The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Quartz: US intelligence sees soccer as indicator of discontent

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:03:33 PDT

To locate the next Arab Spring revolution, look to the soccer stands

By Josh Meyer @JoshMeyerDC 2 hours ago

Quartz

Future revolutionaries. AP Photo

It’s been said that soccer tells us all we need to know about

life, parenting, even globalization.

Now a Singapore-based blogger says soccer can tell us which

Middle East or North African government will be the next to

blow. At the top of the list: Algeria and Saudi Arabia.

Over at his blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer,

James M. Dorsey looks at soccer as a lens through which to

view the fault lines carving up the Middle East and North Africa.

In Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and other countries, he says, soccer

played a key role in allowing pent-up anger and frustration to

percolate into organized protest that forced transitions from

autocratic rule to more open societies.

In these countries, those engaging in public forms of dissent are

often tortured and “disappeared.” Soccer fans, in contrast, are

allowed to vent as much as they want, and in large numbers.

Stadiums become incubators of protest and insurrection. One only

has to watch the action off the pitch to accurately gauge the mood

of the people and see how close they are to erupting into mass protest,

Dorsey tells Quartz.

Dorsey, a former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent, has

been writing his blog for three years. In February 2011,

he focused on the role of the militant, highly politicized, and well

organized soccer fans, known as Ultras, in Egypt’s uprising.

Here’s a taste:

One catch: Often, especially in family-run monarchies, the

countries’ leaders own soccer clubs as a status symbol, so

fans might just be mad at the government for the latest losing

streak. That might have been the case recently in Saudi Arabia,

where fans booed Prince Faisal bin Turki, the owner of Riyadh

soccer club Al Nassr FC.

Saudi soccer fans booing and pelting a prince.http://www.Alhilal.com/The Turbulent World of

Middle East Soccer blog

Dorsey doesn’t think so, and contends the Saudis are in trouble.

Washington-based Saudi dissident Ali al-Ahmad agrees, based on the

increasingly militant behavior of young male soccer fans in the stands

as well as on Facebook and YouTube.

“It has reached a breaking point. They are calling for overthrow, and

using very similar chants to fans in Tunisia and elsewhere,’’ said

al-Ahmad, of the Institute for Gulf Affairs. “When they are all together,

they are not afraid anymore.”

Dorsey predicts the next revolt will be in Algeria. Soccer fans there are

increasingly voicing opposition to 76-year old president Abdelaziz

Bouteflika, who is recovering from a stroke in Paris. Recently, they

interrupted a moment of silence during a match to commemorate the

death of a former leader, chanting “Bouteflika is next.”

Dorsey says some very influential security types, as well as soccer officials,

follow his blog for hints as to what is to come. One US intelligence official

agrees with Dorsey’s premise. The official, who has spent decades in the

Middle East and North Africa, said CIA officers routinely attend matches

to glean clues as to where a country is headed.

Often, the official said, an autocratic regime would cover up burgeoning

dissent by blaming it on hooliganism. The CIA person on the ground would

mention that, too, in the cable back to headquarters: “They would take note

of it all, and put it in context. As soon as the prince shows up, everyone

starts booing. That sort of thing.’’

Saudi Arabia to allow women into stadiums

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:14:11 PDT

Protests persuade Saudi prince to leave the pitch

By James M. Dorsey

Saudi Arabia, under domestic and international pressure to grant women sporting rights, is creating separate stadium sections so that female spectators and journalists can attend soccer matches in a country that has no public physical education or sporting facilities for women.

The move announced by the recently elected head of the Saudi Football Federation, Ahmed Eid Alharbi, a storied player believed to be a reformer, also comes as soccer is emerging as a focal point of dissent in the conservative kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has been slow in granting limited enhancement of women’s rights in response to demands by activists. Women in Saudi Arabia are banned from driving, travelling without authorization from a male relative and banned from working in a host of professions. Saudi Arabia’s religious police said last month that women would be allowed to ride bikes and motorbikes in recreational areas provided that they were properly dressed and accompanied by a male relative.

Saudi Arabia recently also announced that it would allow girl’s physical education in private schools as long as they do so in line with Islamic law. Yet, a five-year national sports plan, the kingdom’s first, currently being drafted does not make provisions for women’s sports. Saudi sources say the government is also for the first time considering licensing women’s soccer clubs.

Saudi Arabia last year sent under pressure from the International Olympic Committee women athletes, albeit expatriate ones, to the 2012 London Olympics, the first time Saudi women competed in an international tournament. The kingdom is also under pressure from the West Asian Football Federation, which earlier this year, issued guidelines to ensure that women have equal rights and opportunities in soccer.

Speaking at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, according to Saudi press reports, Mr. Alharbi hinted at the economic impact of allowing women to attend matches by saying that the creation of facilities for them would increase capacity at various stadiums by 15 percent. He said the Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Stadium in Jeddah would be the first to accommodate up to 32,000 women followed by the King Abdullah City stadium in the capital in 2014. Saudi Arabia, which enforces strict gender segregation, first announced in 2012 plans to upgrade the Jeddah stadium to enable women to enter.

Meanwhile, in the latest politically-loaded soccer incident, Al Ittihad SC of Jeddah, filed a complaint against Riyadh’s Al Hilal SC after an Al Ittihad official and fans tweeted and chanted racist remarks. Al Ittihad, which has a number of dark-skinned Saudi players, and Al Hilal are among Saudi Arabia’s top clubs.

“The last match between Al-Hilal and Al-Ittihad clearly revealed the indecency of Al-Ittihad players through two movements – one from ‘the monkey’ Fahd Al-Muwallad who did not stop proceeding when Muhammad Al-Qarni was injured in a jostle with him. Secondly, (they) did not fulfill the commitment to Majed Al-Murshidi, and did not greet or thank him,” Saud Al-Sahli, assistant director of public relations and announcer at King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, said on Twitter. Al Hilal fans chanted Some Al-Hilal fans had shouted “Nigger, Nigger” during the match earlier this month. Messrs. Al-Muwallad and Al-Qarni are both dark-skinned.

Saudi newspapers warned that racist incidents threaten to rekindle religious sectarianism, tribalism, and regionalism in the kingdom, in part a reference to Shiite Muslim protests in the oil-rich Eastern Province.

“The racist and sectarian utterances of sports fans should not be punished by fines alone, as some heads of the sports clubs are immensely rich and can pay the fines against their fans without feeling any burden. There should be harsher punishments, including a ban on the fans from entering the stadiums, reducing the club’s league points or even downgrading it to a lower division,” the Saudi Gazette said in an editorial.

Members of the royal family with positions in Saudi soccer or who own clubs have been repeatedly in the past year in the firing line of disgruntled fans. A Facebook page entitled Nasrawi Revolution demands the resignation of Prince Faisal bin Turki, the owner of storied Riyadh club Al Nasser FC and a burly nephew of King Abdullah who sports a mustache and chin hair. A You Tube video captured Prince Faisal seemingly being pelted and chanted against as he rushed off the soccer pitch after rudely shoving a security official aside.

The campaign against Prince Faisal follows last year’s unprecedented resignation of Prince Nawaf bin Feisal as head of the Saudi Football Federation (SFF), the first royal to be persuaded by public pressure step down in a region where monarchial control of the sport is seen as politically important.

Prince Nawaf’s resignation led to the election of Mr. Alharbi, a commoner, in a country that views free and fair polling as a Western concept that is inappropriate for the kingdom. Prince Nawaf retained his position as head of the Saudi Olympic Committee and the senior official responsible for youth welfare that effectively controls the SFF.

Nevertheless, the resignation of Prince Nawaf and the campaign against Prince Faisal gains added significance in a nation in which the results of premier league clubs associated with various members of the kingdom’s secretive royal family are seen as a barometer of their relative status, particularly at a time that its septuagenarian and octogenarian leaders prepare for a gradual generational transition.

Said a Saudi journalist, summing up the mood among fans and many other Saudis: “Everything is upside down. Revolution is possible. There is change, but it is slow. It has to be fast. Nobody knows what will happen.”

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Algeria: Middle East’s next revolt if soccer is a barometer

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sun, 19 May 2013 09:01:22 PDT

Algerian soccer fans protest in 2011

By James M. Dorsey

Algeria is competing to be the next Arab nation to witness a popular revolt. That is assuming soccer is a barometer of rising discontent in a region experiencing a wave of mass protests that have already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen and sparked civil war in Syria.

In fact, there is increasingly little doubt that soccer, a historic nucleus of protest in Algeria, is signaling that popular discontent could again spill into the streets of Algiers and other major cities. Two years ago, protesters inspired by events in Egypt and Tunisia, ultimately pulled back from the brink despite the toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Now, in circumstances similar to Saudi Arabia, protests are mounting amid uncertainty about the future as Algeria’s aging leadership struggles with a series of natural deaths and the effects of health problems among its remaining key members.

Soccer fans earlier this month demonstrated their disdain for the fate of 76-year old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika who is recovering from a stroke in a Paris hospital by cheering their team for days in the streets of Algiers in advance of an upcoming championship. Similarly, fans interrupted a moment of silence in a stadium to commemorate the death of a former leader by chanting “Bouteflika is next.”

Mr. Bouteflika’s illness follows the death in the past year of two former presidents, Ahmed Ben Bella and Chadli Benjedid and Ali Kafi, who served as a transition leader in the early 1990s while the military fought Islamist forces who had won elections in a brutal war that left some 100,000 people dead.

The memory of that war and the military-dominated regime’s liberal social spending temporarily took the wind out of the demonstrators’ sails and persuaded them in 2011 to shy away from staging a full-fledged revolt.

Mr. Bouteflika’s stroke threatens to change that.

"If there is not real democratic transition, there will be an uprising ... we will return to the violence of the 1990s," warned Chafiq Mesbah, a former member of Algeria's intelligence service and now a political analyst, earlier this month in an interview with The Associated Press.

The most recent protests are part of an upsurge in soccer-related violence in Algeria, an indicator that increased wages and government social spending is failing to compensate for frustration with the failure of the country’s gerontocracy in control since independence to share power with a younger generation, create jobs and address housing problems.

Dozens of people, including a player, were injured six months ago when supporters of Jeunesse Sportive de la Saoura (JSS) stormed the pitch during a premier league match in their home stadium in Meridja in the eastern province of Bechar against Algiers-based Union Sportive de la Médina d'El Harrach (USM). The incident followed a massive brawl between players and between fans after a Libya-Algeria Africa Cup of Nations qualifier.

Relations between the two countries have been strained since Algeria refused to support the NATO-backed popular revolt that overthrew Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi. Algeria granted until recently refuge to Colonel Qaddafi’s wife Safiya and his daughter Aisha. One of his sons, Hannibal, was also believed to be in Algeria before leaving with the other family members for Oman..Libya apologized in November after hundreds of Libyan fans surrounded the Algerian embassy in Tripoli, ripped the Algerian emblem from the building and burnt an Algerian flag.

The protesters’ retreat into the stadiums amounted to a tacit understanding between Algerian soccer fans and security forces that football supporters could express their grievances as long as they did so within the confines of the stadiums. “Bouteflika is in love with his throne, he wants another term," is a popular anti-government chant in stadiums.

Stadiums have long been an incubator of protest in soccer-crazy Algeria. A 2007 diplomatic cable sent by the US embassy in Algiers and disclosed by Wikileaks linked a soccer protest in the desert city of Boussaada to demonstrations in the western port city of Oran sparked by the publication of a highly contentious list of government housing recipients. The cable warned that “this kind of disturbance has become commonplace, and appears likely to remain so unless the government offers diversions other than soccer and improves the quality of life of its citizens.

Seven fans were killed in the last five years in soccer-related violence and more than 2,700 wounded, according to Algerian statistics.

Algeria’s domestic fragility is highlighted by almost daily smaller protests in towns across the country sparked by discontent over lack of water, housing, electricity, jobs and salaries. Protests have led to suspension of soccer matches. Soccer was also suspended during last year’s legislative elections.

A sense that the government may revert to strong arm tactics rather than reform if protests swell was reinforced when General Bachir Tartag was recalled from retirement in 2012 to head the Directorate for Internal Security (DSI). Gen. Tartag, who is believed to be in his sixties, made a name for himself during the civil war against the Islamists as one of Algeria’s most notorious hardliners and a brutal military commander.

The appointment positions him as a potential successor to aging Algerian spy chief Gen. Gen. Mohamed ‘Tewfik’ Mediene, widely viewed as the number two within the Algerian regime should he eventually take over from Mr. Bouteflika.

Reform of Middle Eastern Militaries: Lessons from Indonesia

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:48:20 PDT

No. 092/2013 dated 14 May 2013

Reform of Middle Eastern Militaries:
Lessons from Indonesia

By James M. Dorsey

Synopsis

The recent commando raid on a prison by Indonesian special forces provoked

renewed debate about the need to further reform the military and subject it to civilian

justice - 15 years after the end of autocratic rule in Jakarta. This illustrates the difficult

road post-revolt nations in the Middle East and North Africa have to travel.

Commentary

THE RECENT RAID of an Indonesian prison and summary execution of four inmates by

heavily armed Special Forces commandos has cast the spotlight on the risk involved in

failing to fully reform the country’s military - 15 years after the end

of autocratic rule.

The raid and subsequent charging of 11 officers as well as other recent incidents involving

security forces has sparked debate about the nature and terms of the reform including the

fact that its members are accountable to military rather than civilian courts. Those courts

have proven to be lenient in sentencing soldiers accused of murder.

Changing a culture of impunity

Critics blame the incidents on the failure to reform the internal workings and culture of the

Indonesian armed forces. At the centre of the Indonesian debate lie questions that are

certain to be raised in Middle Eastern nations like Egypt where the alleged impartiality

of the armed forces during the 2011 overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak is under fire.

Recent leaks of the report of a fact-finding mission established by President Mohamed

Morsi assert that the military killed and tortured protesters during the revolt - charges

the command of the armed forces has denied.

Human rights groups however accuse the police and security forces of continuing

to arbitrarily arrest and torture suspects while militant soccer fans believe these forces,

alongside the military, were responsible for last year’s death of 74 people in a politically

charged stadium brawl in Port Said.

The experience of countries like Indonesia and Turkey that have struggled for years with

changing a culture of impunity pervasive throughout the military and security sector

however highlight issues that go beyond upholding human rights. The military’s

exemption from full civilian control in Indonesia and Turkey limited the authority of a state

seeking to establish itself as the catalyst of democratic rule.

Parallel systems of justice impinged on the rule of law. Lack of full civilian control in Egypt

fuelled the continued existence beyond the law of a deep state - a network of vested

political, military and business interests - similar to the one in Turkey that took

decades to uproot and threatened political and economic change demanded by the

European Union. The military’s vested economic interests distorted economies because

of fiscal concessions and access to inside information.

The raid by the Indonesian special forces, known as Kopassus, put the pitfalls of military

and security sector reform back on the front burner. Kopassus members forced their way on

23 March into the prison in the city of Yogyakarta and took justice into their own hands by

shooting dead four detainees accused of stabbing to death a sergeant during a fight in a

bar. Two weeks earlier, scores of soldiers burnt a police station in South Sumatra and

injured 17 police officers in retaliation for the shooting of one of theirs. The incidents followed

the imprisonment of three soldiers in Papua in 2011 for torturing two detainees.

Fuelling discontent

The incidents sparked debate on the same issues confronting post-revolt nations like

Egypt, foremost among which is what reform is needed to adapt the military and security

forces to a democratic society; also whether non-transparent military courts are able and

willing to maintain accepted human rights standards. Human rights groups in Indonesia

are demanding that the military be accountable to the civilian justice system. Discontent in

Egypt is fuelled by the failure so far to hold military and law enforcement officials

accountable for the death of at least 900 people since the toppling of Mubarak.

A decade-and-a-half of democracy and free media enables Indonesia to publicly debate

the effectiveness of past reforms. Restoration of a measure of political stability and economic

recovery in crisis-riddled Egypt hinges in part on reform of at least the security sector –

the most despised institution because of its role in enforcing the Mubarak-era repression.

The Indonesian military responded to the raid by relieving the military commander of Central

Java of his duty for initially denying that Special Forces had been involved. By contrast,

Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) warned against efforts to tarnish the

military’s image against a perceived background of a crackdown on the media.

To be sure, distrust of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, reinforced by the president’s reliance on

the security forces and the military despite his increasingly strained relations with

the armed forces, undermines his ability to push through necessary reforms. Like in

Indonesia where the 11 officers experienced a wave of support because their victims

were alleged drug traffickers, efforts to reform the military in Egypt are complicated by a

divided public, part of which believes that military rule is their country’s only way out of its crisis.

Shared characteristics

The recent incidents in Indonesia nevertheless underscore the need to address reform

of the military and security sector’s internal procedures, ethical standards,

education, training and compensation. Such reforms go far beyond replacing military

commanders as Morsi did last year and this month’s dismissal by Yemeni President Abd

Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi of senior officers related to the country’s ousted leader, Al

Abdullah Saleh. Those moves were largely motivated by Morsi and Al-Hadi’s efforts to

employ the military as tools to stabilise their grip on power.

The Indonesian and Egyptian military share a desire to retain their privileges. Admiral

Agus Suhartono, the commander in chief of the Indonesian military, has rejected calls

that the 11 soldiers be tried by a civilian rather than a military court. Similarly, Egyptian

Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki insisted in a meeting with human rights activists earlier

this year that it was the interior ministry’s internal responsibility to reform its forces.

One participant in the meeting said on Twitter that Mekki’s remarks were “far worse’

than anything he had heard from Mubarak’s justice minister.

Like in Indonesia, the question of military reform in Egypt is complicated by public

perception of the police and security forces, who are widely viewed as not only

brutal but also incompetent and corrupt. Fifteen years of democracy and a vibrant

media in Indonesia have failed to resolve issues but have made viable a healthy debate

that will likely lead to change in which the armed forces have no choice but to participate.

However the viability of that debate in post-revolt Middle Eastern nations has yet to

pass the litmus test.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International

Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, director of the University of

Würzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle

East Soccer blog.

Soccer emerges as focal point of dissent in Saudi Arabia

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sat, 11 May 2013 22:33:01 PDT

Prince Faisal rushes off the pitch

By James M. Dorsey

Soccer, alongside minority Shiite Muslims and relatives of imprisoned government critics, is emerging as a focal point of dissent in Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich kingdom that despite banning demonstrations by law is struggling to fend off the waves of change sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

Fan pressure is evolving as a potent tool in the absence of the right to protest. It follows intermittent demonstrations and at times deadly clashes with security forces in the kingdom’s predominantly Shiite Eastern Province that hosts its major oil fields as well protests by family members of activists imprisoned for lengthy periods of time without being charged.

In the latest assertion of fan power, a Facebook page entitled Nasrawi Revolution demands the resignation of Prince Faisal bin Turki, the owner of storied Riyadh club Al Nasser FC and a burly nephew of King Abdullah who sports a mustache and chin hair. A You Tube video captured Prince Faisal seemingly being pelted and chanted against as he rushed off the soccer pitch after rudely shoving a security official aside.

Prince Nawaf’s resignation led to the election of a commoner, storied former player Ahmed Eid Alharbi widely viewed as a reformer and proponent of women’s soccer, in a country that views free and fair polling as a Western concept that is inappropriate for the kingdom. Prince Nawaf retained his position as head of the Saudi Olympic Committee and the senior official responsible for youth welfare that effectively controls the SFF.

“The Saudis are extremely worried. Soccer clubs rather than the mosque are likely to be the center of the revolution. Kids go more to stadiums than to mosques. They are not religious, they are ruled by religious dogma,” says Washington-based Saudi dissident Ali al-Ahmad, who heads the Gulf Institute. Mr. Al-Ahmad was referring to the power of clerics preaching Wahhabism, the puritan interpretation of Islam developed by 18^th century preacher Mohammed Abdul Wahhab. Saudi Arabia’s ruling Al Saud family established the kingdom with the help of the Wahhabis who in return were granted the right to ensure that their views would dominate public life.

Sport sources in the soccer-crazy kingdom say the authorities are seeking to reduce soccer’s popularity by emphasizing other sports like athletics and handball in policy and fund-raising while at the same time preparing to professionalize and further commercialize the sport using the English Premier League as a model.

“They are identifying what talent is available in the kingdom. Football is a participatory sport. They want to emphasize the social aspects of other sports. Football won only one medal in the last Asian Games. They think they can score better in other sports. There are parallel agendas with competition about who gets the visibility,” one source said.

Soccer’s popularity and competition with religion was evident during the 2010 World Cup when authorities parked trucks in front of Internet and other cafes, rolled out red carpets and urged Saudis watching matches on television screens to interrupt at prayer time.

The clergy’s puritan view of life that only allowed for the emergence of soccer in the 1950s is under pressure with clerics being forced to retreat from their refusal to permit physical education for girls and women’s sports facilities. Saudi Arabia recently announced it would allow girl’s physical education in private schools as long as they do so in line with Islamic law. Yet, a five-year national sports plan, the kingdom’s first, currently being drafted does not make provisions for women’s sports.

In a further move, sports sources say Saudi Arabia may be on the verge of licensing women’s soccer clubs that currently operate in a legal nether land often with the help of more liberal members of the royal family. These opportunities are however largely accessible only to women from wealthier families. Deputy Minister of Education for Women's Affairs, Nora al-Fayez, was recently quoted as saying that public schools could follow suit.

With sports facilities for women almost non-existent, women are forced to for example to jog dressed so that men cannot see their bodies. Similarly, there are no opportunities to train for international tournaments. Saudi Arabia last year fielded under pressure from the International Olympic Committee for the first time women – albeit expatriate ones- at an international competition during the London Olympics. In the kingdom itself, the all-women Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University is the only institution of higher education that has sports facilities, including a swimming pool, tennis court and exercise area for females.

Columnist Abdulateef al-Mulhim in the Arab News recently credited women for Al Fateh SC’s success in winning the Saudi soccer championship. The victory broke a cycle of poor performance that had depressed a key manager of the club based in the city of Al Mubaraz, Al Mulhim wrote.

“His mother was the one who encouraged him not to give up and gave him the financial support needed for running the club. Ironically, she even advised him about many of the deals which involved the transfer of the best players to the club… As time passed, people knew of more women from the families in Al Mubaraz city.

In the official website, there are more women’s names who are honorary members of this club such as, Fathyah, Ayshah and Fatimah Al Rashid. There are other ladies from other families who also were part of the general public relations through the social media means and through their direct support…. In other words, many young men and women from the city of Al Mubaraz put their hands together and accomplished a dream for being the best in the Kingdom. Last year, this club was the most admired for its performance and for the information of the readers,” Al Mulhim said.

Al Mulhim’s highlighting of the women of Al Mubaraz as well as the introduction of sports in schools positions sports as a key platform for enhancing women’s rights in which women retain economic rights but are even more restricted than men in their political rights and personal lives.

Nevertheless, it reflects gradual change. Women are prominent in various professions, will be allowed to run for office and vote for the first time in the 2015 municipal elections, were last year admitted to the more or less toothless top advisory council to the king and permitted to be sales’ clerks in female apparel shops and ride motorcycles and bikes in parks properly dressed and accompanied by a male relative. The ban, however, on driving remains in place.

How life (and death) change Egyptian soccer and its American coach (JMD quoted)

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sat, 11 May 2013 20:32:23 PDT

How life (and death) change Egyptian soccer and its American coach

Bob Bradley, the former U.S. coach once seen as aloof, has become an emotional leader as Egypt's national soccer team moves one win from the final round of World Cup qualifying.

Egypt Coach Bob Bradley watches his players during an exhibition against Qatar in Doha earlier this year. (Karim Jafaar / AFP / Getty Images / March 7, 2013)

By Kevin Baxter

May 11, 2013, 1:25 p.m.

Bob Bradley wasn't looking for an adventure as much as he was looking for a job after being fired as coach of the U.S. soccer team two years ago.

But in Egypt he found both. When Bradley arrived in the fall of 2011 to take over Egypt's national soccer program, the country was teetering between revolution and rebellion.

The Arab Spring uprising had already unseated longtime leader Hosni Mubarak, and five months after Bradley began work a deadly riot broke out at an Egyptian Premier League match, killing 74.

It probably wasn't the best time to take any soccer job in Egypt. Because of the violence the country's top domestic league was shut down twice, leaving the players without pay or a place to play. And when the government declined to provide adequate security, Bradley's team had to play its firstWorld Cup qualifier in an empty military stadium.

Yet despite it all — or maybe because of it all — Bradley has Egypt a win away from the final round of qualifying for next summer's World Cup, a tournament it has played in just twice since 1930.

"In those difficult circumstances we were able to start to establish something, a trust and an understanding of the opportunity that we had to try to do something special during a time in the country when, honestly, everything's pretty difficult," Bradley says.

"When a national team steps on a field you need to make sure that people look on that field and feel proud. They feel like they're part of it. I think that certainly fits the situation and the challenges that we see here."

As astonishing as soccer's survival in Egypt may seem, however, the bigger surprise is that Bradley has become its savior. He was criticized as robotic, unimaginative, even dispassionate while leading the U.S. into the knockout round of the 2010 World Cup. Now, many in Egypt insist Bradley saved their team through his creativity, emotion and force of will.

The day after the February 2012, riots in the Suez Canal city of Port Said — an event Bradley called "a massacre" — the coach and his wife, Lindsay, marched with thousands of Egyptians in Cairo's Sphinx Square to honor the dead. They visited a memorial, where they spoke with relatives of those who had died. Quietly, they donated money to the survivors. Bradley, his wife and two daughters, also rallied support for the Children's Cancer Hospital of Egypt, to which they also gave money. And last November, after an accident involving a train and school bus killed dozens of children in Asyut, 230 miles south of Cairo, Bradley met with the victims' families.

"Egypt is a region where emotion counts. People respond emotionally and that response is important," says James M. Dorsey, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times andWall Street Journal, who writes a blog on Middle Eastern soccer. "If you respond to situations with a sense that you understand what's going on and that you empathize and that you're part of this, people value that."

Hassan El Mestikawy, a well-known sports analyst in Egypt, pays Bradley an ever bigger compliment. "He's an Egyptian," El Mestikawy says.

Bradley had managed three Major League Soccer teams, including Chivas USA, and some age-group U.S. national squads before being chosen over Juergen Klinsmann to manage the U.S. team in 2006 — only to be replaced by Klinsmann five years later, something Bradley still won't talk about.

Europe, not the Middle East, was Bradley's first choice for a new job. After interviewing unsuccessfully with a club team in Mexico, then reportedly being considered for jobs at Fulham and Aston Villa in the English Premier League, Bradley began to warm to Egypt. Zak Abdel, his goalkeeper coach at Chivas and now an assistant with the Egyptian national team, told him about the country's fervor for soccer.

Many worried that Bradley's stoicism would be a poor match for that passion.

"I'd heard those stories. That he was very distant, aloof and not loved the way he is in Egypt," says Dorsey who, having spent much of his life as a war correspondent, has a theory why Bradley has done well.

"One of the things you learn in war situations is nothing is more adaptable than a human being," he says. "Your concepts of what is normal shift. So if you were in a situation of stress, that situation becomes your normal. And that brings out different qualities."

For Bradley, 55, the shift took place after the deadly melee in Port Said, where fans stormed the field after a Premier League match between the home team, Al-Masry, and Al-Ahly from Cairo. Many in Egypt believe the attack on Al-Ahly players and their main supporter group, the Ultras Ahlawy, was orchestrated by the police and military in retaliation for Ultra-led protests that helped bring down the Mubarak regime.

The riot became personal for Bradley, because many on his national team had played in the game and were caught in the violence that followed. "They experienced things that will live with them for the rest of their lives," Bradley says. "There were fans that used the locker room as the first aid area. There were young fans that died in the locker room."

No player was affected more than midfielder Mohamed Aboutrika, one of Egypt's most decorated stars but one who, at 34, Bradley had been urged to leave off his roster.

"The first time I met Aboutrika in the midst of all the difficulty and the emotion it was so clear how much it meant to him to have one more chance to go to the World Cup," Bradley said of the player, who watched a 14-year-old boy die in his arms on the floor of the Al-Ahly dressing room. "With everything he had done in his career there was still this one thing that hadn't been accomplished. And from that moment on, I felt strongly that this was going to be an important thing for this group, to have an experienced player who was so committed."

Six weeks ago, in Egypt's most recent World Cup qualifier, Aboutrika rewarded his coach's confidence by scoring on a penalty kick in the 88th minute to beat Zimbabwe, 2-1. Egypt is undefeated halfway through the second round of the regional qualifying tournament.

The revolution created more than just emotional challenges for Bradley and his team, which is made up mostly of domestic players little known outside Egypt. When the Premier League halted play, Bradley had to scramble to find ways to keep his players fit and fed.

First, he organized additional training camps. Then, with the government unwilling to guarantee safety in Egypt, Bradley took his team on a barnstorming tour of the Middle East, playing 12 friendlies in five countries.

But the team wasn't forgotten at home, where its matches were broadcast on as many as 12 channels. Through it all, the players grew close.

"In any national team you try to establish what it means to be on that team. What an honor it is," Bradley says. "Everybody in Egypt has this dream for the team to go to the World Cup. Right now we have a real responsibility and we have a chance to do something that everybody would think is very special. And we can't let the things that are going on on the outside take us away from this idea."

The situation got surreal when FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, ordered Egypt home for its first World Cup qualifier last June. With security a concern, Bradley's first competitive match as national coach was moved from Cairo to Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast, where it was played behind locked gates in a military stadium.

There, a military band played the national anthem as the players, standing ramrod straight, sang the lyrics. Then Egypt kicked off against Mozambique before 86,000 empty seats.

"It's difficult to play matches in empty stadiums," says Bradley, whose team won, 2-0. "It's a very strange feeling. It's so quiet. A game without fans has no soul. Playing in front of fans that care, fans that have an incredible passion for the team, this is what drives our game."

And it's a mix of compassion, courage and steely resolve that drives Bradley, a New Jersey native who has achieved star status, and is mobbed by Egyptians when he goes out in public. He has learned to speak broken Arabic — beginning with Kas al-aalam, the term for World Cup.

Everyday life remains a challenge in Egypt. Drivers wait up to four hours in gas lines, the economy is in free fall and even basic foodstuffs are in short supply. The changes also involve Egypt's soccer federation: The men who hired Bradley have all resigned.

Still, Egyptians find hope in their soccer team's success.

"More than anything else I get asked why am I still here? That with everything going on in the country why would you stay?" says Bradley, whose team has a 16-6-4 record since coming to Egypt. "It's a lot of things that you can't control. But … we can control what we're about. We can control that, in the midst of everything, we're not going to let any of it get in our way.

"So the answer as to why I'm still here is because if I'm trying every day to make sure that the players keep their eye on the prize and stay committed to this whole thing, my word wouldn't be worth much if I was looking for a way out."

It's taken almost a year, but a sense of normality has begun to return to the Egyptian team, which will play an exhibition in Cairo — in front of fans — on June 4, before resuming World Cup qualifying five days later in Zimbabwe.

If Egypt beats Zimbabwe, combined with a loss by Guinea, the Egyptians will win the title in their four-team group and move on to next fall's regional finals, a two-leg series, with an invitation to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil on the line.

Egypt last played in the World Cup in 1990. Four years ago it came within a goal of qualifying, losing a decisive playoff to Algeria, 1-0. Then came the revolution and the riots — obstacles Bradley and his players have endured, leaving Egyptians optimistic the team will reach the World Cup for the first time in a generation.

"They have a chance," El Mestikawy, the Egyptian commentator, agrees. "It is important what he's doing now. It he succeeds and goes to the World Cup final, it would be very large thing for the Egyptians. Maybe they'll look again to football as a national game.

"So I think we need to go to the World Cup. We need Bob Bradley's success."

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

FIFA anti-racism campaign has work cut out for it in the Middle East

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Thu, 09 May 2013 01:18:22 PDT

Iranian coach Firouz Karimi (right) banned for racism

By James M. Dorsey and Amir Khalinejad

World soccer body FIFA’s newly established anti-racism committee has its work cut out for it in the Middle East and North Africa where ironically only Israel and Iran have taken some, albeit too few, steps to counter discrimination based on color, religion, ethnicity or sex.

In countering racism and discrimination in the Middle East, FIFA faces not only racist outbursts by fans, players and officials on the pitch but often a structure and unwritten policies that are inherently discriminatory.

In the latest incident of racism, Iran’s soccer federation this month banned Paykan FC coach Firouz Karimi for eight games and fined him $3,000 for calling Dutch player of African descent Sendley Sidney Bito a cannibal and a Negro and refusing to shake his hand.

“I only tried to express my respect toward Karimi. I offered him hand shake, but it seems he was angry with the result.” Mr. Bito told reporters referring to the defeat of Paykan which was last month relegated to the second division by his Fajr FC team. Karimi justified his refusal with the fact that Iranian culture dictates that the older person initiate a handshake.A video of the incident has gone viral on the Internet with fans organizing campaigns against racism despite a crackdown on access to the Web that makes it difficult for Iranians in the Islamic republic to access popular social media websites.

The sanctioning by the Iranian soccer federation is in stark contrast to it its turning a blind eye to regular denunciations as donkeys of players and supporters of Traktor Sazi FC, the club based in Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan, widely seen as a potent projection of Azeri ethnic and national identity. “Wherever Tractor goes, fans of the opposing club chant insulting slogans. They imitate the sound of donkeys, because Azerbaijanis are historically derided as stupid and stubborn. I remember incidents going back to the time that I was a teenager,” said a long-standing observer of Iranian soccer. The Iranian federation’s neglect is tied to the government’s crackdown on anything that reeks of separatism.

Similarly, a recent rejection of two Chechen Muslim players because of their religion by militant, racist supporters of Beitar Jerusalem, the only club in Israel to refuse Palestinian players, sparked outrage in Israel but little effort to force the club to put an end to its discriminatory hiring policies. The outrage was rooted in the militants’ use of Third Reich terminology by vowing to keep their club pure and by the fact that it countered a long-standing pillar of Israeli policy that seeks to forge close ties with its neighbors’ neighbors in the absence of relations with a majority of Arab states.

To be sure, the Israeli soccer federation, the only FIFA member in the region with a long-standing anti-racism campaign has repeatedly slapped Beitar, which has close ties with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud, on its fingers but has refrained from insisting that the club adhere to the country’s anti-discrimination laws. To the credit of Beitar owner Arcadi Gaydamak, the acquisition of the Chechens was in part designed to break the militants’ hold on the club and to pave the way for Palestinian players by first hiring non-Arab Muslim ones.

Similarly, Hany Ramzy, the coach of Egypt’s Olympic soccer team who is credited with Egypt’s winning of the 1998 Africa Cup of Nations championship, returned to Egypt from last year’s London games a soccer hero and a model in a country and a region in which identity politics rather national identity often governs the beautiful game. A Coptic Christian and one-time legendary national soccer team captain of a squad whose former national coach Hassan Shehata established Muslim piety as a criterion for membership equal to skill, Mr. Ramzy, symbolized what is possible as well as the immense problems Middle Eastern and North African nations have in coming to grips with their ethnic and religious minorities.

Mr. Ramzy is one of the few if not the only Coptic Egyptian national team player in past decades. He is the exception that proves the rule in a country in which the Coptic Church has its own Copts-only soccer teams. Mr. Ramzy is believed to owe his success to a significant extent to the fact that he earned prestige by being hired by various European teams, including Neuchâtel Xamax, Werder Bremen and Kaiserslautern.

“In Egypt, there is a problem that many people don't even consider. This problem relates to not allowing the Copts to play in the national teams of sports, especially soccer which is the most popular game in Egypt. Marginalization of young Copts by the Football Association and the administrations of Egyptian clubs resulted in having no Coptic players in the core teams. Youth teams have very few Copts and they are laid off as soon as they reach certain age and never take the chance to promote,” said Safwat Freeze Ghali, writing on the website of Copts United.

Charging that soccer discrimination against Copts encourages discrimination by Muslims and anger and hate among Copts, who account for some 10 per cent of all Egyptians, Mr. Ghali spoke out of personal experience.

“I suffered from this problem with my son who was born in 1995 and has a great talent in soccer. Many people have said so after they saw him playing. My son then started in a small club, but never took a chance to play. His coach treats him so badly and his colleagues make fun of his Christian name. His coach told him: I won't let you touch the ball (play in the team) and never ask me why! We got fed up and I took him to a bigger club and they liked him very much and promised to recruit him but they never did. Then, I moved him to another club where they liked him too, but when the coach knew his name (a Christian name), he said: We'll see, later!” Mr. Ghali wrote.

Journalist Mustafa Abdelhalim in an analysis published by Common Ground suggested that an interfaith soccer day on the eve of the London Olympics could serve as an example for Egypt and for that matter the rest of North Africa and the Middle East. “In June 2012 London’s Wembley Stadium was the site of a ‘faith and football’ day that united students from Muslim, Christian and Jewish schools. This event was planned by the Three Faiths Forum (3FF), a UK-based organization dedicated to building relationships between people of all faiths, and the UK Football Association, which officially oversees the sport in the country. Egyptians could replicate this example by creating nationwide leagues to promote intergroup and interfaith cooperation. These teams could include anyone who wants to participate in the sport and make Egyptians’ shared interest in sports a tool for a more inclusive society,” Mr. Abdelhalim wrote

In Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation with both a European and a Middle Eastern heritage, referee Halil Ibrahim Dincbag campaigns for gay rights. Mr. Dincbag took the Turkish soccer association to court for allegedly outing him by leaking that he had been exempted from military services on the grounds of homosexuality and then dismissing him despite the fact that Turkey has legally enshrined gay rights.

Mr. Dincdag’s decision not to go quietly is nevertheless no mean feat in a country rife with homophobia where spectators decry opposing players and referees whose decisions they dislike as faggots. Dincdag hails from Trabzon, a Black Sea city known for its legendary soccer club, its fanatical football fans and hot-tempered, explosive inhabitants who are quicker with a knife than with their wits. "I could have left the country, or disputed everything," Dincdag said. "But I knew the media wouldn't let it go. So I decided to tell the truth -- yes, I'm the gay ref you're looking for."

»Die Ultras hatten eine Schlüsselrolle« (Interview JMD Suedwind(

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:28:48 PDT

Aus: Südwind – Magazin für internationale Politik, Kultur und Entwicklung (Nr. 5, 2013)

»Die Ultras hatten eine Schlüsselrolle«

James M. Dorsey ist ein profunder Kenner der arabischen Fußballfankultur. Reinhard Krennhuber sprach mit ihm über die Tragödie von Port Said und die Rolle der ägyptischen Ultras beim Sturz Hosni Mubaraks.

Südwind-Magazin: Als der Aufstand in Ägypten 2011 begonnen hat, waren viele Leute überrascht, dass Fußballfans an vorderster Linie dabei waren. Wie kam es dazu?

James M. Dorsey: In den autokratisch geführten Staaten Nordafrikas war die Freiheit im öffentlichen Raum sehr beschränkt. Die einzigen Orte, an denen sich Leute frei bewegen konnten, waren die Moschee und das Fußballstadion. Schon vor dem Ausbruch der Revolution ist es regelmäßig zu Zusammenstößen zwischen Ultras und Sicherheitskräften gekommen. Mit dem Effekt, dass sich hoch organisierte, im Straßenkampf erfahrene

Gruppen herausgebildet haben. Die Ultras haben eine Schlüsselrolle bei der Überwindung der »Barrikade der Angst« gespielt. Sie waren jene, die am Tahrir-Platz in der erste Reihe gestanden sind. Und sie sind geblieben, wenn alle anderen die Flucht ergriffen haben. Im November 2011 gab es eine Demonstration, an der sie nicht teilgenommen haben. Als absehbar wurde, dass es zu einem Polizeieinsatz kommt, haben die Leute die Ultras um Hilfe gerufen.

Wie würden sie die Ultra-Gruppen politisch einordnen?

Im Jänner 2011 verkündeten rivalisierende ägyptische Ultra-Fangruppen Erklärungen, in denen es sinngemäß geheißen hat: Wir sind keine politischen Organisationen, aber unseren Mitgliedern steht es frei, sich an den Protesten gegen das Regime von Hosni Mubarak zu beteiligen. Wenn man privat mit ihren Anführern gesprochen hat, haben sie gesagt: »Jetzt ist der Zeitpunkt gekommen, auf den wir gewartet haben!« Die miteinander rivalisierenden Gruppen haben eines gemein: den tief verwurzelten Hass gegenüber dem Sicherheitsapparat. Ihre Anziehungskraft auf desillusionierte Jugendliche ist enorm. Wir sprechen von der zweit- oder drittgrößten Bürgerbewegung Ägyptens mit zehntausenden Mitgliedern.

Ein Schlüsselmoment war die Stadionkatastrophe von Port Said, bei der im Februar 2012 mehr als 70 Fans des Klubs Al-Ahly Kairo getötet wurden. Wie konnte es dazu kommen?

Nach dem, was bekannt ist, können wir davon ausgehen, dass das (die Übergriffe auf Al-Ahly-Ultras vor den Augen von tatenlosen Exekutivbeamten, Anm.) keine spontanen Handlungen waren. Ich bin aber auch davon überzeugt, dass es so nicht geplant war. Zu dieser Zeit war Ägypten am Scheideweg. Mubarak war gestürzt, aber es ist nichts weitergegangen. Die Leute haben sich nach Normalität gesehnt – und Straßenkämpfe waren

dem nicht zuträglich. Die damalige Militärregierung und die Sicherheitskräfte sahen den Tag gekommen, den aufsässigen Ultras eine Lektion zu erteilen. Aber es ist völlig außer Kontrolle geraten.

Das Gerichtsverfahren hat mit 21 Todesstrafen für Ultras aus Port Said geendet, es wurden aber nur zwei Polizisten verurteilt. Was war Ihr Eindruck von dem Verfahren?

Für Präsident Mohammed Mursi war es eine „No-Win“-Situation: Es war klar, dass eine Seite verlieren muss, und das hat die Situation für die Richter, die politischem Druck ausgesetzt waren, sehr schwierig gemacht. Die 21 Todesurteile sind sehr hart. Die haben das Misstrauen der Bevölkerung in die Regierung noch weiter verstärkt, wie man an den folgenden Unruhen gesehen hat. Die Fans aus Port Said und Kairo sind sich einig, dass

diejenigen, die eigentlich dafür verantwortlich waren, nicht verurteilt worden sind. Wenn man sich das Ausmaß der Tragödie anschaut, ist es unverständlich, dass nur zwei Polizisten zur Rechenschaft gezogen wurden.

Wie sind die Ultra-Gruppen organisiert?

Sie nutzen alle Formen der modernen Kommunikation: Facebook, Twitter, Blogs. Der Gründungsvater der ägyptischen Ultras ist ein Journalist, der mit neuen Medien sehr gut umzugehen weiß. In der Führungsebene gibt es ein sehr starkes politisches Bewusstsein. Ich würde ägyptische Ultras nicht als Hooligans bezeichnen. Denn im Gegensatz zu europäischen Fußballfans hatten und haben sie es mit einem Staatsapparat zu tun, der von sich aus Gewalt ausübt, ohne dass er herausgefordert wird. Die Option des weitgehend friedlichen Widerstands hat nie wirklich existiert.

Eine der zentralen Forderungen der Ultras ist eine Radikalreform des Sicherheitssektors. Besteht da Aussicht auf Erfolg?

Dieses Anliegen teilen die Ultras mit vielen in der Bevölkerung. Der Streik von Sicherheitskräften im März hat gezeigt, dass es reformwillige Strömungen gibt. Aber Mursi müsste die Polizei völlig umkrempeln – und das kann nicht über Nacht geschehen. Wie bei der Justizreform werden ihn auch hier viele Widerstände erwarten. Die Sicherheitslage ist unter Mursi eher schlechter geworden. Seine Antworten darauf folgen der Law-and-Order-Methode. So lange das so bleibt, wird Ägypten nicht zur Normalität zurückfinden.

Die ägyptische Fußball-Profiliga wurde im Februar wieder aufgenommen. Unter welchen Umständen?

Die Spiele finden vor leeren Rängen statt. Einzige Ausnahme war ein WM-Qualifikationsspiel der ägyptischen Fußballnationalmannschaft Ende März, zu dem 10.000 Fans zugelassen wurden. Natürlich fordern die Ultras eine Öffnung der Stadien. So weit ist es aber noch nicht. Denn das ist eine Sicherheitsfrage, und die Polizei will Konflikten aus dem Weg gehen.

Wie groß ist der Einfluss der Fußballfans auf die postrevolutionären Prozesse?

Der einzige Weg, sich von dem Regime in Ägypten zu befreien, war eine Politik der Straße. Nach dem Sturz von Mubarak war entscheidend, ob sich seine Gegnerinnen und Gegner an den demokratischen Prozessen beteiligen. Für Fußballfans stellt sich diese Frage nur bedingt, weil sie keine Partei gründen werden. Die Ultras wissen: Wenn sie die Straßen verlassen, werden sie sie nur schwer wieder zurückerkämpfen können. Zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt werden sie das nicht tun. Auch weil sie die Macht zu schätzen gelernt haben, die damit verbunden ist.

Zur Person: James M. Dorsey (61) war ab den 1970er Jahren für diverse Medien als Nahostkorrespondent tätig und wurde zwei Mal für den Pulitzer-Preis nominiert. Aktuell ist er Senior Fellow am Institut für Internationale Studien der Nayang Universität in Singapur und iCo-Direktor am Institut für Fankultur in Duisburg. Zudem betreibt er den Blog „The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer“ (http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.co.at).

New AFC president sets about reform as battle for change looms

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sat, 04 May 2013 19:40:36 PDT

Sepp Blatter and Sheikh Salman

By James M. Dorsey

A Singapore-based sports marketing company is at the center of a battle for the future of reform within world soccer days after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), wracked by two years of scandal over ousted president Mohammed Bin Hammam’s management of the group, elected a new head to complete his term.

The newly elected president, Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the president of the Bahrain Football Association, has little time to implement promised reforms aimed at ensuring transparency, accountability and good governance within the AFC. With less than two years before regularly scheduled presidential elections, Sheikh Salman has inherited an organization that has yet to prove its commitment to change.

“It’s a tough job. There is a lot of baggage but he has got to do it. It has to be transparency in deeds, not in words. Anything that is not transparent has to be implemented. Otherwise, he won’t make it in 2015,” a source close to the AFC said. The source was referring to the 2015 election when many expect a strong East Asian candidate to compete with hopefuls from the Middle East who dominated this week’s poll.

The difficulties Sheikh Salman, who is supported by world soccer body FIFA president Sepp Blatter, faces were evident at this week’s AFC Congress. The congress defeated a number of motions that would have obstructed reform and limited an evaluation of the group’s past financial and commercial management.

The defeat of the motions prompted Seamus O’Brien, the founder and CEO of Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG), whose eight-year, $1 billion commercial rights agreement with the AFC is at the center of the group’s evaluation of the Bin Hammam era, to walk out of the congress, according to sources close to the AFC.

While pledging to work with WSG “towards enhancing marketing opportunities and develop the AFC brand further through this association,” Sheikh Salman also promised to report by the time FIFA holds its congress at the end of May on the status of the company’s agreement with the AFC.

Sources close to the AFC said that the litmus test of Sheikh Salman’s resolve would be whether he acts on the recommendations of an internal audit conducted last year by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which include seeking legal counsel to ascertain whether the AFC can bring civil or criminal charges against Mr. Bin Hammam and whether it can renegotiate or cancel its controversial agreement with WSG. WSG last year initiated legal proceedings against this reporter in a bid to gain disclosure of sources.

The PwC report charged that Mr. Bin Hammam had used an AFC sundry account as his personal account and raised questions about the negotiation and terms of the WSG contract. Mr. Bin Hammam was last year banned for life from involvement in soccer by FIFA on charges of multiple conflicts of interest that contradicted the group’s code of ethics.

In a further disclosure of his plans, Sheikh Salman told Reuters that he would make creation of an AFC ethics committee a priority. "If there are any wrongdoings by some, there has to be a tool to have a watchdog on everybody including the president,” he said.

Beyond obstacles likely to be put up by associates of Mr. Bin Hammam within the AFC, Sheikh Salman will have to operate in an environment in which resistance to reform appears to be growing. In a statement that took many by surprise, Mr. Blatter declared at the congress in Kuala Lumpur: "This is the last term, not of office, but of reform."

The FIFA president appeared to be countering expectations that he would step down when his term ends in 2015 and reinforced doubts about his sincerity about reform despite the fact that more than a quarter of his executive committee as well as FIFA’s honorary president have been forced to resign or has been suspended because of allegations of wrong doing and corruption.

A recent study based on comparison to best practices established by the International Red Cross, the International Olympic Committee and the Canadian Soccer Association concluded that FIFA has so far failed to introduce a host of reforms, including enhanced financial governance and anti-corruption controls, a state-of-the-art anti-corruption compliance program, transformation of the ethics committee into an independent investigative body, establishment of a committee to determine executives’ and senior staffs’ salaries and benefits, creation of an election campaign finance system that bars private funding, and limitations on executives’ terms in office.”

Sheikh Salman has further been dogged by his failure to stand up for Bahraini national soccer team players who were arrested, publicly denounced, tortured and charged for taking part in anti-government demonstrations two years ago during a popular uprising that was brutally squashed. The charges were later dropped under pressure from FIFA.

Sheikh Salman has evaded the issue arguing that football and politics are separate and that he had not violated FIFA or AFC rules, but has refused to address the moral issues involved. While restricted by being a member of a royal family that is dominated by hard liners, the fact that the government’s own inquiry into the suppression of the revolt admitted to wrongdoing by security forces, including torture, would have given him the leeway to be less categorical in addressing the issue.

In the latest twist, Sheikh Salman charged that an unidentified government was behind the accusations against him, that also included interference in the election on his behalf by the powerful-Kuwaiti led Olympic Council of Asia. He said an independent commission would be set up to look into political interference – a fact that is inevitable in the Gulf where soccer associations are controlled directly or indirectly by ruling royal families. “I don't think that I'd like in 2015 that we go through an election where we see all this happening,” Sheikh Salman said.

Asian soccer elects controversial Bahraini as president

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Thu, 02 May 2013 00:05:19 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has elected a prominent Bahraini soccer executive to complete the term of ousted president Mohammed Bin Hammam in a poll that has been marred by allegations of interference and controversy over the candidates’ track records.

Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, head of the Bahrain Football Association, also defeated his Qatari rival, Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of the Gulf state’s 2022 World Cup organizing committee, 28 to 18 in an election to fill Mr. Bin Hammam’s seat on the executive committee of world soccer body FIFA. The disgraced Qatari national was banned for life from involvement in soccer by FIFA because of multiple violations of its code of ethics.

Sheikh Salman’s sweeping of 33 of the 46 AFC member association votes in the presidential election and his FIFA nomination constitute a stunning success for himself following his narrow defeat by Mr. Bin Hammam in a 2009 election for the FIFA seat as well as for his main supporter, the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) headed by former Kuwaiti government minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah.

Sheikh Salman was the only candidate with no association with Mr. Bin Hammam and as a result the most likely to counter the significant influence the Qatari is still believed to wield in Asian soccer. . “The member of associations want to move on from the Mohammed Bin Hammam era,” a source close to the AFC said.

Sheikh Salman and Mr. Bin Hammam fought a bitter battle in 2009 for the FIFA executive committee seat and FIFA earlier this week warned AFC members of consorting with Mr. Bin Hammam who was accused by the OAC of campaigning on behalf of Mr. Al Serkal.

The Bahraini defeated Yousuf al Serkal of the United Arab Emirates, who unlike Sheikh Salman campaigned on a detailed platform that promised to address mismanagement of the AFC’s financial and commercial affairs revealed in an internal audit by PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC), and Thailand’s Worawi Makudi, who has successfully fended off past allegations of wrongdoing.

Mr. Al Serkal, who repeatedly denounced the OAC’s alleged interference in the election but has been silent on alleged campaigning by Mr. Bin Hammam on his behalf, garnered seven votes while Mr. Makudi won six. A fourth candidate, Hafez Ibrahim Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia, withdrew from the race on the eve of the election

Addressing the AFC Congress in Kuala Lumpur after his victory, Sheikh Salman promised change. "We need complete reforms, what we need is an AFC where decision makers are accountable. Clean up the past and turn the page for the future, restore transparency and integrity," he said in his most explicit remarks on the issue to date.

One litmus test of Sheikh Salman’s resolve will be whether he acts on the recommendations of the PwC report which include seeking legal counsel to ascertain whether the AFC can bring civil or criminal charges against Mr. Bin Hammam and whether it can renegotiate or cancel its controversial $1 billion master rights agreement with Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG). WSG last year initiated legal proceedings against this reporter in a bid to gain disclosure of and intimidate sources and squash reporting.

Sources close to the AFC said Sheikh Salman would have to deliver. “He has no choice. The PwC report is one important test. His election could be a step forward. We’ll see what he does,” one source said. The sources said an ordinary AFC congress scheduled for Friday where he is expected to be pressed on the issue of reform would be Sheikh Salman’s first trial of fire.

The electoral results mirrors the balance of power in the Gulf where Bahrain and Kuwait are much more closely aligned with Saudi Arabia than Qatar that has been charting in foreign policy and projection of soft power a course of its own.

Sheikh Salman has been dogged by allegations that his office identified athletes, including players for the Bahrain nation soccer team, who were arrested for their participation in anti-government protests two years ago, tortured and charged. Sheikh Salman, a member of the Bahraini royal family, has refused to denounce the alleged abuses of human rights or to discuss the allegations against him. He has said that there was no reason to apologize to the players because it was an issue for politicians, not his soccer federation.

Bahraini human rights groups campaigned against his candidacy. Two of the players, brothers Mohammed and Alaa Hubail, accused Sheik Salman of abandoning them. They said they had received no apology or compensation from the Bahrain football association for the months of alleged mistreatment. “We are his responsibility and people like him should solve the problem, not ignore it. I have a lot of anger. I really miss playing in my team and for Bahrain,” Mohammed Hubail told The Associated Press.

A third player, Sayed Mohamed Adnan, speaking to Associated Press in a separate interview, said that "some people sadly want to end my career because of their belief that I am for this and against that. I love Bahrain. Playing in the national team of my country is a great honor. I would love to do it any time. I would do it without hesitation."

FIFA president Sepp Blatter described the Bahraini’s victory as “a historical day because it is a day of election, a day of election in your confederation that has been in a difficult situation during the past two years.” Acknowledging that Sheikh Salman would have limited time as he will only serve until 2015 when Mr. Bin Hammam’s term would have ended and new elections are due, Mr. Blatter added: “You have two more years to put your house in order."

Soccer fans in the Gulf vote with their feet

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Wed, 01 May 2013 21:41:13 PDT

Soccer fans vote with their feet

By James M. Dorsey

Soccer is defeating efforts by wealthy, football-crazy Gulf states to impregnate themselves against the wave of protests that have swept the Middle East and North Africa in the past two years and sparked a brutal civil war in Syria.

Once a prince’s uncontested playing ground that allowed royals to curry favor, strengthen their families grip on power and ensure that the soccer pitch did not become a platform for social and political protest, the beautiful game is emerging as the one arena that so far has proven immune to efforts by Gulf rulers to keep demands for change at bay.

In fact, fans are voting with their feet. Not in mass protests as those that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, but by staying away from matches. What effectively amounts to a fan boycott, is most evident in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the one Gulf state that boasts nationals as a majority of its citizens who in the past filled stadiums. At a recent match in a dilapidated stadium in Doha, barely a hundred people showed up to watch.

In staying away, fans are demonstrating that stadiums in the smaller Gulf states where local nationals account for at most some 40 percent of the population – in the United Arab Emirates that number drops to 15 and in Qatar to just over 20 percent – are not simply empty because of a lack of bodies and a politically inspired refusal to attract non-nationals out of fear that foreigners binding with a local club could open the Pandora Box of them viewing their host country as more than just a place to earn money and leave at the end of their contract.

Dropping stadium attendance numbers in Saudi Arabia in contrast to the smaller Gulf states has at first glance much to do with poor performance and decaying infrastructure as a result of lack of investment. The drop contrasts starkly with efforts three years ago by the Saudi clergy to persuade fans to fulfill their daily prayer rituals during World Cup matches by sending trucks to serve as makeshift prayer rooms in front of Internet cafes where men gathered to watch a game.

Irrespective of demography, the drop in soccer attendance is at the bottom line proving to be more than just a question of numbers or poor performance and infrastructure and one of an unspoken resistance to control by royal autocrats. As a result, countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are looking at restructuring ownership of their premier league clubs to put an unprecedented distance between members of the ruling elite and the game.

Qatar, which is preparing to become the first Middle Eastern and North African state to host a World Cup, the world’s largest sporting event, has taken the lead in restructuring the region’s soccer and building world-class infrastructure out of both the need for massive infrastructure and the fact that the 2022 tournament has put it in the spotlight. It’s hosting of the World Cup when Middle Eastern and North African nations want to demonstrate their region’s soccer prowess has also driven home the need for countries to create the conditions for enhanced performance.

Like Saudi Arabia, Qatar is looking at transferring ownership of clubs owned or effectively controlled by royals. In Qatar, where officials concede that nationals no longer want to watch ‘the sheikh’s club’ play, are looking at the possibility of transferring clubs to state-owned companies, while the kingdom where clubs are government-owned is drafting a plan to privatize them.

Qatar, under pressure from international trade unions that are campaigning to deprive it of its right to host the World Cup, is seeking to improve the much criticized work and living conditions of foreign workers who constitute a majority of the population. Its moves – adoption by the World Cup organizing committee of a charter of workers’ rights, greater safety and security controls and enhanced facilities – fall short of union demands for independent trade unions and collective bargaining.

But the reforms have led to the first chip in barriers erected to ensure that foreigners leave the country once their contracts have been fulfilled. The Qatar Stars League last month organized the first competition for 16 clubs founded by foreign workers and is looking at establishing a league for foreigners that would group 32 clubs. A Qatari sociologist has gone a step further calling on Qatari clubs to establish branches in areas populated by foreign workers.

The Qatari moves follow a program rolled out two years ago by Al Jazeera FC of Abu Dhabi that targeted foreigners by offering them football as well as entertainment. The program, sweetened by a lottery prize of one million dirham ($272,000) and a Ferrari at its final game of the season, helped Al Jazeera quadruple match attendance to 20,000, one of the highest attendance figures in the Gulf.

Protest against performance and royal interference has had the most far-reaching effect in Saudi Arabia where princes are known to phone during a match to for example order the change of a player. In an unprecedented move in a soccer-crazy region in which rulers see political control of sports as essential, fan pressure forced Prince Nawaf bin Feisal, the former head of the Saudi Football Federation, to last year become the first royal to resign from leadership of a sports association. The resignation followed Australia’s defeat of the Saudi national team in a 2014 World Cup qualifier.

The move paved the way for a rare election in a nation that sees free and fair elections as an inappropriate Western concept and the takeover of the federation by a storied former goalkeeper, known to be a reformer and a proponent of women’s soccer in a country that frowns on women’s sports. For now, Prince Nawaf and the Saudi royal family retain their control of soccer through the Saudi Olympic Council and the General Presidency of Youth Welfare which the prince continues to chair.

Columnist Mohammed AlSaif, writing in the Arab News immediately after the election said: “Words such as freedom of choice, equality, human rights, rational thinking, democracy and elections, are terms we came to view with high concern and suspicion. We treat them as alien ideas that are trying to sneak within our society from the outside world. But last week an amazing and irregular event took place, in one of our sporting landmarks. The members of the General Assembly of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF) have elected through popular voting, their first president … Saudis were witnessing for the very first time in their lives a government official being elected through what they used to consider as a western ballot system.”

As part of the kingdom’s first five-year national sports plan that is being drafted albeit for men only, Prince Nawaf’s youth welfare presidency is proposing to privatize Saudi soccer clubs, use the proceeds to improve the country’s infrastructure and restructure its league with the English Premier League as its model. The new league would be able to increase revenues from broadcast rights – a commercial undertaking which is still in its infancy in the Middle East and North Africa and has so far benefitted state-owned broadcasters like Qatar’s Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi Television that have deeper pockets than their private sector competitors.

"We are not only trying to make money, the aim of what we are trying to do is raise the level of sports in Saudi and in order to do so I think you need to have healthy club financials so they can afford to bring the best coaches, the best foreign players. And when you raise the level of Saudi clubs, you raise the level of the national team," said Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who heads the committee planning the restructuring, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Academic Dorsey allowed to appeal High Court ruling

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 02:52:17 PDT

Academic Dorsey allowed to appeal High Court ruling

Ruling ordered him to disclose sources for blog post

GRACE LEONG

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THE Singapore appellate court has allowed local academic James Michael Dorsey to appeal a High Court ruling that ordered him to divulge his sources for a blog post that a company has claimed is defamatory of it.

Mr Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, is appealing an order by Justice Judith Prakash to name the sources that he quoted in a blog post entitled "FIFA investigates: World Cup host Qatar in the hot seat".

Justice Prakash found that his sources had "prima facie breached their duties of confidentiality" under a master rights agreement between events management firm World Sport Group (WSG) and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and ordered him to disclose if a copy of the agreement had been given to him.

WSG had tried to block Mr Dorsey from appealing on the grounds that "the order of the Judge giving pre-action interrogatories was not appealable".

But Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, who delivered the grounds of decision yesterday, found that Mr Dorsey has a "right of appeal to the Court of Appeal against the order of the Judge giving pre-action interrogatories".

In ordering the appeal to be heard "on its substantive merits", CJ Menon noted that the action brought against Mr Dorsey is one purely for the discovery of information.

"This is separate and distinct from proceedings which may subsequently be commenced by the party having obtained the information. In these circumstances, it would be incorrect to treat an application to administer pre-action interrogatories as an interlocutory step in proceedings," he wrote.

"Accordingly, we conclude that an appeal against an order made on an application for leave to administer pre-action interrogatories does not come within any of the limitations prescribed in ... the Supreme Court of Judicature Act," he added.

CJ Menon also ordered WSG to pay Mr Dorsey the costs of the application, fixed at $5,000 inclusive of disbursements.

WSG, which is represented by Senior Counsel Deborah Barker of KhattarWong LLP, started pre-action discovery proceedings last year against Mr Dorsey to compel him to identify the parties responsible for publishing a confidential report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services, which allegedly contained statements defamatory of WSG.

The report, prepared on the instructions of the AFC and its Malaysian lawyers, reviewed transactions, accounting practices and contracts negotiated under the tenure of its former president, Mohamed Bin Hammam.

In agreeing that Mr Dorsey's article contained defamatory statements, Justice Prakash noted there was "an innuendo that (WSG) was involved in corrupt practices", including paying bribes to Mr Bin Hammam to secure the master rights agreement.

Represented by N Sreenivasan, SC, of Straits Law Practice LLC, Mr Dorsey has alleged the report is not confidential and that WSG ought to direct its planned lawsuit against AFC for "disseminating" the report. Mr Dorsey also argued that even if the contents of his article were defamatory of WSG (an allegation he has denied), they were fair comments.

Source: Business Times © Singapore Press Holdings Ltd.

To view the judgment, click <here>.

JMD on Xinhua: AFC to elect new chief in first post-Hammam election

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:37:33 PDT

AFC to elect new chief in first post-Hammam election

linhao

745 words

30 April 2013

05:49

Xinhua News Agency

XNEWS

English

KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 (Xinhua) -- The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) this week is set to elect its new chief, who will have an uphill battle to restore the Asian football governing body' s tarnished image and reputation left by its disgraced former boss, Mohamed Bin Hammam.

Almost all candidates have promised stern actions against corruption, more transparency and better governance for the AFC in the first poll in the post-Hammam era.

Bahrain Football Association chief Shaikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, backed by Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad AL-Sabah, is widely seen as a frontrunner for the presidential race in the run-up to the AFC Extraordinary Congress to be held in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.

He is competing with other two candidates from the Middle East -- United Arab Emirate Football chief Yousuf Al Serkal and Hafez Ibrahim Al Medlej from Saudi Arabia, as well as Thai FIFA Executive Committee member Worawi Makudi, for the AFC presidency.

Shaikh Salman is also running against Hassan Al Thawadi, a less known figure who led Qatar in winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, for the FIFA executive committee seat.

Shaikh Salman is making good use of his narrow defeat in 2009 by Hammam in the election of FIFA Exco seat to position himself as a rival against the Qatari, who was banned by FIFA for life for bribery during the FIFA presidential race in 2011.

Shaikh Salman was reported as saying that he was confident to secure a two-third majority by winning 31 votes out of AFC' s 46 member associations.

He has promised a series of efforts to clean up AFC' s reputation.

However, Shaikh Salman' s own reputation is far from intact.

He is under increasing criticism recently for his role as football association chief and member of the royal family in human right abuses against players during the Bahrain' s crackdown on anti-government protest in 2011. He is also related to votes-buying allegations during the FIFA seat election in 2009.

Shaikh Salman has denied any wrongdoings.

UAE' s Al Serkal is another presidential hopeful, who publicly complains OCA' s

"interference" in the election.

Makudi is largely discredited for being a close ally to Hammam, while Hafez Ibrahim was reported earlier that he would pull out of the race in last minute before the AFC Congress.

A tight race may further rift the association. Caretaker chief Zhang Jilong has consistently called for unity.

The new AFC president will complete the Bin Hammam' s remaining two-year tenure before facing another election in 2015, casting doubt on whether he would have enough time to complete any major reforms.

James M. Dorsey, a football blogger and senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said most presidential candidates do not have a real reform agenda.

"Al-Serkal is the only candidate that has laid out a program that addresses the fundamental problems wracking the AFC, but he lacks a track record of pushing for reform," he told Xinhua.

Dorsey said AFC has not even started to recover from Hammam' s scandals.

In a letter disclosed by media before the AFC Congress, AFC general secretary Alex Soosay warned AFC' s member associations against any kind of bribery, conflicts of interests during the elections.

In the past two years, Acting AFC president Zhong Jilong, who took the rein after Hammam was banned, has tried hard to turn the regional football governing body around and successfully thwarted an attempted come-back by Hammam with the help of FIFA.

During the last AFC Executive Committee meeting his chaired as AFC chief in March, Zhang urged exco members to "restore AFC back to its health and glory" while serve as "shining examples of honesty, integrity, and transparency."

Zhang was once considered the leading figure for the presidential job, but announced that he would step aside before the nomination deadline.

Dorsey said the Chinese tried to confront AFC' s major problems, but didn' t have the leverage to take on vested interests as acting president.

"The presidential election is either not going to make a difference or could worsen things for the AFC. A defeat of Sheikh Salman by Qatar' s Hassan al-Thawadi in the battle for the FIFA Exco seat would be a step, but only a step forward," Dorsey said.

Players’ complaints overshadow Qatari attempts to project improved workers’ rights

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:15:45 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

Employment-related complaints by two international players, one of whom is barred from leaving Qatar, threaten to overshadow the 2022 World Cup organizing committee’s release of a charter of worker’s rights designed to fend off criticism of labor conditions in the Gulf state.

In separate interviews French-Algerian player Zahir Belounis, who is locked into a salary dispute with Al Jaish SC, the club owned by the Qatari military, and Moroccan international Abdessalam Ouadoo, who left Qatar last November to join AS Nancy-Lorraine, complained about failure to honor their contracts and pay their salaries as well as ill treatment.

The Qatar Stars League, the country’s premier league, did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Belounis is locked into a court battle with AL Jaish to get payment of almost two years of unpaid salary. He has been barred from leaving the country in a bid to force him to settle for faction of what is owed to him. “This is a crazy story… I cannot move around freely, I cannot work anymore, I'm 33 years old ... Who wants a player who has not played for months? Frankly, my career takes a hit,” he told Jeune Afrique.

In an interview with the BBC’s World Football, a clearly angry Mr. Ouadoo, who is owed five months’ salary, denounced the alleged refusal of Qataris to honor contracts. “The Qataris showed me no respect and I can never forgive them for that. I know that money is king but you don’t treat a man like that without paying a price,” Mr. Ouadoo said, asserting that he had been “treated like a slave.”

Mr. Ouadoo said he was barred last summer from joining his club for three weeks of training in Spain. Instead, he was forced to train in the Gulf state’s excruciating summer heat when temperatures go up to 50 degrees Celsius “just to push me to forget my rights. They did everything to discourage me…. The Qataris think they can do everything because they think money can buy anything: buildings, jazz, beautiful cars and men… Human rights are not respected. Human beings are not respected. The workers are not respected. A country that does not respect all these things should not organize the World Cup 2022,” Mr. Ouadoo said.

International players union FIFPro Africa division secretary general Stephane Burckhalter, whose group reportedly is investigating Mr. Belounis’ case, said about Mr. Ouadoo’s experience: “Nothing can justify this. These practices are shocking, unacceptable and outrageous.” Added a prominent soccer consultant: “Belounis’ case is typical for Qatar: contract then falling out of favor, then pressure to leave without being paid, passport withdrawn, etc...”

Mr. Ouadoo employed the very language the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is using in a bid to persuade world soccer body FIFA to deprive Qatar of its right to host the World Cup by –re-running the December 2010 vote that awarded it to the Gulf state. The ITUC campaign follows two years of intermittent talks with Qatar with no agreement on demands that it endorse the principles of independent trade unions and collective bargaining, sensitive issues in a country in which foreign labor constitutes the vast majority of the population.

The complaints of Messrs Belounis and Ouadoo could not have come at a worse moment for Qatar. They coincided with the unveiling by Qatar’s 2022 Supreme Committee Workers’ Charter that would be binding on World Cup-related projects. The charter, a set of lofty principles, affirms the right of those working on projects “to be treated in a manner that ensures at all times their well-being, health, safety and security.”

Qatar Foundation, in a statement three days before the release of the charter, said it was working on a charter of its own and was introducing sweeping measures that “can guarantee the rights of workers at all stages of the migration cycle − from the moment they are recruited and until they are repatriated to their home countries.” It said its charter and measures were “based upon a holistic and principled approach that combines Qatari Labor Law and international best practice.”

Qatari labor law that enshrines the principle of kafala or sponsorship, under which an employee is beholden to his employer and that is at the root of the restrictions on freedom of movement that Messrs Belounis and Ouadoo experienced has long been criticized by human rights groups and is one key reason why the unions have turned on the Gulf state.

In a statement the 2022 Supreme Committee said that “our commitment is to change working conditions in order to ensure a lasting legacy of improved worker welfare. We are aware that this cannot be done overnight. But the 2022 FIFA World Cup is acting as a catalyst for improvements in this regard.” The statement said monitoring and enforcement of the committee’s charter would be key once construction of stadiums and other infrastructure begins.

Up to half a million workers were likely to be recruited for projects according to a recent estimate by Qatar labor undersecretary Hussain Al Mulla. Mr. Al Mulla appeared to be cutting back radically on earlier predictions that Qatar would be importing up to a million workers. A Bank of America Merrill Lynch research note reported that Qatar was negotiating with FIFA to reduce the number of venues for the tournament from 12 as proposed in its bid to eight or nine.

Labor conditions “is a matter of utmost importance for all those involved in the organization of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar 2022. We have always acknowledged that the current state of workers’ welfare needs to be improved. From the very beginning, we have pointed to the power of football as a tremendous catalyst for tangibly improving labor conditions in Qatar and the region at large. From day one, we have been working towards this objective with much care and great dedication to ensure that this is a key legacy of our tournament,” the committee statement said.

A committee spokesperson said in an email that “the Charter is a starting point of reference. It is important to point out that progress and developments are taking place on a daily basis in Qatar. The Charter is only one aspect of a larger mosaic of change.”

The statement described the ITUC appeal to FIFA as ‘disingenuous’ and charged that “this campaign is counterproductive and not in the spirit of collaboration.” The ITUC cited earlier the fact that it had not been consulted on the Supreme Committee’s charter as one of the reasons why it was now seeking to deprive Qatar of the hosting of the World Cup.

AFC election marred by interference allegations and candidates’ track records

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:09:41 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

Next week’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) presidential elections designed to elect a leader to clean up two years of alleged financial mismanagement and unethical business conduct and polish the group’s tarnished image are increasingly marred by doubts that real reform is on the horizon, allegations of interference in the poll and controversy over the candidates’ track record.

The marring comes against a background of the AFC’s failure, despite efforts by reformers, to project sincerity in achieving transparency and accountability after its president, Qatari national Mohammed Bin Hammam, was banned for life from involvement in soccer because of unethical conduct in his management of the group’s finances and business affairs.

The group has failed so far to follow up on an internal PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) that almost a year ago recommended possible legal action against Mr. Bin Hammam and called for a review if not cancellation of the AFC’s foremost $1 billion contract to commercialize its rights.

The impression of lack of sincerity is cemented by the allegations of political interference and fears of bribery in the campaign of some candidates, a majority of which are tainted by their past association with Mr. Bin Hammam, as well as past allegations of wrongdoing as in the case of Worawi Makdudi of Thailand which he has successfully refuted and in Sheikh Salman’s failed 2009 election campaign in which he was defeated by Mr. Bin Hammam.

Sheikh Salman faces moreover assertions that his office identified athletes, including players for the Bahrain nation soccer team, who were arrested for their participation in anti-government protests, tortured and charged. Sheikh Salman has also been criticized for the fact that he has refused to denounce these alleged abuses of human rights.

The allegations of interference in the election are bolstered by the fact that three of the four candidates – Yousuf al Serkal of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa and Hafez Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia – hail from the Middle East. Alliances and active support for the front runners, Sheikh Salman and Mr. Al Serkal, mirror the political line-up of Gulf states.

Kuwait publicly backs the Bahraini candidate, a reflection of the two countries frequent policy alignment with Saudi Arabia, versus the perceived Qatari backing for Mr. Al Serkal that groups the two states who often follow a more independent course.

Mr. Al Medlej, who has hinted that he may withdraw at the last minute, does not seem to have significant backing even from his own government. While his Gulf competitors were on the campaign trail in private planes, Mr. Medlej said he only recently had money for his campaign deposited in his account.

Besides campaigning for the AFC presidency, Sheikh Salman is competing with Qatar’s Hassan al-Thawadi for filling Mr Bin Hammam’s seat on the executive committee of world soccer body FIFA.

Sources close to the AFC argue that the new president, who will be in office for less than two years to complete the term of Mr. Bin Hammam, will have little time for reform. As a result, they say Asian political and soccer leaders are focused on the 2015 election. “It takes six months to settle into office, six months to consolidate and then he’ll have six months to campaign,” said one source.

The focus on 2015 explains why the Gulf has fielded three rather than one candidate. “It would have taken one call from the king of Saudi Arabia for the Emirati and other Gulf candidates to pull out. They could have played if they had wanted to play,” the source said. Saudi media quoted the country’s sports czar, Prince Nawaf bin Feisal, as predicting this week that a Saudi national would head the AFC two years from now.

Nevertheless, politics is impacting next week’s election. It hardly helps the AFC’s image that the public campaign of front runner Sheikh Salman has in the recent weeks been dominated by defense of his record during the brutal squashing two years ago of a popular uprising in Bahrain.

The allegations of interference in the election center on the endorsement of Sheikh Salman by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) headed by former Kuwaiti government minister, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah. Messrs Al Serkal and Al Medlej have denounced the OCA’s support as interference in the election.

The OCA was reported to have offered in Sheikh Salman’s failed 2009 campaign several AFC members financial incentives if they voted for him. News reports said OAC officials have accompanied Sheikh Salman on several of his current campaign stops in Asia.

Inside World Football, citing its own sources and Reuters, reported further that the OCA had built domestic pressure in China to persuade acting AFC President Zhang Jilong to drop his plans to run for office. Mr. Jilong, who headed the AFC’s finance committee under Mr. Bin Hammam, emerged as one of the Qatari’s strongest critics and initiated last year’s PwC audit. He was described as ash-faced when he announced several months ago at a private meeting the he was not a candidate in the AFC election.

Inside World Football further disclosed this week a letter by AFC general secretary Dato' Alex Soosay to the group’s 46 member associations asking them to remember their "ethical obligations" when casting their vote. The letter warned against "offering and accepting gifts and benefits; bribery; and conflicts of interests." Mr. Soosay went on to note that “it is the duty and obligation of the Confederation to prevent the introduction of improper methods and practices which might jeopardize the integrity of, or give rise to, the abuse of football…”

Sheikh Salman, a member of the Bahraini royal family, has denounced allegations that his office assisted in abuse of human rights as a “clear attempt to damage my personal reputation and to interfere with the AFC presidential elections.”

He has stopped short of parroting statements by the government that protesters demanding greater freedom and rights were instigated by Iran described by a Bahrain expert in the corridors of a recent conference in Manama as delusional. The government this weekend denounced thousands of protesters who exploited the Formula One Grand Prix to showcase their grievances as “terrorists.”

Bahrain this week accused the US State Department of “fuelling terror and terrorists” by charging in a report on Bahrain that "the most serious human rights problems included citizens' inability to change their government peacefully; arrest and detention of protesters on vague charges, in some cases leading to their torture in detention." The report criticized the "lack of due process in trials of political and human rights activists, medical personnel, teachers, and students, with some resulting in harsh sentences." It claimed that "discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, nationality, and sect persisted, especially against the Shia population" which makes up a majority in Bahrain, ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifa dynasty.

In a letter this week to AFC members, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) said that "in the two years since the uprising began, life has been anything but normal for Bahrain's football players. The actions taken against Bahrain's football players by the Bahrain Football Association, led by Sheikh Al-Khalifa, are hardly credible, are devoid of integrity, and fail to respect the personal rights of the players. As leader of the organization that led such abuses, Sheikh Al-Khalifa bears responsibility for what was done to these players. Yet, in response to recent questions about the arrest, detention, and abuse of Bahrain's football players, Sheikh Al-Khalifa abdicated any personal responsibility for the abuse. Sheikh Al-Khalifa's actions and attitude evidence a clear incompatibility with the AFC Code of Ethics.”

With the election shaping up as a close battle between Sheikh Salman and Mr. Al Serkal, the Emirati has emerged as the candidate with the most far-reaching program for reform of the AFC. He has nonetheless yet to convince proponents of reform that he would actually walk the talk. They note that his record as an AFC executive committee member under Mr. Bin Hammam does not serve as a credential.

Mr. Al Serkal has promised to publish “all allowances and benefits given to me by the confederation, and expenditure incurred by my office,” establish a whistle-blower hotline to encourage the exposure of wrongdoing, make all the AFC’s commercial contracts available to its members for scrutiny, and hire auditors to look at current agreements.”

At the bottom line, the AFC has so far lacked the political will to tackle many of the same issues that also confront FIFA which like the Asian and other regional soccer bodies have been scarred by years of scandal.

A study by three graduates of Ohio University's Sports Administration program laid out what needs to be done in FIFA that also apply to the AFC. Their recommendations, include enhanced financial governance and anti-corruption controls, a state-of-the-art anti-corruption compliance program, transformation of the ethics committee into an independent investigative body, establishment of a committee to determine executives’ and senior staffs’ salaries and benefits, creation of an election campaign finance system that bars private funding, and limitations on executives’ terms in office.”

“It is all up to the AFC Congress. The problem is some members follow certain people’s suggestions,” said one source close to the AFC.

Egyptian soccer TV rights aim to alleviate financial crisis

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 21:40:23 PDT

Soccer protests in Bizerte

By James M. Dorsey

The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) hopes to raise at least $17 million in an auction this week of the premier league’s television broadcast rights for clubs financially strapped by two years of political strife that has seen soccer suspended for much of that period and fans banned from attending matches.

Egypt’s Satellite Broadcasting Commission headed by the chairman of crowned Cairo club Al Zamalek SC, Mamduh Abbas, has set EGP 120 million ($17.3 million) as the starting price of the auction that does not include radio broadcast rights and gives the winner the ability to parcel out segments of the league to different broadcasters.

The targeted price for television broadcast rights constitutes a multiple of the $2.6 million paid by Qatar’s state-run Al Jazeera network in late 2011. It was not immediately clear whether Al Jazeera would bid again for the rights that fit into its building of a significant sports franchise that includes the rights for 23 countries to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups as well as to France’s top league and the launch of a sports channel in the United States.

In a world in which top European clubs like Manchester United, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have become global brands, Egypt boasts some of the Middle East and North Africa’s most popular teams, including Zamalek and its arch rival Al Ahli SC that is believed to have a fan base of 50 million.

Al Jazeera’s drawback in the short term is that Egyptian matches have until now also been broadcast on free-to-air channels in a country where cable television penetration remains low.

In a bid to give the winner of the auction confidence that he will not run afoul of the Egyptian Television and Radio Broadcasting Union, which controls all broadcast satellite uplinks, broadcast matches will display the union’s emblem.

A successful auction would give a badly needed financial boost to clubs that are financially troubled and have often been unable to pay players as a result of Egypt’s political volatility since mass protests first erupted in early 2011 that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

Al Ahli along with five other premier league clubs -- Haras El-Hodoud, Ittihad El-Shorta, Bani Swaif Telephones, Arab Contractors and El-Dakhleya – withdrew this month from the Egypt Cup because they could not raise sufficient sponsorship.

Soccer has been at the core of more than two years of protests with militant soccer fans playing a key role and the death of more than 70 Al Ahli fans in a politically loaded brawl in February of last year in the Suez Canal city of Port Said.

The volatility remains as Egypt’s struggles to find a political balance and fans barred from both domestic and international matches after a year-long suspension of professional soccer in the wake of Port Said, the worst incident in Egyptian sports history, was lifted earlier this year.

The ban was earlier this month expanded from domestic to international matches as a result of several incidents including a display by Al Ahli fans during a match against Kenya’s Tusker FC in which they blamed Egypt’s former top military commander, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who was the country’s de facto ruler at the time of the Port Said brawl, for the incident.

Angry Zamalek fans blocked the entry to the sports ministry earlier this week with a banner that read: "The stand is closed on the orders of the ministry and the ministry is closed on the orders of the stand."

Egyptian national team coach Bob Bradley cautioned that "a football match without spectators has no soul. Any footballer who has played in an empty stadium will confirm what an eerie, silent experience it is."

With soccer fan activism not limited to Egypt, Al Ahli meets this weekend in an African Champions League match Tunisia’s CA Bizerte, a club whose fans this week fought pitches battles with security forces this week after their team was disqualified from the domestic league as a result of alleged match-fixing. The fans attacked banks and shops and hurled rocks at police who fired tear gas in response.

Fan fury was sparked by a Tunisian Football Association decision to allow Club Africain rather than Bizerte to compete for the domestic title against Esperance Sportieve du Tunis, despite both teams coming second in their group with the same number of points. Club Africain and Esperance are Tunisia’s richest and two most popular teams.

The Tunisian club announced on Tuesday that it was withdrawing from the CAF Champions League in protest at Monday's decision in favor of Tunisia's two richest and most popular teams.

Bizerte initially said it would withdraw from the African tournament but then reversed its decision.

Trade unions call on FIFA to deprive Qatar of World Cup

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:48:43 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

International trade unions have called on world soccer body FIFA to deprive Qatar of its right to host the 2022 World Cup because it has failed to end what they term 21^st century slavery and adopt international labor standards for the Gulf state’s more than one million foreign workers.

In a letter to FIFA president Sepp Blatter dated April 16, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) General Secretary Sharan Burrow asserted that discussions with Qatari authorities since FIFA awarded Qatar the World Cup in a controversial December 2010 vote have produced no results.

Ms Burrow said the ITUC had obtained a copy of a Charter for Migrant Workers that was drafted by Qatar’s World Cup organizing committee. She said the trade union was disappointed by the drafting process in which the committee failed to consult unions as well as its content. Sources said the draft charter was continuously being revised.

In a press release, the ITUC, which refuses to publish the draft charter, charged that it “shows contradictions with Qatari law and fails to give workers any real rights or protection from slavery conditions.” ITUC did not detail the legal contradictions.

Speaking in a telephone interview, Ms Burrow said ITUC’s campaign to take the World Cup away from Qatar was an effort to “escalate pressure” on the Gulf state. She said the ITUC would consider ways of stepping up pressure on FIFA and Qatar if the soccer body failed to opt for a revote of the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar latest at its general assembly in Mauritius at the end of May.

“The government of Qatar has had two years to do two things: introduce freedom of association and the kafala (sponsorship) system that effectively mounts to 21^st century slavery. The government has done nothing. How long are we supposed to wait and listen to the same things? Three years? Five years? Ms Burrow said. She was referring to the widely criticized sponsorship system common to various Gulf states that effectively deprives workers of their free choice and gives employees full control over their employees.

Ms Burrow asserted that “hundreds of workers are dying and thousands more are injured in Qatar” as a result of its failure to adhere to international labour standards. “FIFA must act now- the longer the delay, the more workers will suffer and die,” she said.

The union official said the demand to deprive Qatar of the World Cup was boosted by the corruption scandals overshadowing FIFA and world soccer that have yet to produce evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the Gulf state as well as debate on whether the tournament in Qatar should be moved to the winter months because of the region’s extreme summer heat.

The demand to deprive Qatar of the World Cup constitutes a change of union tactics. While the ITUC has threatened to call on its 175 million members in 153 countries to boycott Qatar at a time that it is expected to recruit up to a million additional workers to construct billions of dollars in World Cup-related infrastructure, it had initially said it would first put Qatari promises to the litmus test.

These promises included a legally non-binding oral pledge in November by Qatari Labour Minister Nasser bin Abdulla Alhumidi to effectively allow the formation of independent trade unions. "After a full and frank discussion, Qatar's labour minister assured me that if workers want to establish a union he will make sure that those who decide to join a union will not be punished. We will test him on that," Ms Burrow said at the time. ITUC officials said subsequently that they were preparing to establish a union in Qatar later this year.

To be sure, few analysts or labour and human rights activists expect Qatar to allow free and independent trade unions and to accept the principle of collective bargaining – the two major issues dividing Qatar and the union.

In a bid to fend off union demands, Qatar has moved to improve workers’ living and working conditions. It is seeking to ensure enforcement of safety and security standards, monitor on-time salary payments, reduce the number of workers living in one room from eight to four, and is building a city for workers that would include hitherto non-existent recreational facilities. It is also reviewing much criticized recruitment procedures that reinforce the sponsorship system and leave workers heavily indebted.

In a break with Gulf reluctance to give foreign nationals a stake in their host nations, Qatar’s soccer league said this month that it plans to create a league for un- and low-skilled guest workers who account for the majority of the country’s population. The decision follows this month’s successful organization of a soccer tournament for foreign workers deprived of relaxation and entertainment facilities. The league would involve 32 clubs, double the number that competed in the tournament.

In a region in which lop-sided demography is the elephant in the room when it comes to the future of the smaller states, Adil Ahmad who was identified by a Gulf newspaper as executive director of the Qatar Stars League (QSL) was quoted as saying in what would be an almost revolutionary statement that the idea of the foreign workers’ league was “to give low-income workers a sense of belonging in the country they serve.” Hani Taleb Ballan, the QSL deputy director was quoted as saying that the league would workers give “a fair opportunity to enjoy the life they had in their countries of origin in Asia and Africa”.

In an email, the QSL denied that Mr. Ahmed was a QSL employee or had any authority to speak on beahlf of the League. "He has no business within the Qatar Stars League and therefore cannot be quoted as a member of the QSL's upper management," the email said. The QSL also denied that Mr. Ballan had commented on the issue.

Qatar University sociologist Kaltham Al Al-Ghanim recently called on the country’s sports clubs to set up branches in the capital’s Industrial Zone where many of foreign workers are housed “to channel their energy to productive avenues and hunt for sporting talent.” She cautioned that if foreign workers were allowed to “live on the social fringes, the danger is they would take to illegal activities and emerge as a threat to social security.” Ms. Al-Ghanim argued further that this would offer Qatari clubs an opportunity to spot local talent.

Smaller Gulf states whose nationals constitute a minority of the population have until now gone out of their way to ensure that foreigners have no sense of belonging out of fear that this would encourage them to stand up for their rights.

Critics of the ITUC’s demand to deprive Qatar of the World Cup charged that the union was being sensationalist and that there was still room for negotiation. “The ITUC makes the situation look a lot simpler than it is. The situation is not black and white. They are being sensationalist,” said an independent labor analyst.

The critics charged that the ITUC’s demand robbed it of the leverage it had obtained with the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar. Human rights groups have long criticized Qatar and other Gulf states for their labor practices. But unlike the ITUC they never had more than moral leverage. Qatar’s dependence on foreign labor for its World Cup infrastructure enhances the ITUC’s power given that it in contrast to the human rights activists can mobilize millions of people.

“What happens to the workers if Qatar loses the World Cup? The ITUC loses its bargaining chip. Moreover, they are campaigning for taking away the World Cup even before the bids for construction of stadiums have been awarded. Qatar’s construction boom will continue with or without the World Cup. Even if they lose those workers, others will come. It’s the market’s push and pull factor. If the Nepalese don’t come, the Bangladeshis will. If the Bangladeshis don’t come, the Vietnamese will and if the Vietnamese don’t come, the Chinese will,” the analyst said.

ASEAN Super League offers World Sport Group potential fallback

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:27:54 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

Plans to launch an Association of Southeast Nations Football Federation (AFF) Super League with Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG) as its marketing partner come against the backdrop of an Asian Football Confederation (AFC) presidential election that could put the company’s $1 billion marketing rights agreement with the Asian soccer body in jeopardy.

The new league would be independent of AFC competitions. It would initially kick off in 2015 with eight franchise teams but would likely grow to 16. Major Southeast Asian soccer nations, including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore would have a limited number of franchises to ensure that upcoming countries like Laos and Myanmar are also represented.

AFF council member and AFC vice-president Prince Abdullah Ibni Sultan Ahmad Shah told Reuters that "the AFF has agreed to further develop the proposed concept of the ASEAN Super League together with World Sports Group to be presented to the AFC in the near future.’ The AFF needs the AFC to ensure that the winner of its Super League can compete in Asian championships.

Sources said WSG had approached AFF to be the Super League’s marketing partner. “They have a long-term relationship with the AFF and are trusted by the member associations. We asked them to come up with something that works. We made clear to ESH that this is not about money, it is about improving national leagues and clubs,” one source said.

The sources said the league was part of a greater effort to empower regional associations and win AFC recognition. “We have been discussing the super league for years in an effort to develop our profile. We have zero power. Unlike FIFA or the AFC, we can’t compel member associations to do anything. It’s a way of developing training academies and making clubs self-sustainable so that they are not just a billionaire’s vanity project,” one source said.

AFC insiders suggested that although the value of the Super League’s revenues was likely to fall short of those of the AFC that are generated primarily by East Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea, it could constitute a fallback position for WSG should the company lose its Asian contract. Sources pointed to the financal success of the AFF’s Suzuki Cup as well as the commercial potential of soccer in countries like Indonesia and Singapore.

At the same time, the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF) recently put out a tender to replace WSG as its marketing partner after the Singapore company’s contract expired. WAFF is believed to have received several competitive offers.

WSG’s AFC contract is an issue in the AFC presidential campaign that centers on questions of greater transparency, accountability and openness after two scandal-riddled years involving allegations of financial mismanagement and corruption under the leadership of its disgraced and banned former president, Mohammed Bin Hammam.

Of the four presidential candidates in the May 2 election -- Yousuf al Serkal of the United Arab Emirates, Worawi Makdudi of Thailand and Hafez Ibrahim Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain Football Association head Sheik Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa --, Mr. Al Serkal has gone the furthest in promising reforms that could affect the WSG contract.

The UAE soccer executive unveiled earlier this month a platform that promises to publish “all allowances and benefits given to me by the confederation, and expenditure incurred by my office,” establish a whistle-blower hotline encourage the exposure of wrongdoing, make all the AFC’s commercial contracts available to its members for scrutiny, and hire auditors to look at current agreements.

Mr. Al Serkal stopped short of saying that he would implement the recommendations of a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) audit that last year concluded that Mr. Bin Hammam had used an AFC sundry account as his personal account and that raised questions about the negotiation and terms of WSG’s master rights agreement.

The audit noted that the contract had not been put to tender and questioned its terms as well as payments made to Mr. Bin Hammam by a WSG shareholder in advance of the signing of the agreement. It advised the AFC to seek legal advice for possible criminal or civil charges against Mr. Bin Hammam and to ascertain whether the contract with WSG could be renegotiated or even cancelled.

Mr. Al Serkal’s foremost opponent, Sheikh Salman, widely viewed as a frontrunner because he is backed by the Kuwaiti head of the Olympic Council of Asia, Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al-Sabah, insisted in a meeting with reporters in Dubai on Tuesday that he too would address the issues raised by the PwC audit but provided less specifics on how he would go about it.

''If there was wrongdoing in the past, it has to be corrected. If I succeed on second of May, we need to keep our (member associations) and FIFA aware of all the wrongdoing in the past and how we can correct things. The most important thing is to have Asia united again.''

Sheikh Salman, a member of the Bahraini royal family who besides running for the AFC office is competing with Qatar’s Hassan al-Thawadi for a seat on the executive committee of world soccer body FIFA, seemed equally interested in arguing that the AFC presidency should automatically grant him a seat on the FIFA board should he be elected.

The only candidate who is not associated with Mr. Bin Hammam, Sheikh Salman focused much of his reform agenda on fighting match fixing in a region that is at the center of the distortion of the beautiful game. He said he would have zero tolerance for offenders and would enlist the help of governments.

"I think people have sensed the wind of change. I think I represent the new face of Asia. People who want to vote for the change, the choice is clear. If people want to leave matters as they are, they have the right to do so. I think for the last few years it's been like a roller-coaster up and down that the AFC has suffered. I think it's time to steer the ship to calmer waters… We want a clean AFC, we want to do the changes that are needed, the transparency," Sheikh Salman said.

Tweeting on social media platform Twitter, Dubai-based Associated Press sports reporter Mike Casey described Sheikh Salman’s notion of transparency when asked by another reporter about the arrest two years ago of three Bahraini national soccer team players for having participated in a popular uprising that was brutally squashed.

Sheikh Salman has systematically refused to comment on the fact that the players were denounced as traitors on state-run television, allegedly tortured and charged. The charges were ultimately dropped under pressure from FIFA.

"My response is let's talk about football and leave the political side to the other people who deal with that. We hear reports a lot from all sides and I am here to talk about the elections. I don't want to talk about these matters because the moment you talk about it, it opens the door. Since I have been in charge of football here in Bahrain, we always leave religious and political matters and views outside to try to focus on the game,” Sheikh Salman said in Dubai.

The nexus of sports and politics in Bahrain was however evident this week with members of Bahrain's village-based February 14^th Coalition youth movement exploding a series of non-lethal devices in protest against Bahrain’s Formula One Grand Prix. The attacks dubbed Operation: Ultimatum 3 followed mass demonstrations against this week’s staging of the race at a time of continued political and social strife organized by Bahrain’s official opposition that included a 1.6 kilometer long stretch of protesters blocking a key highway.

On Twitter, Mr. Casey, who was last year barred entry to Bahrain but granted a visa to cover this week’s F1m initially reported that the moderator of Sheikh Salman’s press conference intervened when he was asked about the players and that the question went unanswered. Mr. Casey subsequently tweeted: “Told to leave #SheikSalman's presser over stories I've written in past, not a good first step for openness.” He finally said on Twitter: “Organizers at #Sheik Salman’s presser allow me to remain after I refuse to leave, welcome them to call security.”

At least one other reporter was barred from attending the news conference because of critical reporting on Bahrain.

The Shia-Sunni divide: Tunnel vision prevails

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:36:45 PDT

RSIS presents the following commentary The Shia-Sunni divide: Tunnel vision prevails 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. 067/2013 dated 17 April 2013

The Shia-Sunni divide:
Tunnel vision prevails

By James M. Dorsey

Synopsis

Tunnel vision prevails on opposite shores of the Gulf where governments execute policies based on perception rather than reality. They run the risk of being incapable of managing tensions that could threaten shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz as well as create domestic turmoil in both Gulf states and Iran.

Commentary

A WIDENING schism along sectarian lines between Sunni and Shia Muslims was highlighted in two recent conferences, one in Bandar Abbas, Iran, the other in Bahrain. Both were designed to promote opposing government views of popular unrest and discontent sweeping the Middle East and North Africa and the Islamic republic’s role in the region. Senior Iranian officials stressed the geo-strategic importance of minority Shia communities, who inhabit oil and water-rich regions in Arab Gulf states, while Bahrainis, supported by senior representatives of the US Republican Party, dismissed domestic unrest in their part of the world as the result of Iran’s interference.

Yet, the widespread popular discontent was palpable in March just metres away from the conference halls in both Bandar Abbas and Bahrain. That discontent is being fuelled by increased repression in Iran in advance of presidential elections in June and a refusal in Bahrain to address the issues that sparked a popular revolt on the island two years ago. Bahraini security forces brutally supressed the uprising that continues to smoulder in villages outside the capital of Manama and is fracturing Bahraini society.

Paying a heavy price

The government response to the uprising turned what intially was a call for reform by by both Bahrain’s Shia majority and members of the Sunni minority into a proxy tug-of-war between two of the region’s foremost powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, with the island state paying a heavy price. Sunni teachers often refuse to cross sectarian lines to give classes in Shia majority neighbourhoods and view some areas as no-go zones. Students miss lectures because of security road blocks. Shias and Sunnis segregate themselves in university classrooms and reject professors’ efforts to get them to single. Youths regularly die in clashes with security forces.

Few Bahrainis expect a national dialogue between the government and the opposition to produce any results despite US and Saudi pressure. Opposition demands that Crown Prince Salman Al Khalifa - who has favoured granting Shias historic concessions, including a larger number of seats in parliament - participate in the dialogue have so far been rejected by a dominant hard-line group within the royal family that has gained control of security and intelligence. The opposition, for its part, has signalled its lack of confidence in the dialogue by only sending lower-ranking officials to the talks.

Few further believe that either the United States, which has its Fifth Fleet headquartered in Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia want to upset the apple cart. Saudi Arabia, which two years ago dispatched troops to Bahrain, is unlikely to want to see Shia majority rule in a country that is a mere 45-minute drive from its restive, oil-rich, predominantly Shia Eastern Province. Yet, it has recently signalled that it would favour concessions to the Shias provided the Sunni monarchy remains in place.

In contrast to Saudi Arabia, US pressure for a compromise has cooled relations with the Obama administration. Speakers at the Bahrain conference under the auspices of the University of Bahrain included conservative former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana who was until January head of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, but no Obama administration officials or spokesmen for the opposition. In fact pro-government newspapers referred to the US president as “Ayatollah” Obama.

US presence and Iranians’ bunker mentality

To be sure, Bahraini concern about Iranian encouragement of dissent is not without reason. As early as in the first year of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran hosted a miniscule group that called for the liberation of Bahrain. Moreover, Iran’s decades-old occupation of three islands in the Gulf that are claimed by the United Arab Emirates, inspires little confidence in its designs for the region.

Nevertheless, with talks in Kazakhstan in early April between the five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and Iran over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program producing little progress, Iranian officials labour under the psychological impact of international isolation and hard-hitting sanctions. The impact is obvious in the regime’s increasing pervasiveness, its fear-inspired penchant for control, a preference among officials for monologue rather than dialogue, and a dread of foreigners reminiscent of the former Soviet Union and North Korea.

Foreign academics invited to the Bandar Abbas conference encountered among senior Iranian officials and scholars a self-righteous bunker mentality and a bazaar merchant's penchant for deception and half-truths. In a break with a culture that prides itself on its diplomatic, artistic and gastronomic sophistication, officials and clerics embarked on diatribes of at times crude propaganda. Iranian speakers played up Iran's role as a regional power, the strategic geography of Shia Muslims in oil and water-rich parts of the Gulf, the discrimination suffered by Shias in countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and the alleged subservience to the United States of wealthy Gulf states who blame Iran for stirrings of unrest within their own borders.

Discontent bubbling at the surface

Foreign ministry officials and associated think tank figures used their role as moderators to rudely cut off their foreign guests so that they could embark on a drumroll of lengthy, highly politicized and ideological speeches. The degree of control became further obvious when several foreign participants who ventured into town on a shopping spree were intercepted by security officials allegedly for their own protection.

Foreigners are not the only ones to run afoul of the regime’s suspicions and bunker mentality. Ahmad Shaheed, the United Nations’ monitor for human rights in Iran, warned in a report last month that the crackdown was intended to stymie potential protests linked to the upcoming election. Iran brutally suppressed protests in the wake of its 2009 presidential election. Iranians say that the government in recent weeks has established absolute control of access to the Internet, making impossible circumvention of censorship with specialised software.

With tension building on both shores of the Gulf, the stakes are high for regional governments as well as the international community as they could threaten shipping in the Straits of Hormuz as well as create domestic turmoil in both the Gulf states and Iran. As a young Iranian soccer fan sums up the situation: “Its bubbling at the surface. Who knows if or when something will erupt?”

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University and director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

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Bahrain soccer chief faces tough questions in AFC election

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 01:37:56 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC), struggling to restore credibility after two scandal-riddled years involving allegations of financial mismanagement and corruption, has had a foretaste of questions and issues that are likely to be raised if Bahrain Football Association head Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa , widely viewed as a frontrunner, wins the group’s May 2 presidential election.

Sheikh Salman is one of four candidates running to replace Mohammed Bin Hammam, the disgraced and banned former president of the governing Asian soccer. Sheikh Salman lost to Mr. Bin Hammam four years ago in a bitter election campaign and is the only current candidate who is not associated with the Qatari national.

Mr. Bin Hammam was last December banned for life from involvement in soccer by world football body FIFA on charges of multiple conflicts of interest that violated the group’s code of ethics. An earlier internal AFC audit conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) had concluded that he had used an AFC sundry account as his personal account.

It also raised questions about his further financial and commercial management of the group, including the negotiation and terms of a $1billion master rights agreement (MRA) with Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG). WSG has taken legal action against this reporter in a bid to squash reporting and silence sources.

The AFC and Sheikh Salman, who is backed by the powerful Olympic Council of Asia headed by Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al-Sabah, got an inkling of issues involved in the Bahraini’s candidacy when Manchester United soccer legend Dennis Law this month visited the Gulf island state.

A human rights group, Human Rights First, charged this week that a Bahraini medical doctor, Dr Fatima Haji, had been arrested, beaten and electrocuted two years ago during a brutally squashed popular uprising for asking Manchester United to hold a minute's silence for 15-year-old Ahmad Shams, who was shot and killed during the uprising wearing a Manchester United shirt.

Mr. Law and Manchester United have so far avoided addressing the issue. The club’s website quoted Mr. Law as saying: "I have been overwhelmed by the number of United fans who have greeted me here today. It is my first time in Bahrain and the welcome I have received has been fantastic.”

Nevertheless, the squashing of the revolt that involved the arrest and/or dismissal of some 150 Bahraini athletes and sports officials, including three national team soccer players, continues to haunt the country as well as Sheikh Salman, a member of Bahrain’s royal family.

Companies sponsoring Formula One motor racing have shown significantly less willingness to fund this week’s Bahrain Grand Prix after last year’s race failed to move criticism of the country’s human rights record and continued protests out of the limelight. This week’s race is likely to again focus attention on Bahrain’s domestic tensions.

Thomson Reuters and Diageo’s Johnnie Walker whisky brand, which is culturally sensitive in a Muslim nation, opted out of this year’s Bahrain Grand Prix. Vodafone decided to use the logos of its Middle East partner Zain rather than its own. Oil company Shell said its involvement in Bahrain would be limited to sending three technicians to offer support on fuel and lubricants while Swiss bank UBS would not host any of its clients at the Bahrain race.

Hesitancy towards Bahrain is reinforced by the fact that two years after the squashing of the revolt with the help of a Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation (GCC) force protests continue unabated. Few expect talks between the government and the opposition to resolve the crisis with hardliners within the royal family on the ascendancy and despite indications that Saudi Arabia is concerned that the situation on the island, a mere 45-minute drive from its predominantly Shiite, oil-rich Eastern Province, could again get out of hand.

Sheikh Salman is likely to be questioned at a news conference in Dubai this week about his failure to stand up for the soccer players who were arrested, denounced as traitors, allegedly tortured and charged. The charges were ultimately dropped under pressure from FIFA. "Sheikh Salman has taken a hard-liner on football players accused of protest activity during the uprising, but most likely he was simply the executor of this crackdown,” said Justin Gengler, a Doha-based Bahrain analyst.

With his competitor’s -- Yousuf al Serkal of the United Arab Emirates, Worawi Makdudi of Thailand and Hafez Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia – promising reform of the AFC, Sheikh Salman will have to come up at his meeting with journalists with a convincing program that holds out the promise of greater transparency and accountability of the troubled Asian body.

Sheikh Salman drafted in February a seven-point program entitled United for Change that pledged to fight match-fixing, doping and illegal betting; ensure full financial transparency by introducing international accounting standards and externally audited yearly reports; and guarantee equality in the distribution of AFC commercial revenues.

Mr. Serkal has since then unveiled a platform that promises to publish “all allowances and benefits given to me by the confederation, and expenditure incurred by my office,” establish a whistle-blower hotline encourage the exposure of wrongdoing, make all the AFC’s commercial contracts available to its members for scrutiny, and hire auditors to look at current agreements.

Egypt’s banning of soccer fans from matches likely to boomerang

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:05:29 PDT

March funeral of a Port Said Protester (Credit:AFP/Jonathan Rashad)

By James M. Dorsey

Egyptian authorities have expanded the ban on fans attending matches to include international as well as domestic games in a bid to prevent violence that is likely to backfire and spark renewed incidents in a country that is reeling from economic decline, widespread discontent and lack of confidence in the government and law enforcement.

Sports minister Al-Emary Farouq announced the ban from international matches following incidents in African championship games involving crowned Cairo clubs Al Ahly and Al Zamwelek SC as well as Ismaili SC.

The ban is certain to upset militant, highly politicized, street battle-hardened fans or ultras divided over verdicts announced in January and last month in the trial against those responsible for the death last year of 74 Al Ahly fans in a politically loaded brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, and opposed to the already existing barring of supporters from recently restarted domestic matches.

The fans are further upset that their demands have yet to be met for reform of the country’s security sector as well as the putting on trial of law enforcement officials involved in the killing of more than 900 people in the last two years since the toppling of president Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt’s Premier League was recently relaunched in the absence of fans after a suspension of a year in the wake of the Port Said incident that is widely viewed as an attempt that got out of hand by authorities to teach the ultras a lesson for their key role in Egypt’s popular revolt, sustained opposition to the military rulers who succeeded Mr. Mubarak and led the country to its first free and fair elections, and the growing perception that President Mohammed Morsi is more of an autocrat than a reformer.

The sentencing to death in January of 21 fans of Port Said’s Al Masri SC for their role in the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history sparked an uprising in the city that has long felt negelcted and disadvantaged by central governments in Cairo. Al Masri and Al Ahli fans agree however that the police and security forces were spared with the sentencing of only two of the nine officers that had been charged in the case, the first two security officials to have been accountable for the deaths of protesters since Mr. Mubarak’s downfall.

The ban against the backdrop of political volatility in which the ultras play a prominent role complicates a tough choice facing the militant fan groups as well as youth organizations who formed the backbone of Egypt’s popular uprising: at what point do they surrender the power of the street and contentious politics and transition into electoral politics and non-governmental lobbying and activism?

For now, the ban coupled with mounting resistance to Mr. Morsi because of his reliance on security forces and the military rather than outreach to his critics, his haughty style of government, a crackdown that last week culminated in the arrest and subsequent release on bail of the Arab world’s most prominent political satirist, a series of measures that curtail rather than enhance the role of civic society, and his unilateral rushing through of a controversial constitution that many see as serving an Islamist agenda has postponed the need to take a decision.

Mr. Farouq, a former Ahli board member, justified the banning of fans from international matches saying that the recent incidents “put the safety of fans at risk and damaged public property” and was necessary “to protect sports facilities."

Zamalek fans earlier this month destroyed seats at the military-owned Borg El-Arab Stadium in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, Ismaili supporters invaded the pitch and fought with police after a match against Algeria's USMA, and Ahly fans threw projectiles and damaged the stadium during a game against a Kenyan club.

The ban is in line with Mr. Morsi’s refusal to see the uprising in Port Said, street protests in Cairo and other Egyptian cities and the role of the ultras as a consequence of a government policy that has allowed the economy to slide to the point of Egypt teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, a deep-seated distrust of security forces because of their role as executors of the Mubarak-era repression and their continued brutality and that appears more intent on consolidating the power of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood than leading the transition from autocracy to a more open and free society.

The ban leaves the ultras with the street as their only potential stronghold in an environment in which reform seems as elusive as it appeared before soccer fans and youth groups discovered their real power on January 25, 2011, the first of 18 days of protests on Cairo’s Tahrir Square that forced Mr. Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office. That is a stronghold protesters are unlikely to surrender until they see real steps towards change, starting with the tackling of what is a difficult and complex task: reform of the security forces.

AFC presidential candidates’ promises of reform put World Sport Group in the crosshairs

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:56:31 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

Candidates in next month’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) presidential election designed to appoint a successor to disgraced Qatari national Mohammed Bin Hammam are competing to project themselves as agents of change following two years of scandals in world soccer involving charges of corruption and financial mismanagement.

On the surface of it, all four candidates in the May 2 election lack the credentials of a reformer. Three of them – Yousuf al Serkal of the United Arab Emirates, Worawi Makdudi of Thailand and Hafez Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia – are close associates of Mr. Bin Hammam while Bahrain Football Association head Sheik Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa represents a nation that two years ago banned three of its top national soccer team players for taking part in a failed public uprising.

At least one of the players was allegedly tortured while in detention. Sheikh Salman, a member of the Bahraini royal family, has largely refrained from criticizing the arrests of the players or the sacking of some 150 other sports executives and athletes, many of whom have since been reinstated.

Nevertheless, if the winning candidate sticks to his campaign promises greater transparency in and improved governance of Asian soccer may be on the horizon.

Speaking to reporters in Dubai this week, Mr. Al Serkal, the only prominent Bin Hammam associate never to have been accused of wrongdoing, detailed a program that would involve significant change. The UAE official and AFC executive committee member promised to publish “all allowances and benefits given to me by the confederation, and expenditure incurred by my office,” establish a whistle-blower hotline to encourage the exposure of wrongdoing, make all the AFC’s commercial contracts available for its members to scrutinize and hire auditors to look at current agreements.

The audit noted that the contract had not been put to tender, and questioned its terms as well as payments made to Mr. Bin Hammam by a WSG shareholder in advance of the signing of the agreement. It advised the AFC to seek legal advice for possible criminal or civil charges against Mr. Bin Hammam and to ascertain whether the contract with WSG could be renegotiated or even cancelled.

Mr. Bin Hammam, who dominated Asian soccer for a decade, was last year banned for life by world soccer body FIFA from involvement in soccer because of alleged conflicts of interest that violated the group’s code of ethics.

If elected and if he sticks to his word, Mr. Al Serkal would be encouraging unprecedented scrutiny of the AFC’s relationship with WSG. Sheikh Salman was viewed until Mr. Al Serkal’s detailing of his program as the most likely candidate to introduce reform. Sheikh Salman, who is supported by the powerful Kuwaiti head of the Olympic Council of Asia, Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al-Sabah, was narrowly defeated some four years ago by Mr. Bin Hammam in a bitter battle for a seat on the FIFA executive committee that involved personal attacks, power abuse claims and alleged cash bribes for votes.

WSG has gone to great lengths to ensure the confidentiality of its agreement with the AFC as well as to control its implementation. Sources close to the AFC as previously reported on this blog have said that not all executive committee members have seen the MRA and that those who have could only do so on the premises of the AFC and that WSG last year engineered the early departure of the head of the AFC marketing committee, who had previously been banned from attending marketing meetings with the AFC contractor.

WSG moreover last year initiated legal action against this reporter for writing about the PwC audit even though it had already been widely reported and for reporting that the AFC had been advised not to sign the MRA because it was not in the group’s interest. WSG demanded in the proceedings that this reporter disclose his sources in a bid to silence him and his sources and intimidate potential whistleblowers.

In a landmark decision in late February, a Singapore court granted this reporter the right to appeal an earlier court order that he disclose sources. The court dismissed WSG's application to strike out his appeal.

Mr. Al Serkal dismissed Mr. Bin Hammam’s endorsement of his candidacy in a Twitter message to Bloomberg News, saying “that friendship had nothing to do with the work that we used to do. I always had different ideas and opinions and had conflict with him and raised issues in meeting. I keep friendship separate from work.”

The burden on the new president of the AFC to introduce reform is reinforced by the fact that FIFA members will next month vote on host of reform proposals in the wake of several scandals involving alleged wrong doing by members of its executive committee. That burden is further bolstered by the fact that Asia has been at the center of a match-fixing scandal that has rocked world soccer. Authorities in Singapore, from where the match fixers are believed to operate, last week charge three Lebanese executives with accepting sexual favors as an inducement to fix a game.

Al Jazeera targets Spain amid dropping viewer numbers in its heartland

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:17:00 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

State-owned Qatari television network Al Jazeera is exploring the acquisition of Spain’s La Liga premier soccer league rights in a bid to expand its budding global sports franchise, tweak its business model in a world in which pan-Arab television is on the decline and compensate for mounting criticism of its coverage of popular revolts in the Middle East and North Africa.

Al Jazeera’s renewed interest in Spanish rights comes as financially troubled Spain’s two major sports broadcasters, Mediapro and Canal Plus, which is owned by Grupo Prisa, are struggling under a mountain of debt. It also follows a breakdown in talks with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, according to Spanish news website El Confidencial Digital.

Grupo Prisa with debts estimated at €3 billion and Mediapro with liabilities of €300 million hinted last year that they would not bid at current rates for the Spanish league rights when the broadcast contract expires in 2016.

Al Jazeera’s interest in the Spanish rights reaffirms its strategy of moving in behind other Qatar government institutions as they conclude sponsorship agreements and acquisitions such as the winning of the hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup, Qatar Foundation and Qatar Airways’ sponsorship of FC Barcelona, and the television network’s acquisition of French broadcasting rights in the wake of the Gulf state’s takeover of Paris St. Germain.

It also fits Al Jazeera’s move into markets such as Egypt in anticipation that they will generate revenue at a later stage rather than immediately and Qatar’s strategy of employing sports and media to leverage its global influence. Al Jazeera last year launched BelN Sports USA and early this year purchased former US vice president Al Gore’s Current TV to ease the network’s penetration of the North and Latin American markets.

Al Jazeera’s emphasis on sports as well as its acquisition of local broadcasters such as Mubasher in Egypt reflects changes in Middle Eastern and North African broadcasting. Al Jazeera’s launch in 1996 revolutionized the region’s news broadcasting that until then was dominated by state-run broadcasters who towed the official line with its free-wheeling coverage and debate of sensitive issues and willingness to offend governments. As a result, it spawned the launch of a huge number of satellite television stations eager to grab a piece of the pie and make their mark.

It’s a strategy that has paid off. More than anything else, Al Jazeera and the 2022 World Cup have put Qatar, a tiny city state, on the world map, allowing it to project soft power and engage in public diplomacy.

Nevertheless, Al Jazeera, which experienced a boom as the primary news source in the heyday of the Arab revolts that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen, has seen its viewership numbers decline recently with Arabs turning increasingly to local news broadcasters and a growing perception that Al Jazeera is in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in line with Qatar’s support for them in various post-revolt countries as well as in Syria.

Market research company Sigma Conseil reported recently that Al Jazeera’s market share in Tunisia had dropped from 10.7 in 2011 to 4.8% in 2012 and that the Qatari network was no longer among Egypt’s 10 most watched channels. Tunisia’s 3C Institute of Marketing, Media and Opinion Studies said that Al Jazeera Sports was the only brand of the network that ranked in January among the country’s five most watched channels.

Al Jazeera reporters are reportedly increasingly harassed as they seek to do their jobs in Tunisia. Protests that erupted after this year’s assassination of prominent opposition leader Shukri Belaid charged that “Al Jazeera is a slave of Qatar,” accusing it of biased reporting on the murder because of the Gulf state’s support for Ennahada, the country’s dominant Islamist grouping.

Complicating Al Jazeera’s potential push into Spain is the fact that Spanish law requires one match a week to be aired on a free-to-air rather than a pay tv channel as well as the fact that each Spanish club sells its own rights which strengthens the negotiating position of teams like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

Prisa Grupo currently owns the broadcasting rights of Atletico Madrid, Celta de Vigo, RCD Espanyol, Getafe, Osasuna, Real Sociedad, Real Zaragoza, Athletic Bilbao and Real Betis while Mediapro’s franchise includes Real Madrid FC and FC Barcelona. El Confidencial Digital reported that Al Jazeera was likely to revolutionize the $600 million Spanish soccer broadcast market by acquiring La Liga’s rights as a package with Mediapro acting as its broadcast sub-contractor despite Madrid and Barcelona’s opposition.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, visiting scholar at the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Sport Science, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Turkey gears up to give Gulf states a run for their money

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:51:41 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

The Gulf states dominate headlines with Qatar’s controversial hosting of a World Cup and the high profile acquisition of European soccer teams, but they may be meeting their match in an emerging competition for being the Middle East and North Africa’s prime sports, transportation and economic hub.

Turkey may not have the Gulf’s financial muscle, but on virtually every other front it brings assets to the table that smaller oil-rich states lack: geographic and demographic depth; a soccer-crazy population that fills stadium; storied, internationally accomplished and recognized clubs; a respectable international track record in a variety of other sports, including basketball and volleyball; ethnic, cultural and ex-colonial links across a swath of land stretching from China to the Atlantic coast of Africa; a functioning democracy with all its warts that many see as a model for the Muslim world; a highly developed educational sector; one of the world’s largest standing armies; and a state-of-the-art industrial base that drives on indigenous labor.

Turkey ranks number 18 on the list of the world’s largest economies ahead of Saudi Arabia at number 20, the United Arab Emirates at 30 and Qatar at 51 despite the fact that many Gulf states have a nominally higher GDP.

A look at Turkey’s sporting ambitions as well as the expansion of its national airline, Turkish Airlines, and its plans for a third Istanbul airport tell the story. Turkish sports minister Suat Kilic hinted this week at his country’s ambition, telling World Football Insider that Turkey’s hosting this summer of the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, the biggest sporting event to be held in Turkey to date, would be a platform to “showcase Turkey’s capabilities” to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

To be sure, its not all smooth sailing for Turkey. Its premier soccer has been wracked by a major match-fixing scandal exasperated by a power struggle among Islamists and financial crisis as a result of over spending. And European soccer body UEFA’s opposition to Turkey’s simultaneous bid for the Olympics and the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship (Euro 2020) prompted it to spread that year’s tournament over a multitude of European nations. Qatar, the UAE and China moreover have easier access to capital compared to Turkey

But putting such concerns aside, the future looks promising. Beyond bringing a greater number of key assets to the table, Turkey, the literal dividing line in Eurasia, and the Gulf compete on a level playing field in exploiting geography to create an air transportation hub at the meeting point of Europe, Asia and Africa: like Qatar and the UAE, Istanbul is at flying equidistance from Sao Paolo and Sydney with easy access to Africa and Central Asia.

Turkish Airlines flies to 200 destinations and to more countries than any other carrier in the world as opposed to Emirates’ 120 and Qatar Airways’ 115 destinations. Turkey’s plans for a new, six runway airport, the world’s largest in terms of passenger capacity, capture its global ambitions. Turkey is currently entertaining bids at the very moment that Qatar is about to open its long-touted new air hub. The new airport would also surpass Dubai, which currently claims the honor.

Both Turkey and the Gulf states populate a volatile region that has embarked on what is likely to be a decade of messy and at times violent and bloody change. At this point, Turkey is closer than the Gulf to the turmoil with its long border with Syria and close cross-border links as well as its proximity to Lebanon that increasingly is teetering on the brink.

But contrary to the autocratic Gulf, which so far has largely been able to ring-fence itself against the wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, few predict upheaval in Turkey, a traditionally politically instable country that is witnessing a decade of stability and near unprecedented rule by one party that has gone from one electoral victory to another.

Turkey’s position as the regional powerhouse could be further boosted by a potential agreement with the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) that would grant the country’s estimated 20 million Kurds greater rights and end almost 30 years of conflict that has left tens of thousands of people dead as well as last week’s restoration of diplomatic relations with Israel.

Reconciliation with Israel potentially paves the way to closer cooperation on Syria and cooperation in developing significant energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean. It also holds out hope for crisis-ridden Cyprus and progress in resolving the decades-old inter-communal dispute on the island by opening the door to the unthinkable: energy cooperation between Turkey and the Greek-Cypriot dominated government in Nicosia.

Turkey expects its sporting ambitions to be boosted by the ongoing visit of a 14-member committee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to evaluate Istanbul’s bid as well as by world soccer body FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke for the U-20 World Cup draw. The tournament in late June and early July involves 52 matches in seven host cities and will immediately follow the 24-nation Mediterranean Games. The IOC last year rejected Qatar’s bid for the 2020 Olympics.

“International sports authorities will think that if Turkey is capable of hosting two great sporting events at the same time, it’s capable of host the Olympics,” sports minister Kilic told World Football Insider.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a soccer fan and former player, makes no bones about Turkey’s strategy that includes sports. “The whole world must know that Turkey has big ambitions, based on national will and a strong State,” he told Turkish diplomats almost a decade ago.

Qatar broaches sensitive demography through soccer

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:47:37 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

Qatar's soccer league, in a break with a reluctance among Gulf states to give their largely expatriate majorities a sense of belonging, is next month organizing the region's first cup for foreign workers' teams.

The cup, involving up to 24 teams formed by foreign workers primarily from Asia who account for the bulk of Qatar's 1.5 million expatriates, is part of an effort to improve working and living conditions as well as a bid to fend off international trade union demands to meet global labor standards.

Meeting those standards would involve abolishing the widely criticied sponsorship system common to various Gulf states that effectively gives employees full control of their employees; allowing the creation of independent trade unions; and adopting the principle of collective bargaining – changes Qatar until now has shown no inclination to entertain.

The cup further fits into Qatar's sports strategy that aims to make sports part of the country's national identity and constitutes a key pillar of its cultural and public diplomacy as well as its global projection of soft power as part of its foreign, defense and security policy.

International trade unions have threatened Qatar with a boycott of its hosting of the 2022 World Cup if it failed to adopt international labor standards. Human rights groups are meanwhile documenting individual cases of workers that they consider to be violations and in some case are intervening to improve their conditions. The government's tacit cooperation like the soccer cup and moves to improve worker safety and security as well as living conditions constitute small but not insignificant steps forward.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) charges that Qatar’s steps so far that also include drafting a charter of rights expected to be announced at the end of this month and a review of the much criticized recruitment system that often exposes workers to extortionary fees fall short of its promise to fully comply with international labor standards and are being implemented unilaterally rather than in consultation.

ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow last month said she was "disappointed to hear that the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee has publicly asserted that it has 'sought out concrete suggestions on best practice'. The ITUC, representing the worlds working people, has not been consulted nor seen the draft charter. The UN, IMF, World Bank and the G20 all see fit to discuss labour issues with the ITUC, and consult with worker representatives in formal and informal dialogues. Yet Qatar's Supreme Committee appears to ignore these accepted protocols in their failure to discuss the workers charter with the ITUC.”

While forward-looking Qataris acknowledge the need to improve workers' conditions as well as their country’s unsustainable demographic dilemma, the breaking point at this point in ongoing discussions with the ITUC is likely to be the demands for independent unions and collective bargaining.

A recent survey by the Permanent Population Committee (PPC) concluded that more than 80 percent of Qataris worry about the country’s dependence on foreign labor expected to increase with the import of more workers needed to complete $150 billion worth of infrastructure projects in advance of the World Cup.

The government this week said that it would establish an independent committee to protect the rights of private sector workers that would help them in disputes with their employers and offer legal aid in cases of work-related injuries or deaths. It said the 50-member committee would be populated by employers and employees, seven of which would be appointed as board members. The committee’s status would fall short of that of an independent union that could engage in collective bargaining.

The unions charged last month that the number of construction site injuries in Qatar was increasing and that workers in Doha’s Sports City stadium were eight times more likely to die in a fatal accident than construction workers in Britain. “They are reckoning that more than 1,000 workers were injured in falls last year; that’s very serious. The problem in Qatar is that the workers don’t have rights to be involved in any prevention measures, they don’t have training, they don’t have the equipment,” said Fiona Murie of the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI).

The ITUC said earlier that it would put a promise made last year by Qatar Labor Minister Sultan bin Hassan that his government would not penalize workers who formed their own unions to the test later this year. Critics caution that Mr. Bin Hassan’s oral pledge was not legally binding.

Progressive Qataris acknowledge privately that their country's demography is unsustainable with less than 300,000 nationals in an increasing foreign population that is currently estimated at 1.7 million. That demography has until now persuaded Qataris and other Gulf nationals to ensure that foreigners are continuously reminded that they are only temporary residents for the duration of their contract.

Those reminders included a reluctance of sports clubs to attract non-nationals as fans. Soccer stadiums in the region with the exception of Saudi Arabia are as a result largely empty. Qataris further admit that stadium attendance is also low because they perceive their country's clubs that are often owned by members of the royal family as the 'sheikh's clubs.' The foreign workers’ cuo, while not intended to reverse that policy constitutes a potential chink in its armor.

To increase stadium audiences and increase the local population's involvement with clubs, Qatar is looking at the possibility of transferring ownership to publicly held companies. The foreign workers’ cup is viewed by many as a first step towards creating a fan base for Qatari clubs among the country’s a non-Qatari population – an initiative long shied by clubs across the region because that could be a first step towards a greater attachment to their host countries.

Qatar University sociologist Kaltham Al Al-Ghanim recentlu called on the country’s sports clubs to set up branches in the Industrial Zone where many of foreign workers are housed “to channel their energy to productive avenues and hunt for sporting talent.” Ms. Al-Ghanim cautioned that if foreign workers were allowed to “live on the social fringes, the danger is they would take to illegal activities and emerge as a threat to social security.” She said the need to engage them socially was enhanced by the fact that many of them were unmarried or in Qatar without their families.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the Institute for Fan Culture and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Sport Science at the University of Würzburg, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.