Iran’s New President: Averting a Popular Revolt

RSIS presents the following commentary Iran’s New President: Averting a Popular Revolt by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at  RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg   ________________________________________        No. 109/2013 dated 18 June 2013 Iran’s New President: Averting a Popular Revolt  By James M. Dorsey        Synopsis The election of Hassan Rouhani as Iran's new president signals a possible change in direction in Iran’s foreign policy. It also underscores Supreme Leader Sayed Ali Khamenei’s apparent move to avert a popular uprising. Commentary THE ELECTION by a clear majority of cleric Hassan Rouhani as Iran's new president on 15 June 2013 has secured for Supreme Leader Sayed Ali Khamenei the most moderate of candidates. Rouhani’s landslide victory, his endorsement by reformist leaders barred from running, and the high voter turnout, all signalled the depth of discontent and desire for change among the majority of voters. In his inaugural press conference, President-elect Rouhani promised a path of moderation and offered a conciliatory approach with the West. Supreme Leader Khamenei’s prime goal in the election was to have a high voter turnout that would lend it legitimacy, while the fervour of the campaign suggested that the slate of candidates was geared towards a conservative and loyalist victory. In urging voters to go to the polls, Khamenei - the ultimatte authority in Iran - made clear that turnout was more important to him than which of the six candidates would emerge victorious. In so doing, he sought to avert a repeat of the popular uprising of 2009 that was driven by widespread belief of a fraudulent election. Ensuring some degree of change Campaigning was initially dominated by the hardline rhetoric of Saeed Jalili, a devoted Khamenei acolyte and Iran’s nuclear negotiator, whose electoral programme, based on a hard line in nuclear talks with Western powers and vague Islamic solutions to the country’s economic woes, effectively promised to reinforce Iran’s international isolation. A closer look at the slate of candidates suggests however that Iranians were in fact offered a choice of varying degrees of change – and the candidate with the greatest promise of reform emerged on top. In many ways, Jalili’s role in the election campaign may well have been that of a scarecrow – the man whose proposed policies would be frightening enough to persuade voters who may otherwise have boycotted the election to go to the polls, just to prevent him from winning. Former foreign minister and Khamenei foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar Velayati held out the prospect of a president with significant international exposure who chided Jalili for defining diplomacy as being tough and stubborn rather than as a process of give-and-take. Velayati effectively blamed Jalili for the hardening of sanctions designed to persuade Iran to compromise on its nuclear programme. He also suggested that he would roll back to some degree the role of the Revolutionary Guards in public life by calling for an end to political interference in sports. Similarly, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guard air force commander, who emerged a far second in the election, is widely believed by militant conservatives to be a closet technocrat. Qalibaf campaigned on the platform of respect for those imprisoned for their political beliefs. As a mayor he reformed public service and introduced budget transparency despite being an outspoken critic of the reform movement and social liberalisation.   In short, Khamenei may well have engineered this election to ensure that Iran’s next president and the Islamic republic’s face to the outside world would embody some degree of change away from the provocative foreign policy and devastating economic populism of outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with whom the supreme leader was increasingly at odds. A win-win situation The challenge now for Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiator and national security adviser, is to demonstrate amid high public expectations that he will be able to bring about change. Reducing economic hardship that has sent inflation and unemployment spiralling entails negotiating a deal with Western powers that ensures Iran’s right to enrich uranium while assuring the international community that its intentions are exclusively non-military. It also means reversing Ahmadinejad’s policy of handing out cash to the poor and ignoring budgetary guidelines. Further, it suggests a loosening of security that in Ahmadinejad’s last year in office had become omnipresent with a sharp increase in the numbers of journalists imprisoned and a crackdown on access to the Internet. The country will be watching to see if Rouhani will be allowed to loosen the tight grip on society and release political prisoners. High expectations on Rouhani’s first year in office could well be compounded by the combustible combination of widespread discontent and soccer fervour if Iran qualifies for the 2014 World Cup this week (June 18) when it plays a decisive match against South Korea. Celebrations of a 1997 World Cup qualifier sparked protests barely a month after reformist Mohammad Khatami took office as president. Fans chanted twice within a matter of months “Death to the Mullahs” while thousands of women stormed Tehran’s Azadi stadium. Need for wise leadership    A soccer defeat four years later prompted protests against a backdrop of disappointment with Khatami’s failure to achieve change. Khatami’s younger brother, the then deputy speaker of parliament, warned at the time that the protests reflected popular frustration with unemployment and low standards of living and a rejection of the regime’s “excessive interference in people’s private lives.” Rouhani’s victory offers Khamenei and the regime’s middle-aged revolutionaries as well as Iran’s Western detractors an opportunity to achieve their goals. Rouhani is certain to project a very different image to the outside world from that of Ahmadinejad. To achieve his goals of achieving a resolution to the nuclear issue that will lift punishing sanctions, turning Iran’s crippled economy around and reducing intrusive repression, Rouhani needs not only Khamenei’s endorsement but also Western interlocutors who can convince Iranians that their goal is a mutually acceptable deal rather than regime change. It’s a win-win situation for all but it will take wise leadership willing to grab the bull by the horns.    James M. Dorsey is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog. ________________________________________ Click herefor past commentaries. Find us on Facebook. Due to the high number of publications by our RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS), RSIS maintains a separate subscription facility for the Centre. 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Syrian TV accuses FC Barcelona of aiding anti-government rebels

Al Dunya accuses FC Barcelona of aiding Syrian rebels

By James M. Dorsey

State-run Syrian Al Dunya television, in one of its more bizarre parroting of allegations of foreign intervention by embattled President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, has accused crowned traditionally left-wing leaning Spanish soccer club FC Barcelona of employing its tactical formations to deliver coded messages to armed Syrian rebels.

The television broadcast the allegation as fighters of the rebel Free Syrian Army retreated from the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor following a fierce two day Syrian military assault in what activists said was an effort to spare residents further bloodshed. The retreat followed earlier rebel withdrawals from Homs and Idlib.

The withdrawals appear to signal a shift in rebel tactics from trying to hold on to territory in favour of a campaign of bombings and assassinations, particularly in the sensitive Syrian capital of Damascus.

Al Dunya charged that Barcelona’s tactical formations represented a map of routes from Lebanon to Syria used to smuggle weapons to the Syrian rebels. It said projecting the map on a Barcelona Copa del Rey quarter final match against Real Madrid that players in the club’s formation on the soccer pitch were the equivalent of smugglers while the ball represented weapons as they were moved along the smuggling route.

Al Dunya asserted that midfielder Andres Iniesta operated at the beginning of a smuggling route while a late game pass by player of the year Lionel Messi constituted the successful handover of an arms shipment in Deir al-Zor at the end of the route. In Al Dunya’s apparently doctored version of the match a mysterious, unidentified player appears as Messi passes the ball. The shadowy player somehow ends up in the Real Madrid goal. Midfielder Sergio Busquets Burgos was also part of Barcelona’s international intrigue, Al Dunya said.

The report serves as further evidence of the callousness of the Assad regime and the degree to which Mr. Assad and his immediate family and aides appear to be cut off from reality – a portrait that also emerges from Assad family emails disclosed earlier this month by The Guardian which detail the president’s purchases on ITunes and his wife’s acquisition of luxury goods at the same time that his forces push on with their brutal year-old crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Al Dunya’s assertions are likely to be an attempt at scoring public relations points against Qatar, the Arab nation that together with Saudi Arabia has taken the lead in denouncing the Assad regime, seeking to isolate it in the Middle East as well as internationally and calling for support for the country’s armed resistance. Barcelona signed its first ever commercial shirt sponsorship agreement worth $200 million in December 2010 with the Qatar Foundation, a state-owned charity.

The Al Dunya report was posted on YouTube and has been viewed by almost half a million people.

Al Dunya charged that the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera television network was repeatedly broadcasting clips from the Barcelona match in a bid to weaken the Assad regime. Al Dunya earlier this month charged that Al Jazeera sports newscaster had incited listeners against the Assad regime during his coverage of a match between Syria and Bahrain in London.

Syria has repeatedly over the past year accused Al Jazeera and other foreign media from being in bed with anti-government forces. Syria has barred all foreign media from reporting from the country and has tightly controlled the movements of the few journalists granted entry.

Syria’s invocation of soccer as part of the international conspiracy it alleges that it is battling underscores the important role of soccer in Middle Eastern and North African politics.

Syria’s national soccer teams flagrantly set rules aside in recent months in their line-ups to ensure success on the pitch in a bid to demonstrate that Mr. Assad’s regime is in control and can perform despite the violence and turmoil and the hope that success on the soccer pitch would rub off on the regime.

World soccer body FIFA last September barred Syria from competing for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil after the country’s national team fielded an ineligible player in in a qualifying match against Tajikistan. Lebanon has accused Syria in November of fielding six players in an Under-19 Asian Football Championship qualifier whose ages had been falsified to qualify them for the team.

By the same token, Syria refused to send athletes to last November’s Arab Games because it feared embarrassment if some of its sportsmen defected.

That fear may not have been unfounded. Abdelbasset Saroot, who was targeted by pro-Assad forces and is believed to be in hiding since the Syrian military recently entered the rebel stronghold of Homs, symbolizes the regime’s problems with its youth soccer team.

A 20-year old goalkeeper for Syria's national Under-23 team, Mr. Saroot is a leader of the revolt in Homs. “They are really targeting me. They really want to get me. They want to kill me. But God is giving me life. The more death and destruction we face, the higher our optimism and spirit. We are not sad that our martyrs are dead but we miss them as revolutionaries” Mr. Saroot says in an Al Jazeera documentary.

The documentary pictures Mr. Saroot standing on a podium leading protesters with a chant:

“My homeland is Syria

Those who want to challenge this revolution are not up to the task

We want to hang Bashar and crush this tyranny,” he sings.

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.

Qatari doubts about alcohol boosted by unlikely allies: World Cup hosts Brazil and Russia

To serve or not to serve?

By James M. Dorsey

With alcohol becoming a domestic political issue in the Gulf state of Qatar, host of the 2022 World Cup, Qatari officials are certainly taking heart from world soccer body FIFA’s battle with the non-Muslim hosts of the next two tournaments, Brazil and Russia, over the role of alcohol in the world’s largest sporting events.

That however may be premature. The outcome of FIFA’s dispute with Brazil, host of the 2014 World Cup, and Russia where the tournament will be held in 2018, is certain to shape the soccer body’s certainly forthcoming debate with Qatar.

Unlike Qatar, which restricts the consumption and sale of alcohol on religious grounds, Brazil and Russia have outlawed its sale at sporting events in recent years in a bid to control crowds and prevents riots and violence.

With FIFA insisting in the words of its General Secretary Jerome Valcke that “alcoholic drinks are part of the FIFA World Cup…that’s something we won’t negotiate” due to its obligations to sponsors that include brewer Budweiser, a compromise may already be in the making.  Whatever that compromise is, it will certainly inform debate in Qatar as well as between the Gulf state whose cultural history is rooted in a puritan interpretation of Islam and FIFA.

Alcohol and particularly beer battles increasingly seem to be a feature in the walk-up to a World Cup. German brewers revolted in 2006 because their beers were initially excluded until Anheuser-Busch agreed to sell local beer Bitburger alongside its own. “We’re not talking about alcohol, we’re talking about beer,” Mr. Valcke said in Brasilia, a distinction that certainly will be rejected in Qatar.

Qatar-based controversial Islamic television preacher Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi who commands a following of tens of millions and has a weekly show on the Gulf state’s Al Jazeera television network issued a religious edict in 2008 that Muslims could consume beverages with up to 0.5% alcohol.

The ruling was however rejected by supporters of Wahhabism, the puritan version of Islam common to Qatar and Saudi Arabia even if it’s more liberal interpretation in Qatar is a far cry from its severe application in Saudi Arabia. The ruling moreover doesn’t do much for beer brewers whose products have an alcohol content of more than four per cent.

An emailed FIFA statement on this week’s first meeting in Brazilia of the 2014 Cup’s Local Organizing Committee made no mention of the alcohol issue, but FIFA’s insistence that Brazil overturn its ban has sparked debate in the Latin American country as officials seek to find a resolution.

While some members of the Brazilian Congress and judiciary are campaigning for the ban on alcohol to remain in place, FIFA said in a statement sent to CNN that it believes that the law instituting the ban would soon be changed.

"The selling of beer in stadiums is part of the fan culture and will also be part of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. It is important to note that the sale of alcohol will be limited to beer only as was done at all previous FIFA World Cups. We are confident that we will be able to solve the very few open matters and close the chapter of the 2014 Bill by March 2012, so we can then focus on the operational aspects of staging the FIFA Confederations Cup in 18 months from now and then the 2014 FIFA World Cup,” the statement said.

Brazilian Minister for Sports Aldo Rebelo, speaking to CNN acknowledged that Brazil in its agreement to host the World Cup had “agreed with all the requirements… We need to move on and fasten up and I am confident that by March we can complete this," the minister said.

Similarly, Russian soccer federation president Sergey Fursenko called in recent days for the reinstitution of beer advertisements and brews in Russian stadiums. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week told a soccer fan that “when the decision was made about stadiums, it came from the best of intentions. OK, we’ll return to it again and think about it.”

Qatar, a controversial choice for the World Cup because of fan objections to some of its cultural mores, a lack of a soccer tradition and blistering summer temperatures, has sought to pre-empt a debate about alcohol by announcing that it would create fan zones where alcohol can be consumed.

The offer has so far silenced the Gulf state’s non-Qatari critics but features in a domestic debate that recently led to a ban on alcohol in restaurants on a man-made island that is home to and frequented by expatriates. The debate has also sparked online calls for a boycott of state-owned Qatar Airways because it serves alcohol on board and operates a shop in the capital Doha that sells alcohol and pork to non-Muslims.

Qatar’s drinking zone solution to the alcohol problem could well serve as a model for a compromise with Brazil and Russia. Alternatively, an agreement with the two non-Muslim nations involving a different solution could spark a revisit of the Qatari approach and fuel opposition to Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani’s efforts to position the Gulf state as a global sports hub and make sports a pillar of its national identity.

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

Lebanese-Syrian soccer qualifier serves as barometer of troubled relations

Syrian soccer kowtows to Assad regime

By James M. Dorsey

A recent Lebanese-Syrian Asia Cup qualifier serves as an ironic barometer of troubled relations between the two countries seeking to chart their individual futures as well as that of their uneasy relationship.

Soldiers armed with machine guns controlled the entrances to the Rafik Hariri Stadium where the match was being played in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon named after a prime minister who was assassinated in 2005 allegedly with tacit Syrian complicity if not active participation. A United Nations tribunal last year indicted four members of Syria’s foremost Lebanese ally, Shiite militia Hezbollah, on charges of killing Mr. Hariri in a massive car bombing. Both Syria and Hezbollah have repeatedly denied involvement in the death of Mr. Hariri.

The killing of Mr. Hariri sparked massive anti-Syrian demonstrations that forced Damascus to withdraw its troops after 30 years from Lebanon. It also paved the way for the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries after Syria dropped its refusal to formally recognize Lebanon as an independent state rather than a part of Greater Syria. Syria accredited Lebanon’s first ambassador to Damascus days before the match and welcomed a rare visit to Damascus by the Lebanese defence minister Elias Murr, who blames a failed 2005 attempt on his life on Syrian intelligence.

The massive security operation in a stadium bereft of spectators reflected the near civil war in Syria where a brutal government crackdown has failed to repress a ten month-old popular uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad as well as the ripples of the revolt in Lebanon as a result of Hezbollah’s unqualified support for the Syrian leader.

Nevertheless, the very fact that Syria allowed its national team to travel abroad and that the match was the first in many years to be played on Lebanese soil rather than on neutral ground elsewhere in the Middle East speaks volumes about Syria’s relationship with Lebanon, one of only three Arab League countries to have voted against sanctioning the Assad regime for its brutality. More than 5,000 people are believed to have died in Syria since the uprising began in March of last year.

The fact that Syria allowed its national soccer team to Lebanon contrasts starkly with Syria’s refusal late last year to participate in the Arab Games in Bahrain for fear that some of its athletes might defect and confidence that Lebanon would not welcome any player seeking asylum.

Only two Syrian soccer players – national Under-23 goalkeeper and music composer Abd al Basset Saroot, a leader in the rebel stronghold of Homs, and national team goalkeeper Mosab Balhous who reportedly has been incarcerated since August on charges of sheltering armed gangs and possessing suspicious amounts of money – are known to have joined the revolt against Mr. Assad’s regime.

Syria placed its confidence in Lebanon despite deep-seated distrust between the two countries spilling regularly onto the soccer pitch. Suggesting that the Assad regime was so desperate for a victory in a bid to shore up its tarnished image, Lebanon accused Syria in November of fielding six players in an Under-19 Asian Football Championship qualifier whose ages had been falsified to qualify them for the team. The incident came two months after world soccer body FIFA barred Syria from competing for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil after the country’s national team fielded an unnamed ineligible player in a qualifying match against Tajikistan.

Syria, despite beating Lebanon 2:0 in this week’s Asia Cup qualifier, attacked Lebanon for its lack of hospitality and for having caused eight Syrian players to have food poisoning.

"We were treated with intentional carelessness by our hosts. There is no excuse for it, and brotherly countries should not be dealt in that way," Syrian Football Association executive Bahaa al-Omary told the BBC.

The Syrian defeat of Lebanon put paid to a rare moment of Lebanese unit sparked in a country where almost every facet of life is defined by its sectarian fault lines by the Lebanese team’s defeat in December of South Korea in a 2014 World Cup qualifier. The estimated 60,000 fans in Beirut’s Cite Sportive stadium shifted from sectarian chants to egging on their team with roars of “Minshan Allah, Libnan yallah” – “For God’s Sake, Lebanon Come On” – as soon as the Lebanese scored their first goal.

The fan support boosted Lebanese soccer, devastated by a ban on fans attending league matches in the wake of Mr. Hariri’s killing that was only lifted in October. As a result, Lebanon’s domestic league has all but collapsed and the national team drained of potential talent

“Politics came into football and destroyed it,” said Rahif Alameh, secretary-general of the Lebanese Football Association, who dates the “death of football” to 2001, the year when the government intervened in a murky match-fixing scandal rather than the 2005 ban on fans. That was when Lebanon’s political-religious leaders began treating the association as a pie to be carved up, just as they share power among Muslim and Christian communities.

Mr. Hariri, for example, sponsored several clubs and bought Nejmeh soccer club, Lebanon’s most popular team, which was largely cross-sectarian, but had always attracted much Shiite support. Mr. Hariri initially ventured into sports as a moneymaking venture, but later turned his teams into vehicles for consolidating his Sunni Muslim support.

Similarly, virtually every Lebanese soccer club is identified in sectarian and political terms — Maronite Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Druze or Armenian with certain political factions — even if the team’s players are religiously mixed.

“Football had just (become an extension) of politics. Everything in Lebanon is politicized, the air we breathe is politicized,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Alameh as saying.

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

Lebanese soccer unites (briefly) deeply divided nation

Defender Ali al-Saadi celebrates goal against South Korea (Source: FIFA.com)

By James M. Dorsey

In a country where almost every facet of life is defined by its sectarian fault lines, soccer is at least temporarily performing where politicians and religious figures have failed: rallying a divided country scarred by years of bitter civil war around a symbol of national unity.

Soccer’s achievement stems from its defeat of South Korea in a 2014 World Cup qualifier. 

It took a first goal from defender Ali al-Saadi to convince the 60,000 fans in Beirut’s Cite Sportive stadium to shift from sectarian chants to egging on their team with roars of "Minshan Allah, Libnan yallah'' - "For God's Sake, Lebanon Come On'' – to historic 2-1 win over their favoured Asian opponents.

Tens of thousands of fans poured into the streets of the Lebanese capital waving the country's red and white flags with a green cedar in the middle. Traffic came to a halt and for a moment sectarian differences that have deeply divided the country for decades were superseded by a sense of national pride.

However to cement its achievement on and off the soccer pitch, the Lebanese national team would have to score the one more point it needs against a so far winless United Arab Emirates squad. If that fails, it could still make it to the fourth qualifying round if Kuwait follows its example and upsets South Korea’s apple cart.

"Sports can do what religion and politics can't, gather the Lebanese people around a common thing. The national team changed the point of view to many football fans, and it united them for one goal, to participate in World Cup 2014. This was a very good step to help people to leave their political and religious views behind and watch their team without reverting to riots or gang wars,” The Associated Press (AP) quoted Lebanese supporter Serge Mghames as saying.

If the experience of Iraq whose national team became Asian champion in 2007 at a time that the country was wracked by sectarian bloodshed or Abbas Suan, a devout Palestinian Israeli Muslim who refused to sing the Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem, when it was played before a game but united in 2006 Israeli Jews and Arabs by securing with a last minute equalizer against Ireland Israel’s first chance in 35 years to qualify for a world cup is anything to go by soccer’s unifying effect is lost as soon as the team no longer performs.

For Lebanese soccer to succeed where the game ultimately failed in countries like Iraq and Israel is a tall order against the backdrop of bitter feuds between Lebanon’s four million inhabitants who are divided among 18 Muslim and Christian sects and 15 years of civil war that ended with a fragile peace in 1991.

That peace has this year repeatedly been put to the test with militant Shiite group Hezbollah supporting embattled President Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria and a United Nations-backed tribunal indicting four members of the group on charges of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.  Hezbollah has denied involvement in the killing and has vowed never to turn over the suspects.

If that were not enough of a challenge, Lebanon’s national team would find it difficult if not impossible to significantly undermine sectarianism which is so deeply rooted in the country’s game that the government banned fans from attending domestic league matches following Mr. Harriri's assassination.

"There are no guarantees in football. We can only guarantee that we will go about our job in a professional manner. We are in good form, but don't write off the Emirates,'' said Theo Bucker, the national team’s German coach, sounding a cautionary noted according to FIFA.com.

The government lifted the ban on fans in October, but by then the damage had been done. The ban devastated the game: its domestic league all but collapsed and the national team was drained of potential talent. As a result, Lebanon fell in world soccer body FIFA’s rankings from 125 to 178 but has rebounded to 111 with its defeat of South Korea.

"Politics came into football and destroyed it," said Rahif Alameh, secretary-general of the Lebanese Football Association, who dates the "death of football" to 2001, the year when the government intervened in a murky match-fixing scandal rather than the 2005 ban on fans. That was when Lebanon's political-religious leaders began treating the association as a pie to be carved up, just as they share power among Muslim and Christian communities.

Mr. Hariri, for example, sponsored several clubs and bought Nejmeh soccer club, Lebanon’s most popular team, which was largely cross-sectarian, but had always attracted much Shiite support. Mr. had Hariri initially ventured into sports as a moneymaking venture, but later turned his teams into vehicles for consolidating his Sunni Muslim support. Virtually every Lebanese soccer club is identified in sectarian and political terms -- Maronite Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Druze or Armenian with certain political factions -- even if the team’s players are religiously mixed. Those identities have been reinforced by the aftermath of Mr. Hariri’s assassination.

"Football had just (become an extension) of politics. Everything in Lebanon is politicized, the air we breathe is politicized.,” Mr. Alameh told AP.

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

Bahrain and Iran battle on and off the soccer pitch

By James M. Dorsey

Bahrain scored from its perspective well on and off the pitch in its second, politically laden 2014 World Cup qualifier.

For starters, the 1:1 draw keeps Bahrain in the race to play in the finals in Brazil in three years’ time. The draw was a far better performance than the 6:0 thrashing Iran meted out to Bahrain at their first encounter in Tehran a few weeks ago.

As important as the score on the field however, was the political battle in the stands between two nations whose relations are strained as a result of the mass anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Bahrain accuses Shiite Muslim Iran of early this year having instigated its majority Shiite population to rise up against the Gulf island’s long-reigning Sunni Muslim dynasty.

Some 30 people were killed in a Saudi- and Gulf Cooperation Council-backed government crackdown that pushed the protests out of the capital in Manama and reduced them to more isolated, far smaller village demonstration beyond the glare of the international media. Iran has denied the charge and denounced the crackdown and introduction of predominantly Saudi GCC forces in Bahrain.

The Bahraini-Iranian confrontation on the soccer pitch takes on additional significance because in contrast to most Arab autocracies coping with popular revolts, Bahrain athletes and sports executives took an active role in the protests. Some 150 sports people, including three national soccer team players, were fired or arrested and held for up to three months in prison. Many, who were sentenced to prison in secretive military trials, charge that they were abused and tortured.

Bahrain Supreme Council for Youth and Sport and Olympic Committee chairman Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, who is believed to have ordered the crackdown on the athletes, praised that national soccer team’s performance against Iran. "Bahrain National Football team still has a good chance to qualify in the coming matches", the official Bahrain News Agency quoted Sheikh Nasser as saying.

The agency said Sheikh Nasser had also paid tribute to the spectators, many of whom were waving Saudi in addition to or instead of Bahraini flags, burning Iranian ones outside the stadium, and throwing water bottles at Iranian players as they were leaving the field, according to Bahraini activists – an indication that authorities had populated the stadium with regime supporters and a taunting of the Iranians. Sheikh Nasser warned during the revolt early this year, according to ESPN, that “Whoever calls for the fall of the regime, may a wall fall on his children.”

Played at home in Manama’s Bahrain National Stadium, Bahrain had the advantage certainly on the stands. The Iranian Football Federation complained to world soccer body FIFA that Iranian fans and journalists who had been given visas to attend the match had been barred entry at Bahrain’s airport and forced to return to Iran.

In a letter to the Bahrain Football Association, quoted on Iran’s Press TV, FIFA reportedly advised the Bahrain Football Association that “…FIFA expects all the participating member associations… to comply with the international standards established for adequate media coverage of FIFA World Cup qualifiers… In the event that these conditions are not given or fulfilled for every match, FIFA would need to submit the matter to the Organizing Committee for the FIFA World Cup.”

FIFA has had a publicly gloves-on approach to Bahrain’s crackdown on sports people. National soccer team player Mohammed Hubail, who was sentenced to two years in prison and barred from soccer on the island, was reportedly released pending his appeal due to FIFA pressure. But FIFA has remained silent in response to the BFA’s assertion that no soccer players or officials had been penalized because of their participation in protests. BFA made the assertion in answer to an earlier FIFA inquiry.  

Friday’s pro-government and pro-Saudi manifestations contrasted starkly with the anti-government protests on the stands of Tehran’s Azadi Stadium when the two teams played their first round on October 11 in the Iranian capital. The chants – ‘Death to the Dictator’; ‘No to Gaza, No to Lebanon, My life only for Iran’ rejecting Iran’s involvement with Hezbollah and Hamas; and against the basij, the Iranian regime’s paramilitary voluntary militia – call into question the sincerity of the Islamic republic’s support of anti-regime protests in Bahrain. To be sure, so does its support of the increasingly brutal crackdown in Syria.

The protest in Tehran follows the arrest of some 30 soccer fans in the northwestern Azeri city of Tabriz who were protesting against an Iranian parliamentary decision not to fund measures to save an environmentally endangered lake. The protests spilled out of the stadium into the city into demonstrations demanding unification between the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan and Iranian Azerbaijan.

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 and Iran at loggerheads on and off the pitch

Bahrain to face off Iran ((Photo Courtesy New Zealand Scoop)

By James M. Dorsey

World soccer body FIFA has appointed a security expert to monitor next week’s politically loaded 2014 World Cup qualifier between Bahrain and Iran in the Iranian capital Teheran.

The October 11 match is scheduled take place amid continued tension in Bahrain in the wake of this year’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters. The protests pit a majority of the Gulf island’s dominant Shiite Muslims against its minority Sunni Muslim rulers.

Shiite Iran has repeatedly denounced the government crackdown as well as the presence of Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) troops to bolster the Bahraini government.

FIFA said the security expert had been appointed because next week’s match was likely to be “high risk.”

Iranian protesters chanting “Death To Saudi” clashed with police earlier this year when Iran’s Piroozi club hosted Saudi club Al-Ittihad.

Iran’s Fars News Agency suggested next week’s match could produce similar scenes. 

“Despite FIFA's concern about the security of this match, the fervent fans of the Iranian national team are highly expected to give a warm welcome to the Bahraini team and chant mottoes to show their full support for the Bahraini nation's quest for democracy and freedom,” the agency said.

Next week’s game is the first of two in the next month between the two teams who both expect to advance from Group E to the next stage of qualifiers. Iran and Bahrain share the lead in the group with four points from two games. The group also includes Qatar and Indonesia.

Dismissed Bahraini national players are fighting in courts charges brought against them for joining protesters earlier this year who were seeking greater political freedom, an end to discrimination against Shiite Muslims and more economic opportunity.

Some 150 soccer players, athletes and sports executives who had participated in the demonstrations were either arrested or fired from their positions. They were among thousands detained in the crackdown that left some 30 people dead.

Among the detained athletes were three national soccer team players, including brothers Alaa and Mohammed Hubail. Alaa last month recounted in an interview with The Associated Press how he and his brother were arrested, abused and humiliated during the government’s brutal suppression of the protests. 

The loss of the Hubail brothers has affected the team’s performance. It failed to make it out of the group stage in this year’s Asian Cup and has fallen to 102nd in the FIFA world rankings.

Iran, in contrast, has seen its fortunes on the rise. After failing to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, the three-time World Cup qualifiers reached the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup in January and have risen in the rankings in the past year to 50th.

The arrests in Bahrain were part of a government sweep that targeted medics, government employees and activists, many of who said they were tortured while in detention.

Bahraini courts last week sentence 36 people, including 21 medics and two hand ball players, to prison terms of up to 15 years.

Mohamed Hubail was tried by a Bahraini security court and convicted to two years in prison, but later released pending his appeal after FIFA questioned the BFA about the crackdown.

Alaa’s case that has yet to go to court. He and the five other national team players have been barred from playing on the national team or in Bahrain’s domestic league.

A Bahraini court meanwhile sentenced Zulfiqar Naji, a 16-year old Iraqi footballer to a year in jail and deportation from the Gulf state, according to the boy's father, Iraqi club soccer coach, Abdelamir Naji. Zulfiqar was one of 19 people sentenced to one to five years in prison on Wednesday for participating in the protests.

"The sentence was a year in prison as well as deportation from Bahrain.  We have spoken to a lawyer in Bahrain, who is following up the case to start an appeal against the sentence. After sentencing, my son was moved to another prison where he will spend the rest of his sentence, after already spending six months in the first jail," Mr. Naji said.

He said his son had been training with the junior team of Bahrain’s Al-Mouharrak club. Mr. Naji played with Iraq's Al-Zawra club from 1978 to 1990 before coaching various clubs in Bahrain, including  Al-Mouharrak, Al-Itifaq, Al-Ittihad and Al-Badiyah.

The detention in April of Zulfiqar sparked angry demonstrations in Iraq and as far away as Canada calling for his release. It also prompted the Iraq government to make a plea to Bahrain on his behalf.

Relations between predominantly Shiite Iraq and Bahrain turned sour earlier this year because of Iraqi criticism of the government crackdown on the Gulf island. As a result, Bahraini airlines have stopped flying to Iraq.

By including athletes in the crackdown, Bahrain effectively shot itself in its foot. Like other Gulf states, Bahrain sees sports as a vehicle to project itself on to the world stage. It succeeded in attracting the region's first Formula One race, the Bahrain Grand Prix, and in becoming part of this year’s   Volvo Golf Champions European tours. Both events were however cancelled because of the protests.

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.

FIFA appoints controversial Bahraini official to 2014 World Cup committee

Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim bin Hamad Al Khalifa (Source: Associated Press_

By James M. Dorsey

World soccer body FIFA has appointed Bahrain Football Association president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim bin Hamad Al Khalifa to its 2014 World Cup committee despite the Bahraini officials denial of the sentencing and torture of national team soccer players for their involvement in anti-government protests earlier this year.

Bahrain’s official Bahrain News Agency heralded the appointment as “adding to Sheikh Salman’s rich record of prestigious positions he has held at the Asian and international sport arenas, testifies to the global acclaim of the kingdom’s role in enhancing sport movement.”

The agency quoted Sheikh Salman as saying that his appointment would “enable him to reaffirm the capability of the kingdom’s cadres to hold such key international positions.”

The appointment comes as national soccer players are fighting in Bahrain courts charges brought against for peacefully demonstrating and despite the fact that other major sports institutions have steered clear of the Gulf island because of the brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters seeking greater political freedom, an end to discrimination against Shiite Muslims and more economic opportunity.

Sheikh Salman played an important role in the crackdown as head of a committee that identified 150 soccer players, athletes and sports executives who had participated in the demonstrations. They were either arrested or fired from their positions.

Among them were three national soccer team players, including brothers Alaa and Mohammed Hubail. Alaa last month recounted in an interview with The Associated Press how he and his brother were arrested, abused and humiliated during the government’s brutal suppression of the protests.

The arrests were part of a government sweep that targeted medics, government employees and activists, many of who said they were tortured while in detention.

Bahraini courts last week sentence 36 people, including 21 medics and two hand ball players, to prison terms of up to 15 years.

Sheikh Salman’s involvement in the crackdown has privately prompted questions within the Asian Football Confederation because he is a frontrunner to succeed disgraced Qatari national Mohammed Bin Hammam as the organization’s president. The AFC in July postponed initiating the process of electing a new president to give Mr. Bin Hammam time to appeal a world soccer body FIFA ban for life on involvement in football because of his alleged engagement in bribery. AFC officials suggest privately that electing Sheikh Salman would send the wrong signal.

Mohamed Hubail was tried by a Bahraini security court and convicted to two years in prison, but later released pending his appeal after FIFA questioned the BFA about the crackdown.

Alaa’s case that has yet to go to court. He and the five other national team players have been barred from playing on the national team or in Bahrain’s domestic league.

The protests were part of the wave of anti-government demonstrations sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Unlike in Syria and elsewhere the region, Bahrain succeeded to squash the protests with brute force. Thousands were detained and some 30 people were killed.

By including athletes in the crackdown, Bahrain effectively shot itself in its foot. Like other Gulf states, Bahrain sees sports as a vehicle to project itself on to the world stage. It succeeded in attracting the region's first Formula One race, the Bahrain Grand Prix, and in becoming part of this year’s   Volvo Golf Champions European tours. Both events were however cancelled because of the protests.

Many of the affected soccer players are meanwhile trying to move on with their lives. National team defender Sayed Mohammed Adnan went into voluntary exile and has joined Australian A-League champion Brisbane Roar. Alaa recently signed a deal to play for an Omani football club.

His brother Mohammed is still looking for a place to go. He rejected an offer to return to Al Ahli because the club demanded that he sign a statement admitting to his crimes.

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.

FIFA bans Iraq from playing qualifiers at home

World soccer body FIFA has banned Iraq from playing 2014 World Cup and 2012 Olympics qualifiers on home ground on Iraqi territory because of flaws in the country’s security arrangements.

In a letter citing security concerns published on the website of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), FIFA advised Iraq that it would have to play “until further notice” its home matches in a neutral venue.

FIFA noted that "the security plan established by the local organizing committee (for Iraq's September 2 third round World Cup qualifier against Jordan in Arbil) did not meet the structural, technical, organizational and operational requirement specified in FIFA Safety Regulations."

As a result, Iraq’s Brazilian coach Zico has to identify a neutral venue for its home qualifiers by early October.

Iraq ranks third in Group A of the AFC's Brazil 2014 qualifiers with three points from two matches. Jordan and China are ahead of them while Singapore sits at the bottom of the group.

Iraq’s next World Cup home matches are on October against China and February 29, 2012 against Iraq. Its coming Olympics qualifier is November 23 against Australia.