Port Said deaths send businessmen, politicians and clerics scrambling

A protester hurls a rock in post-Port Said protests (Source: Reuters)

By James M. Dorsey

The deaths of 74 militant soccer fans in a politically loaded soccer brawl in the Egyptian Suez Canal city of Port Said has political forces across the country’s political spectrum scrambling to score points and counter a tsunami of rumours as security forces appear to have gained the upper in days of clashes with ultras and youth groups near the interior ministry in downtown Cairo.

With the military and security forces accused of at best negligence and at worst having deliberately instigated the violence that led to the death of the fans immediately after last week’s match between Port Said’s Al Masri SC and crowned Cairo club Al Ahli SC, businessmen associated with the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak and fundamentalist Salafi politicians who advocate Islamic practice as it was at the time of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7^th century are being drawn into the maelstrom.

Yasser el-Mallawany, the chief executive of EFG-Hermes, the Arab world’s largest privately owned, London and Cairo-listed investment bank, denied allegations that he had funded an unidentified group of thugs who reportedly had mingled with the Al Masri fans and instigated the violence that led to the 74 deaths. Al Masri fans said they had noticed a group of people in the stadium that they had never seen before.

The allegations were reported after Mr. El-Mallawny was barred from boarding a flight from Cairo to Dubai on instructions from Egypt’s attorney general. Associated Press quoted a justice ministry official as saying that Mr. El-Mallawny was together with Mr. Mubarak’s imprisoned son Gamal, whom he was grooming as his successor, being investigated for having paid the thugs to attack the Al Ahli ultras. The ultras played a key role in toppling Mr. Mubarak and have since been the most militant thorn in the side of the military that succeeded the ousted president with a promise to lead the country to democracy.

Mr. El-Mallawany was a member of the policies high committee of Mr. Mubarak's National Democratic Party. He said he was on the committee to "give ideas regarding the technical issues of finance".

Sources close to EFG-Hermes said Mr. El-Mallawny was among 300 people barred from leaving Egypt because of their alleged ties to the ancient regime and corruption but that it had nothing to do with the incident in Port Said. Gamal Mubarak is believed to have an 18 percent stake in one of EFG Hermes’ numerous subsidies, EFG-Hermes Private Equity that contributes an estimated 7% per cent to the bank’s total profits. EFG-Hermes has denied managing any funds or portfolios for Mr. Mubarak or members of his family.

“No charges of any form have been laid against Mr. El-Mallawany. The firm has been informed that the ban was issued as a precautionary measure, as similar bans have been imposed in the past 12 months on other individuals in Egypt,” EFG-Hermes said in a statement.

EFG-Hermes has offices in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Lebanon and employs more than 850 people. It has advised companies such as Vodafone, Sainsbury and Heineken on deals in the region.

At the very other end of Egypt’s political spectrum, Sheikh Abdel Moneim El-Shaha, a controversial Salafist preacher, was attempting to talk his way out of reports that he had condemned soccer as a sin and said that the 74 ultras were killed because they had been watching a forbidden form of entertainment. Mr. El-Shaha charged that he had been misquoted. He said that while he considered soccer a sport like swimming, archery and horse riding that was encouraged by Islamic law, he objected to large sums of money being spent on the sport instead of on youth centers.

Mr. El-Shaha however did little to correct the impression that he was in-line with hard-line Salafist beliefs that condemn soccer as a game of infidels with his refusal to acknowledge the 74 dead ultras as ‘ash-shuhada’ or martyrs, an Islamic and Arabic term used to describe among others those who died in innocence. The families of the 74 describe their lost ones as martyrs.

"What I said exactly was that not everyone who died unjustly is a martyr. And the people who died in Port Said died unjustly and no more. In sharia (Islamic law), a martyr is someone who died in battle or dies a painful death, drowns, or dies under the rubble of a building. But those who died in Port Said only died unjustly," Mr. El-Shaha told Al Arabiya.

Mr. El-Shaha was quoted by Al Arabiya Asharq Al-Awsat and El-Badil as telling an audience in the El-Fath mosque in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, a Salafist stronghold, that the 74 died while watching an a forbidden sport that is alien to Muslims, distracts from praying to God and that had been imported from the West. “They were not in a war fighting for God, they were just having fun. This fun distracts Muslims from worshipping God,” Mr. El-Shaha was quoted as saying.

The Salafist Noor party won a quarter of the votes in Egypt’s recent first-post Mubarak parliamentary election. Mr. El-Shaha, who failed to win a seat in that election, earlier stirred controversy by demanded that statues which he denounced as idols be covered with was and condemning the writings of Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz as “prostitution literature.”

Mr. El-Shaha’s comments are in line with the banning of soccer on the threat of execution by the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Shabab militia, which controls chunks of war-torn Somalia, earlier remarks by Egyptian Salafi Sheikh Abu Ishaaq Al Huweni and a 2005 attempt by Saudi Salafi clerics to rewrite the rules of the game to allegedly Islamify it.

“All fun is bootless except the playing of a man with his wife, his son and his horse… Thus, if someone sits in front of the television to watch football or something like that, he will be committing bootless fun… We have to be a serious nation, not a playing nation. Stop playing,” Sheikh Al Huweni said in a religious ruling published in 2009 on YouTube. Al Noor has yet to distance itself from Sheikh Al Huweini’s comments.    

Al Noor has also yet to take issues with views such as those expressed in 2005 in a controversial ruling by militant clerics in Saudi Arabia, the world’s most puritanical Muslim nation where soccer was banned until 1951. The ruling denounced the game as an infidel invention and redrafted its internationally recognized International Football Association Board (IFAB) rules to differentiate it from that of the heretics. It banned words like foul, goal, and penalty and like shorts and T-shirts and ordered players to spit on anyone who scored a goal.

In Egypt’s political center, a parliamentary committee meanwhile blamed Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim for the deaths of some 15 protesters in the wake of the Port Said incident and called for a vote of no confidence in the minister.

Outside the interior ministry security forces appear to have gained control of streets that were the scene of four days of pitched battles with ultras and youth groups. Leaders of the ultras have denied that they were involved in the fighting but admit that many of those attempting to storm the interior ministry are members of their groups who are beyond their control. The security forces gained the upper hand by using tear gas and bird shot after attempts to mediate a truce by clerics and activists had failed.

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

Ignoring social media at your peril (AJF News)

JAMES M. DORSEY is part of the team organising the Asia Journalism Forum conference on Media and Political Change in Asia and the Middle East. In this article, he reflects on the lessons that governments need to learn from the Arab revolts.

If there is one event or region that has highlighted the impact of technology and social media on policymaking, social movements and protest, it is the Arab revolt that has been sweeping the Middle East and North Africa since december 2010. Many have dubbed the popular revolts in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Syria a “Facebook revolution” because of the use by middle-class activists of social media in the build-up to the mass anti-government protests that have so far toppled four Arab leaders.

Similarly, social media and mobile telephony play a key role in Syria in circumventing news blackouts and censorship to get news of the brutal crackdown by the government of President Bashar al Assad to the outside world. They also figure in exacerbating sectarian tensions between the country’s Sunni Muslims and Alawites, the minority sect to which Assad belongs.

Yet, despite the perception of many, it is not technology that sparks revolts.

No doubt, social media facilitate and accelerate the speed and breadth of communication, and impact politics, social movements, communications and the flow of news. But the answer to the question whether the Arab revolt would have erupted without Facebook is a resounding yes. To dub the Arab revolt a Facebook revolution would require revising explanations of past revolts such as the Islamic revolution in Iran and popular uprisings in the Philippines and Indonesia.

To be sure, technology plays an important role in protests and revolts. In Iran in 1979, it was the cassette tape that helped Ayatollah Khomeini to inspire millions to overthrow the Shah, at the time the most powerful symbol of US influence in the region. In Tunisia, a mobile phone video of a young man setting himself on fire in desperation, tapped into widespread discontent and brought thousands into the streets of Tunis. Cassettes and mobile telephony are technologies that autocrats understand.

Social media, however, is a game changer.

Pro-democracy activists understand social media and the opportunities they offer in ways that autocratic Arab regimes find difficult, if not impossible, to grasp. Social media change the way communications and public affairs are managed, particularly in a crisis. That requires a degree of sophistication that many but particularly autocratic governments often find difficult, if not impossible, to marshal.

In fact, employing that degree of sophistication would require a far-reaching revision of the way most Arab autocrats do business. Syria is a case in point. The government’s approach to online information warfare involved its Syrian Electronic Army hacking hundreds of opposition and international websites, to assert that it was battling terrorists.

Perhaps what is most frustrating to Arab autocrats is the fact that the combination of mobile telephony, the Internet and social media has rendered censorship futile and fundamentally rewritten the ground rules of communications policies. Social media have turned the shaping of the narrative into something much more complex, in which governments and institutions have to engage in ways they did not have to in the past.

For one, communication has become a two-way street. Shaping the narrative no longer means control, instead it means engagement. That is an approach that in the best of circumstances is a difficult one, but particularly for embattled autocrats, because it requires a mind shift that few autocrats can make.

Even the Western media had problems in adjusting to technological change. When newspapers shifted from broadsheet to tabloid formats, not only did size change, so did the content, the story. Similarly, moving the print edition of a newspaper on to the Internet proved to be an unworkable formula. It failed to recognise that technology had replaced one-way communication with interactivity and changed the way news is consumed and what an empowered public expects of news organisations.

As a result, governments and institutions, irrespective of the political environment they operate in, are being forced to rethink their approach to communications. They have to pay greater attention to the way they project themselves, their policies and the way they relate to the public in a new and increasingly complex communications landscape. 

Technological change means that governments and institutions have to be more attentive to public opinion because whether or not that opinion can be freely expressed social media enable it to become part of the public domain.

The international community looked to the Arab street in the wake of 9/11 for change that would eradicate the breeding ground of extremism. When the Arab street did not immediately revolt, government officials, analysts and journalists wrote off the Arab street. Nonetheless, the widespread discontent continued to simmer at the surface. It was palpable if one put one’s ear to the ground.

If the current Middle Eastern revolt and its embrace of technology teach anything, it is that where discontent exists but cannot be expressed openly, it will be expressed elsewhere in what constitutes a truer reflection of reality. It is a reality enhanced by technology that Middle Eastern and North African autocrats ignore at their peril.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at NTU’s  S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He is the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer. This article was published in AJF News.

China Needs to Change Mideast Foreign Policy: JMD on Bloomberg

Illustration by Jordan Awan

By James M. Dorsey Feb 7, 2012 8:10 AM GMT+0800 0 Comments

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China’s decision to veto a condemnation of Syria’s regime at the United Nations Security Council is just the latest signal that illustrates the need for a fundamental change in Chinese foreign policy.

The question is no longer whether officials in Beijing will abandon the principle of non-interference in other countries’ affairs to protect their expanding interests around the globe. The question is when.

China joined Russia in vetoing last weekend’s resolution partly for fear that backing the UN’s rebuke of a government’s brutal suppression of its people may come back to haunt China itself, given its treatment of Tibetans and of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang autonomous region.

Yet China’s economic growth and associated need to secure resources increasingly have been at odds with this long-standing policy of being aloof. That’s especially true in the resource- rich region that stretches from the Atlantic coast of Africa to Central Asia and the subcontinent, much of which is now in revolt.

Over the past year, a series of incidents in the region have tested China’s non-interference policy, but without serious damage to the country’s image. With China’s veto of the UN resolution on Syria, Chinese determination to cling to a principle rooted in 19th-century diplomacy seems set to backfire.

Painted Into Corner

Rather than portray China as a global power that seeks good relations with all and -- unlike the U.S. -- doesn’t meddle in other countries’ affairs, last weekend’s veto of a relatively toothless condemnation of the regime in Damascus has painted China into a corner. The nation now appears to support an international pariah that brutally suppresses its people, a stance that risks roiling ties with some of China’s most important energy suppliers in the Arab League, which sponsored the defeated UN resolution.

In Libya, China initially avoided its policy dilemma. There, the Chinese abstained from voting on a UN resolution that effectively authorized international military intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds. Chinese diplomats then went a step further. They supported a Security Council resolution that imposed an arms embargo and other sanctions on the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and endorsed referral of the regime’s crackdown to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

China cultivated relations with both Qaddafi’s embattled regime and the Benghazi-based rebels. Yet that evenhanded approach didn’t prevent the rebels from threatening a commercial boycott, particularly after they found documents purporting to show that Chinese defense companies had discussed the supply of arms with Qaddafi operatives. A Chinese Ministry of Commerce delegation visited Libya this week in a bid to recover at least some of the losses that China, Libya’s biggest foreign contractor, suffered with the evacuation last year of 35,000 workers who were servicing $18.8 billion worth of contracts.

The Arab revolt is certain to force not only a revision of China’s policy of non-interference but also of the employment practices of Chinese companies. With new and long-standing governments in the region desperate to reduce unemployment -- a key driver of the revolts -- authorities in Libya and elsewhere are likely to demand that Chinese construction companies employ local, rather than imported, labor.

Social Media Criticism

Moreover, Chinese authorities have twice in recent days come under criticism in the country’s social media for the government’s inability to protect workers abroad after 29 Chinese nationals were kidnapped by rebels in Sudan’s volatile South Kordofan province, and an additional 25 were abducted by restive Bedouin tribesmen in Egypt’s Sinai Desert. The critics charged that as a superpower, China needed to project its economic, as well as its military, muscle to stand up for those who put their lives at risk for the national good -- much like the U.S. sent Navy Seals to rescue two hostages in Somalia.

Censors were quick to remove the critical messages from social media because they touched a raw nerve. A policy of winning friends economically rather than make enemies by flexing military muscle is increasingly inconsistent with China’s dislike of appearing weak and vulnerable. National pride was at stake. The dilemma sparked public debate, with official media saying China needs time to build the necessary military capability to intervene when its nationals are in jeopardy, while others argue that China’s inaction may encourage further attacks.

The need for a revised approach to the Middle East and North Africa, as well as countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, will become increasingly clear as China boosts its investment in Central and South Asian nations before the scheduled 2014 withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, where China has secured oil and copper rights.

Reports that China is considering establishing military bases in Pakistan’s insurgency-plagued northwestern tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan, and a naval base in the Balochistan port city of Gwadar, could create further pressure for change. China holds the Pakistan-based East Turkestan Islamic Movement responsible for attacks last year in Xinjiang’s city of Kashgar. Defeating the movement is key to Chinese plans to keep regional trade and energy flowing, and the bases in Pakistan may tempt China to take on a role as local policeman.

If it takes an event to drive a change of China’s foreign policy, Yemen may prove to be the spark. With $355 billion worth of trade with Europe and a quarter of China’s exports traveling through Bab el Mandeb -- the strait that separates Yemen from Somalia and Djibouti -- China cannot afford a collapse of law and order in Yemen. The crisis-ridden country is countering multiple threats, including an al-Qaeda insurgency after mass protests and intercommunal fighting that forced the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and paved the way for elections later this month.

Policy Breached Before

China has breached its non-interference policy to respond to these pressures in the recent past. Its deployment of naval vessels off the coast of Somalia to counter piracy, for example, constituted the first Chinese venture of its kind.

But China’s status as an emerging economic superpower demands that it become a more muscular global actor to pursue its interests. Ultimately that will mean taking positions on domestic disputes and conflicts around the world that have a bearing on China’s global national-security interests, the very opposite of the stance it adopted on Syria. Similarly, China will need to maintain military bases in key regions that serve to secure Chinese demand for natural resources, and to satisfy domestic calls to ensure the safety of its nationals abroad.

In short, China will have to use virtually the same tools employed by the U.S., shouldering the risks of a foreign policy that is interest-driven and therefore, at times, contradictory.

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

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.

Port Said helps forge bridges and reopens fault lines in Egypt

Protesters pray as their compatriots stand guard to prevent them from throwing stones at riot police during clashes near the Interior Ministry in Cairo February 4, 2012. (Source: Reuters/Asmaa Waguih)

By James M. Dorsey

With the street battles in Cairo between militant soccer fans and protesters becoming ever more vicious, the death of 74 supporters of crowned Cairo soccer club Al Ahli SC in Port Said is sparking a reconciliation among once implacable foes while at the same time solidifying emerging fault lines in Egyptian society.

Budding ties between arch rival ultras – militant, well-organized, highly-politicized, street-battled hardened soccer fans – of Al Ahly and its arch rival, Cairo’s storied Al Zamalek SC, have been boosted by the lethal incident in Port Said.

Ultras of the two Cairo teams who had battled one and other for years stood a year ago for the first time in their five-year old history shoulder-to-shoulder on Tahrir Square manning the front lines of the protests that forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office. They were the first to absorb attacks by security forces and Mubarak loyalists.

Throughout the year, ultras of both teams repeatedly found themselves on the same side against a common enemy during the storming of the offices of the hated State Security Service, which has since been renamed the National Security Force; protests demanding the resignation of the now dismissed board of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA); the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo last September; and vicious street battles in November and December in streets near Tahrir in support of their call for an immediate return to their barracks of Egypt’s military rulers. Some 50 people died and more than 1,000 were wounded in those clashes.

With many Egyptians convinced that the incident in Port Said constituted a planned, deliberate targeting of the Al Ahly ultras, ultras of all stripes see the incident as an attack on all ultras in a bid to break their resolve as the most militant opposition to the military’s designs to shape the future of Egypt in its image in a bid to preserve their Mubarak era perks and privileges.

As a result, ultras of Al Ahly and Al Zamalek are again together braving tear gas and birdshot in their effort to storm the interior ministry in central Cairo, under which the hated police and security forces resort. At least 12 people have been killed and hundreds wounded.

Ironically, the Port Said tragedy immediately after a match in which the city’s Al Masri SC defeated Al Ahly, may help restructure strained relations in Egyptian soccer and launch it on a badly needed road of reform.

The failure of the overwhelming majority of players to support last year’s uprising against Mr. Mubarak had further strained relations with the ultras who view themselves as the only true supporters of their clubs. To them, players are hired guns willing to switch allegiances for money while management consists largely of corrupt Mubarak appointees. Al Ahly ultras last March unfolded a huge banner addressed to players during their team’s friendly against Harras El-Hodoud that read: "We followed you everywhere but in the hard times we didn't find you."

Players have since pressured the ultras unsuccessfully to moderate their support tactics that include the use of fireworks, flares, smoke guns and abusive chanting because the clubs were being penalized.

However, in a sign of the changing times, the Al Ahly ultras this weekend apologized on an especially created Facebook page named “We are sorry Shika” to Zamalek winger Mahmoud Abdel-Razek aka Shikabala, widely viewed as Egypt’s top player, for routinely abusing him verbally during their clubs’ derbies. The abuse frequently lead to Shikabala and Al Ahly fans trading insults in heated exchanges.

Responding in an interview on the Zamalek club’s website, Shikabala welcomed the apology. “Despite the cruelty of what happened in Port Said, this disaster played a role in uniting the fans of all clubs. It might be a turning point in ending intolerance and hatred in Egyptian football. I will go to the Ahly club along with my teammates to offer our condolences to the families of Port Said martyrs. The fans of Ahly are my brothers. I hope Ahly and Zamalek fans can sit together in the stands without barriers," he said.

Players, fans and clubs may also find common ground in opposing a demand by Sepp Blatter, the president of world soccer body FIFA that the government reinstates the EFA board dismissed in the wake of Port Said on the grounds that its firing constituted political interference. Clubs and fans have been demanding the resignation of the board for the past year. Mr. Blatter’s call rings hallow given that the board consists of Mubarak appointees who further the ousted president’s efforts to control and manipulate the game to his political benefit.

It also rings hallow given the fact that despite a nominal 2013 FIFA deadline for a restructuring of Egyptian soccer FIFA essentially tolerated the fact that the vast majority of Egyptian premier league clubs fail to meet the soccer body’s criteria for league membership. These criteria include that an owner can only have one club in the league – several Egyptian premier league teams are military owned --; must have its own stadium – virtually no club does and if it does as in the case of Wadi Degla was not allowed by the security services to use it; and should be financially self-sufficient – few Egyptian clubs are.

If Port Said is setting the stage for a reordering of Egyptian soccer, it is also reinforcing emerging fault lines in a country that is protest weary, retains confidence in the military despite its brutality, is frustrated with the lack of immediate economic benefit from the revolt and yearns for normalcy so that Egypt can return to economic growth.

The public mood increasingly meant that the ultras, revered for their fearlessness and contribution to the ousting of Mr. Mubarak, were growing isolated with the public opting for electoral politics and turning its back on contentious street politics. Port Said brought the ultras out of their isolation with thousands of Egyptians in recent days joining their efforts to seek retribution by attacking the interior ministry.

It also sparked counter demonstrations. “Those who love Egypt should not destroy it” and "Police or people…we are all Egyptians," demonstrators chanted demanding a ceasefire between the ultras and the security forces. Residents on Cairo’s Mansour and Mohammed Mahmoud streets, the scene of the battles, complain barricades erected by the security forces and the clashes were disrupting daily life in their neighborhood.

Various groups including relatives of Port Said casualties, members of parliament and the imam of Tahrir Square’s Omar Markram mosque, Mazhar Shahin have been seeking to negotiate a ceasefire. Ahmad Maher, a leader of the April 6 movement that played a key role in the uprising against Mr. Mubarak, suffered a fractured skull and concussion when he was hit by a rock while trying to negotiate a truce.

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