Kurds monitor upcoming FIFA decision on Kosovo

By James M. Dorsey

The Kosovo Football Federation (KFF) and soccer-crazy Kosovars are not the only ones in anxious anticipation of this coming Friday’s executive committee meeting of world soccer body FIFA that is expected to decide the terms on which Kosovo will be allowed to play international friendlies. So will the Kurdistan Football Association and equally soccer-mad Kurds.

Kosovo and Catalonia, which already has been granted permission by FIFA to play international friendlies, are models for Kurdistan to whom soccer is also an important tool in achieving recognition as a nation and statehood.

For Kurdistan, it is an uphill battle. Kosovo and Catalonia have a leg up on Kosovo.  Unlike Kurdistan, an autonomous region in Iraq that enjoys no recognition from an international community afraid that its independence would further destabilize the Middle East, Kosovo has been recognized by the United States, 36 European nations including 22 European Union members, and 54 other countries.

Kosovo moreover is a member of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In addition, Kosovo achieved full sovereignty this month with the ending of international supervision imposed after it unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008. For its part, Catalonia’s bid was backed by the Spanish Football Federation.

Kurdistan has none of those assets. The KFF’s relations with the Iraqi soccer body are strained with Iraqis weary of Kurdish efforts to strike out on their own. Unable to breakthrough internationally, Kurdistan organized last June the 5th VIVA world cup for nations that FIFA refuses to recognize. Competing teams included Kurdistan, Northern Cyprus the Tamils, Western Sahara and Darfur.

In a September 14 letter to FIFA, the KFF welcomed FIFA’s decision in May to grant Kosovo the right to play international friendlies and requested that that right be applicable to “football as a whole, national clubs and teams, men’s and women’s, age categories and senior teams.”

The KFF noted that “Kosovo is not a place where football is embryonic and has to be sustained from a low level. The Football Federation of Kosovo became a member of the FA of Yugoslavia in 1946 with equal rights and the pyramid is complete with leagues and competitions from the top down to the bottom totally in line with FIFA and (European soccer body) UEFA requirements.”

That is in many ways true for Kurdistan too, which like Kosovo has Kurds playing in major European clubs. Nonetheless, the hardnosed, realpolitik objections to Kurdistan, for all practical matters a state-in-waiting, following in the shoes of Kosovo and Catalonia outweigh the moral arguments in its favor.

FIFA’s embrace of Kosovo will nevertheless make Kurdistan and others all the more determined to achieve equal soccer status. A statement by Iraqi Kurdish president Massoud Barzani equating sports to politics as a way of achieving recognition adorns Iraqi Kurdistan’s three major stadiums and virtually all of its sports centers and institutions. “We want to serve our nation and use sports to get everything for our nation. We all believe in what the president said,” says KFF president Safin Kanabi, scion of a legendary supporter of Kurdish soccer who led anti-regime protests in Kurdish stadiums during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

“Like any nation, we want to open the door through football. Take Brazil. People know Brazil first and foremost through football. We want to do the same. We want to have a strong team by the time we have a country. We do our job, politicians do theirs. Inshallah (if God wills), we will have a country and a flag” adds Kurdistan national coach Abdullah Mahmoud Muhieddin.

With other words, soccer may not achieve immediate political and diplomatic recognition but it certainly puts nations in the public eye. “Our external objective is primarily to project our identity through sports. Many people don't know our problem or would not be able to find us on a map. Soccer can change that. We had a French woman visit our refugee camps. When she told children that she was from France, they all replied saying Zidan” – a reference to retired star soccer player Zinedine Zidan, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, argues , said Sheikh Sidi Tigani, president of the Western Sahara Football Federation. “We’ve replaced the gun with a soccer ball,” adds West Saharan national sports director Mohammed Bougleida.

In using soccer as a tool to further nation and statehood, Kosovars, Kurds and West Saharan exploit a tradition established at the time that soccer was introduced in the Middle East and North Africa by the British when soccer was a tool to resist European colonialism and assert Arab interests internationally.

“Our success with VIVA demonstrates our ability to govern ourselves. Our goal for now is to be part of FIFA. All languages are represented in FIFA, only Kurdish isn’t while (FIFA president Sepp) Blatter claims that football is for everyone. We are human. We want the world to understand Kurdistan’s contribution,” says Mr. Kanabi.

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

Playing for nationhood

Kurds cheer their national team (Source: James M. Dorsey)

By James M. Dorsey

Kurdistan beat Northern Cyprus this week to win the 5^th VIVA world cup but both nations secured a far greater victory than emerging at the top of an obscure soccer tournament designed for often even more obscure national, ethnic and cultural entities.

In competing in the world cup for nations that world soccer body FIFA refuses to recognize Kurdistan and Northern Cyprus alongside the Tamils; Western Sahara; Darfur; Provence; the former Roman province of Raetia; Zanzibar; and Occitania, a strip of France, Italy and Spain where Occitan is spoken projected themselves as national and cultural entities.

The tournament organized by the New Federation or Non-FIFA Board underlines the role soccer plays in furthering national dreams. Like religion, soccer is a tool for socialization that generates a sense of belonging, representation and recognition. For nations like Palestine that thanks to Arab pressure is FIFA’s only member without a state and Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous part of Iraq, soccer is a key pillar of their 

strategy to achieve independence.

A statement by Iraqi Kurdish president Massoud Barzani equating sports to politics as a way of achieving recognition adorns the Kurdish state-in-waiting’s three major stadiums and virtually all of its sports centers and institutions. “We want to serve our nation and use sports to get everything for our nation. We all believe in what the president said,” said Safin Kanabi, head of the Kurdish Football Association, which co-organized the VIVA tournament with financial support of the Iraqi Kurdish government, and scion of a legendary supporter of soccer who led anti-regime protests in Kurdish stadiums during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

“Like any nation, we want to open the door through football. Take Brazil. People know Brazil first and foremost through football. We want to do the same. We want to have a strong team by the time we have a country. We do our job, politicians do theirs. Inshallah (if God wills), we will have a country and a flag” adds Kurdistan national coach Abdullah Mahmoud Muhieddin.

Sitting on the floor of a hotel room in the Kurdish capital of Erbil, Sheikh Sidi Tigani, president of the Western Sahara Football Federation said the Sahrawi government-in-exile formed by liberation movement Frente Polisario saw soccer as a way of keeping youth away from violence and drugs. It also allows the guerrilla movement to channel discontent with the fact that 37 years after the territory was occupied by Morocco, Saharans are no closer to a state f their own.

“Our external objective is primarily to project our identity through sports. Many people don't know our problem or would not be able to find us on a map. Soccer can change that. We had a French woman visit our refugee camps. When she told children that she was from France, they all replied saying Zidan” – a reference to retired star soccer player Zinedine Zidan, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, Sheikh Sidi said. “We’ve replace the gun with a soccer ball,” adds West Saharan national sports director Mohammed Bougleida.

Western Sahara’s presence at the Kurdistan tournament constituted a victory not only for the African desert region but also for Kurdistan itself even if the Sahrawis were forced to make concessions. It allowed Kurdistan to demonstrate its ability and intention to conduct a foreign policy at odds with that of Baghdad by hosting a World Cup for nations that world soccer body FIFA refuses to recognize. The fact that Morocco protested against the inclusion of the disputed Saharan territory to the Kurdish department of foreign relations rather than the Iraqi foreign ministry, and negotiated a deal with the Kurds under which the Saharans were not allowed to fly their flag during ceremonies and matches added to Kurdistan’s sense of recognition.

For the various nations participating in the VIVA World Cup, recognition means differing things. For a majority including Kurdistan, Northern Cyprus, Darfur, Western Sahara and the Tamils it is about achieving recognized nationhood. For Raetia and Occitania it is a platform to assert cultural identity while for Zanzibar it’s a tool to persuade FIFA to pressure the Tanzanian football association to include the island as part of its responsibility.

Building and maintaining an Iraqi Kurdish national team remains a political balancing act. Recruitment of Diaspora players is sensitive. Turkish Kurds are off limits. A nation whose Kurdish players and coach helped it in recent years reach the semi-finals of both the World Cup and the European Championships, Turkey fears losing some of its best players and encouraging national aspirations among its estimated 15 million Kurds who account for one fifth of the population.

“When we travel through Turkey we can't wear our Kurdistan outfits because it is too sensitive. The Turks remove all our T-shirts and tags from our bags. It's just too risky," said Mr. Kanabi.  Iraq too is afraid that the Kurdish team will lure some of its best players. Lack of FIFA recognition means Mr. Kanabi cannot demand that Iraqi Kurds choose between the Iraqi and the Kurdish squad.

In using soccer as a tool to further nation and statehood, Palestinians and Kurds are maintaining a tradition established at the time that soccer was introduced in the region by the British. “Sport was then used as a means of resisting, to different degrees, to French and British colonial presence, and of defending the Arab cause in the international arena,” writes Algerian sports researcher Mahfoud Amara in a book published last year. 

Algeria’s national team, for example, traces its roots to the National Liberation Front (FLN) during the war of independence which formed the team in 1957 from Algerian players in France who clandestinely left their colonial motherland to forge closer ties with its socialist supporters. The FLN move came on the heels of the first sport demonstration involving several Arab nations during the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, which Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq boycotted in protest against the invasion of Egypt by British, French and Israeli troops.

The crowds in Kurdish stadiums stood erect each time the Kurdish anthem was played at the beginning of a VIVA match. “Kurdistan, Kurdistan,” they shouted with one voice whenever their national team went of the offensive.

Says Mr. Kanabi: “Our success with VIVA demonstrates our ability to govern ourselves. Our goal for now is to be part of FIFA. All languages are represented in FIFA, only Kurdish isn’t while (FIFA president Sepp) Blatter claims that football is for everyone. We are human. We want the world to understand Kurdistan’s contribution.”

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.

Western Sahara conflict erupts in violence on the soccer pitch

Soccer practice in Laayoune (Source: The Road to 2010)

By James M. Dorsey

Morocco Tuesday sought to downplay as football hooliganism the death last weekend of seven people, including two policemen, in clashes at the end of a soccer match between local residents of the West Saharan port city of Dakhla and migrants from the north of the country.

Some 20 people were reported to have been wounded in the clashes in what the state-owned news agency MAP said was a fight between rival supporters of local club Mououdia Dakhla and  Casablanca’s Chebab  Mohammedia .

The clashes, the worst in a year, reflected tension between the local population, many of whom see the migrants as an attempt by the Moroccan government to change the mineral-rich Western Sahara’s demography in a bid to prevent the region from voting for independence in an eventual referendum.

Morocco and the Algerian-backed Saharan independence movement Polisario Front fought a 25 year-long war that ended in 1991 with a United Nations-brokered ceasefire. US efforts to reach an agreement on the terms of a referendum stalled this summer with Polisario rejecting a Moroccan offer of far-reaching autonomy and demanding a referendum on independence instead.

The Western Sahara, a sparsely populated tract of desert about the size of Britain, was annexed by Morocco in 1975 after Spain’s withdrawal from the territory. Morocco has since moved people from the north of the country into the region. Dakhla lies 1,830 kilometers southwest of the Moroccan capital of Rabat.

The clashes erupted Sunday with youths throwing stones. They escalated as Sahrawi activists joined the fighting, local residents said. The residents said the violence continued on Monday. They said that police used teargas to restore calm and that troops had been deployed in two of Dakhla’s neighborhoods.

Moroccan Interior Minister Taieb Cherkaoui visited Dakhla a day after the violence ordered an inquiry to determine who was responsible for the violence.

Local authorities issued a statement saying that cars and businesses had been set on fire. “The security situation is under control and an inquiry by police detectives is under way to arrest people involved in these actions in order to bring them to trial," a statement by the Oued-Eddahab-Lagouira province said.

It charged that “criminals” had exploited the soccer riot to attack people with clubs and knives.

The soccer riots were the latest in a series of incidents between locals and migrants. Northerners attacked in February members of local population. The Saharan town of Laayoune witnessed last November deadly riots when police sought to break up a protest camp housing thousands of local residents demanding better living conditions.

Moroccan Communication Minister Khalid Naciri likened the violence to "hooliganism that can happen anywhere around the world.” He charged in a telephone call with Reuters that “some people may be seeking to take advantage of these riots to spread instability ... We don't expect enemies of unity to sit idle."

The soccer riots erupted as thousands participated in the largest anti-government protest in months in Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city, and a smaller demonstration in Rabat, threatening to boycott the upcoming elections. In a symbolic retaking of territory, the 10,000 protesters marched through the sprawling lower income neighborhood of Sbata, where in May pro-democracy demonstrators were attacked and beaten by police.

“Will you vote?” chanted a protest leader. “No!” roared back the demonstrators, The Associated Press reported.

The protesters – youth activists, Islamists and leftists – are critical of a new constitution passed in July in a bid to save Morocco the kind of turmoil other Arab nations are experiencing as a result of the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. The protesters fear that the constitution will not lead to improved services or put an end to corruption and nepotism.

The criticism is further rooted in the fact that the constitutional changes were drafted by a commission appointed by the king. An overwhelming majority of Moroccans voted in a referendum in July in favor of the new constitution but for many feel that the changes don’t go far enough in meeting protesters’ demands for greater political freedom and enhanced economic opportunity.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco, like King Abdullah of Jordan, is one of the few Arab leaders to enjoy popular support. Demonstrators have granted him the benefit of the doubt in the hope and expectation that he will meet their demands.

The new constitution invests unprecedented power in a civilian, democratically elected government. However liberalization of autocratic culture is gradual and the constitution maintains the king as ruler with more than just ceremonial power.

The king retains the prerogative to appoint the prime minister even if he has to come from the ranks of the party that won the most seats in parliament in democratic elections. The constitution enhances the powers of the prime minister but execution of many of them has to be approved by the monarch, who remains head of the council of ministers. The king retains the right to address parliament without being challenged as well as the power to declare a state of emergency,

The king also retains control of the military and remains Morocco’s supreme religious leader under a constitution that guarantees freedom of religion but reaffirms the Islamic character of the state.

The right to criticize the king remains curtailed while he effectively continues to control all major government decisions.

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.