Sudanese anti-government protests mushroom

By James M. Dorsey

Sudanese students are demanding the fall of President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir’s government in growing daily demonstrations that come 15 months after student protests nearly forced the African Football Confederation to deprive Sudan of the hosting of an African soccer tournament.

Like in February of last year, attempts by security forces using tear gas have only boosted the demonstrators’ ranks with other population groups joining the week-old protests that erupted after the government announced spending cuts.

Hundreds of Sudanese of various walks of life joined the students after Friday prayers chanting the Arab world’s all too popular slogan: “The people want to overthrow the regime.” Mr. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Sudanese crackdown against rebels in the Darfur region.

This week’s protests have already lasted longer than last year’s and it remains to be seen whether the eruption will fizzle out as it did last year. The killing by security forces of a student last year proved insufficient to give the protests the momentum witnessed in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world.

The student protesters were born largely after the popular revolt in 1985 that forced then President Jaafar al Numeir from office. Nonetheless those protests, that like in Egypt last year prompted the military to step in and replace the disliked leader are one of the few, if not the only ones, in which an Arab leader was forced out of office by popular will prior to the current wave of revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. That revolt led to Sudan for a period of time becoming the first country ever to be effectively ruled by a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate rather than a democracy.

What makes this round of protests different from those last year is the fact that they feed on government measures intended to reduce a $2.4 billion budget deficit fuelled by last year’s secession of South Sudan that robbed Sudan of three quarters of its oil production that effect the pocket book of every Sudanese. The measures include lifting subsidies for fuel, and increased taxes and custom duties on luxury products.

Disagreement over the price that landlocked South Sudan should pay Sudan to pump its oil to northern ports has prompted the newly created nation to shut down production and brought Sudan and South Sudan to the brink of war.

Some analysts suggest that the myriad problems Mr. Bashir faces rather than popular discontent that struggles to maintain momentum the absence of a viable alternative to the disliked president could ultimately prove to be his downfall. "But an economic crisis, armed conflict along the borders, a stalemate with South Sudan on sharing the oil yield and a malfunctioning political system might all render a popular uprising unnecessary, and cripple the government from within," said Sudanese analyst Nesrine Malik in an article in The Guardian.

If Darfur is one of Mr. Bashir’s problems, Darfur United, the region’s fledgling soccer team made up of survivors of the vicious battles against Bashar-backed forces who live in refugee camps in neighbouring Chad is happy to contribute its bit. The team plays in a bid to offer a violence-ridden and destitute region a ray of hope, keep it on the world’s map and serve as a reference point that allows a far-flung refugee Diaspora to maintain contact. Newly formed with the support of an American NGO, singer Macy Gray, National Basketball Association Tracy McGrady and Adidas, Darfur United earlier this month participated alongside Kurdistan, the Western Sahara, Provence, the Tamils and Northern Cyprus in the 5^th VIVA World Cup for nations world soccer body FIFA refuses to recognize.

“Soccer united people. It keeps Dafur on the international agenda. Competing in VIVA in Kurdistan is more important than winning. We are now part of the world,” said a Darfur United player putting a good face on the fact that his team ended at the bottom of the tournament.

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.

Protest is proving beneficial to North African soccer performance

(Source Matthew Barrett, FootballSpeak.com)

By James M. Dorsey

Protest is good for soccer. It enhances performance despite the hardship of civil strife according to an analysis of the performance of six North African national soccer teams before and after pro-longed mass protests that demanded regime change in their countries.

Matthew Barrett, a sports sponsorship professional, concluded in an analysis published on FootballSpeak.com that Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Morocco and Algeria, five nations that experienced political upheaval in 2011, had performed significantly better in terms of average points per match following the protests or in Sudan’s case, the cessation of South Sudan, compared to 2010, the year before the unrest. Egypt, , which won the African Cup three times in row, but failed to qualify for the 2012 finals was the exception that confirmed the rule.

The six national teams, Mr. Barrett, calculated, played 53 matches since the series of Arab uprisings erupted in Tunisia a year ago, in which they scored 87 goals with an average of 1.64 goals per match and won 45% of all games played. By comparison, the same teams played 60 matches in the year before the revolts in which they scored 79 points with an 

average of 1.32 per game and won 33% of the games played.

The teams performed better even though professional soccer was suspended for months in several countries, including Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria during the protests in a bid to prevent the soccer pitch from becoming an opposition rallying point. The enhanced performance occurred further against the backdrop of a rift in various countries between fans, who played key roles in the protests, and a majority of players who opted to either remain aloof, and not take sides or in some cases to come out in support of the embattled autocrat.

The improvement in performance constitutes an apparent triumph of national identity over internalized neo-patriarchism, which characterizes Arab autocracies and means that players and managers more often than not identified with the autocratic leader as a father figure. It also highlights the debilitating effect that politically motivated autocratic interference in the game had on performance.

Libyan goalkeeper Samir Aboud suggested that enhanced performance was the result of post-revolt national teams having a sense of truly playing for their country rather than their ruler when he said after a draw against Zambia that allowed Libya to progress towards the 2012 African Cup finals that “this is for all Libyans, for our revolution.” Libya’s Brazilian coach, Marcos Paqueta, added that his squad was "not only playing for football success but for a new government and a new country”.

Nabil Maalouf, coach of Esperance Sportive de Tunis, which this year won the African Champions League, noted that “the events at home really stimulated our team and we believe that the players felt greatly liberated after what happened." Defender Khalil Chammam concluded that “one positive thing from the revolution was that, although we suffered a lot, those changes and the suffering made us stronger -mentally and physically."

The triumph of national identity over neo-patriarchism symbolized by the post-Qaddafi Libyan team flying the pre-Qaddafi Libyan flag and singing a new national anthem enabled Libya to remain undefeated in competitive matches since the country’s autocratic leader, Moammar Qaddafi, was toppled earlier this year. That is no mean fete for a team that was dominated for years by Al Saadi al Qaddafi, the Libyan leader’s cruel and mercurial son with soccer ambitions of his own, who equated its success with that of his father’s regime and its failures as unacceptable poor reflections on the regime.

Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Saadi on charges of misappropriation of soccer funds and armed intimidation of players and officials who has sought refuge in neighboring Niger. In a separate case, Saadi is under investigation by Libyan authorities for the 2005 murder of an anti-Qaddafi player.

The impact of neo-patriarchism that turned players into celebrated figures who went victorious were showered with expensive gifts meant that the Libyan team meant was during the revolt  increasingly split between supporters of Mr. Qaddafi and players who lost close ones among the NATO-backed rebel forces in the war against Qaddafi loyalists. The team’s captain denounced the rebels as dogs and rats, language used by Mr. Qaddafi to describe his opponents, while the goalkeeper and three other players defected together with 14 club players to the rebels four months into the rebellion.

The Libyan team’s rising star contrasts starkly with the fact that like Sudan it had barely ever registered on the radar of African soccer prior to the wave of protests that have swept the Middle East and North Africa in the past year and led to the overthrow of not only Mr. Qaddafi but also the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, far-reaching political reform in Morocco, continued unrest in Algeria and the carving out of an independent state of South Sudan.

The Algerian national squad, with anti-government protests moving this year from the streets back into the stadiums after having forced the government to lift the 19-year old state of emergency, won three of its five matches to emerge at the top of its group, according to Mr. Barrett, who calculated that it had scored 1.75 points per game as opposed to 1.25 last year. For its part, Sudan qualified as a runner-up in its group, achieving a 53 percent win ratio with 1.79 points per game as opposed to a 25 percent win ratio and 1.13 points per match a year earlier.

Egypt is the exception to the rule that autocratic interference diminishes and protest enhances performance. In the days of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s national team coached by the legendary Mubarak loyalist Hassan Shehahta won the African Cup three times in a row but this year failed for the first time in 29 years to qualify for the tournament’s finals.

There is no immediate explanation for why Egypt’s performance has been markedly weaker. Granted, Egypt’s transition from autocracy to a more open political system has been messy and bloody with soccer fans remaining engaged in bitter battles to force the country’s military rulers to relinquish power. Transition has however been messy in most countries with the exception of Tunisia, yet all have displayed performances beyond expectation.

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 papers take center stage in battle for press freedom in Sudan

By James M. Dorsey

Sports and particularly soccer is taking center stage in a battle for press freedom in Sudan.

The soccer-crazy country’s National Press Council said it was suspending six sports newspapers and has issued warnings to three others for allegedly encouraging violence between rival soccer teams. The suspensions as well as planned legal action against sports journalists are the latest move in a crackdown on a media landscape in which sports publications outstrip political media in circulation.

The council’s secretary general, El-Obeid Ahmed Morawah, said the suspensions were justified because the newspapers had failed to adhere to journalistic standards and were damaging Sudan’s reputation. Mr. Morawah insisted that the measure did not violate constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press.

Sensational reporting in which soccer executives and journalists of rival papers see their private lives exposed is par for the course in the fierce competition between the papers. Reporters are believed to be on the take and allegedly often seek to bribe soccer players and executives.

The crackdown on the sports media comes ten days after world soccer body FIFA forced the Sudanese Football Association to rerun its first presidential elections in a bid to avoid being banned from international soccer. FIFA charged that the government had interfered in an earlier election by preventing some candidates from standing and imposing prohibitive fees on nominees.

FIFA endorsed the election after the incumbent president, Kamal Shaddad,  who had been barred from re-election by the government in the initial vote on July 26, withdrew his nomination and did not attend the vote.

As a result, the same two candidates as in the initial vote ran in the re-run, which Mr. Shaddad’s deputy, Mutasim Jaafar won.

That apparently was good enough for FIFA. “This assembly has met FIFA’s requirements,” said Taha Ismail, one of the FIFA representatives monitoring the vote.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.