been thwarted by the military’s desire to retain its privileges by reinforcing the state's role in the economy.
The military has further signalled in advance of the May election that it will adopt a hard line towards domestic unrest as well as AQIM. It recently recalled from retirement Gen. Bachir Tartag to head the Directorate for Internal Security (DSI). Gen. Tartag made a name for himself during the civil war against the Islamists in the 1990s as one of Algeria’s most notorious hardliners and a brutal military commander.
The appointment positions him as a potential successor to aging Algerian spy chief Gen. Gen. Mohamed ‘Tewfik’ Mediene, widely viewed as the number two within the Algerian regime. It comes at a time that there are no clear successors to Algeria’s ageing but opaque military leadership. Gen. Tartag succeeds Gen. Abdelkader Kherfi who was criticized for having failed to prevent the kidnapping of three European aid workers in October of last year and for his handling of the protests in the first quarter of 2011.
Algeria has recently adopted a number of laws that emphasize security rather than reform and impose restrictions on the media, associations and political parties, which according to Amnesty International violate international conventions signed by Algeria.
While signalling that it will take a hard line against anti-government protesters, the government and the military are banking on the assumption that allowing protests in stadiums as a release valve coupled with last year's lifting of the state of emergency, increased subsidies of basic goods and public sector wage and memories of the massive bloodletting in a decade-long war between the military and Islamist forces will stymie activists’ desire to confront the regime head on. That assumption is reinforced by the fact that the experience of popular uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Yemen has so far produced mixed results and the spectre of protests descending into pro-longed bloodshed and chaos as it has in Syria.
With discontent nonetheless continuously manifesting itself, the government and the military are walking a tightrope. The seeming return to the very policies that brought protesters on to the streets of Algerian cities early last year could at any moment again tip the balance.
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 striker Zidan highlights post-revolt transition problems by calling Mubarak father
By James M. Dorsey
Egyptian soccer star Mohamed Zidan in controversial remarks in
a television... more
By James M. Dorsey
Egyptian soccer star Mohamed Zidan in controversial remarks in
a television interview put his finger on the problem Egypt and other post-revolt Arab countries face in transition from an autocratic to a more open society and the battles to be fought on the soccer pitch.
In an interview with satellite channel CBC Egypt, Mr. Zidan, a striker in the Egyptian national team and for Germany’s FSV Mainz 05, focused attention on the neo-patriarchal role of Arab autocrats as their nation’s father figure, the refusal of a majority of soccer players and managers to join the region’s anti-autocratic revolts and the deep-seated rivalry between crowned Cairo clubs Al Ahly SC and Al Zamalek SC despite the fact that militant soccer fans of both clubs stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the mass protests last year that forced president Hosni Mubarak out of office.
“I kissed Mubarak’s hand when he honoured Egypt after the 2010 African Cup of Nations as I saw him as a father of all Egyptians,” said Mr. Zidan said reflecting the attitude of most soccer players and managers in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world.
Egyptian soccer players stood aside during the mass protests while some prominent managers, including then starred national coach Hassan Shehata and twin brother Ibrahim and Hossam Hassan, who were at the time a Zamalek board member and the team’s coach openly supported Mr. Mubarak, only to be later blacklisted by the protesters.
Mr. Zidan’s description of Mr. Mubarak as a father echoed repeated statements last year by the Hassan brothers and others who said they supported the objectives of the anti-government protesters, but were concerned about the impact on soccer and believed that Mubarak had served his country and should be treated with respect.
Elsewhere, Libyan soccer players only joined the rebels four months into the NATO-backed armed revolt against Moammar Qaddafi when family and friends of theirs were killed in the fighting. In Bahrain where majority Shiite Muslim national soccer team players and other sportsmen organized their own protest against the minority Sunni Muslim government, the royal family failure to ensure equal rights for the religious minority meant that the king was not perceived as the country’s father figure.
Abdelbasset Saroot, a 20-year old player for Syria's national Under-23 team who is one of the leaders of the protest in the embattled city of Homs, is perhaps the foremost exception to the rule.
At the heart of the failure of soccer players and managers to join the popular revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa is what Palestinian-American historian Hisham Sharabi call neo-patriarchy in a controversial book published in 1992 that is still banned in many Arab countries. Mr. Sharabi argued that Arab society was built around the "dominance of the Father (patriarch), the centre around which the national as well as the natural family are organized. Between ruler and ruled, between father and child, there exist only vertical relations: in both settings the paternal will is absolute will, mediated in both the society and the family by a forced consensus based on ritual and coercion."
In other words, Arab regimes franchised repression so that in a cultural patrimonial society, the oppressed participated in their repression and denial of rights. The regime is in effect the father of all fathers at the top of the pyramid. In the words of Egyptian journalist Khaled Diab quoted by journalist Brian Whitacker in a book exploring the nature of Arab soicety, Egypt's problem was not simply an aging president with little to show for himself after almost thirty years in power, but the fact that "Egypt has a million (president Hosni) Mubaraks.”
As a result, the patriarchal values that dominate soccer in addition to its popularity made it the perfect game for neo-patriarchs. Their values were soccer's values: assertion of male superiority in most aspects of life, control or harnessing of female lust and a belief in a masculine God. The identification of the presidents of Egypt, Iran and Yemen - Mubarak, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Abdullah Ali Saleh - as well as Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Qaddafi’s son, Al Saadi al Qaddafi, with their country’s national teams turned their successes and failures into barometers of how their regimes were faring.
It also meant that managers were either appointed or approved by the Middle East’s and North Africa’s autocratic regimes while players were feted by autocrats and showered with gifts including expensive real estate and cars as well as significant amounts of cash for their successes on the soccer pitch.
With the region’s militant soccer fans or ultras – highly politicized, well organized street battle-hardened groups modelled on similar groups in Serbia and Italy – likely to refocus their attention on the beautiful game after having played a key role in revolts that toppled various Arab autocrats and a year of vicious street battles with security forces in downtown Cairo, Mr. Zidan’s remark highlights the strained relations between fans who view themselves as their club’s only truly supporters, players and managers in the region’s post-revolt soccer.
To the ultras, players are hired guns willing to switch allegiances for money while management consists largely of corrupt appointees of autocratic regimes. Al Ahly ultras unfolded a year ago a huge banner addressed to players during their team’s friendly against Harras El-Hodoud that read: "We followed you everywhere but in the hard times we didn't find you." Many reject Egypt’s national team as ‘Mubarak’s team’ rather than that of the nation. Players have since the overthrow of Mubarak pressured the ultras unsuccessfully to moderate their support tactics that include the use of fireworks, flares, smoke guns and abusive chanting because the clubs were being penalized.
In the interview, Mr. Zidan attempted to explain his failure to acknowledge the 74 soccer fans who died in a lethal clash in Port Said earlier this month immediately after a match between Al Ahly and the Sue Canal city’s Al Masry SC. His failure to do so highlighted the intense rivalry between Ahly, established in the early 20as an Egyptians-only meeting place for opponents of Britain's colonial rule as well as the monarchy that was toppled in 1952 and Zamalek, the pro-monarchy club of the British imperial administrators and military brass as well as the Cairo upper class. Their rivalry was so deep-seated that matches between them became the world’s most violent derby.
Ironically it was Mr. Mubarak that brought the arch rivals together.
For the first time in the two clubs’ history, Mr. Mubarak emerged as the figure that fans of both clubs hated more than they hated each other. As a result, ultras of the two clubs joined forces last year on Cairo’s Tahrir Square to throw the country’s father figure off his pedestal.
“I really didn’t mean to provoke the emotions of the Egyptians,” Mr. Zidan said apologizing for his lack of empathy with the killed Ahli fans. “I was really close to a move to Ahly in the past and I respect the club and its fans,” Mr. Zidan insisted.
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.
Crooning goalkeeper leads Homs protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DmQzzgjWN4
Abdelbasset Saroot on Al Jazeera
By James M. Dorsey
Abdelbasset Saroot's promising future as a goalkeeper dims as Syrian forces encroach ever more on opposition strongholds in the battered city of Homs.
A 20-year old player for Syria's national Under-23 team, soccer is for now the last thing on Mr. Saroot's mind. A singer of revolutionary folk songs and a leader of the 11-month old popular revolt in Homs Mr. Saroot leads the life of a marked man on the run.
He often leads protests crooning but after having survived the bombing of his house, three attempts on his life and suffering the loss of his brother and some of his closest friends whose bodies were dumped on the streets of Homs and crushed by tanks, according to Al Jazeera, Mr. Saroot leads the life of a fugitive. Twelve people, including his brother were killed in the attack on his home. At the time, he held up for television cameras empty shells, which he described as the "Iranian heavy weapons" with which the protesters had been attacked.
He shies day light, travelling only at night. Constantly on the run, he never stops moving and stays at any one place at most a few
days.
"It's worth it. I'm free. I've travelled all over the world to play football. But freedom is not just about me or about traveling. What about everyone else? Freedom is a big word. It's about freedom of speech and freedom of opinion. If you see something wrong being done, freedom is being able to talk about it," Mr. Saroot, dressed in a black Salsa music t-shirt, told Al Jazeera.
Alerted to Mr. Saroot's courage and circumstances, originally reported on The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog on August 4 and November 13, senior Asian soccer officials said they would look at ways to support him. "It’s in our purview to defend players," one official said. It was not immediately clear what soccer bodies can do beyond condemning the violence and threats Mr. Saroot and much of the population are enduring.
"There is something I want to tell everyone. I lost one of my brothers but this is something I shouldn't be saying because we've lost 13,000 people and a lot of people have been detained or have disappeared. ... They are all like my brothers ... It's a big honour for everbody to say: 'We have a martyr in this family,'" Mr. Saroot said, describing the regime of embattled President Bashar al Assad as "monstrous."
A hero in the eyes of Mr. Assad's opponents and an Islamist traitor according to the president's regime, Mr. Saroot described his role as "a big responsibility to lift people's morale. We always try to stay optimistic about the future. The more optimistic we are the more the revolution keeps going," Mr. Saroot said.
In an earlier interview, Mr. Saroot decried the lack of international support for the uprising against Mr. Assad. "We have become too used to hearing about the issuing of resolutions which are never implemented," Mr. Saroot said.
Mr. Saroot asserted in a You Tube video last summer that the Assad regime was accusing him of being a Salafi fundamentalist who seeks to emulate life as it was in the time of the Prophet Mohammed, and that is seeking to turn Syria into a Salafi state.
“This accusation was made when we took to the streets, demanding freedom for the Syrian people. I am now wanted by the security agencies, which are trying to arrest me. I declare, in sound mind and of my own volition, that we, the free Syrian people, will not back down until our one and only demand is met: the toppling of the regime. We are not Salafis, and there is no truth to the regime's claims about armed groups or a Salafi emirate,” Mr. Saroot said.
In August, Mr. Saroot reported on YouTube that Syrian security forces had arrested national soccer goalkeeper Mosab Balhous on charges of sheltering armed gangs and possessing suspicious amounts of money. He said Mr. Balhos too had been accused of participating in anti-government protests and wanting to establish an Islamic emirate in the city of Homs.
In a column last year in the London-based Arabic daily Al Quds al Arabi, writer Elias Khoury describes a documentary entitled Al Waar (Rocky Terrain) by an anonymous Syrian filmmaker that portrays Mr. Saroot as a leader of the protests and a composer of some of its slogans and songs.
“His features are Bedouin, he is a thirsty person who is not satisfied with only freedom … It is he who composes for the nocturnal gatherings for a popular festival in the suburbs of Homs where the air bears bullets. The slogans are an appeal by a decapitated nation and the will of a people determined not to bow to anyone,” Mr. Khoury writes.
"Go is the cry of the brave, A cry of the city with Bedouins, A cry of all religions, The cry of Syria and the land it covers: Let them leave him and his dogs and the destruction they have wrought," the film quotes the chants of the protesters crafted by Mr. Saroot.
Mr. Khoury describes Mr. Saroot as the protagonist of the film whose voice challenges the Assad forces’ weaponry. "Our weapon is our voice," Mr. Saroot says in the film.
The film describes how the regime has put a reward of one million Syrian pounds ($20,000) on the heads of alleged Salafis like Mr. Saroot. The goalkeeper smiles at the word Salafi and chants: “Shed tears, shed for the young victims and Syria.”
Throughout the film a picture of Bashar al-Assad superimposed on that of his father, Hafez al-Assad, constitutes the background with the words, ‘Assad or nothing,’ a play on the slogan that accompanied the portrait of Hafez during his rule: ‘Our leader in eternity and beyond.’
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.
Ultras call for retaliation as parliament blames fans and security for Port Said deaths
By James M. Dorsey
An Egyptian parliamentary inquiry into this month’s death of 74 soccer fans in the Suez... more
By James M. Dorsey
An Egyptian parliamentary inquiry into this month’s death of 74 soccer fans in the Suez Canal city of Port Said has blamed fans and lax security for the worst incident in the country’s sports history. The inquiry’s preliminary report also suggests without going into detail that unidentified thugs were involved in the violence that erupted at the end of a match between Port Said’s Al Masri SC and crowned Cairo club Al Ahli SC.
The report is scheduled to be debated in parliament on Monday. It was drafted by a committee headed by Ashraf Thabet, the assembly’s first deputy speaker and a member of the Salafist Al-Nur Party, which is believed to enjoy backing from Saudi Arabia and advocates adherence to Islam in line with 7th century practices at the time of the Prophet Mohammed.
A controversial member of Al Nur, Salafist preacher Sheikh Abdel Moneim El-Shaha, was last week attempting to talk his way out of reports that he had condemned soccer as a sin and said that the 74 fans were killed because they had been watching a forbidden form of entertainment. Mr. El-Shaha charged that he had been misquoted.
The parliamentary report is unlikely to reduce tension between the fans or ultras – militant, well-organized, highly politicized, street battle-hardened soccer support groups modelled on similar organizations in Serbia and Italy – and Egypt’s ruling military and security forces. At least 16 people were killed in the wake of the Port Said incident in six days of fighting between security forces and youths seeking to storm the interior ministry in central Cairo.
The military last week said troops and tanks would ensure security in advance of a general strike last weekend called by activists and youth groups to demand the immediate return of the military to their barracks and the formation of a civilian government. The failure of the strike on the first anniversary of the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak after religious leaders called on Egyptians to ignore it signalled the increasing isolation of the ultras – the military’s most militant opposition – and other activists who led the protests that forced the Egyptian leader to resign after 30 years in office.
Ultras Ahlawy, the Al Ahli support group that lost scores in the Port Said incident, called in a statement on Facebook on the eve of the release of the parliamentary report for retaliation against those responsible for the death of their comrades. The statement also called for the cleansing of the interior ministry, under which the security forces, the focus of their animosity whom they accuse of engineering the fatal brawl, resort.
The interior ministry or dakhliya symbolizes for many ultras their battle for karama or dignity. Their dignity is vested in their ability to stand up to the dakhliya, particularly in the wake of Port Said; a sense that they no longer can be abused by security forces without recourse; and the fact that they no longer have to pay off policemen to stay out of trouble.
“This Wednesday will mark two weeks since the passing of some of Egypt’s finest youth. They died because they refused to live without dignity and screamed loud calling for freedom,” the Ultras Ahlawy statement said.
It demanded an investigation of what it alleged was the failure of the interior ministry and the security forces to ensure safety and security during the match in which Port Said defeated Al Ahli 3:1 as well as “the cleansing of the ministry of interior and a full reconstruction of its system.”
The ultras further demanded that authorities drop references to involvement of a “third” party in the incident, a reference to the military’s attempt to position the Port Said incident as part of a foreign conspiracy to destabilize post-revolt Egypt. The ultras said they would not “accept the outcome of an investigation that blamed an anonymous (group for an incident) that wasted the lives of the martyrs.” They demanded the immediate arrest of the culprits whom they said were known to authorities “so as not to put us in the position of taking the right (into our own hands).”
While the Ultras Ahlawy charge that security forces failed to intervene in the lethal attack on their members and accuse thugs hired by the government of instigating the incident they also appeared to agree with the parliamentary inquiry’s conclusion that television footage documents the involvement of Al Masri fans in the attack on them. Ultras Ahlawy believes it was targeted because of its key role alongside other ultras groups in the toppling of Mr. Mubarak and its opposition since then to military rule.
Leaders of the ultras suggested that the incident was intended to exploit waning public support for the ultras, which were revered for their fearlessness, years of confrontation with security forces in the stadiums, role in manning defending Tahrir Square during the anti-Mubarak protests last year and militant support of their clubs. Their militancy and contentious street politics is however increasingly out of step with the mood in a country that is protest weary, retains confidence in the military despite its brutality, is frustrated that its revolt has not produced immediate tangible economic fruits and yearns for a return to normalcy so that Egypt can recover economically.
Deputy Parliament Speaker Thabet said in parliament Sunday that the Port Said incident had been sparked in part by incitement on sports TV channels. Disclosing details of the inquiry, he charged that thugs and hard core soccer fans had taken "advantage of the tension surrounding the game to achieve some political gains," but gave no details. Mr. Thabet promised to release the names of the instigators a later stage. He said 12,000 tickets had been sold for the match but 18,000 spectators had been admitted to the stadium.
Mr. Thabet said fans were not inspected while entering the stands and there was a lack of order inside and outside the stadium. "Security facilitated, allowed and enabled this massacre," he said, adding that security forces ignored mounting tension in advance of the Al Masri-Al Ahli match. "Both ultras and thugs attacked Ahly fans and this is part of Ultras' culture," he said.
Mr. Thabet acknowledged that similar pitch invasions had occurred in Port Said in the past year. Like in stadiums elsewhere in Egypt, security was often lax and security forces where more interested in avoiding clashes with fans in a bid to shore up their tarnished image as the Mubarak regime’s henchmen than in ensuring security. The Port Said incident has sparked suspicion that more than just laxness was involved because stadium exits that were normally open had been locked and because security forces refused to intervene despite the fact that the brawl had turned lethal.
The parliamentary inquiry also took the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) to task for violating world governing body FIFA’s security standards that call for monitoring by a security official of the security and political situation before, during and after a match.
The charge cast a further shadow over FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s demand for the reinstitution of the EFA board that was last week dismissed by the government in the wake of the Port Said incident. Mr. Blatter’s charge that the dismissal constituted political interference rings hallow given that the board consists of Mubarak appointees who furthered the ousted president’s efforts to control and manipulate the game to his political benefit. It also rings hallow given the fact that despite a nominal 2013 FIFA deadline for a restructuring of Egyptian soccer FIFA essentially tolerated the fact that the vast majority of Egyptian premier league clubs fail to meet the soccer body’s criteria for league membership.
FIFA sources said the Mr. Blatter’s demand was part of a flawed communications strategy designed to position the FIFA president as a leader and defender of soccer in a bid to repair the reputational damage he suffered as a result of a series of scandals in the last year that have rocked the soccer body and tarnished its image and that of its president. One source described the strategy as dating from the 1930s.
The sources said FIFA’s announcement that it was donating $250,000 to the families of those who died in Port Said was part of Mr. Blatter’s strategy. They noted that it was being handled personally by the FIFA president rather than the soccer body’s emergency committee and doubted that there was a mechanism to distribute the funds. In a separate move, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) which is headed by a controversial Blatter ally, Issa Hatou, said it was donating $150,000.
In the first regional fallout of the Port Said incident, Tunisia’s interior ministry ordered that all league matches be played behind closed doors because of concern about deteriorating security. Le Presse sports editor Sami Akrimi said the decision stemmed from the failure of the Tunisian soccer body to work with fan groups to ensure security.
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.
Port Said deaths send businessmen, politicians and clerics scrambling
By James M. Dorsey
The deaths of 74 militant soccer fans in a politically loaded soccer brawl in the... more
By James M. Dorsey
The deaths of 74 militant soccer fans in a politically loaded soccer brawl in the Egyptian Suez Canal city of Port Said has political forces across the country’s political spectrum scrambling to score points and counter a tsunami of rumours as security forces appear to have gained the upper in days of clashes with ultras and youth groups near the interior ministry in downtown Cairo.
With the military and security forces accused of at best negligence and at worst having deliberately instigated the violence that led to the death of the fans immediately after last week’s match between Port Said’s Al Masri SC and crowned Cairo club Al Ahli SC, businessmen associated with the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak and fundamentalist Salafi politicians who advocate Islamic practice as it was at the time of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century are being drawn into the maelstrom.
Yasser el-Mallawany, the chief executive of EFG-Hermes, the Arab world’s largest privately owned, London and Cairo-listed investment bank, denied allegations that he had funded an unidentified group of thugs who reportedly had mingled with the Al Masri fans and instigated the violence that led to the 74 deaths. Al Masri fans said they had noticed a group of people in the stadium that they had never seen before.
The allegations were reported after Mr. El-Mallawny was barred from boarding a flight from Cairo to Dubai on instructions from Egypt’s attorney general. Associated Press quoted a justice ministry official as saying that Mr. El-Mallawny was together with Mr. Mubarak’s imprisoned son Gamal, whom he was grooming as his successor, being investigated for having paid the thugs to attack the Al Ahli ultras. The ultras played a key role in toppling Mr. Mubarak and have since been the most militant thorn in the side of the military that succeeded the ousted president with a promise to lead the country to democracy.
Mr. El-Mallawany was a member of the policies high committee of Mr. Mubarak's National Democratic Party. He said he was on the committee to "give ideas regarding the technical issues of finance".
Sources close to EFG-Hermes said Mr. El-Mallawny was among 300 people barred from leaving Egypt because of their alleged ties to the ancient regime and corruption but that it had nothing to do with the incident in Port Said. Gamal Mubarak is believed to have an 18 percent stake in one of EFG Hermes’ numerous subsidies, EFG-Hermes Private Equity that contributes an estimated 7% per cent to the bank’s total profits. EFG-Hermes has denied managing any funds or portfolios for Mr. Mubarak or members of his family.
“No charges of any form have been laid against Mr. El-Mallawany. The firm has been informed that the ban was issued as a precautionary measure, as similar bans have been imposed in the past 12 months on other individuals in Egypt,” EFG-Hermes said in a statement.
EFG-Hermes has offices in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Lebanon and employs more than 850 people. It has advised companies such as Vodafone, Sainsbury and Heineken on deals in the region.
At the very other end of Egypt’s political spectrum, Sheikh Abdel Moneim El-Shaha, a controversial Salafist preacher, was attempting to talk his way out of reports that he had condemned soccer as a sin and said that the 74 ultras were killed because they had been watching a forbidden form of entertainment. Mr. El-Shaha charged that he had been misquoted. He said that while he considered soccer a sport like swimming, archery and horse riding that was encouraged by Islamic law, he objected to large sums of money being spent on the sport instead of on youth centers.
Mr. El-Shaha however did little to correct the impression that he was in-line with hard-line Salafist beliefs that condemn soccer as a game of infidels with his refusal to acknowledge the 74 dead ultras as ‘ash-shuhada’ or martyrs, an Islamic and Arabic term used to describe among others those who died in innocence. The families of the 74 describe their lost ones as martyrs.
"What I said exactly was that not everyone who died unjustly is a martyr. And the people who died in Port Said died unjustly and no more. In sharia (Islamic law), a martyr is someone who died in battle or dies a painful death, drowns, or dies under the rubble of a building. But those who died in Port Said only died unjustly," Mr. El-Shaha told Al Arabiya.
Mr. El-Shaha was quoted by Al Arabiya Asharq Al-Awsat and El-Badil as telling an audience in the El-Fath mosque in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, a Salafist stronghold, that the 74 died while watching an a forbidden sport that is alien to Muslims, distracts from praying to God and that had been imported from the West. “They were not in a war fighting for God, they were just having fun. This fun distracts Muslims from worshipping God,” Mr. El-Shaha was quoted as saying.
The Salafist Noor party won a quarter of the votes in Egypt’s recent first-post Mubarak parliamentary election. Mr. El-Shaha, who failed to win a seat in that election, earlier stirred controversy by demanded that statues which he denounced as idols be covered with was and condemning the writings of Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz as “prostitution literature.”
Mr. El-Shaha’s comments are in line with the banning of soccer on the threat of execution by the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Shabab militia, which controls chunks of war-torn Somalia, earlier remarks by Egyptian Salafi Sheikh Abu Ishaaq Al Huweni and a 2005 attempt by Saudi Salafi clerics to rewrite the rules of the game to allegedly Islamify it.
“All fun is bootless except the playing of a man with his wife, his son and his horse… Thus, if someone sits in front of the television to watch football or something like that, he will be committing bootless fun… We have to be a serious nation, not a playing nation. Stop playing,” Sheikh Al Huweni said in a religious ruling published in 2009 on YouTube. Al Noor has yet to distance itself from Sheikh Al Huweini’s comments.
Al Noor has also yet to take issues with views such as those expressed in 2005 in a controversial ruling by militant clerics in Saudi Arabia, the world’s most puritanical Muslim nation where soccer was banned until 1951. The ruling denounced the game as an infidel invention and redrafted its internationally recognized International Football Association Board (IFAB) rules to differentiate it from that of the heretics. It banned words like foul, goal, and penalty and like shorts and T-shirts and ordered players to spit on anyone who scored a goal.
In Egypt’s political center, a parliamentary committee meanwhile blamed Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim for the deaths of some 15 protesters in the wake of the Port Said incident and called for a vote of no confidence in the minister.
Outside the interior ministry security forces appear to have gained control of streets that were the scene of four days of pitched battles with ultras and youth groups. Leaders of the ultras have denied that they were involved in the fighting but admit that many of those attempting to storm the interior ministry are members of their groups who are beyond their control. The security forces gained the upper hand by using tear gas and bird shot after attempts to mediate a truce by clerics and activists had failed.
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.
China Needs to Change Mideast Foreign Policy
By James M. Dorsey
China’s decision to veto a condemnation of Syria’s regime at the United Nations... more
By James M. Dorsey
China’s decision to veto a condemnation of Syria’s regime at the United Nations Security Council is just the latest signal that illustrates the need for a fundamental change in Chinese foreign policy.
The question is no longer whether officials in Beijing will abandon the principle of non-interference in other countries’ affairs to protect their expanding interests around the globe. The question is when.
China joined Russia in vetoing last weekend’s resolution partly for fear that backing the UN’s rebuke of a government’s brutal suppression of its people may come back to haunt China itself, given its treatment of Tibetans and of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
Yet China’s economic growth and associated need to secure resources increasingly have been at odds with this long-standing policy of being aloof. That’s especially true in the resource- rich region that stretches from the Atlantic coast of Africa to Central Asia and the subcontinent, much of which is now in revolt.
Over the past year, a series of incidents in the region have tested China’s non-interference policy, but without serious damage to the country’s image. With China’s veto of the UN resolution on Syria, Chinese determination to cling to a principle rooted in 19th-century diplomacy seems set to backfire.
Painted Into Corner
Rather than portray China as a global power that seeks good relations with all and -- unlike the U.S. -- doesn’t meddle in other countries’ affairs, last weekend’s veto of a relatively toothless condemnation of the regime in Damascus has painted China into a corner. The nation now appears to support an international pariah that brutally suppresses its people, a stance that risks roiling ties with some of China’s most important energy suppliers in the Arab League, which sponsored the defeated UN resolution.
In Libya, China initially avoided its policy dilemma. There, the Chinese abstained from voting on a UN resolution that effectively authorized international military intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds. Chinese diplomats then went a step further. They supported a Security Council resolution that imposed an arms embargo and other sanctions on the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and endorsed referral of the regime’s crackdown to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
China cultivated relations with both Qaddafi’s embattled regime and the Benghazi-based rebels. Yet that evenhanded approach didn’t prevent the rebels from threatening a commercial boycott, particularly after they found documents purporting to show that Chinese defense companies had discussed the supply of arms with Qaddafi operatives. A Chinese Ministry of Commerce delegation visited Libya this week in a bid to recover at least some of the losses that China, Libya’s biggest foreign contractor, suffered with the evacuation last year of 35,000 workers who were servicing $18.8 billion worth of contracts.
The Arab revolt is certain to force not only a revision of China’s policy of non-interference but also of the employment practices of Chinese companies. With new and long-standing governments in the region desperate to reduce unemployment -- a key driver of the revolts -- authorities in Libya and elsewhere are likely to demand that Chinese construction companies employ local, rather than imported, labor.
Social Media Criticism
Moreover, Chinese authorities have twice in recent days come under criticism in the country’s social media for the government’s inability to protect workers abroad after 29 Chinese nationals were kidnapped by rebels in Sudan’s volatile South Kordofan province, and an additional 25 were abducted by restive Bedouin tribesmen in Egypt’s Sinai Desert. The critics charged that as a superpower, China needed to project its economic, as well as its military, muscle to stand up for those who put their lives at risk for the national good -- much like the U.S. sent Navy Seals to rescue two hostages in Somalia.
Censors were quick to remove the critical messages from social media because they touched a raw nerve. A policy of winning friends economically rather than make enemies by flexing military muscle is increasingly inconsistent with China’s dislike of appearing weak and vulnerable. National pride was at stake. The dilemma sparked public debate, with official media saying China needs time to build the necessary military capability to intervene when its nationals are in jeopardy, while others argue that China’s inaction may encourage further attacks.
The need for a revised approach to the Middle East and North Africa, as well as countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, will become increasingly clear as China boosts its investment in Central and South Asian nations before the scheduled 2014 withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, where China has secured oil and copper rights.
Reports that China is considering establishing military bases in Pakistan’s insurgency-plagued northwestern tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan, and a naval base in the Balochistan port city of Gwadar, could create further pressure for change. China holds the Pakistan-based East Turkestan Islamic Movement responsible for attacks last year in Xinjiang’s city of Kashgar. Defeating the movement is key to Chinese plans to keep regional trade and energy flowing, and the bases in Pakistan may tempt China to take on a role as local policeman.
If it takes an event to drive a change of China’s foreign policy, Yemen may prove to be the spark. With $355 billion worth of trade with Europe and a quarter of China’s exports traveling through Bab el Mandeb -- the strait that separates Yemen from Somalia and Djibouti -- China cannot afford a collapse of law and order in Yemen. The crisis-ridden country is countering multiple threats, including an al-Qaeda insurgency after mass protests and intercommunal fighting that forced the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and paved the way for elections later this month.
Policy Breached Before
China has breached its non-interference policy to respond to these pressures in the recent past. Its deployment of naval vessels off the coast of Somalia to counter piracy, for example, constituted the first Chinese venture of its kind.
But China’s status as an emerging economic superpower demands that it become a more muscular global actor to pursue its interests. Ultimately that will mean taking positions on domestic disputes and conflicts around the world that have a bearing on China’s global national-security interests, the very opposite of the stance it adopted on Syria. Similarly, China will need to maintain military bases in key regions that serve to secure Chinese demand for natural resources, and to satisfy domestic calls to ensure the safety of its nationals abroad.
In short, China will have to use virtually the same tools employed by the U.S., shouldering the risks of a foreign policy that is interest-driven and therefore, at times, contradictory.
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.
Port Said helps forge bridges and reopens fault lines in Egypt
By James M. Dorsey
With the street battles in Cairo between militant soccer fans and protesters becoming... more
By James M. Dorsey
With the street battles in Cairo between militant soccer fans and protesters becoming ever more vicious, the death of 74 supporters of crowned Cairo soccer club Al Ahli SC in Port Said is sparking a reconciliation among once implacable foes while at the same time solidifying emerging fault lines in Egyptian society.
Budding ties between arch rival ultras – militant, well-organized, highly-politicized, street-battled hardened soccer fans – of Al Ahly and its arch rival, Cairo’s storied Al Zamalek SC, have been boosted by the lethal incident in Port Said.
Ultras of the two Cairo teams who had battled one and other for years stood a year ago for the first time in their five-year old history shoulder-to-shoulder on Tahrir Square manning the front lines of the protests that forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office. They were the first to absorb attacks by security forces and Mubarak loyalists.
Throughout the year, ultras of both teams repeatedly found themselves on the same side against a common enemy during the storming of the offices of the hated State Security Service, which has since been renamed the National Security Force; protests demanding the resignation of the now dismissed board of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA); the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo last September; and vicious street battles in November and December in streets near Tahrir in support of their call for an immediate return to their barracks of Egypt’s military rulers. Some 50 people died and more than 1,000 were wounded in those clashes.
With many Egyptians convinced that the incident in Port Said constituted a planned, deliberate targeting of the Al Ahly ultras, ultras of all stripes see the incident as an attack on all ultras in a bid to break their resolve as the most militant opposition to the military’s designs to shape the future of Egypt in its image in a bid to preserve their Mubarak era perks and privileges.
As a result, ultras of Al Ahly and Al Zamalek are again together braving tear gas and birdshot in their effort to storm the interior ministry in central Cairo, under which the hated police and security forces resort. At least 12 people have been killed and hundreds wounded.
Ironically, the Port Said tragedy immediately after a match in which the city’s Al Masri SC defeated Al Ahly, may help restructure strained relations in Egyptian soccer and launch it on a badly needed road of reform.
The failure of the overwhelming majority of players to support last year’s uprising against Mr. Mubarak had further strained relations with the ultras who view themselves as the only true supporters of their clubs. To them, players are hired guns willing to switch allegiances for money while management consists largely of corrupt Mubarak appointees. Al Ahly ultras last March unfolded a huge banner addressed to players during their team’s friendly against Harras El-Hodoud that read: "We followed you everywhere but in the hard times we didn't find you."
Players have since pressured the ultras unsuccessfully to moderate their support tactics that include the use of fireworks, flares, smoke guns and abusive chanting because the clubs were being penalized.
However, in a sign of the changing times, the Al Ahly ultras this weekend apologized on an especially created Facebook page named “We are sorry Shika” to Zamalek winger Mahmoud Abdel-Razek aka Shikabala, widely viewed as Egypt’s top player, for routinely abusing him verbally during their clubs’ derbies. The abuse frequently lead to Shikabala and Al Ahly fans trading insults in heated exchanges.
Responding in an interview on the Zamalek club’s website, Shikabala welcomed the apology. “Despite the cruelty of what happened in Port Said, this disaster played a role in uniting the fans of all clubs. It might be a turning point in ending intolerance and hatred in Egyptian football. I will go to the Ahly club along with my teammates to offer our condolences to the families of Port Said martyrs. The fans of Ahly are my brothers. I hope Ahly and Zamalek fans can sit together in the stands without barriers," he said.
Players, fans and clubs may also find common ground in opposing a demand by Sepp Blatter, the president of world soccer body FIFA that the government reinstates the EFA board dismissed in the wake of Port Said on the grounds that its firing constituted political interference. Clubs and fans have been demanding the resignation of the board for the past year. Mr. Blatter’s call rings hallow given that the board consists of Mubarak appointees who further the ousted president’s efforts to control and manipulate the game to his political benefit.
It also rings hallow given the fact that despite a nominal 2013 FIFA deadline for a restructuring of Egyptian soccer FIFA essentially tolerated the fact that the vast majority of Egyptian premier league clubs fail to meet the soccer body’s criteria for league membership. These criteria include that an owner can only have one club in the league – several Egyptian premier league teams are military owned --; must have its own stadium – virtually no club does and if it does as in the case of Wadi Degla was not allowed by the security services to use it; and should be financially self-sufficient – few Egyptian clubs are.
If Port Said is setting the stage for a reordering of Egyptian soccer, it is also reinforcing emerging fault lines in a country that is protest weary, retains confidence in the military despite its brutality, is frustrated with the lack of immediate economic benefit from the revolt and yearns for normalcy so that Egypt can return to economic growth.
The public mood increasingly meant that the ultras, revered for their fearlessness and contribution to the ousting of Mr. Mubarak, were growing isolated with the public opting for electoral politics and turning its back on contentious street politics. Port Said brought the ultras out of their isolation with thousands of
Egyptians in recent days joining their efforts to seek retribution by attacking the interior ministry.
It also sparked counter demonstrations. “Those who love Egypt should not destroy it” and "Police or people…we are all Egyptians," demonstrators chanted demanding a ceasefire between the ultras and the security forces. Residents on Cairo’s Mansour and Mohammed Mahmoud streets, the scene of the battles, complain barricades erected by the security forces and the clashes were disrupting daily life in their neighborhood.
Various groups including relatives of Port Said casualties, members of parliament and the imam of Tahrir Square’s Omar Markram mosque, Mazhar Shahin have been seeking to negotiate a ceasefire. Ahmad Maher, a leader of the April 6 movement that played a key role in the uprising against Mr. Mubarak, suffered a fractured skull and concussion when he was hit by a rock while trying to negotiate a truce.
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.
Egypt One Year On: Stark Message for Arab Revolutionaries
By James M. Dorsey
EGYPT’S MILITARY council, backed by Islamist and secular political parties, has upstaged... more
By James M. Dorsey
EGYPT’S MILITARY council, backed by Islamist and secular political parties, has upstaged the 25 January celebrations of the anniversary of the protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak even before the party gets underway. The military pre-empted plans by the revolutionary youth and militant soccer fan groups whose mass protests early last year forced Mubarak from office by announcing that they would organise their own celebration together with the Muslim Brotherhood on Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
The military’s co-opting of the celebrations is certain to dash hopes of the protesters to exploit the anniversary to launch what they call a second revolution that would force the armed forces to immediately relinquish power. Instead, it is likely to seal their defeat in a country that has grown tired of demonstrations, still largely reveres the military despite its brutal response to anti-government protests late last year and wants to see tangible results of its revolt.
The military’s move also signals the primacy of electoral over contentious politics in post-autocratic transition societies with the backing of the Brotherhood, which emerged as Egypt’s foremost political grouping with some 40 per cent of the vote in the first post-Mubarak elections. The Brotherhood’s backing of the military celebration is significant given its demonstrated ability to fill Tahrir Square and mobilise opposition against the military if it wanted to.
The military is sending a stark message not only to Egyptian youth and soccer fan groups that established political organisations with well-oiled party machines rather than newly emerging political forces will shape the country’s future. The message is also to protesters elsewhere in the region that unless they can match their mobilisation and street skills with the art of electoral politics and backroom horse trading they too will be relegated to the sidelines of history.
Much of the youth and soccer groups’ criticism of the post-Mubarak transition rings true even if does not resonate with a majority of the population. They accuse the military of subverting a promised transition to real democracy in a bid to preserve its political and economic perks and interests and employing to do so the same if not worse repressive measures than the Mubarak regime. Scores have been killed in protests since Mubarak’s downfall, thousands injured and some 12,000 people, including activists, bloggers and soccer fans dragged in front of military courts.
The one joker in the military’s plans to upstage the youth and soccer fan groups and give them the death knell is the spectre of violent confrontation during the celebrations. Fear of a repeat of the bitter street battles that took place between security forces and soccer fans in November and December last year could persuade many Egyptians to steer clear of Tahrir Square on 25 January. Egypt’s military ruler, Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi issued a thinly veiled warning to the youth and soccer fan groups days before the 25 January celebrations that Egypt faced unprecedented “grave dangers” but that the military would protect it. The statement, echoing Mubarak’s tactic of distracting attention from domestic issues by invoking an alleged foreign threat, was contrived to rally public opinion against the protesters.
A failure to rally the masses would dent the military’s efforts to maintain the high ground and would boost revolutionary moves to thwart its plans. Nonetheless, the youth and soccer fan groups are on treacherous ground. They have lost much of the popular support they enjoyed in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of Mubarak’s ousting. Their refusal to surrender Tahrir Square in favour of traditional politics has won them few brownie points with the public. Their marginalisation is compounded by the fact that men and women perceived to be honest and of faith have emerged victorious in the election, raising hopes that government will be free of nepotism and corruption.
Revolutionaries in other Middle Eastern and North African societies in transition may well conclude from the Egyptian experience that it is a fatal mistake to simply topple an autocratic leader and not to push for the ultimate uprooting of a failed system. It promises to make transitions even more contentious and could inspire the kind of resilience and determination displayed by protesters in Syria who have refused to give ground to a ten-month old brutal government crackdown that has already cost some 5,000 lives.
Protesters across the Middle East and North Africa like their counterparts in other parts of the world have mastered the art of seemingly leaderless revolt and exploitation of new technology. However, the lesson of Egypt is that they will also increasingly have to harness the skills of traditional politics and face up to the reality of realpolitik to ensure that they not only win a battle but also the war.
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.
Egypt suspends soccer matches in anticipation of protest anniversary clashes with ultras
By James M. Dorsey
The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) has delayed the 16th round of Premier League... more
By James M. Dorsey
The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) has delayed the 16th round of Premier League soccer matches in a bid to prevent the pitch from becoming an anti-military rallying point during this week’s celebrations of the eruption of protests a year ago that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
The delay, a year after the EFA suspended professional soccer for three months in the walk-up to and aftermath of the ousting of Mr. Mubarak, is part of a concerted effort to reduce the risk of clashes between militant, violence prone soccer fans and security forces.
The military announced late Saturday that it had granted amnesty to 1,950 people, including activists and soccer fans detained during clashes in past months with security forces in a nother move designed to avert violence during the anniversary celebrations.
Matches will resume on January 27, two days after the celebrations on January 25, the first of 18 days of mass anti-government protests last year that forced Mr. Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office.
Egypt’s military rulers who succeeded Mr. Mubarak with a pledge to lead the country to free and fair elections see the celebrations as a means of cementing their position in advance of horse trading with the Muslim Brotherhood, which was confirmed this weekend as the winner of the country’s first Mubarak election.
They hope that the celebrations will further isolate the youth and soccer fan groups or ultras – militant, highly politicized, violence-prone supporters of Cairo’s two main soccer teams that are modelled on similar groups in Italy and Serbia -- that formed the core of the anti-Mubarak protests and have since repeatedly clashed with security forces over their demand that the military return to the barracks.
Revered by activist youth, the soccer fans and youth groups that spearheaded Mubarak’s overthrow have lost significant support of a public that has grown tired of the political turmoil wracking Egypt and a year later has yet to see a tangible improvement of their social and economic situation. The military continues to be popular despite its brutal response to post-Mubarak protests and many Egyptians are for now willing to give it and the Brotherhood the benefit of the doubt.
The youth and soccer fan groups fear that the military and the Brotherhood, which controls about half the seats in parliament, will cut a deal under which in return for the military’s acceptance of the Islamists’ electoral victory they would support the military’s candidate for president in presidential elections scheduled for June.
The postponement of the soccer matches reflects the government and the EFA’s concern that the soccer fan and youth groups will use the January 25 celebrations to press their demand for the immediate return of the military to its barracks – a demand that is strengthened by the fact that the country now has an elected parliament.
The military has been reluctant to surrender power as long as its privileged political and economic position, involving exemption from civilian oversight and the maintenance of a commercial conglomerate that accounts for anywhere between 10 and 25% of Egypt’s GDP, is not guaranteed.
The Brotherhood’s actions over the last year, including its support for this week’s military-led celebrations and a declared willingness to grant the military immunity, suggests that it is willing to accommodate the military despite a statement in recent days by its leader, Mohammed Badie, that the incoming parliament will scrutinize the military's budget and hold the army accountable for mistakes made during the last year’s transition.
Scores have been killed, thousands wounded and thousands more dragged in front of military courts in the last year as a result of clashes between soccer fans and other youth groups and security forces.
Fears of renewed clashes this week are reinforced by a growing sense that the militant soccer fans’ raison d’etre increasingly has become their deep-seated hatred of the police and the Central Security Force (CSF) rather than a political vision for the future of Egypt.
“If you went to a stadium and saw how some policeman riding a horse could lash ultras members with a whip for no apparent reason, you would understand the nature of the relationship between the police and ultras groups. This terrible relationship between both sides is the result of the constant brutality ultras have long been subject to. They do hate the police and would engage with them on every possible occasion, and that’s by far justifiable considering the treatment they have been receiving,” Al Ahram Online quoted Ahmed Gafaar, a nephew of Zamalek football legend Farouk Gafaar and one of founders of the Ultras White Knights (UWK), the fan group of crowned Cairo club Al Zamalek SC.
The ultras, steeled by years of almost weekly clashes with security forces in stadiums during the Mubarak era, played a key role in breaking the barrier of fear as tens of thousands of protesters poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square in late January of last year where they stayed for 18 days until Mubarak resigned. They formed the protesters’ front line when security forces and Mubarak loyalists attacked the protesters.
The ultras have since Mr. Mubarak’s departure joined other youth groups in often violent anti-military clashes with security forces and were welcomed as the revolt’s shock troops by protesters being attacked by the CSF.
The ultras “would step in whenever they see police forces brutalising people anywhere, whether from their own or not. They would take advantage of their experience in fighting with the CSF to stand up against them, and protect the other side,” Mr. Gafaar said.
Ahmed Ezzat, the general coordinator of the Popular Committees for Protecting the Revolution, added speaking to Al Ahram Online: “All demonstrators always welcome the Ultras members in Tahrir Square. They are highly organised and are not looking for any media attention. They have the tendency to struggle in hard times; they are perceived to be comrades in the project of the revolution and have robustly supported the revolutionaries all along.”
The military and the EFA fears that attitude could spark riots on January 25. Says Mohamed Gamal Beshir, another UWK founder and author of the recently published book, Kitab Al Alutras (Book of the Ultras): “No one knows how January 25 will turn out.”
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-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.
Saudi Arabia embraces Salafism: Countering the Arab uprising?
By James M. Dorsey
SAUDI ARABIA has long been seen as the main backer of... more
By James M. Dorsey
SAUDI ARABIA has long been seen as the main backer of Salafis across the globe. It has always, however, shied away from officially endorsing the Muslim trend that until recently preached a politically quietist return to the way of life at the time of Islam’s first 7th century Caliphs.
If Saudi support and funding of Salafi communities in the past constituted a key but discreet element of its soft power strategy aimed at countering Iran’s perceived revolutionary Islamic appeal, today it serves to counter Islamist forces who trace their roots to the Muslim Brotherhood. It also seeks to curtail the revolutionary zeal of protesters that are clamouring for true democracy rather than cosmetic change. At the same time, it counters idiosyncratic foreign and domestic policies of forward-looking and long-time Saudi rival Qatar - the only other Arab-Muslim nation whose theological origins hark back to the Wahhabi founders of Saudi Arabia.
Qatar is home to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, an influential Egyptian Muslim brother, and one of the world’s most respected yet controversial Islamic thinkers critical of Saudi Arabia’s puritanic concepts. The Gulf state has further emerged as a champion of revolts in several Arab countries with Bahrain as the notable exception, a media powerhouse thanks to Al Jazeera, and a key US interlocutor in the region.
The change in Saudi tactics highlights the rupture in relations between the kingdom and the Brotherhood more than a decade ago when Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz denounced his erstwhile allies in the wake of the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.
Saudi Arabia welcomed the Muslim Brothers in the 1950s and 1960s as they fled a crackdown in Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt. Many became teachers in their newly found refuge where their political interpretation of Islam cross-fertilised with the ideas of the 18th century cleric-warrior Mohammed Abdul Wahhab whose puritanic views shaped modern Saudi Arabia and inspired Salafism.
It took Prince Nayef, widely viewed as a hard line conservative, months to acknowledge in 2001 that 15 of the 19 perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks had hailed from Saudi Arabia. But once he did, he turned his wrath on the Brotherhood, which decades ago had abandoned violence except in the case of the Palestinian struggle against Israel, but has been the starting point of numerous first generation jihadists.
In an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper, Prince Nayef charged at the time that the Brotherhood was responsible “for most of the problems in the Arab world” and had “done great damage to Saudi Arabia”. The prince acknowledged that whenever they got into difficulty or found their freedom restricted in their own countries, Brotherhood activists found refuge in Saudi Arabia, “which protected their lives” but said that they had “later turned against the kingdom”.
Ten years later, Crown Prince Nayef is leading the kingdom’s embrace of Salafism when it has discarded its non-involvement in politics and has emerged in Egypt’s first post-revolt elections as the country’s second largest political force with a quarter of the votes. Egyptian state-controlled media, citing unnamed Justice Ministry sources, reported that Saudi Arabia had financed the Salafis to the tune of $63 million last year.
Last month Prince Nayef and the kingdom’s mufti and advisor on religious affairs, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Shaikh, a descendant of Mohammed Abdul Wahhab, gave keynote speeches at a conference convened under the title, Salafism: Legal Path, National Demand. The conference constituted a rare occasion on which the kingdom acknowledged Salafism as a full-fledged school of thought within Sunni Islam, though Saudi political and religious discourse had often referred to al-salaf-al-saleh, Prophet Mohammed’s immediate successors who are revered for their piety.
“My brothers, you know that true Salafism is the path whose rules derive from the book of God and the path of the Prophet…This blessed state (Saudi Arabia) has been established along correct Salafi lines since its inception by Imam Mohammed bin Saud and his pact with Imam Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab. Saudi Arabia will continue on the upright Salafi path and not flinch from it or back down,” Prince Nayef told the conference participants.
In an apparent response to criticism of Wahhabi and Salafi discrimination of Shiite Muslims, intolerance towards non-Muslims and harsh restrictions of women’s rights, the prince described Salafism as “authentic and contemporary” and an ideology that promotes progress and “peaceful coexistence with others and respect for their rights”.
In a similar vein, Sheikh Abdulaziz said Salafism was “a comprehensive godly path based on moderation and the middle way; it is based on unitarianism and forsakes innovation, superstitions and erroneous things”.
The kingdom’s embracing of Salafism follows the sentencing of Mokhtar al-Hashemi to 30 years in prison on charges of funding terrorism and plotting a coup in cooperation with Al Qaeda in seeking to create an Islamist political party in the kingdom based on Brotherhood thinking.
The question is not whether the Arab revolt will reach the kingdom but how it will progress in Saudi Arabia, which last year witnessed several protests in the predominantly Shiite, oil-rich Eastern Province. In fact in November 2010, a month before the eruption in Tunisia, it had been the scene of anti-corruption demonstrations. The vote for Salafists in Egypt was more a vote against established politics than opting for a Saudi-style system.
Demonstrations last month by groups of activists not only in Shiite Qatif but also in the capital, Riyadh and the Wahhabi stronghold of Buraida, constitute a shot across the bow of the House of Saud. Saudi rulers, by embracing Salafism and adopting the ways and mores of the righteous Caliphs, hope to shield themselves from the regional and global uprising against repressive and failed regimes. It is a gamble whose outcome could have repercussions far beyond the kingdom
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Alcohol ban raises specter of problems for Qatar’s hosting of 2022 World Cup
By James M. Dorsey
A ban on alcohol on Qatar’s man-made The Pearl Qatar island coupled with the naming of a... more
By James M. Dorsey
A ban on alcohol on Qatar’s man-made The Pearl Qatar island coupled with the naming of a large mosque after the founder of a puritan strand of Islam and online protests against various state-owned companies highlights domestic opposition to some of the Gulf state's more forward looking policies as well as freedoms for soccer fans it is expected to host during the 2022 World Cup.
Qatari officials have said that the 500,000 soccer fans expected to descend on their country during the World Cup will be allowed to consume alcohol in designated zones. Alcohol is currently served exclusively in hotels and sold in a Qatar Airways–owned shop only to expatriates who hold a license.
The banning of alcohol on the island, whose restaurants are popular with Qatar's growing expatriate community, was introduced in advance of the Al Kass International Cup, a ten-day
Under-17 soccer tournament, involving top world clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain, Brazil's Vasco De Gama (Brazil), Juventus, Ajax, FC Barcelona, Japan's Kashima Antlers and Egypt's, Al Ahly. It also came as senior international figures gathered in Doha at Qatar's invitation to brainstorm over the role of sports in society and what governments, NGO's and the private sector should do to promote sports.
Business at restaurants on the Pearl has dropped as much as 50 percent as a result of the ban. “Obviously the business has dropped; by half… for some restaurants, probably even more,” said Sumeet Jinghan, country manager of Foodmark, whose brands include Carluccio’s, The Meat Company and Mango Tree.
Mr. Jinghan said Foodmark had suspended plans to open two more restaurants and a club on the Pearl, home to an estimated 41,000 residents, until it became clear whether the ban was permanent or not.
The ban did not immediately affect the Al Kass tournament which attracted primarily only local spectators. The competition offers Aspire Qatar, the Gulf state's youth team, whose players include young Qataris as well as youths from Africa, Asia and Latin America selected in a yearly talent search from among some 500,000 aspiring soccer playing kids to compete against some of the world's best teams.
The tournament is one initiative in Qatar's emphasis on sports as a cornerstone of its foreign policy, development and effort to shape the energy-rich nation's national identity at a time that youth-driven popular revolts have toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and pushed embattled autocrats in Syria and Yemen to the brink. Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network has played an important role in the revolts with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accusing it of instigating and encouraging the protests against his regime.
“Our goal is to create a dialogue that resonates with and talks to the youth. This is an opportunity to inspire and engage young people…. Sports are at the heart of Qatar’s development… Sports like education and arts are part of our national identity,” said Noora Al Mannai, CEO of Qatar’s bid to win the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games. Ms. Al Mannai said “empowering young people” was one reason for the bid alongside Qatar’s efforts to mediate conflicts and reduce regional obesity and diabetes levels.
If sports are for Qatar’s leaders a key tool in forging national identity, banning alcohol is its equivalent for more conservative and nationalist forces in the Gulf state.
"I don't see a reason to have alcohol. It impacts very negatively on locals. Locals are not happy with it," The Wall Street Journal quoted Qatari writer Abdul Aziz Al Mahmoud as saying.
Conservative Qataris worry that an increasing number of their compatriots, often dressed in full-length robes, the Gulf's national dress, drink publicly in hotels and bars. "It is a taboo in Qatar to see somebody wearing the national dress and drinking," said Hassan Al Ibrahim, a Qatari commentator, according to the Journal.
Conservative fears in a nation where locals account for at best one third of the population were further inflamed when the Qatar Distribution Company, a Qatar Airways owned-retail shop, introduced pork alongside the alcohol it was already selling to expatriates. The introduction was one spark of an online call to boycott the airline.
Qatar’s The Peninsula daily reported that a group of some 500 Qataris had called for a boycott of the state-owned airline, a major tool in the positioning of the Gulf state as a global travel hub, in protest against its serving of alcohol on flights, high fares and failure to allocate more jobs to Qatari nationals. The protesters’ campaign featured the Qatar Airways logo with a no entry sign superimposed on it. It followed a similar protest in recent months decrying telecommunications services.
Qatar Airways has declined to comment on why its store had started to sell pork.
"I never thought the day would come that I have to ask the waiter in a restaurant in Qatar what kind of meat is in their burgers," said a Qatari on Twitter.
"Ppl don't get it. Its not about the pork—its about us feeling more & more like a minority—in our own country,” tweeted another Qatari.
The banning of alcohol as well as the shutting down of a weekly party on the Pearl, a development that bills itself as the Arab Riviera; the naming of a mosque in memory of Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th century warrior priest whose austere, puritan interpretation of Islam life shapes life in Saudi Arabia and inspires Qatari cultural traditions; and the online protests are likely issues that opponents of Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup will seize on in so far failed attempts to get the awarding by world soccer body FIFA reversed.
Al-Wahhab’s puritanism created the cradle of Salafism – an Islamic trend that propagates a return to the way of life at the time of Islam’s first 7th century caliphs and has emerged as a power political force in post-revolt Egypt. Saudi Arabia recently officially embraced Salafism as a key element in its soft power strategy aimed at countering Iran’s perceived revolutionary Islamic appeal as well as the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. The embrace also constitutes a response to Qatar’s idiosyncratic foreign and domestic policies.
That response is likely to sharpen the battle lines within Qatar as the Gulf state prepares to host perhaps not only one but two of the world’s biggest sporting events in the next decade.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.