Manchester City victory threatens to strengthen Middle Eastern autocrats
By James M. Dorsey
Manchester City, by winning the Premier League for the first time in more than four... more
By James M. Dorsey
Manchester City, by winning the Premier League for the first time in more than four decades, has defied warnings that money cannot buy soccer success and set an example for Middle Eastern and North African autocrats and wealthy businessmen who employ the beautiful game to strengthen unpopular regimes in what an Egyptian democracy activist describes as the new opium of the people.
The Premier League title crowns the investment of an estimated $1.5 billion that the Abu Dhabi United Group headed by United Arab Emirates royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan pumped into the club since it acquired the struggling team in 2008. The investment was used to acquire high profile players, including Argentinian Carlos Tevez, Robinho, Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré and Joleon Lescott for a total of approximately $330 million.
Funds were poured into upgrading Manchester City’s facilities: a new office block was built with bars and an entertainment arena for supporters; the Carrington training ground was revamped. The club’s stadium was renamed Etihad Stadium after Abu Dhabi’s premier airline signed a ten-year, $475 million sponsorship agreement with Manchester City.
The Guardian sports writer David Conn notes in a book to be published early next month, ‘Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football And Growing Up,’ that the deprived neighbourhoods surrounding the club ‘s stadium have benefitted little if anything from Sheikh Mansour’s largesse.
Nonetheless, Manchester City fans enthusiastically greeted the Middle East’s first acquisition of a major European club, by wearing Arab headdress and waving British pound notes with the picture of the queen replaced by a Gulf sheikh at the team’s first post-acquisition match. A picture in The Guardian this weekend shows Sheikh Mansour’s portrait featuring on a fake GBP 500 billion note that Manchester City supporters waved at fans of rival club Chelsea.
Fans have at times also been willing to accept cultural changes that have accompanied Arab acquisitions in Europe. FC Malaga’s new owner, law by its new owner, Qatari royal Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani, last year replaced bookmaker William Hill Plc the club’s jersey sponsor because gambling is banned under Islamic. United Nations culture agency UNESCO took the place of the bookmaker.
On the other hand, Real Madrid’s recent decision to remove a Christian cross from its official logo in what it described as the cost of doing business in a globalized world has sparked ire, particularly among anti-Muslim right-wingers. The removal came as Real Madrid embarked on the construction of a $1 billion sport tourist resort in the United Arab Emirates scheduled to open in 2015.
Elsewhere, fans have expressed fears that commercial investment such as new funds that invest in players - Dubai’s United Investment Bank last year launched the Middle East’s first alternative investment soccer fund modelled on similar controversial European funds -- undermines a club’s ability to generate funds of its own and often favours vested interests. Opposition last year by fans of Istanbul’s Besiktas to third party acquisition of three Portuguese players -- Hugo Almeida, Simao Sabrosa and Manuel Fernandez -- was fuelled by unsubstantiated suspicions that the fund involved was a front for club president Yildirim Demiroren, a wealthy businessman who had lent the club just under $100 million.
For Middle Eastern and North African autocrats who have long seen support and control of soccer as a tool to improve their tarnished images, divert attention from widespread grievances and manipulate national emotions the message from Manchester City is that investment in soccer pays political dividends, particularly at a time that the region is wracked by popular unrest. The message is likely to reinforce a tendency to hire and fire managers and coaches depending on how a team performs in its last game rather than in a long-term bid to build a squad’s culture and cohesion. Performance on the pitch is reduced to the prestige of a regime or nation in what to autocratic rulers is a zero sum game.
The message threatens to distort a trend towards professionalization, commercialization and the creation of a proper football industry as a key to unlocking economic opportunity in a world where the soccer pitch is often a battlefield for political, ethnic, religious and gender rights that was sparked by Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup.
For many in the region, last year’s Asia Cup final in Doha, in which half of the competing teams hailed from the Middle East with not one reaching the semi-finals, constituted a wake-up call. It is an experience, Middle Eastern and North African leaders and soccer officials do not want repeated at the Qatar World Cup for political reasons as well as a sense of pride and realization of what soccer can do for their prestige as well as that of their nations.
Manchester City’s victory threatens to send out the message that money rather than political reform, divorcing soccer from the political control of often unpopular regimes and building a strong, cohesive team over time can do the trick.
Similarly, for European clubs there is risk inherent in dependency on wealthy benefactors and in association with Middle Eastern autocrats.
Michel Platini, the head of Europe’s soccer body, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) warned his week in the wake of the Manchester City title win that that clubs dependant on the largesse of wealthy benefactors could face oblivion if they failed to maintain a realistic level of spending.
Mr. Platini defended UEFA’s new Financial Fair Play rules developed in response to an influx of wealthy club owners that require clubs to balance their soccer-related expenditure over a three-year period by telling Fox Soccer America: “We have to protect the clubs, because until they pay Manchester City will be happy but if they (the owners) leave Manchester City what is going to happen with this club?”
Under the new rules, clubs will initially be allowed to make a loss of $60 million over the first three years, falling to $36 million from 2015–16. Mr. Platini reiterated that despite the Manchester City success, money was not a guarantee. Clubs that violate the Financial Fair Play rules could be excluded from European competitions.
The experience of some European clubs illustrates the risk Mr. Platini was highlighting. Emirati Sheikh Sulaiman Al Fahim , barely three months after acquiring Portsmouth FC several years ago, sold the bulk of his stake to Saudi property tycoon Ali Al-Faraj amid reports that his flagship Hydra Village project in Abu Dhabi was floundering. Mr. Al-Faraj too had no intention of staying involved for long. Soon after the takeover, he announced that he was selling the club. But with no buyer on the horizon, Portsmouth FC went into receivership.
Geneva’s Swiss Super League club Servette FC and Austria’s Admira Wacker haven’t fared much better. Servette is on the brink of collapse after Iranian businessman Majid Pishyar who acquired it in 2008, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Mr. Pishyar, who managed the club on a shoe string, tried unsuccessfully to attract government funding by last year appointing Robert Hensler, a former top civil servant for the canton of Geneva, as vice-president. His earlier efforts to salvage Admira, his first European acquisition, failed too. Servette’s problems come on the heels of the bankruptcy in January of Neuchatel’s Super League team Xamax whose Chechen owner was arrested on charges of fraud and financial mismanagement.
Manchester City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak in an interview in
Mr. Conn’s book, an excerpt of which was published in The Guardian this weekend, illustrated the benefits as well as the risks of wealthy ownership. Mr. Al Mubarak expressed surprise at the lack of professional administration that Manchester City’s new owners encountered when they took over the club and described how he had introduced a more professional approach. "One of the big surprises was how amateurish it was. I found it shocking in the famous Premier League, to be without such basic
functions" as a personnel department, he said.
Mr. Al Mubarak appointed former Arsenal winger Brian Marwood as head of administration. Mr. Marwood showed Mr. Conn a 30-page, colour-coded analysis produced by Manchester City's new inter-departmental analytic system for a 15-year-old that was being eyed by the club. For major signings, Mr. Marwood said, the dossiers could run up to 50 pages. Before, he said, "it was in people's heads" Now, it is a spreadsheet that. “that detailed, not left to chance," Mr. Marwood said.
Manchester City is unlikely to be able to comply with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules without Sheikh Mansour. The club’s losses for 2010–11, the year before their finances were assessed under the new regulation, were $294 million, the highest ever by an English football club and five times the total the club is allowed in the coming two years.
In Mr. Conn’s book, Mr. Platini’s concern about an evolving unhealthy relationship between money and soccer seemed lost on Mr. Al Mubarak. “Whichever way I asked Al-Mubarak about the instinctive repulsion many people in football have for this kind of "project" – for a rich man to just buy a club, then pour in as much money as it took to buy success – he did not so much defend what they were doing as fail to understand the question,” Mr. Conn wrote.
“If you said football was not supposed to be about which ‘owner’ had the most money, so who could pay the most to players, thereby seducing them to their club, he (Mr. Al Mubarak) wondered aloud how United had won the Premier League so many times, and how anybody could compete with them without money. If you tried to argue that a club should be a club, belonging to the people who support it, that a sporting competition does not seem sporting if it is owned by one rich man spending whatever it takes to stockpile the necessary mercenary talent, you would be describing an abstract idea with which he was unfamiliar, and which did not match reality as it was, and as it was viewed from Abu Dhabi,” Mr. Conn said.
To Sheikh Masour and Mr. Al Mubarak buying a soccer club may be more fun than the oil and gas industry, the mainstay of Abu Dhabi’s economy, but at the bottom line it remains a business. To them clubs are business. "There is an opportunity we have identified and taken hold of. A mid-tier club will move to become a big club because of the financial resources we are able to make available. Because we see value in making that transition. And that is the bottom line," Mr. Conn quoted Mr. Al Mubarak as saying.
Beyond the financial dependency risk, European acquisition targets also run the risk of being associated with regimes potentially capable of using brute force to suppress popular demands for greater freedom. The UAE has nervously reacted to the mass protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa by cracking down on dissent and freedom of expression at home and investing more than $500 million in the creation of a mercenary force headed by former Blackwater security company head Eric Page for the eventuality of an outbreak of protests at home.
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.
Gulf Societies and the Image of Unlimited Good
S.N. Khalaf. 1992. Dialectical Anthropology 17: 53-84.
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Saudi imams warn against mixing of sports, politics and protest
By James M. Dorsey
Saudi and ultra-conservative imams have warned in separate statements against the mixing... more
By James M. Dorsey
Saudi and ultra-conservative imams have warned in separate statements against the mixing of sports and politics and protests against autocratic regimes, which, according to some, results from of the mingling of the sexes in sports.
The warnings come against the backdrop of Saudi efforts to shield the Gulf from the wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, renewed focus on the role of militant soccer fans opposing military rule in Egypt and pressure on the kingdom to allow women to compete for the first time in an international tournament during the London Olympics.
Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh quoted in the kingdom's Al Watan newspaper warned that the protests that have already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen and brought Syria to the brink of civil war were sinful. "The schism, instability, the malfunctioning of security and the breakdown of unity that Islamic countries are facing these days is a result of the sins of the public and their transgressions," Sheikh Abdulaziz said.
Such sins include, according to Imam Abu Abdellah of As-Sunnah mosque in Kissimee, Florida, speaking in a video posted on the Internet, the mixing of the sexes at sports events. “In the past it was only men, now it is almost half half (in stadiums). Allah knows what happens afterwards. Either way it is bad. Either people go out, they are sensing and partying and drinking and all that, so that’s negative. And if they don’t, they go out and they demonstrate and they’re angry and they destroy property and they destroy cars and they destroy people’s business. Either way its haram (forbidden), things have to be done in moderation. These are the things that are associated with sports that the believers have to be careful with,” Abu Abedallah said.
“So there is nothing wrong with watching and practicing your favourite sport as long as you adhere to the norms. When it comes to the way you dress and the way you behave, where you’re going to be, what are you going to be listening to; are you going to be mingling in crowds you are not supposed to be mingling with? All of those things do matter when you are practicing or you are watching your favourite sport,” the imam said.
The clerics’ statements came as Saudi Arabia prepares for a summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in which it hopes to foist closer political and military cooperation on its largely reluctant co-members Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. Bahrain, which last year brutally squashed with Saudi assistance an uprising against its minority Sunni Muslin rulers, is likely to be the only GCC state to fully endorse the notion of a political union.
The statements also come as International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge is under pressure to make good on his pledges earlier this year to stand for gender equality by banning Saudi Arabia from this year’s London Olympics if it fails to field women athletes. A Human Rights Watch report released in February, called on Saudi Arabia to protect women's equal right to sports and urged the IOC to live up to its charter, which prohibits discrimination, or face a ban similar to that imposed on Afghanistan in 1999 partly for its exclusion of female athletes.
With Qatar and Brunei expected to have women athletes for the first time this year in their delegations, Saudi Arabia would be the only country in the world that still refuses to allow women to compete. The kingdom has recently hinted that it would not stand against Saudi women living abroad competing, but would not field athletes from the kingdom itself.
In separate statements, two Saudi religious scholars admonished soccer players that bad behaviour could lead to a ban on public attendance of matches. It was not immediately clear what incidents of bad behaviour they were referring to.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Suleiman Al Manei, a member of the Gulf Kingdom’s supreme scholars committee and an advisor to King Abdullah warned that “the spread of such (bad) acts on play fields is a clear indicator of a decline in moral values and the transformation of sport from fair competition into bigotry. The continuation of these bad phenomena which pose a threat to the ethical values of our sons makes the attendance of these matches a hateful thing. This means that going to these matches could become prohibited because what is happening there has a strong negative impact on the society.”
In a statement of his own, Sheikh Abdullah Al Mutlaq, another member of the supreme committee, denounced players for allegedly faking incidents in a bid to get a referee to award a penalty in their team’s favour. “These are acts of deception, which is hated and forbidden in Islam…..the sin becomes worse when the player swears by Allah falsely…players should refrain from such wrong acts as they have become a bad example for the young generation,” Sheikh Al Mutlaq said without reference to specific incidents.
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.
Trade unions reject World Cup-related Qatar labor measures and threaten global boycott
By James M. Dorsey
International trade unions this week rejected World Cup-related Qatari proposals to meet... more
By James M. Dorsey
International trade unions this week rejected World Cup-related Qatari proposals to meet concerns about worker rights, including health and safety that violate international human and labor rights as well as principles the Gulf state had adopted as a member of the International Labor Organization ILO.
The unions said they were moving ahead with plans for a global campaign this summer under the motto 'No World Cup in Qatar without labor rights’, to deprive Qatar of its right to host the 2022 World Cup if it failed to align its labor legislation and workers’ condition with international standards.
“It is not too late to change the venue of the World Cup. This is not an industrial skirmish about wages; this is a serious breach in regard to human and labor rights. The country is incredibly wealthy and is portraying itself as a model country. That is simply not true. Our members are football fans and they don’t want to see the game played in a country that practices slavery,” Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 175 million workers in 153 countries, said in a telephone interview.
A spokesman for the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee declined to comment on Ms. Burrow’s statements.
The looming confrontation between Qatar and the international workers’ movement comes at a sensitive time for the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that incorporates Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. The GCC is preparing for a summit in Riyadh later this month to discuss a political union that would allow Saudi Arabia to pressure the smaller states to fall in line with its more conservative social and foreign policies at a time that the Middle East and North Africa are experiencing popular revolts in demand of greater freedom.
The issue of labor rights is also sensitive because several Gulf states have populations that are in majority foreign. Beyond the commercial and economic advantages of a cheap pool of labor, discussion of any kind of rights for non-locals raises the specter of the minority Gulf population in countries like Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait no longer having a country that is theirs and which they control.
“It’s a real problem. Everybody knows that,” said a source close to Qatari and Gulf thinking on the issue against the backdrop of the UAE and Bahrain alongside Qatar seeking to project themselves as global sports hubs. An attempt by Bahrain to project an image of business as normal and distract attention from continuing popular discontent despite the suppression of last year’s revolt by letting Formula 1 go ahead last month backfired with protests overshadowing the race.
Ms. Burrow said the unions were seeking an urgent Qatari acceptance and implementation of international human and labor rights because the Gulf state was about to start construction of World Cup-related infrastructure.
Qatar’s 2022 Supreme Committee this week issued a second tender for the project, design, commercial and construction management of one of the 12 stadiums it is planning for the tournament, nine of which will be newly built. The three remaining stadiums already exist but need to be refurbished. The committee earlier tendered the contract for a master planning and lead design consultant for the stadiums.
“Gradual change is not good enough. The urgency is because the stadiums are about to be constructed in a serious way. Companies are gearing up their supply chains and costing infrastructure on a model of modern day slavery. We want that to change and companies might have to adjust their costing and pricing accordingly,” Ms. Burrow said.
Qatar with a majority expatriate population expects to import up to one million foreign workers to complete infrastructure needed both for the World Cup and the development of the energy-rich nation.
In a statement, the ITUC said it had requested an urgent meeting with Qatari labor minister Sultan bin Hassan, charging that “workers are dying in Qatar as they build World Cup stadiums and infrastructure, and suffer large scale exploitation every day.” Ms. Burrow said she had yet to receive a reply to the letter, which was also sent to world soccer body FIFA.
The union leader said that some 200 Nepalese died last year in Qatar, a favored destination for the country’s low skilled expat labor; 30 of them while on a construction job while another approximately 70 as a result of the country’s brutal summer temperatures that rise above 40 degrees Celsius. It was not clear whether any of these deaths were directly related to World Cup-related construction. “We quite confidently predict that more people will die off the field than there are players on the field,” Ms. Burrow said. She said she would soon be travelling to Nepal for discussions with the government and trade unions.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Burrow pointed to a report in The Himalaya Times that described Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia as “graveyards for young Nepali workers in the 25-42 years age group.”
The unions in a meeting with FIFA last November gave the soccer body and FIFA six months to ensure that workers in Qatar have “the legal right to organize themselves in free, independent trade unions without punishment or interference from authorities” that could “collectively bargain” with employers.
“Construction workers, the majority who are migrant workers are risking their lives today as they work in poor and unsafe conditions with low wages. They need trade union rights today to protect them", the ITUC statement quoted Ambet Yuson, General Secretary of Building and Wood Workers International, as saying.
Ms. Burrow said the fight for workers’ rights in Qatar was a battle for labor rights in the region. She said of the three GCC states – Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait – that legally allow trade unions only Bahrain had enshrined international standards in its legislation. She said Bahrain’s progress had however been marred by last year’s Saudi-backed brutal repression of a popular uprising in which teachers, nurses, doctors and others were detained and tortured for demanding basic democratic rights.
“Bahrain was on track until it came under pressure. The prime minister admitted to us that there were concerns from the Gulf states around them, Saudi Arabia in particular but also Qatar etc. Bahrain at least had public recognition of the rights if not realization of those rights in their totality because of the pressure of the Gulf states,” Ms. Burrow said.
She said a Qatari proposal for the creation of a labor committee and abolishment of its controversial system of sponsorship of foreign labor was a “far cry” from union demands for a free and independent trade union and equitable and human working conditions. Qatar is seeking to project itself as a show case member of the global community, “yet it is so far outside the basic human framework of human and labor rights” that it need to choose between being part of the international community or a model of 21st century slavery, Ms. Burrow said.
Qatari media this week quoted Labor Undersecretary Hussain Al Mulla as saying that the country’s emir was considering a plan to establish a Qatari-led labor committee that would represent workers’ interests as well as an abolition of the sponsorship system that would stop short of allowing foreigners to freely change jobs. Qatar recently abandoned the requirement that foreign workers surrender their passports to their Qatari employers. Mr. Al Mulla said the plan had already been endorsed by the Qatari prime minister.
Denouncing conditions of foreign workers in Qatar as 21st century slavery, Ms. Burrow said unions were demanding not only improved health and safety conditions but also the ability to live freely in the community, bring their families and move freely in and out of the country. “Current conditions are absolute enslavement to the employer,” Ms. Burrow said.
She said Mr. Al Mulla’s proposal for a labor committee involved creation of a government controlled body rather than an independent trade union. The way Qatar planned to abolish the sponsorship system failed to create a level playing field or guarantee workers’ freedom of movement, she said.
Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee Secretary General Hassan Al Thawadi pledged early this year in a speech at Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Doha that the Gulf state would adhere to international labor standards.
"Major sporting events shed a spotlight on conditions in countries. There are labor issues here in the country, but Qatar is committed to reform. We will require that contractors impose a clause to ensure that international labor standards are met. Sport and football in particular, is a very powerful force. Certainly we can use it for the benefit of the region." Mr. Al Thawadi said.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Qatar to legalize trade unions as Saudi Arabia pushes closer Gulf cooperation
By James M. Dorsey
Qatar, in a bid to fend off an international trade union campaign against its hosting of... more
By James M. Dorsey
Qatar, in a bid to fend off an international trade union campaign against its hosting of the 2022 World Cup, is taking cautious steps to meet demands backed by world soccer body FIFA, to allow the establishment of the emirate’s first trade union and to scrap its controversial system of sponsorship of foreign labour condemned by human rights groups as modern day slavery.
The Qatari concessions come as the Gulf state in which foreigners account for a majority of the population envisions recruiting up to one million overseas workers for massive infrastructure projects. The projects will all benefit the World Cup but many, including a new airport, expansion of the transport system and hotel and residential compounds were on the drawing board irrespective of the sports tournament.
The Qatari decision increases pressure on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that still ban unions to follow suit. Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait have all legalized trade unions but Bahrain is the only other Gulf state to have abolished its foreign labour sponsorship system.
Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE are however likely to follow Qatar’s example any time soon. Qatar’s concession to FIFA and the international trade unions comes at a time that Saudi Arabia is cajoling fellow GCC states into moving from a council to a union to bolster the ability of the conservative Gulf monarchies to confront Iran and prevent the Arab uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa from further encroaching on their fiefdoms.
Persistent reports suggest that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the first Gulf state to have virtually run out of oil that last year brutally squashed a popular revolt with the assistance of the kingdom and the UAE, will declare a union at a GCC summit scheduled to be held in Riyadh later this month.
Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, in a speech this week to a GCC youth conference delivered on his behalf by his deputy cautioned that "cooperation and coordination between the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in its current format may not be enough to confront the existing and coming challenges, which require developing Gulf action into an acceptable federal format. The Gulf union, when it is realized, God willing, will yield great benefits for its peoples, such as in foreign policy with the presence of a supreme Gulf committee coordinating foreign policy decisions that reorders group priorities and realizes group interests," he said.
The Riyadh summit is expected to discuss the outline of a union first proposed by Saudi King Abdullah last December. The Saudis, fearful that Bahrain’s rebellious Shiite Muslim majority could spark further unrest in their predominantly Shiite, restive, oil-rich Eastern Province, envision a GCC political union in which they would be the major power that would adopt joint foreign and defence policies.
Bahraini security forces clash almost daily with Shiite protesters despite last year’s crackdown which pushed demonstrators out of the island capital’s main square. Bahraini opposition forces fear that a union with the kingdom will further strengthen hardliners in the ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa family and open the door to a permanent presence of Saudi troops on the island.
A Gulf union would also bolster royal resistance in some states like the UAE to political liberalization and greater rights as embodied in the Qatari decision to legalize trade unions. Qatar has consistently charted its own course that has put it at odds with the Saudis. Qatar has backed in various countries in revolt the Muslim Brotherhood, a group deeply distrusted by the kingdom, while the Saudis have supported the more conservative Salafis.
GCC states have also failed to achieve unanimity on a wide range of other issues including monetary union, the building of a causeway linking Qatar and Bahrain and security front information sharing as well as the creation of a central command.
The failure to cooperate more closely on security prompted by mutual distrust as well as lack of confidence in US reliability has led to the recent scuppering of the installation of a joint missile shield as a defence against Iran.
For its part, Qatar, by hosting the 2022 World Cup, the world’s largest sporting event, and bidding for various other big ticket tournaments has opened itself to international scrutiny as well as demands from various groups to liberalize so that it as a global hub can accommodate issues such as alcohol and sexual diversity that go against the region’s conservative grain. A GCC political union could complicate the Qatari balancing act.
The Qatari union concession came as a six-month ultimatum by the International Trade Union Confederations (ITUC) that the Gulf state legalize unions and ensure that labour conditions meet international standards came to an end. The ITUC, which represents 175 million workers in 153 countries, had threatened Qatar with a global campaign that would denounce under the slogan, 'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights,' the Gulf state as a slave driver.
The ITUC had charged earlier in a report that the working conditions of migrant workers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were "inhuman." Entitled ‘Hidden faces of the Gulf miracle,’ the multi-media report demanded that Qatar prove that migrant workers building infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup were not subject to inhuman conditions.
Qatari media quoted Labour Undersecretary Hussain Al Mulla as saying that the country’s emir was considering the plan to establish an independent Qatari-led labour committee to represent workers’ interests and an abolition of the sponsorship system that would stop short of allowing foreigners to freely change jobs.
The authorities have recently abandoned the requirement that foreign workers surrender their passports to their Qatari employers. Mr. Al Mulla said the plan had already been endorsed by the Qatari prime minister. It was not immediately clear if the Qatari moves would satisfy the ITUC.
“We wanted to set up the labour committee to help employees and lift off the pressure we and other Gulf countries have been under from several organisations. We are often asked about the non-existence of labour unions to defend labourers in Qatar. We had a labour committee during the days of oil companies. However, the situation in the Gulf is somewhat different because there are few Qataris who are labourers,” Mr. Al Mulla said. He said foreigners would have the right to vote in the committee but would not be able to become board members.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Soccer meets politics at Doha’s Mohammed Abdul Wahhab Mosque
Qatar’s increasing engagement in European soccer and international sport is just one leg in the small Gulf State’s high-risk attempts to position itself as a global player ‘on the right side of history’. But the accompanying social and political changes also spark local opposition in a conservative culture, James M. Dorsey writes in his second analysis on the Gulf State’s growing influence in international sport.
By James M. Dorsey
20 April 2012
Print version
A multi-domed, sand-coloured,... more
By James M. Dorsey
20 April 2012
Print version
A multi-domed, sand-coloured, architectural marvel, Doha’s newest and biggest mosque, symbolizes both Qatar’s bold storm into the 21st century and the pitfalls that that march entails. It’s not the mosque itself that raises eyebrows but its naming after an 18th century warrior priest, Sheikh Mohammed Abdul Wahhab,
the founder of Islam’s most puritan sect
Ironically, the mosque owes its naming to the debate Qatar’s winning of the right to host the 2022 World Cup has sparked. It is a debate that goes to the heart of the energy-rich Gulf state’s identity and the place its ruler, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al
Thani, wants to carve out for his tiny city-state.
The World Cup constitutes a centrepiece of a strategy that seeks to reshape the identity of the world’s only state outside of Saudi Arabia that adheres to Wahhabism, one of Islam’s most austere and restrictive interpretations of Islam; position Qatar as a global player capable of punching above its weight; create opportunities to leverage its enormous wealth in a bid to reduce its reliance on
the export of one commodity; and enhance its security by establishing mutually beneficial relations with friend and foe and ensuring that it is at the cutting edge of history.
The sports leg of Qatar’s broader, high-risk geo-political, conomic and media strategy – involving the creation of a world class airline, Qatar Airways; Al Jazeera as a cutting edge global broadcaster; a far more liberal interpretation of Wahhabism than that of Saudi Arabia and support for many of the popular uprisings
sweeping the Middle East and North Africa – is emerging as a driver of imminent restructuring of the region’s soccer landscape as well as of social change.
To achieve his goal, Emir Hamad has embarked on a buying spree of European soccer assets such as Paris Saint Germain and top league European broadcast rights as well as big ticket sponsorship agreements with the likes of FC Barcelona and the Tour de France, multiple bids for the hosting of international sports tournaments and the construction of world class infrastructure at a cost of tens of billions of dollar.
The strategy, which has exposed Qatar to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny, has already succeeded in putting Qatar with a population of some 1.7 million of which some two thirds are expatriates on the global map. Doha’s massive
international airport is even before its completion an international hub connecting the world’s seven continents. Al Jazeera competes with the BBC as the world’s foremost global broadcaster while Qatari businessmen are beginning to reap benefits in terms of business opportunities from their country’s investment in sports. Doha is a sought after venue for disputing parties such as the United States and the Taliban, bitterly divided
Palestinian factions and warring parties in Sudan, to find a way to bridge their differences.
It is a strategy that envisions cost outstripping material benefit for years to come with some individual components producing tangible results quicker than others. In many ways however, the intangibles – regional and political change, global positioning and the benefits of being on the right side of history – are as if not more important than a bookkeeper’s calculation of outlays and revenues.
Sparking opposition in the emir’s backyard
Yet, it is those intangibles that are sparking opposition in Emir Hamad’s own backyard to the social and economic changes necessary to transform Qatar into a global sports hub and
the political and diplomatic path on which the Gulf state has embarked that is likely to produce a region very different from the one conservative Wahhabis envision. These intangibles challenge a religious and cultural environment that discourages women’s
involvement in sports, often sees Western-style entertainment and fun as irreligious, opposes the kind of political change sweeping the Middle East and North Africa and favours government and society’s uncompromising adherence to Islamic law.
In the latest spat, conservative Qataris, including members of the royal family, quietly backed by Saudi Arabia have challenged the emir’s authority to allow the sale of alcohol and pork to non-Muslims. The conservative opposition has already prompted the ban of alcohol on a man-made island largely frequented by expatriates, a decision to make Arabic rather than English the language of instruction in education and a boycott of Qatar Airways. So far both sides have scored points. Sports has been exempted from the imposition of Arabic as the language of instruction while the naming of the mosque after Sheikh Mohammed throws a bone to the conservatives albeit one that is unlikely to satisfy them.
Beyond forging a national identity, sports serves also as an effort to pre-empt the kind of youth-led rebellion that has been rocking much of the region for the past 16 months. “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. She described “empowering young people” as one reason for the bid alongside Qatar’s efforts to mediate conflicts and reduce regional obesity and diabetes levels.
Sport as a trigger for social change
Nonetheless, sports are likely to spark a social revolution of sorts as long as the emir is able to keep the conservatives in check. For one, it is forcing Qatar to become the first wealthy Gulf state dependent on expatriate labour to significantly improve
working conditions and the legal environment of expatriate workers in line with international standards. It is however not clear yet whether that will also mean legalizing the existence of trade unions.
With international trade unions threatening a global campaign under the slogan 'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights,' Qatar has further vowed to ensure that contractors involved in preparations for the 2022 World Cup will adhere to international labour laws.
Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee Secretary General Hassan Al Thawadi conceded early this year that "major sporting events shed a spotlight on conditions in countries. There are labour issues here in the country, but Qatar is committed to reform. We will require that contractors impose a clause to ensure that
international labour standards are met. Sport and football in particular, is a very powerful force. Certainly we can use it for the benefit of the region."
Qatar and other oil-rich Gulf states have long been targeted by labour organizations for their treatment of particularly unskilled and low-skilled workers. Qatar like the UAE and others in the Gulf operates a sponsorship program under which all foreign
workers have to have a local sponsor who can make seeking alternative employment or another sponsor difficult and who often retains the worker’s passport on employment. Trade unionists argue that the lack of a minimum wage further enhances exploitation of labour.
The issue of workers’ rights touches a raw nerve in countries like Qatar and the UAE where the local population constitutes a minority. Gulf states are concerned that improving labour conditions would not only have economic consequences but also
give foreigners a greater stake in a society which ensures they are forced to leave the country once their contract has ended.
Qatar’s employment of sports to project itself internationally coupled with pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has also prompted Qatar to field women’s athletes for the first time in its history at this year’s London Olympics. Qatar
alongside Saudi Arabia, which is still struggling with how to respond to the IOC, and Brunei, is the only country never to have been represented by women at an international tournament. To be fair, women in Qatar, in contrast to their sisters in Saudi Arabia, are by and large subject to far less restrictions.
Increasing professionalization and commercialization in the region
Finally, in a part of the world where sports and particularly soccer are often a battlefield for political, ethnic, religious and gender rights, Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup has sparked a growing push towards professionalization,
commercialization and the creation of a proper football industry as a key to unlocking economic opportunity.
For many in the region, last year’s Asia Cup final in Doha, in which half of the competing teams hailed from the Middle East with not one reaching the semi-finals, constituted a wake-up call. It is an experience, Middle Eastern leaders and soccer
officials do not want repeated at the Qatar World Cup.
"Something is moving," says Santino Saguto, an Italian soccer management consultant based in Dubai. "Qatar 2022 has prompted the region to discuss ways to create value. The leagues, the football associations and the media are starting to buy into the concept. That's how it started in Europe."
The UAE took a first step a few years ago when for the first time it marketed the rights to broadcast its league matches – a key step in generating revenue and creating value. The UAE example is reportedly being discussed by Saudi Arabia, the region's most
important league beyond Egypt.
That is not to say that the UAE's blazing of the trail is not without its birth pangs. Commercial broadcasters charge that state-owned networks distort competition by paying exorbitant amounts for the exclusive right to broadcast major football events.
They point to Al Jazeera's clinching of the right to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 Fifa World Cups for an undisclosed amount believed to be in excess of US$3 billion. Abu Dhabi Media Company, owned by the royal family, was moreover awarded the
exclusive rights to air the English Premier League in the UAE.
________________________________________
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.
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.
Conservative Saudi crown prince endorses female participation in Olympics
By James M. Dorsey
Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has approved plans for the... more
By James M. Dorsey
Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has approved plans for the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom to send female athletes to the Olympics for the first time at the London Games in a move that counters fears that he would be a less progressive ruler than ailing King Abdullah, according to Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper.
In doing so, Prince Nayef, the kingdom’s long-serving interior minister who is widely viewed as a conservative even by Saudi standards and is closer than the king to the country’s powerful, austere Wahhabi clergy, is bowing to pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that threatened to bar Saudi Arabia from the London games if it failed to field female athletes.
The decision is likely to be welcomed by liberal Saudis who worry that once he succeeds King Abdullah he will prove to be more susceptible to demands of the clergy who adhere to the teachings of the 18th century puritan warrior-priester, Mohammed Abdul Wahhab to reverse the process of gradual political, economic and social reforms initiated by King Abdullah. In an illustration’s of the clergy’s conservatism, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Abd al-Aziz bin Abdullah recently called for the destruction of all churches in the Arabian Peninsula.
The decision by Prince Nayef is likely part of a concerted government effort to fend off a possible popular uprising in the kingdom similar to those sweeping large parts of the Middle East and North Africa by catering to youth sentiments and growing female demand for sporting opportunities.
Prince Nayef earned a reputation as a hardliner most recently for his crackdown on Al Qaeda militants in the kingdom. By the same token, he oversaw a largely successful rehabilitation program that guided the return to society of former Al Qaeda operatives.
Al Hayat said that Prince Nayef’s approval was conditioned on women competing in sports that "meet the standards of women's decency and don't contradict Islamic laws." It was not immediately clear which sports the crown prince had in mind.
Al Hayat reported Prince Nayef’s decision a day after the IOC reported that progress had been made in negotiations with Saudi Olympic officials on sending female athletes and officials to the games.
Saudi Arabia alongside Qatar and Brunei has never included women in its Olympic teams. IOC officials believe that Qatar and Brunei will also be fielding women athletes in London for the first time.
“The IOC is confident that Saudi Arabia is working to include women athletes and officials at the Olympic Games in London in accordance with the international federations' rules," the IOC said.
Earlier, IOC President Jacques Rogge said in an interview with The Associated Press that he was "optimistic" that Saudi Arabia would send women to London. "It depends on the possibilities of qualifications, standards of different athletes. We're still discussing the various options," Mr. Rogge said.
He said a decision would be finalized within a month to six weeks, but "we are optimistic that this is going to happen."
The apparent IOC success in nudging Saudi Arabia into complying with the committee’s charter contrasts starkly with world soccer body FIFA’s failure to hold the kingdom to its obligation. Saudi Arabia fields a men’s soccer team but restricts if not bans women’s soccer.
FIFA’s failure to pressure Saudi Arabia also contrasts with its recent effort to ensure that observant Muslim women can play professional soccer by lifting its ban on women wearing the hijab in favour of a headdress that fulfils the cultural needs of Muslim players and meets safety and security standards.
International human rights group Human Rights Watch last month accused Saudi Arabia of kowtowing to assertions by the country's powerful conservative Muslim clerics that female sports constitute "steps of the devil" that will encourage immorality and reduce women's chances of meeting the requirements for marriage.
The Human Rights Watch charges contained in a report entitled “’Steps of the Devil’ came on the heels of the kingdom backtracking on a plan to build its first stadium especially designed to allow women who are currently barred from attending soccer matches because of the kingdom’s strict public gender segregation to watch games. The planned stadium was supposed to open in 2014.
The report urged the International Olympic Committee to require Saudi Arabia to legalize women's sports as a condition for its participation in Olympic games.
Saudi women despite official discouragement have in recent years increasingly been pushing the envelope at times with the support of more liberal members of the ruling Al Saud family. The kingdom's toothless Shura or Advisory Council has issued regulations for women's sports clubs, but conservative religious forces often have the final say in whether they are implemented or not.
In a sign that efforts to allow and encourage women's sports are at best haphazard and supported only by more liberal elements in the government, the kingdom last year hired a consultant to develop its first national sports plan - for men only. There is no legal ban in on women’s sports in Saudi Arabia where the barriers for women are rooted in tradition and the kingdom’s puritan interpretation of Islamic law.
The pushing of the envelope comes as women are increasingly challenging other aspects of the kingdom's gender apartheid against the backdrop of simmering discontent in Saudi society over a host of issues.
Manal al-Sharif was detained in May of last year for nine days after she videotaped herself flouting the ban on women driving by getting behind a steering wheel and driving. She was released only after signing a statement promising that she would stop agitating for women's rights.
A group of women launched earlier this year a legal challenge to the ban asserting that it had no base in Islamic law.
Opposition to women's sports is reinforced by the fact that physical education classes are banned in state-run Saudi girl’s schools. Public sports facilities are exclusively for men and sports associations offer competitions and support for athletes in international competitions only to men.
The issue of women's sport has at time sparked sharp debate with conservative clerics condemning it as corrupting and satanic and charging that it spreads decadence. Conservative clerics have warned that running and jumping can damage a woman's hymen and ruin her chances of getting married.
One group of religious scholars argued that swimming, soccer and basketball were too likely to reveal “private parts,” which includes large areas of the body. Another religious scholar said it could lead to “mingling with men.”
To be fair, less conservative clerics have come out in favour of women's sports as well as less restrictions on women. In addition, the newly appointed head of the kingdom's religious vigilantes is reported to favour relaxation of the ban on the mixing of the sexes.
In defiance of the obstacles to their right to engage in sports, women have in recent years quietly been establishing soccer and other sports teams using extensions of hospitals and health clubs as their base.
Prince Nayef’s decision has revived hope that 18-year old equestrienne Dalma Rushdi Malhas who won a bronze medal in the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics in which she participated at her own accord would be among the first Saudi women athletes to compete at an Olympic games. Expectations that she would be competing in London were dashed recently when the Saudis qualified an all-men team qualified for London’s jumping competition.
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.
The indispensable junior partner
op-ed article for the British Scholar Society, March 2012
An analysis of the Anglo-American relationship in the Persian Gulf during the 1960s, written from the perspective of... more An analysis of the Anglo-American relationship in the Persian Gulf during the 1960s, written from the perspective of the US Government.
Muslim players win hijab battle in their struggle for women’s rights
By James M. Dorsey
Observant Muslim women soccer players won a first victory on Saturday with the... more
By James M. Dorsey
Observant Muslim women soccer players won a first victory on Saturday with the endorsement by the International Football Association Board’s (IFAB) decision to allow the players to test specially designed headscarves for the next four months.
The proposal presented to the IFAB, the soccer body that determines the game’s rules, was tabled by world soccer body FIFA vice president Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, a proponent of women’s rights.
Prince Ali’s campaign to lift the ban on Muslim women wearing a headdress in competition matches garnered over the past year widespread support from among others the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the United Nations and the International Federation of Professional Footballers as well as members of the FIFA executive committee.
Prince Ali launched his campaign after Iran was disqualified for this year’s London Olympics because it appeared last year on the pitch in Amman for a qualifier against Jordan with its players wearing the hijab, the headdress that covers a woman’s hair, ears and neck. Three Jordanian hijab-wearing players were also barred.
IFAB, a grouping whose membership – FIFA, England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland – harks back to British colonialism’s globalization of the beautiful game, will review its decision in early July based on the experience of the coming four months.
"I am deeply grateful that the proposal to allow women to wear the headscarf was unanimously endorsed by all members of IFAB. I welcome their decision for an accelerated process to further test the current design and I'm confident that once the final ratification at the special meeting of IFAB takes place, we will see many delighted and happy players returning to the field and playing the game they love, ," Prince Ali said.
While the IFAB decision constitutes an important tangible as well as psychological victory for Muslim women athletes, it by no way resolves all of their problems, many of which have less to do with religion and more to do with inbred traditions of patriarchic societies as well as non-Muslim prejudices.
“Female athletes in the Middle East face pressures that include family, religion, politics, and culture. These issues often take place over use or nonuse of the hijab, the traditional head covering for Muslim women,” concluded a recent study entitled ‘Muslim Female Athletes and the Hijab’ by Geoff Harkness, a sociologist at Northwestern University’s campus in Qatar, and one of his basketball playing students, Samira Islam.
The study based on interviews with female athletes and their coaches found that sports often empowered young women whose role models are successful sportswomen like Fatima Al-Nabhani, an Omani tennis player, and Bahraini sprinter Roqaya Al-Ghasara, who was fully covered when she ran and won at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “Both women not only serve as role models for aspiring female athletes from the region, but also shatter Western stereotypes,” the report said. Eight other female athletes competed in Beijing wearing the hijab in sprinting, rowing, taekwondo and archery.
Resistance to women playing soccer with or without their head covered is not restricted to Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa. Palestine’s women soccer team includes 14 Christians and only four Muslims but a majority of the team has similar tales to tell about the obstacles they needed to overcome and the initial resistance they met from their families.
In a break with tradition, Kuwait this weekend hosted the first Gulf university soccer tournament for females at its Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) in which Saudi Arabia fielded its first ever women’s soccer team in an international competition.
"Out of commitment to its social role, besides the academic one, GUST seeks to promote female sports in Kuwait and in the Arabian Gulf region through organizing and patronizing such competitions," GUST Chancellor Afaf Al-Rakhis said. She described women's sports as a reflection of the social and cultural advancement of a country.
That’s a strong statement given resistance in Kuwait to women’s soccer and the fact that Saudi Arabia bans women’s sports and only tacitly allows women’s teams to be formed in private settings.
Kuwaiti Islamists denounced GUST’s plans for the tournament when they were first announced last year and urged the government the competition. “Women playing football is unacceptable and contrary to human nature and good customs.
The government has to step in and drop the tournament,” Kuwait’s Al Wasat newspaper quoted member of parliament Waleed al-Tabtabai as saying.
Mr. Tabtabai was one of a number of deputies who criticized the government and sports executives for allowing the Kuwaiti women’s national soccer team to take part in the Third West Asian Women Soccer Tournament in Abu Dhabi. The members of parliament charged that the women’s participation had been illegal and a waste of money. “Football is not meant for women, anyway,” Mr. Tabtabai said at the time.
Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite tv quoting Reuters reported that the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority had earlier this year announced plans to introduce after-hours physical education classes for both girls and boys. Public schools in the kingdom do not offer girls physical education. It was not clear why the investment authority rather than the Saudi authority responsible for youth and sports would be spearheading an initiative to facilitate women’s sports.
Al Arabiya conceded that professional women athletes in the kingdom “are publicly slammed for going against their natural role” and reported that Saudi newspapers refer to them as “shameless” because they cause embarrassment to their families. Women athletes often receive text messages urging them to stay home and tend to their household duties as mothers and wives, Al Arabiya said.
“If there is no support from the family we cannot get into these types of activities ... some people are extremist or extra conservative,” it quoted 17-year old basketball player Hadeer Sadagah as saying.
International human rights group Human Rights Watch last month accused Saudi Arabia of kowtowing to assertions by the country's powerful conservative Muslim clerics that female sports constitute "steps of the devil" that will encourage immorality and reduce women's chances of meeting the requirements for marriage.
The Human Rights Watch charges contained in a report entitled “’Steps of the Devil’ came on the heels of the kingdom backtracking on a plan to build its first stadium especially designed to allow women who are currently barred from attending soccer matches because of the kingdom’s strict public gender segregation to watch games. The planned stadium was supposed to open in 2014.
The report borrows its name from a religious edict by Sheikh Abdulkareem al-Khudair, a member of the kingdom’s Supreme Council for Religious Scholars, banning sports for women because they “will lead to following in the footsteps of the devil.” Sheikh Al-Khudair said the government could not introduce sports in schools for girls because such activity is forbidden in Islam.
Saudi women, including some members of the royal family, nonetheless are pushing the envelope. A group of women is planning a hiking expedition to Everest base camp this summer as part of a charity fundraising exercise to promote a healthy lifestyle for breast cancer patients.
“As a nation we need to focus on preventative measures that include healthy lifestyle, specifically nutrition and fitness and early detection (of women's illnesses). The inspiration to climb Everest base camp came from the basic idea that a healthy lifestyle and healthy body can fight illness better,” Al Arabiya quoted Princess Reema al-Saud, who is leading the Everest climb 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.
Bahrain’s 10:0 against Indonesia puts both nations in the political hot seat
By James M. Dorsey
Bahrain’s stunning 10:0 thrashing this week of Indonesia in a World Cup qualifier... more
By James M. Dorsey
Bahrain’s stunning 10:0 thrashing this week of Indonesia in a World Cup qualifier threatens to damage the campaign of the country’s football czar, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, to be elected head of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and has put the careers of prominent soccer managers and executives in the firing line as world soccer body FIFA investigates possible match fixing.
The investigation kick starts former German police chief and Interpol director Ralf Mutschke’s new job as FIFA security chief, which includes the fight against corruption and match-fixing.
FIFA described the Bahraini victory which failed to ensure that the Gulf state advances to the fourth and final Asian qualifying round for the 2014 World Cup as “unusual.”
In addition to having to make up for a nine-goal deficit, which it did with its defeat of Indonesia, Bahrain also needed Qatar to lose its last match. But by scoring an 83rd-minute equalizer to draw 2-2 with Iran, Qatar ensured that it rather than Bahrain would advance to the final round.
All in all, Indonesia has lost all five of its previous group matches, conceding 16 goals while scoring just three.
FIFA, in a bid to appear impartial and not further tarnish Bahrain Football Association (BFA) president Sheikh Salman’s election campaign, described its investigation as “routine,” adding that the probe was justified "given the unusual outcome against results expectation and head-to-head history, and in the interests of maintaining unequivocal confidence in our game."
The allegation of match-fixing adds another layer of controversy to Sheikh Salman’s campaign given his backing last year of the arrest, torture and/or firing of 150 athletes and sports officials, including several national soccer team players on charges of involvement in anti-government protests.
Speaking in London, FIFA vice president Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein said the outcome of the Bahrain-Indonesia match “might just be a coincidence, however there might be something behind it." Prince Ali, a proponent for greater transparency within FIFA, noted that match fixers were often “a step ahead” of those seeking to safeguard the integrity of the beautiful game. "We will have to see what the investigation comes out with,” he said.
The AFC said in a statement that it supported the FIFA probe and would "cooperate closely with the world football governing body in the investigation."
Bahrain’s English coach Peter Taylor is likely to move into the fire line if it emerges that the match against Indonesia was fixed. Mr. Taylor was criticized last year for taking up the job in a country where several national team players were banned and mistreated as part of the 150 sports people penalized for demonstrating against the government. Mr. Taylor somewhat callously at the time justified accepting the job by saying: "I am just a football manager. Since I've been here there have been more problems in England than there have been in Bahrain."
Bahrain has historically had close games with Indonesia, having won two, drawn two and lost two prior to Wednesday's game. Bahrain had scored nine goals in those matches and conceded seven.
Indonesia was disadvantaged during the match after its goalkeeper, Samsidar, was sent off the pitch with a red card just two minutes into the game and because it was fielding several inexperienced international players after suspending others who play for clubs in the breakaway Indonesian Super League.
As a result, it is hardly surprising that the probe shines the spotlight on the Indonesian football association (PSSI), which like Indonesia itself has been wracked by corruption.
PSSI chairman Djohar Arifin Husin added fuel to the fire when he was quoted by Indonesian news website Inilah.com on his way back to Jakarta from Bahrain as charging that the national team could “no longer depend on the senior players. They are all mafia who have been contaminated with the way previous PSSI officials ran football, fixing matches as they see fit.”
Amid denunciations by former players, Mr. Husin has since denied making the remark and accused Inilah.com of defaming him.
Mr. Husin nonetheless appeared to leave the door open to possible foul play charging that controversial Lebanese referee Andre El Haddad had made “lots of questionable calls…., so that should be investigated.”
Mr. El Haddad last year took charge of a qualifier between China and Singapore that saw him make several hotly contested decisions. China won 2-1.
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 victory boosts national unity and spotlights Gulf problems
By James M. Dorsey
Lebanon advanced for the first time in its soccer history to the fourth and final Asian... more
By James M. Dorsey
Lebanon advanced for the first time in its soccer history to the fourth and final Asian qualifying round for the 2014 World Cup despite losing this week to the United Arab Emirates. In doing so, the Lebanese squad cemented soccer’s role as a rallying point for a country divided and scarred by years of bitter civil war afraid that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s sectarian-tainted brutal crackdown could spill into the streets of Lebanese cities.
In a country where almost every facet of life is defined by sectarian fault lines, Lebanon’s advance had people from all walks of life glued to television sets and computer screens in offices, university lecture halls, sports bars and living rooms. Schools closed early for students to be able to watch the match.
The Lebanese success even if it was by default strengthened soccer’s unifying role two months after the national team’s defeat of South Korea in December brought tens of thousands into the streets of the Lebanese capital Beirut waving the country's red and white flag with a green cedar in the middle. As Lebanon scored against South Korea sectarian chants in Beirut’s Cite Sportive stadium were replaced with roars of "Minshan Allah, Libnan yallah'' - "For God's Sake, Lebanon Come On'' as fans belonging to the country’s multiple sects and political groups united behind their national squad.
Nonetheless, fighting last month between supporters of Mr. Assad, and those who oppose his regime in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli signaled just how fragile that sense of national unity is. Three people were killed and many more were injured in 24 hours of fighting.
Meanwhile, in a weird twist of events, Lebanese fans attending Wednesday’s match in Abu Dhabi against the UAE spotlighted a key weakness of soccer in the Gulf that has fuelled some of the criticism of Qatar’s winning in late 2010 of the right to host the 2022 World Cup: the lack of a fan base eager to come to the stadium to cheer their team.
The estimated 6,000 Lebanese fans outnumbered the Emiratis on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi’s Al Nahyan Stadium. To be sure with an estimated 100,000 Lebanese expats resident in the UAE many of the Lebanese did not have to travel far for the match.
Nonetheless, news reports said that Lebanese supporters had come from as far as Brazil and Britain to support their team.
The Gulf News reported that Emiratis boycotted the match because their team did not stand a chance irrespective of whether it defeated Lebanon or not of reaching the World Cup finals as it had done once before in 1990.
While that may be true it evades the structural problem with filling stadiums in a part of the world where the local population often constitutes a minority of the total population. In the UAE, locals account for at best 15% of the population whose vast majority are expatriates.
A recent survey by Abu Dhabi daily The National concluded that the Mohamed bin Zayed Stadium of the emirate’s Al Jazira Sports & Culture club was among the UAE’s most popular sport venues. The stadium owes it popularity only in part to its futuristic design that lacks a runway track and allows fans to be seated closer to the field.
Equally important is the fact that Al Jazira has some of the highest attendance figures in the Gulf because its former chief executive officer, Englishman Phil Anderton, a former marketeer for Scottish Rugby, Coca Cola and Procter & Gamble, was willing to go places others in the Gulf shied away from because they were afraid of upsetting the fragile demographic apple cart.
In a bid to raise match attendance and integrate his club with the community, Mr. Anderton reached out to the expatriate population – a move Gulf clubs controlled by the region’s ruling families have avoided out of fear that this would give foreigners a stake that could encourage them over time to demand greater rights.
Mr. Anderton’s strategy worked. Within a year attendance figures at the Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium had quadrupled drawing a record crowd of 28,164 for a match against Al Wasl. Redevelopment of the stadium has increased its capacity from 15,000 to 42,000. Ironically, the increased number of expats has sparked greater enthusiasm among Emiratis.
"The number of Al Jazira's home fans is really impressive as they really get a good crowd. You enjoy the game thrice as much than the stadium being more than half empty. Also, we see a lot of expats at their games so it's great that they are showing an interest in the Pro League,” The National quoted rival Al Nasr fan Faisal Hamadi as saying.
“We looked at who was coming and who wasn't and why. There was a lack of awareness and a range of misconceptions - they thought it was amateur or for Emiratis only. From this we developed a brand position to encourage people interested in football to come to the club. With the transitory nature few felt a connection so we are trying to unite the city through the club with the tag line ‘Pride of Abu Dhabi'. We developed a full marketing plan with advertising and PR as well as going into local schools and communities to try and change perceptions and raise awareness,” Mr. Anderson said in an interview last year.
“We showcased our star players and organized tournaments for the community in our facilities. Once we encouraged people to come to the games and feel part of the club we had to deliver a product. We needed to make sure that we treated people well when they came, with food in a clean well sign-posted stadium and then we needed to put on a good show where football is at the core of other entertainment options - it's more an American model,” he added.
Mr. Anderton’s approach broke with Gulf practice in more than one way. Arguing that teams can only exploit their home advantage if they have the crowd cheering them on during matches, he also argued in favor of turning clubs dependent on the politically motivated largesse of their royal and tribal owners into commercially viable entities. “Historically clubs here didn't have the requirement to go into the commercial side of things but we want to develop sponsorship, merchandise, ticketing and hospitality from using our facilities 365 days a year via leasing in order to set down a sustainable business model, which inevitably leads to success on the field,” Mr. Anderton said.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
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