Sport for Newbies

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Syrian soccer star symbolizes games importance in protests

Syrian Studies Association Newsletter, Vol 17, No 1 (2012)

Syrian soccer star symbolizes games importance in protests

James M. Dorsey

A celebrated national soccer team goalkeeper, singer of revolutionary folk songs and cheerleader of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the city of Homs, AbdelbassetSaroot is the exception that confirms the rule in a world in which soccer stars have largely stayed on the side lines of mass protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

For much of the last year until Syrian forces loyal to Assad entered Homs in March 2012, Saroot led protests by crooning in the neighbourhood of Baba Amr. These days he leads the life of a marked man on the run rather than that of a feted and upcoming soccer star. He avoids daylight, travelling only at night. Constantly on the run, he never stops moving and stays at any one place at most a few days.

Three attempts on his life later[i] in which 12 people were killed, including his brother and some of his closest friends whose bodies were dumped on a street and crushed by tanks[ii], he recently called for NATO military intervention, and denounced Syrian exile opposition leaders for leading a life of luxury in five-star hotels and obstructing efforts to persuade the international community to intervene.[iii] Saroot was lying on a cot covered by a blanket as he recovered from injuries he allegedly suffered in the last attack.

More than a year into the rebellion against Assads rule, Saroot may have led a somewhat less perilous life had he not joined the rebellion, but probably not a more glamorous one. In a sign of the importance of soccer in Middle Eastern and North African politics in general and for the Assads embattled regime specifically, the government has unsuccessfully gone to great length to use the game as evidence that it remains in control and is functioning normally. As a result, players reputations have been tarnished both among those segments of soccer-crazy Syrian society that are opposed to Assad as well as internationally.

Syrias national soccer teams have flagrantly set rules aside in recent months in their line-ups to ensure success on the pitch in the hope that success on the soccer pitch would rub off on the regime. World soccer body FIFA in September 2011 barred Syria from competing for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil after the countrys national team fielded an ineligible player in in a qualifying match against Tajikistan.[iv] 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.[v]

By the same token, Syria refused to send athletes to the November 2011 Arab Games because it feared embarrassment if some of its sportsmen defected. Saroot is a living symbol that that fear may not be unfounded. It also suggests the problems the Assad regime has in ensuring that the countrys athletes toe the party line. Syrian security forces last summer arrested national soccer goalkeeper Mosab Balhous on charges of sheltering armed gangs and possessing suspicious amounts of money.[vi] Unconfirmed reports said a third soccer player, Ahmed al Sheban, was killed in Homs under unclear circumstances.

Saroot and Balhous stand out in a region in revolt, in which soccer players feted by autocratic leaders and managers appointed by their regimes remained largely on the side lines of mass anti-government protests. At the heart of their failure to join the popular revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa is what Palestinian-American historian Hisham Sharabi called neo-patriarchy in a controversial 1992 book[vii] that is still banned in many Arab countries.

Sharabi argued that Arab society was built around the dominance of the Father (patriarch), the center around which the national as well as the natural family are organized. Between ruler and ruled, between father and child, there exist only vertical relations: in both settings the paternal will is absolute will, mediated in both the society and the family by a forced consensus based on ritual and coercion.[viii]

In other words, according to Sharabis thesis, Arab regimes franchised repression so that in a cultural patrimonial society, the oppressed participated in their repression and denial of rights. The regime is in effect the father of all fathers at the top of the pyramid. As a result, the patriarchal values that dominate soccer in addition to its popularity made it the perfect game for neo-patriarchs. Their values were soccer's values: assertion of male superiority in most aspects of life, control or harnessing of female lust and a belief in a masculine God. The identification of the presidents of Egypt, Iran and Yemen – Hosni Mubarak, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Abdullah Ali Saleh – as well as Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Qaddafis son, Al Saadi, with their countrys national teams turned their successes and failures into barometers of how their regimes were faring. They also turned celebrated soccer players and managers into regime supporters who saw the autocrat as their father figure.

In Syria, that was all the more the case with the domination of soccer by the military and the police. The Syrian military and police own and operate two of the countrys most important teams; Al Jaish (The Army) was for the longest time virtually synonymous with the national team. National service was crucial to Al Jaishs success. The moment a talented young player came of age, the army conscripted him and he played for Al Jaish. By sucking up the league's talent they won honours and attracted huge crowds, while the other clubs had to keep a lid on their discontent. Professionalization has hit Al Jaish hard. Yet, its soccer training grounds are still designated as a military zone, its chairman is a general and its technical director a colonel.

Similarly, a senior military officer, General Mowaffak Joumaa, heads the Syrian Olympic Committee. Joumaa underlined the importance the Assad regime attributes to its association with sports by recently insisting that he was committed and determined to head the Syrian delegation to this summers London Olympics irrespective of calls for a banning of Syria.[ix] There is no question about it we are taking part in a official way and with the best quality of athletes here in Syria, Joumaa said. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), despite mounting British opposition, insisted in March that Syria would be at the Games despite the brutal government crackdown on protesters.

By joining the revolt Saroot and Balhous have become part of a small group of soccer players and officials in the Middle East and North Africa with popular uprisings. Libyan national team players waited four months after the eruption of protests against Qaddafi and joined only after relatives and friends of theirs were killed by pro-government forces. In Bahrain, players joined because as Shiite Muslims they resented discrimination by a Sunni majority regime. Elsewhere in Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia and Syria, players and managers remained aloof.

Saroot describes his role as "a big responsibility to lift people's morale. We always try to stay optimistic about the future. The more optimistic we are the more the revolution keeps going It's worth it. I'm free. I've travelled all over the world to play football. But freedom is not just about me or about traveling. What about everyone else? Freedom is a big word. It's about freedom of speech and freedom of opinion. If you see something wrong being done, freedom is being able to talk about it.[x]

Speaking in the same broadcast as Joumaa, Saroot asserted that he knew personally that a majority of athletes slated to represent Syria in London were doing so to shield their family from the repercussions of defection. "They don't want to play for a flag that they have no pride or faith in, he said.

In a column last year in the London-based Arabic daily Al Quds al Arabi, writer Elias Khoury describes a documentary entitled Al Waar (Rocky Terrain) by an anonymous Syrian filmmaker that portrays Saroot as a leader of the protests and a composer of some of its slogans and songs.[xi] His features are Bedouin; he is a thirsty person who is not satisfied with only freedom Itis he who composes for the nocturnal gatherings for a popular festival in the suburbs of Homs where the air bears bullets. The slogans are an appeal by a decapitated nation and the will of a people determined not to bow to anyone, Khoury writes.

Go is the cry of the brave, A cry of the city with Bedouins, A cry of all religions, The cry of Syria and the land it covers: Let them leave him and his dogs and the destruction they have wrought, the film quotes the chants of the protesters crafted by Saroot. Khoury describes Saroot as the protagonist of the film whose voice challenges the Assad forces weaponry. Our weapon is our voice, Saroot says in the film.

Throughout the film a picture of Bashar al-Assad superimposed on that of his father, Hafez al-Assad, constitutes the background with the words, Assad or nothing, a play on the slogan that accompanied the portrait of Hafez during his rule: Our leader in eternity and beyond.

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. Parts of this story first appeared on his blog.

[i] Al-Bayada | Homs | Assad Forces Attack Home of Abdul Basit Saroot, Brother Now Martyr, You Tube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyGmTMivRdA&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL059D7AA813D3D375, 11.12.11.

[ii] Syria: Songs of Defiance, Al Jazeera English, March 15, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2012/03/201231213549186607.html

[iii] Syria Soccer Star Says NATO Now! - Assad Slaughter Must Be Stopped! 12-15-11, You Tube, December 16, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlw4V1N-um4

[iv] James M. Dorsey, FIFA bans Syria from 2014 World Cup, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/2011/08/fifa-bans-syria-from-2014-world-cup.html

[v] James M. Dorsey, Everything goes in Syrian crackdown and Syrian soccer, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, November 9, 2011

[vi] Mustapha Ajbaili, Syrian goalkeeper arrested for sheltering armed gangs, Al Arabiya, August 4, 2011, http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/08/04/160768.html

[vii] Hisham Shirabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society, London, 1992

[viii] Idem page 7

[ix] Niel Connery, Syrian Olympic chief to attend Games despite calls for a ban, ITV News, April 3, 2012, http://www.itv.com/news/2012-04-03/syrian-olympic-committee-president-to-attend-london-2012/

[x] Syria: Songs of Defiance, Al Jazeera English, March 15, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2012/03/201231213549186607.html

[xi] James M. Dorsey, Syrian goalkeeper emerges as protest leader in embattled city of Homs, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, November 13, 2011,http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/2011/11/syrian-goalkeeper-emerges-as-protest.html

Monday, May 21, 2012

Join JMD at May 29 Webinar 1200-1300 (CST) Soccer as an Engine of Change and Assertion of Identity

Dear All,

Those interested in participating in the Webinar, please register at

https://connect.dco.dod.mil/ckcspeakers

Hope to meet you there.

Best,

James

AFC puts Iran on the spot on women’s rights

(Source: BBC)

By James M. Dorsey

Iranian women soccer fans have set their hopes on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to return them to the terraces after having been banned from stadiums for years to prevent them from looking at men’s bodies.

The women expect the AFC’s insistence that Iran adhere to the Asian soccer body’s standards when it hosts this fall the AFC Under-16 Championship to grant them access to matches during the tournament but would like to see that spark a permanent lifting of the ban imposed after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

"So far as AFC is concerned, there should be no sex discrimination regarding the presence of men and women at stadiums," AFC Director of National Team competition Shin Mangal was quoted as saying by Shiite news agency Shafaqna.

The AFC said it had received assurances from Ali Kaffashian, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Football Federation (IRIFF) that it would comply with AFC regulations.

The AFC quoted Mr. Kaffashian as saying at the drawing of the groups for the tournament that the IRIFF is “fully ready to follow all the requirements and instructions from AFC.” The Iranian soccer boss repeated his position in remarks to Iranian reformist newspaper Sharq.

In an editorial the newspaper said "the youth championships could create a great change in Iranian football. They are an excellent opportunity."

The IRIFF’s apparent willingness to counter Iranian policy and adhere to international standards has sparked significant domestic debate that pits conservatives against liberals. Proponents of a permanent lifting of the ban are weakened by a power struggle within Iran’s soccer elite.

Two proponents of lifting the ban are at each other’s throats.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an avid soccer fan who at times micromanages the affairs of the IRIFF and six years ago unsuccessfully attempted to lift the ban, is trying to get Mr. Kaffashian’s re-election in March as head of the Iranian soccer body annulled by the courts.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s attorney general has argued that Mr. Kaffashian could not hold public office as a former civil servant even though that was not an issue four years ago when he was first elected with the president’s backing.

Mr. Ahmadinejad turned against Mr. Kaffashian because Iranian soccer has failed to perform internationally under his leadership. The president had hoped to shore up his tarnished image and dropping popularity by associating himself with the country’s most popular sport. For that tactic to work, he needed a soccer success that Mr. Kaffashian failed to deliver.

In effect, Mr. Kaffashian is the fall guy for the failure of successive national coaches to deliver performance even though Mr. Ahmadinejad took a direct interest in their appointment. The coaches failed to take Iran to the 2010 World Cup finals or triumph in the 2011 Asian Cup. Iran still stands a chance for qualifying for the 2014 Brazil World Cup but that will do Mr. Ahmadinejad little good after his supporters were trounced in parliamentary elections in March.

Mr. Ahamdinejad, however, also turned against Mr. Kaffashian because the soccer pitch on Mr. Kaffashian’s watch has repeatedly in Tehran and Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan, has become a venue for protest against his government. The government, aware that the pitch was an important incubator of the revolt that toppled Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and has played a role in popular revolts elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, last year suspended soccer matches in Tehran during celebrations of the anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

While Iran is almost certain to comply with AFC rules to ensure that it does not lose the hosting of the games, more difficult will be turning the breaching of the wall into its destruction. It would not be the first time that Iran opportunistically complies with international soccer requirements only to return its discriminatory practice afterwards. Iran allowed women into the stadium during World Cup qualifiers played in the country in 2007 but maintained the ban for all other matches.

"Women looking at a man's body, even if not for the sake of gratification, is inappropriate. Furthermore, Islam insists that men and women should not mix," said Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani back in 2006 when Mr. Ahmadinejad failed to get the ban lifted permanently.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s effort was in part sparked by the fact that significant numbers of Iranian women were succeeding to circumvent the ban by sneaking into stadiums dressed as men. The practice attracted attention when Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi won international acclaim for his documentary Offside that tells the story of a group of young girls who dress up as boys to pass through stadium gates only to be detained. A second more recent movie, Shirin Was A Canary, recounts the tale of a girl who is expelled from school for her love of soccer.

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.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Manchester City victory threatens to strengthen Middle Eastern autocrats

Manchester City supporters waved fake £500bn notes at Chelsea fans after the club was bought by the Abu Dhabi United group. Photograph: TheGuardian/Tom Jenkins

By James M. Dorsey

Manchester City, by winning the Premier League for the first time in more than four decades, has defied warnings that money cannot buy soccer success and set an example for Middle Eastern and North African autocrats and wealthy businessmen who employ the beautiful game to strengthen unpopular regimes in what an Egyptian democracy activist describes as the new opium of the people.

The Premier League title crowns the investment of an estimated $1.5 billion that the Abu Dhabi United Group headed by United Arab Emirates royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan pumped into the club since it acquired the struggling team in 2008. The investment was used to acquire high profile players, including Argentinian Carlos Tevez, Robinho, Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré and Joleon Lescott for a total of approximately $330 million.

Funds were poured into upgrading Manchester City’s facilities: a new office block was built with bars and an entertainment arena for supporters; the Carrington training ground was revamped. The club’s stadium was renamed Etihad Stadium after Abu Dhabi’s premier airline signed a ten-year, $475 million sponsorship agreement with Manchester City.

The Guardian sports writer David Conn notes in a book to be published early next month, ‘Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football And Growing Up,’ that the deprived neighbourhoods surrounding the club ‘s stadium have benefitted little if anything from Sheikh Mansour’s largesse.

Nonetheless, Manchester City fans enthusiastically greeted the Middle East’s first acquisition of a major European club, by wearing Arab headdress and waving British pound notes with the picture of the queen replaced by a Gulf sheikh at the team’s first post-acquisition match. A picture in The Guardian this weekend shows Sheikh Mansour’s portrait featuring on a fake GBP 500 billion note that Manchester City supporters waved at fans of rival club Chelsea.

Fans have at times also been willing to accept cultural changes that have accompanied Arab acquisitions in Europe. FC Malaga’s new owner, law by its new owner, Qatari royal Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani, last year replaced bookmaker William Hill Plc the club’s jersey sponsor because gambling is banned under Islamic. United Nations culture agency UNESCO took the place of the bookmaker.

On the other hand, Real Madrid’s recent decision to remove a Christian cross from its official logo in what it described as the cost of doing business in a globalized world has sparked ire, particularly among anti-Muslim right-wingers. The removal came as Real Madrid embarked on the construction of a $1 billion sport tourist resort in the United Arab Emirates scheduled to open in 2015.

Elsewhere, fans have expressed fears that commercial investment such as new funds that invest in players - Dubai’s United Investment Bank last year launched the Middle East’s first alternative investment soccer fund modelled on similar controversial European funds -- undermines a club’s ability to generate funds of its own and often favours vested interests. Opposition last year by fans of Istanbul’s Besiktas to third party acquisition of three Portuguese players -- Hugo Almeida, Simao Sabrosa and Manuel Fernandez -- was fuelled by unsubstantiated suspicions that the fund involved was a front for club president Yildirim Demiroren, a wealthy businessman who had lent the club just under $100 million.

For Middle Eastern and North African autocrats who have long seen support and control of soccer as a tool to improve their tarnished images, divert attention from widespread grievances and manipulate national emotions the message from Manchester City is that investment in soccer pays political dividends, particularly at a time that the region is wracked by popular unrest. The message is likely to reinforce a tendency to hire and fire managers and coaches depending on how a team performs in its last game rather than in a long-term bid to build a squad’s culture and cohesion. Performance on the pitch is reduced to the prestige of a regime or nation in what to autocratic rulers is a zero sum game.

The message threatens to distort a trend towards professionalization, commercialization and the creation of a proper football industry as a key to unlocking economic opportunity in a world where the soccer pitch is often a battlefield for political, ethnic, religious and gender rights that was sparked by Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup.

For many in the region, last year’s Asia Cup final in Doha, in which half of the competing teams hailed from the Middle East with not one reaching the semi-finals, constituted a wake-up call. It is an experience, Middle Eastern and North African leaders and soccer officials do not want repeated at the Qatar World Cup for political reasons as well as a sense of pride and realization of what soccer can do for their prestige as well as that of their nations.

Manchester City’s victory threatens to send out the message that money rather than political reform, divorcing soccer from the political control of often unpopular regimes and building a strong, cohesive team over time can do the trick.

Similarly, for European clubs there is risk inherent in dependency on wealthy benefactors and in association with Middle Eastern autocrats.

Michel Platini, the head of Europe’s soccer body, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) warned his week in the wake of the Manchester City title win that that clubs dependant on the largesse of wealthy benefactors could face oblivion if they failed to maintain a realistic level of spending.

Mr. Platini defended UEFA’s new Financial Fair Play rules developed in response to an influx of wealthy club owners that require clubs to balance their soccer-related expenditure over a three-year period by telling Fox Soccer America: “We have to protect the clubs, because until they pay Manchester City will be happy but if they (the owners) leave Manchester City what is going to happen with this club?”

Under the new rules, clubs will initially be allowed to make a loss of $60 million over the first three years, falling to $36 million from 2015–16. Mr. Platini reiterated that despite the Manchester City success, money was not a guarantee. Clubs that violate the Financial Fair Play rules could be excluded from European competitions.

The experience of some European clubs illustrates the risk Mr. Platini was highlighting. Emirati Sheikh Sulaiman Al Fahim , barely three months after acquiring Portsmouth FC several years ago, sold the bulk of his stake to Saudi property tycoon Ali Al-Faraj amid reports that his flagship Hydra Village project in Abu Dhabi was floundering. Mr. Al-Faraj too had no intention of staying involved for long. Soon after the takeover, he announced that he was selling the club. But with no buyer on the horizon, Portsmouth FC went into receivership.

Geneva’s Swiss Super League club Servette FC and Austria’s Admira Wacker haven’t fared much better. Servette is on the brink of collapse after Iranian businessman Majid Pishyar who acquired it in 2008, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Mr. Pishyar, who managed the club on a shoe string, tried unsuccessfully to attract government funding by last year appointing Robert Hensler, a former top civil servant for the canton of Geneva, as vice-president. His earlier efforts to salvage Admira, his first European acquisition, failed too. Servette’s problems come on the heels of the bankruptcy in January of Neuchatel’s Super League team Xamax whose Chechen owner was arrested on charges of fraud and financial mismanagement.

Manchester City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak in an interview in Mr. Conn’s book, an excerpt of which was published in The Guardian this weekend, illustrated the benefits as well as the risks of wealthy ownership. Mr. Al Mubarak expressed surprise at the lack of professional administration that Manchester City’s new owners encountered when they took over the club and described how he had introduced a more professional approach. "One of the big surprises was how amateurish it was. I found it shocking in the famous Premier League, to be without such basic functions" as a personnel department, he said.

Mr. Al Mubarak appointed former Arsenal winger Brian Marwood as head of administration. Mr. Marwood showed Mr. Conn a 30-page, colour-coded analysis produced by Manchester City's new inter-departmental analytic system for a 15-year-old that was being eyed by the club. For major signings, Mr. Marwood said, the dossiers could run up to 50 pages. Before, he said, "it was in people's heads" Now, it is a spreadsheet that. “that detailed, not left to chance," Mr. Marwood said.

Manchester City is unlikely to be able to comply with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules without Sheikh Mansour. The club’s losses for 2010–11, the year before their finances were assessed under the new regulation, were $294 million, the highest ever by an English football club and five times the total the club is allowed in the coming two years.

In Mr. Conn’s book, Mr. Platini’s concern about an evolving unhealthy relationship between money and soccer seemed lost on Mr. Al Mubarak. “Whichever way I asked Al-Mubarak about the instinctive repulsion many people in football have for this kind of "project" – for a rich man to just buy a club, then pour in as much money as it took to buy success – he did not so much defend what they were doing as fail to understand the question,” Mr. Conn wrote.

“If you said football was not supposed to be about which ‘owner’ had the most money, so who could pay the most to players, thereby seducing them to their club, he (Mr. Al Mubarak) wondered aloud how United had won the Premier League so many times, and how anybody could compete with them without money. If you tried to argue that a club should be a club, belonging to the people who support it, that a sporting competition does not seem sporting if it is owned by one rich man spending whatever it takes to stockpile the necessary mercenary talent, you would be describing an abstract idea with which he was unfamiliar, and which did not match reality as it was, and as it was viewed from Abu Dhabi,” Mr. Conn said.

To Sheikh Masour and Mr. Al Mubarak buying a soccer club may be more fun than the oil and gas industry, the mainstay of Abu Dhabi’s economy, but at the bottom line it remains a business. To them clubs are business. "There is an opportunity we have identified and taken hold of. A mid-tier club will move to become a big club because of the financial resources we are able to make available. Because we see value in making that transition. And that is the bottom line," Mr. Conn quoted Mr. Al Mubarak as saying.

Beyond the financial dependency risk, European acquisition targets also run the risk of being associated with regimes potentially capable of using brute force to suppress popular demands for greater freedom. The UAE has nervously reacted to the mass protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa by cracking down on dissent and freedom of expression at home and investing more than $500 million in the creation of a mercenary force headed by former Blackwater security company head Eric Page for the eventuality of an outbreak of protests at home.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Islamist power politics threaten clean-up of Turkish soccer

By James M. Dorsey

Scandal-ridden Turkish soccer is playing two parallel existential matches: one to eradicate widespread corruption and match-fixing, another involving two Islamist teams for the hearts and minds of Turkish soccer fans.

The team of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former soccer player and member of Istanbul’s storied Fenerbahce Spor Kulubu, has regained the lead in the battle of the Islamists with a decision by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) to clear the Turkish leader’s club and 15 others of charges of involvement in match-fixing.

The controversial TFF’s decision came three months after the soccer body against Mr. Erdogan’s wish rejected a proposal backed by the prime minister that would have shielded clubs guilty of match fixing from being relegated. The defeat of the proposal prompted the TFF’s three top officials, including its vice chairman, Goksel Gumusdag, a brother-in-law of Mr. Erdogan, to resign.

The surprise TFF vote followed Mr. Erdogan’s success in driving through parliament against the will of President Abdullah Gul, believed to be an ally of Fethullah Gulen, a powerful, self-exiled, Pennsylvania-based cleric, who backs harsh punishment, including relegation, of those involved in the match-fixing scandal, to limit punishment of people guilty of match fixing.

For Mr. Erdogan however to decisively win his match against Mr. Gulen the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the governing body of European soccer will, have to endorse the TFF’s decision. UEFA has yet to comment on the decision.

UEFA warned earlier that it would intervene if the Turkish federation's disciplinary body failed to act before a June 1 deadline to register clubs for European competitions. It also barred Fenerbahce from this season's Champions League as a result of the investigation.

It could now opt to extend Fenerbahce’s ban as well as expand it to other prominent clubs implicated in the scandal such as Besiktas and Trabzonspor.

UEFA intervention would reflect poorly on Mr. Erdogan, further taint Turkey’s already damaged image and complicate its bid to host the 2020 European soccer championship. As a result, Trabzonspor president Sadri Sener was among the first to express concern about the potential fallout of the TFF decision.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge this week added fuel to the fire by warning that Istanbul would not be allowed to host both the European championship and the Olympics 2020. Mr. Rogge’s statement amounted to calling on UEFA president Michel Platini to delay awarding the soccer tournament to Turkey, the sole bidder, until after the IOC decides on the Olympic Games in September of next year.

The stakes for Messrs. Erdogan and Gulen are high: the hearts and minds of millions of Turkish soccer fans with the prime minister and Mr. Gulen focusing primarily on Fenerbahce, Turkey’s biggest and best supported club, whose imprisoned president, Aziz Yildirim, is among 93 soccer officials and players standing trial on match-fixing charges.

It was not immediately clear what impact the TFF decision would have on the proceedings of the court, which looked to the federation for guidance. Mr. Gulen is believed to want to see Mr. Yildirim convicted to pave the way for someone closer to his movement to be able to take control of the club.

The risks for Mr. Erdogan were evident as a video demanding that UEFA take action to ensure harsh penalties for those implicated in the match fixing scandal went viral on the Internet shortly after the TFF announced its decision. “Only UEFA can help us solve this problem, we can’t. If we could we wouldn’t be in this situation,” says a middle-aged soccer fan sitting in the video on the Bosporus as he signs a soccer ball alongside other from all walks of life. The ball is to be given to the European soccer body as a petition for intervention.

It is also politically sensitive because Mr. Gulen’s movement is Turkey’s foremost Islamic alliance and has supported Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). It operates schools, businesses, media, including major Turkish media, and NGOs across the globe, and is widely seen as having significant sway over Turkey’s police force. The Gulen movement has been instrumental in the rise of Turkey’s appeal across the Middle East, North Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa with its network often paving the way for Turkish diplomacy and business.

Followers of Mr. Gulen believe that Ergenekon, an allegedly clandestine, Kemalist ultra-nationalist organization representing Turkey’s deep state, benefitted financially from the match-fixing. Hundreds of people have been arrested, including senior military figures, in recent years on terrorism-related charges for their alleged involvement in Ergenekon, which the Turkish government denounces as a terrorist organization.

Mr. Erdogan defended the TFF decision earlier this week on the grounds that punishing institutions rather than individuals would amount to penalizing “millions of fans who set their hearts on these institutions.''

In announcing its decision, the federation banned striker Ibrahim Akin of Istanbul Buyuksehir Belediyesi for three years for allegedly fixing the result of a game when his team last year lost to Fenerbahce. The TFF also banned Serdar Kulbilge of Genclerbirligi for two years for allegedly attempting to fix the result of a game that Fenerbahce won 4-2.

The TFF said further that eight other people -- including Fenerbahce officials Mehmet Sekip Mosturoglu, Ilhan Yuksel Eksioglu, and Cemil Turhan – had been deprived of their rights, which means that they were barred from any administrative or sports activity, including the right to enter a stadium.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Saudi imams warn against mixing of sports, politics and protest

Saudi Grand Mufti: Protesters are sinful

By James M. Dorsey

Saudi and ultra-conservative imams have warned in separate statements against the mixing of sports and politics and protests against autocratic regimes, which, according to some, results from of the mingling of the sexes in sports.

The warnings come against the backdrop of Saudi efforts to shield the Gulf from the wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, renewed focus on the role of militant soccer fans opposing military rule in Egypt and pressure on the kingdom to allow women to compete for the first time in an international tournament during the London Olympics.

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh quoted in the kingdom's Al Watan newspaper warned that the protests that have already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen and brought Syria to the brink of civil war were sinful. "The schism, instability, the malfunctioning of security and the breakdown of unity that Islamic countries are facing these days is a result of the sins of the public and their transgressions," Sheikh Abdulaziz said.

Such sins include, according to Imam Abu Abdellah of As-Sunnah mosque in Kissimee, Florida, speaking in a video posted on the Internet, the mixing of the sexes at sports events. “In the past it was only men, now it is almost half half (in stadiums). Allah knows what happens afterwards. Either way it is bad. Either people go out, they are sensing and partying and drinking and all that, so that’s negative. And if they don’t, they go out and they demonstrate and they’re angry and they destroy property and they destroy cars and they destroy people’s business. Either way its haram (forbidden), things have to be done in moderation. These are the things that are associated with sports that the believers have to be careful with,” Abu Abedallah said.

“So there is nothing wrong with watching and practicing your favourite sport as long as you adhere to the norms. When it comes to the way you dress and the way you behave, where you’re going to be, what are you going to be listening to; are you going to be mingling in crowds you are not supposed to be mingling with? All of those things do matter when you are practicing or you are watching your favourite sport,” the imam said.

The clerics’ statements came as Saudi Arabia prepares for a summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in which it hopes to foist closer political and military cooperation on its largely reluctant co-members Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. Bahrain, which last year brutally squashed with Saudi assistance an uprising against its minority Sunni Muslin rulers, is likely to be the only GCC state to fully endorse the notion of a political union.

The statements also come as International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge is under pressure to make good on his pledges earlier this year to stand for gender equality by banning Saudi Arabia from this year’s London Olympics if it fails to field women athletes. A Human Rights Watch report released in February, called on Saudi Arabia to protect women's equal right to sports and urged the IOC to live up to its charter, which prohibits discrimination, or face a ban similar to that imposed on Afghanistan in 1999 partly for its exclusion of female athletes.

With Qatar and Brunei expected to have women athletes for the first time this year in their delegations, Saudi Arabia would be the only country in the world that still refuses to allow women to compete. The kingdom has recently hinted that it would not stand against Saudi women living abroad competing, but would not field athletes from the kingdom itself.

In separate statements, two Saudi religious scholars admonished soccer players that bad behaviour could lead to a ban on public attendance of matches. It was not immediately clear what incidents of bad behaviour they were referring to.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Suleiman Al Manei, a member of the Gulf Kingdom’s supreme scholars committee and an advisor to King Abdullah warned that “the spread of such (bad) acts on play fields is a clear indicator of a decline in moral values and the transformation of sport from fair competition into bigotry. The continuation of these bad phenomena which pose a threat to the ethical values of our sons makes the attendance of these matches a hateful thing. This means that going to these matches could become prohibited because what is happening there has a strong negative impact on the society.”

In a statement of his own, Sheikh Abdullah Al Mutlaq, another member of the supreme committee, denounced players for allegedly faking incidents in a bid to get a referee to award a penalty in their team’s favour. “These are acts of deception, which is hated and forbidden in Islam…..the sin becomes worse when the player swears by Allah falsely…players should refrain from such wrong acts as they have become a bad example for the young generation,” Sheikh Al Mutlaq said without reference to specific incidents.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Egyptian military’s loss of popularity brings ultras in from the cold

Cairo's Al Abbasiya battlefield (Source: MSNBC)

By James M. Dorsey

It took Egypt’s military brass less than six months to first isolate street-battle hardened soccer fans, the country’s most militant opponents of military rule, and then restore their waning popularity amid mushrooming protests demanding an immediate return of the armed forces to their barracks and a transition to civilian government.

The ultras– militant, highly politicized, violence-prone soccer fans modeled on similar groups in Italy and Serbia – chanting "Where are the Baltagiya (thugs)? The Revolutionaries are here" and “Tantawi is Mubarak,” joined this weekend thousands of protesters in a confrontation with security forces in Cairo near the defense ministry.

The timing of the protest could not have been more symbolic – the 84th birthday of ousted President Hosni Mubarak with whom the protesters have come to equate Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

The health ministry said a soldier was killed and more than 400 people injured in clashes between the protesters and security forces barely three weeks before the first scheduled presidential elections since the toppling of Mubarak more than a year ago. A group of doctors aiding wounded protesters said two demonstrators had died of shotgun wounds.

The government declared a night curfew in the area around the defense ministry in Cairo’s Al Abbasiya neighborhood. Similar protests occurred in other Egyptian cities, including Alexandria and Suez. An effort by protesters to defy the curfew was repelled in part by residents of Abbasiya, a stronghold of support for Mubarak and the military.

The joining of forces of Salafists – proponents of return to life as it was at the time of the Prophet Mohammed --, Islamists, youth and left wing groups and ultras in their demand for an end to military rule in defiance of a warning by SCAF that it would not tolerate protests near the defense ministry or military facilities symbolizes the military’s misreading of the public mood.

The coming together of protesters of all walks of life was a far cry from the scene in late November and early December when protesters on Tahrir Square first called on the ultras to protect them against attacks by security forces but then abandoned them as they fought vicious street battles with the police in a street just off the square. Some 50 people were killed at the time in the fighting and more than a thousand wounded.

The then isolation of the youth groups and ultras – respected for their years of resistance in the stadiums to Mubarak’s brutal security forces and celebrated for their key role in toppling the hated leader -- reflected growing protest weariness at a time that the public retained confidence in the military despite its brutality, was frustrated by the lack of economic fruits of their popular revolt and longed for a return to normalcy that would put Egypt back on the path of economic growth.

The ultras’ increasing marginalization was evident in their lonely battle in recent months to demand justice for the 74 soccer fans killed in early February in a soccer brawl in Port Suez, the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history that was widely seen as an effort by the security forces to teach the militants a lesson. Security forces failed to intervene in the brawl in which pro-government thugs armed with sticks and knives were believed to have been involved. The government has charged 61 people, including nine security officials, with responsibility for the incident. The incident led to the cancellation of this season’s top two soccer competitions. A majority of the dead were supporters of Al Ahly SC, Egypt and Africa’s foremost soccer club.

A series of unpopular measures widely seen as an effort by the military to manipulate the outcome of the presidential election to ensure that a civilian-led Egypt is governed by a president and government sympathetic to safeguarding the role of the armed forces in politics and its stake in the economy and shield them from external oversight has over the past week brought protesters back in to the streets in ever growing numbers.

The measures included the banning of popular Islamist politicians and others from standing for president and culminated in an attack by thugs on anti-military protesters last Wednesday that left 11 people dead, some of them shot, others reportedly with their throats slit. Like in the case of Port Said, few doubt that the military at the very least had turned a blind eye to aggression by unidentified pro-regime thugs.

The mounting tension has strengthened the resolve of the ultras to force justice for their fallen comrades in Port Said and press for an end to military rule. In a show of unity in March, ultras of crowned Cairo arch rivals Ahly and Al Zamalek SC warned that they would sacrifice their lives to achieve their goals.

The statement at the end of a historic meeting between the two groups who have bitterly fought each other since their inception in 2007 suggested a sea change in Egypt’s soccer politics and a cementing of relationships among rival groups that have the organization and street battle experience to turn the military’s effort to mold Egypt in its image into a bitter and bloody struggle.

State-owned Al Ahram newspaper warned earlier this year that the ultras were “a time bomb ticking due to lack of justice for fallen comrades following the Port Said disaster.”

In a statement almost two months after the Port Said incident, Ultras Ahlawy said: “You can call us thugs, you can call us crazy, but we will be crazy to regain our rights, either through legal avenues or with our bare hands. We are ready to die for our rights; we are ready to add to the toll of 74 deaths.”

The ultras bring to the demonstrations against the military in Al Abbasiya the same degree of fearlessness, recklessness and abandon that they brought to last year’s mass protests on Tahrir Square that forced Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office.

"The government has turned the ultras into their enemy. That was a mistake. The ultras are passionate; they don’t have a specific agenda and don’t want to be labeled politically. They go into battle with abandon impervious to what it may produce,” said Mohammed Gamal Bashir aka Gemyhood, a founder of the UWK and author of a recent Arabic-language book about the ultras who is widely seen as the movement’s Egyptian godfather.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Trade unions reject World Cup-related Qatar labor measures and threaten global boycott

By James M. Dorsey

International trade unions this week rejected World Cup-related Qatari proposals to meet concerns about worker rights, including health and safety that violate international human and labor rights as well as principles the Gulf state had adopted as a member of the International Labor Organization ILO.

The unions said they were moving ahead with plans for a global campaign this summer under the motto 'No World Cup in Qatar without labor rights’, to deprive Qatar of its right to host the 2022 World Cup if it failed to align its labor legislation and workers’ condition with international standards.

“It is not too late to change the venue of the World Cup. This is not an industrial skirmish about wages; this is a serious breach in regard to human and labor rights. The country is incredibly wealthy and is portraying itself as a model country. That is simply not true.

Our members are football fans and they don’t want to see the game played in a country that practices slavery,” Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 175 million workers in 153 countries, said in a telephone interview.

A spokesman for the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee declined to comment on Ms. Burrow’s statements.

The looming confrontation between Qatar and the international workers’ movement comes at a sensitive time for the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that incorporates Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. The GCC is preparing for a summit in Riyadh later this month to discuss a political union that would allow Saudi Arabia to pressure the smaller states to fall in line with its more conservative social and foreign policies at a time that the Middle East and North Africa are experiencing popular revolts in demand of greater freedom.

The issue of labor rights is also sensitive because several Gulf states have populations that are in majority foreign. Beyond the commercial and economic advantages of a cheap pool of labor, discussion of any kind of rights for non-locals raises the specter of the minority Gulf population in countries like Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait no longer having a country that is theirs and which they control.

“It’s a real problem. Everybody knows that,” said a source close to Qatari and Gulf thinking on the issue against the backdrop of the UAE and Bahrain alongside Qatar seeking to project themselves as global sports hubs. An attempt by Bahrain to project an image of business as normal and distract attention from continuing popular discontent despite the suppression of last year’s revolt by letting Formula 1 go ahead last month backfired with protests overshadowing the race.

Ms. Burrow said the unions were seeking an urgent Qatari acceptance and implementation of international human and labor rights because the Gulf state was about to start construction of World Cup-related infrastructure.

Qatar’s 2022 Supreme Committee this week issued a second tender for the project, design, commercial and construction management of one of the 12 stadiums it is planning for the tournament, nine of which will be newly built. The three remaining stadiums already exist but need to be refurbished. The committee earlier tendered the contract for a master planning and lead design consultant for the stadiums.

“Gradual change is not good enough. The urgency is because the stadiums are about to be constructed in a serious way. Companies are gearing up their supply chains and costing infrastructure on a model of modern day slavery. We want that to change and companies might have to adjust their costing and pricing accordingly,” Ms. Burrow said.

Qatar with a majority expatriate population expects to import up to one million foreign workers to complete infrastructure needed both for the World Cup and the development of the energy-rich nation.

In a statement, the ITUC said it had requested an urgent meeting with Qatari labor minister Sultan bin Hassan, charging that “workers are dying in Qatar as they build World Cup stadiums and infrastructure, and suffer large scale exploitation every day.” Ms. Burrow said she had yet to receive a reply to the letter, which was also sent to world soccer body FIFA.

The union leader said that some 200 Nepalese died last year in Qatar, a favored destination for the country’s low skilled expat labor; 30 of them while on a construction job while another approximately 70 as a result of the country’s brutal summer temperatures that rise above 40 degrees Celsius. It was not clear whether any of these deaths were directly related to World Cup-related construction. “We quite confidently predict that more people will die off the field than there are players on the field,” Ms. Burrow said. She said she would soon be travelling to Nepal for discussions with the government and trade unions.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Burrow pointed to a report in The Himalaya Times that described Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia as “graveyards for young Nepali workers in the 25-42 years age group.”

The unions in a meeting with FIFA last November gave the soccer body and FIFA six months to ensure that workers in Qatar have “the legal right to organize themselves in free, independent trade unions without punishment or interference from authorities” that could “collectively bargain” with employers.

“Construction workers, the majority who are migrant workers are risking their lives today as they work in poor and unsafe conditions with low wages. They need trade union rights today to protect them", the ITUC statement quoted Ambet Yuson, General Secretary of Building and Wood Workers International, as saying.

Ms. Burrow said the fight for workers’ rights in Qatar was a battle for labor rights in the region. She said of the three GCC states – Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait – that legally allow trade unions only Bahrain had enshrined international standards in its legislation. She said Bahrain’s progress had however been marred by last year’s Saudi-backed brutal repression of a popular uprising in which teachers, nurses, doctors and others were detained and tortured for demanding basic democratic rights.

“Bahrain was on track until it came under pressure. The prime minister admitted to us that there were concerns from the Gulf states around them, Saudi Arabia in particular but also Qatar etc. Bahrain at least had public recognition of the rights if not realization of those rights in their totality because of the pressure of the Gulf states,” Ms. Burrow said.

She said a Qatari proposal for the creation of a labor committee and abolishment of its controversial system of sponsorship of foreign labor was a “far cry” from union demands for a free and independent trade union and equitable and human working conditions.

Qatar is seeking to project itself as a show case member of the global community, “yet it is so far outside the basic human framework of human and labor rights” that it need to choose between being part of the international community or a model of 21^st century slavery, Ms. Burrow said.

Qatari media this week quoted Labor Undersecretary Hussain Al Mulla as saying that the country’s emir was considering a plan to establish a Qatari-led labor committee that would represent workers’ interests as well as an abolition of the sponsorship system that would stop short of allowing foreigners to freely change jobs. Qatar recently abandoned the requirement that foreign workers surrender their passports to their Qatari employers. Mr. Al Mulla said the plan had already been endorsed by the Qatari prime minister.

Denouncing conditions of foreign workers in Qatar as 21^st century slavery, Ms. Burrow said unions were demanding not only improved health and safety conditions but also the ability to live freely in the community, bring their families and move freely in and out of the country. “Current conditions are absolute enslavement to the employer,” Ms. Burrow said.

She said Mr. Al Mulla’s proposal for a labor committee involved creation of a government controlled body rather than an independent trade union. The way Qatar planned to abolish the sponsorship system failed to create a level playing field or guarantee workers’ freedom of movement, she said.

Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee Secretary General Hassan Al Thawadi pledged early this year in a speech at Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Doha that the Gulf state would adhere to international labor standards.

"Major sporting events shed a spotlight on conditions in countries. There are labor issues here in the country, but Qatar is committed to reform. We will require that contractors impose a clause to ensure that international labor standards are met. Sport and football in particular, is a very powerful force. Certainly we can use it for the benefit of the region." Mr. Al Thawadi said.