The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Global Sporting Events: Battlegrounds for Human Rights

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sun, 27 May 2012 20:03:28 PDT

RSIS presents the following commentary Global Sporting Events: Battlegrounds for

Human Rights 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. 089/2012 dated 28 May 2012

Global Sporting Events:
Battlegrounds for Human Rights

By James M. Dorsey

Synopsis

With the London Olympics less than two months away major global sporting events

are increasingly proving to be Middle Eastern battlegrounds for human rights

rather than an expensive way for countries to boost their prestige and sense of

national pride.

Commentary

Flashy, high-profile events in the Middle East like the 2022 World Cup in Qatar,

Formula-1 in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi and tennis championships in Dubai have

become leverage points in the hands of international and local activists and

flashpoints of protest against autocratic regimes

To detractors of Gulf Arab regimes the tournaments are symbols of an effort to

retain power in part by squandering resources to pacify people with glittering

totems of unbalanced and often misconceived development as well as games.

That perception is reinforced by a sense that major economic benefactors of

sporting events are often members of the host’s ruling family

Currently the British Foreign Office is struggling whether to allow a Syrian general

close to embattled President Bashar al-Assad to attend the Olympics. General

Mowaffak Joumaa, head of Syria's Olympic committee, has signaled his intention

to be present in London in contrast to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who

said he was not coming because Britain had an undisclosed “problem” with his

presence. The general sees his attendance as a way to project the Assad regime

as an accepted member of the international community despite widespread

condemnation of its brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters and rebels.

Anti-government protests foiled a Bahraini attempt earlier this year to use

Formula-1 to portray the country as stable and harmonious following last

year’s hard-handed suppression of anti-government demonstrations. The attempt

backfired. Rather than focusing on happenings on the race track, international

attention turned instead to continued discontent and the government’s failure to

move ahead with meaningful political and economic reforms demanded by the Shiite

Muslim majority of the ruling Sunni majority.

Meanwhile, Gulf states are feeling the heat of the labour movement to change

foreign workers’ conditions, widely denounced as modern day slavery, as a result of

Qatar’s winning of the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

Confronting existential fears

Union pressure to change the labour system cuts to the core of the nature of Gulf

societies, whose dependence on foreign labour has turned the local citizenry into a

minority in countries like Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Beyond the commercial and economic advantages of a cheap pool of labour,

discussion of any kind of rights for non-locals raises the spectre of minority

Gulf populations no longer having countries that they control.

Gulf states are nonetheless seeking to avoid confrontation with the

International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 175 million

workers in 153 countries. The ITUC is threatening Qatar with a boycott campaign of

the 2022 World Cup if it fails to bring the conditions of up to one million primarily

Asian workers engaged in construction of stadiums and other huge infrastructure

projects in line with international standards. Qatar’s Labour Minister Nassir bin

Abdulla Alhumidi agreed recently to meet the ITUC for the first time at the

International Labour Organisation conference next month.

Saudi Arabia has followed Qatar in announcing that it was looking to replace

employer sponsorship of workers with a licensing system. Qatari Labour

Undersecretary Hussein Al-Mulla said earlier this month that the energy-rich

Gulf state would form “an elected and independent workers’ union to

protect workers’ rights regardless of their nationality.”

However the moves by the Gulf states amount to too little too late. They have

failed to appease the ITUC and have put world soccer body FIFA on the spot

because it does not want to be seen as endorsing the staging of the world’s

largest sporting event on the back of perceived slavery and violations of human

rights. Until Qatar’s agreement to meet the ITUC next month governments in the

Gulf had refused to engage in a dialogue with the trade unions and other

interest groups who are using the staging of major global sporting events to

push for changes that would bring the region into line with accepted international

practice.

They also seek to underwrite the calls for social justice echoing across North

Africa and West Asia from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf that have been in revolt

since December 2010. As a result, trade unions are moving ahead with plans for a

global campaign under the motto 'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights’,

to deprive Qatar of its right to host the 2022 World Cup if it failed to align its

labour legislation and workers’ condition with international standards.

It was not immediately clear whether Al Mulla’s announcement went further

than his proposal in early May to establish a Qatari-led labour committee that

would represent workers’ interests rather than a union able to engage in collective

bargaining; he had also proposed abolition of the sponsorship system that

would stop short of allowing foreign workers to freely change jobs.

Battle for labour rights

The unions’ sense of urgency stems from the death last year of some 200

Nepalese workers, allegedly as the result of harsh working conditions as well

as the fact that companies are developing their supply chains and costing

models for major infrastructure projects on the basis of what they describe as

unacceptable labour terms.

The battle for labour rights is one that could significantly alter the paradigm on

which international sporting bodies like FIFA and the International Olympic

Committee award hosting rights. A successful campaign for labour rights would

force such bodies to take workers’ conditions and by extension, adherence to

human rights, into account in the awarding of future tournaments. Qatar

learnt the price of reputational risk this week when the International Olympic

Committee rejected its bid for the 2020 Olympics

The campaign could also spark long overdue debate over the unsustainable

demographic structure of wealthy Gulf states that are home to generations of

Gulf-born descendants of immigrants with no rights, no secure prospects and

no real stake in the countries of their birth. As their number continues to

increase, educated and prosperous Gulf-born expatriates are beginning to

demand that they be given equal rights and caution that they no longer can be

bought off with cushy tax-free incomes and benefits.

The scion of a wealthy South Asian family in the Gulf, when asked whether he

minded that his Gulf born children would grow up with no rights and no

security, responded: “Absolutely, that is no longer acceptable. Gulf societies will

have to change by hook or by crook.”

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

Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He has been a journalist

covering the Middle East for over 30 years.

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Conservative Christians and Muslims campaign against Muslim women’s soccer headdress

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sun, 27 May 2012 08:22:11 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

Proponents of allowing observant Muslim female soccer players to wear a head dress and anti-autocratic protesters in the Middle East and North Africa are running up against similar conservative attempts to roll back their achievements. Ironically, they are both confronting alliances that at times cut across confessional boundaries.

While the battle to secure the goals of successful protests in post-revolt Egypt, Tunisia and Libya has largely moved from the street to the polling station and backroom horse trading, the campaign for a woman’s head dress on the pitch that meets security and safety standards is being waged in the secretive board rooms of authorities that govern association soccer.

While protesters in the Middle East and North Africa have learnt the hard way that toppling an autocrat is but the first step to ensuring greater freedom and social justice, pro-head dress campaigners are discovering that tentative board decisions are no more than tentative and open to challenge. That is even truer given world soccer body FIFA’s lack of transparency and accountability and its failure at times to avoid conflicts of interest.

FIFA Executive Committee member, medical doctor and head of the soccer body’s medical committee Michel D’Hooghe, in the latest twist in the campaign for observant Muslim female soccer player’s rights, has thrown into doubt a decision last March by the International Football Association Board (IFAB) that sets the rules for association soccer to temporarily allow the wearing of a head dress that meets safety and security criteria while various designs and models are tested. IFAB decided at the meeting that it would take its final decision in July based on the testing results.

Speaking at a news conference at last week’s FIFA congress in Budapest, Dr. D’Hooghe, in a sudden about face withdrew from his earlier backing of the IFAB decision saying that “we have received some samples and some doctors, including from the Muslim countries, said they (headscarves) represented a danger. When a girl is running at speed someone can hit the head scarf and that can lead to head lesions,” he said. Dr D’Hooghe suggested that further testing may be needed.

It was not immediately clear what prompted Dr. D’Hooghe’s turnaround and he did not respond to requests for comment.

Dr. D’Hooghe was a co-drafter and signatory of a statement that favoured allowing a head dress issued last October at a meeting in Amman of soccer executives, referees, players and this reporter convened by FIFA Vice President Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, a half-brother of Jordanian King Abdullah who campaigned for his soccer post on a platform that called for greater women’s rights.

The statement defined the hijab, a head dress that covers a woman’s hair, neck and ears in accordance with Muslim custom as a cultural rather than a religious issue. “The hijab issue has taken centre stage in football circles in recent years due to the increasing popularity of women’s football worldwide. It is a cultural issue that not only affects the game, but also impacts society and sports in general. It is not limited to Asia, but extends to other continents as well,” the statement said.

It called on FIFA to articulate a clear policy that “avoid(s) any form of discrimination or exclusion of football players due to cultural customs” and establishes the pitch as “a forum for cultural exchange rather than conflict.”

Dr. D’Hooghe, one of FIFA’s longest serving executive committee members, has since reportedly denied involvement in the drafting of the statement or having agreed to sign it.

Proponents of the head dress believe that Dr. D’Hooghe’s turnaround and the effort to backtrack on IFAB’s decision – employing medical arguments much like the English Football Association did almost a century ago when it banned women’s soccer – strengthens an uncoordinated scala of conservative anti-Muslim, sexist, feminist and conservative Muslim opposition to the head dress by disparate parties that each have different interests.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s most conservative Muslim nation, has privately argued against the IFAB decision because it undermines the kingdom’s rejection of women’s sports in general and soccer in particular. IFAB’s endorsement came at a moment that Saudi Arabia, the only nation unlikely to be represented by women at this summer’s Olympics, is under mounting pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as well as human rights and women’s groups to include women in its delegation in London.

Any delay in the definitive approval of the hijab by IFAB could have implications for teams competing FIFA Under-17 Women's World Cup in Baku in September – a move that would make Saudi Arabia appear less isolated.

FIFA insiders suggest that the soccer body’s president, Sepp Blatter, widely believed to be a conservative Catholic, is ambiguous towards the hijab. A former president in the 1970s of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders that campaigns against women swapping their suspender belts for pantyhose, Mr. Blatter famously said when asked in 2004 how to popularize soccer: "Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men – such as playing with a lighter ball. That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?"

Mr. Blatter advised gays in 2010 after Qatar, a country that bans homosexuality, was awarded the 2022 World Cup to “refrain from sexual activities” during the tournament.

A meeting of the 17-member FIFA medical committee in the wake of the IFAB decision focused on the threat of carotid sinus irritation - a condition to which men over 50 rather than women are susceptible - that a head dress could pose rather than on the danger of strangulation or heat emission, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.

Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Bruce D. Lindsay, a sports medical expert, refuted the threat in a letter to Prince Ali dated May 21.

“If vigorous carotid sinus massage were performed by a physician with knowledge of anatomy, it might cause minor slowing of the pulse or possibly a brief pause in a healthy young athlete; however, even this response would be blunted during the level of exertion expected during a football game… it is extremely unlikely that a reasonable degree of carotid pressure would have any effect. The risk of inducing loss of consciousness is negligible. There is no reason to believe that a light headscarf with breakaway attachments, such as Velcro or magnets, would exert effective occlusive pressure simultaneously on both carotid arteries such as occurs when a choke hold is used in Judo or hand to hand combat. In summary, there is no medical basis to prevent women from playing football with sports headscarfs that are designed for quick release in the event of inadvertent contact,” Dr. Lindsay wrote.

During the committee meeting, a female woman staffer was asked to put on one of the designer’s head dresses. Committee members, including three from the Arab world, pulled at the head dress, according to persons familiar with the proceedings, on the basis of which the committee declared it unsafe.

At a follow-up meeting called at Prince Ali’s request, designers of head dresses for soccer players and representatives of testing institutions briefed Dr. D’Hooghe and committee advisor Jiri Dvorak.

Dr. D’Hooghe advised FIFA on the basis of the two meetings that designs presented to the medical committee had been deemed unsafe.

“We were shocked that he could write a recommendation on that basis. We don’t know what prompted this or changed his mind,” said Michele Cox, a director of Prince Ali’s foundation, Asian Football Development Project, and a former member of FIFA’s women’s committee who attended the Amman meeting.

Prince Ali said in an interview that he has called on Dr. D’Hooghe and Mr. Dvorak to explain their reversal and rejection of the head dress to IFAB at its next meeting in July. Prince Ali said the hijab issue should be addressed with the same sincerity FIFA approaches other issues such as goal line technology and various designs should be rigorously tested on the pitch for a period of time. “Let them do it properly,” Prince Ali said.

The IFAB meeting is likely to be a litmus test of Mr. Blatter’s intentions. IFAB’s eight members -- four from FIFA as well as one each from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland – are appointed in advance of each of its meetings. Dr. D’Hooghe is often one of the FIFA representatives when IFAB discusses medical issues. FIFA has yet to announce who will represent it at IFAB’s next meeting and if Dr. D’Hooghe is delegated whether he would be attending as a decision making IFAB member or an expert witness.

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

Egypt election offers youth and soccer fans second chance

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sat, 26 May 2012 22:29:38 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

The Arab world’s first free and fair presidential elections pose a dilemma and a wake-up call for militant Egyptian soccer fans and revolutionary youth groups as the two surviving candidates seek to win their votes in a run-off next month in which a majority of the votes are up for grabs.

To many analysts, the results of the first round of the elections that produced ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi as the two surviving candidates, illustrate the marginalization of the revolutionaries and the soccer fans. Yet, a closer look shows that the result constitutes both a narrow defeat and an opportunity for those in Egypt yearning for real change rather than an immediate restoration of stability in the face of growing unemployment and rising street crime.

In a country that 15 months after Mr. Mubarak’s departure has grown protest weary and yearns for a return to economic growth and security, Messrs. Morsi and Shafiq’s victory reflects the fact that they represent the two Egyptian forces with an institutionalized political machinery and political experience. Mr. Shafiq moreover benefitted from a state-owned media that portrayed the youth and soccer fan groups as responsibility for the post-revolt instability and economic decline.

Nonetheless, the two candidates favored by the revolutionaries – independent Islamist Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh and Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi – together won 40 per cent of the vote. They failed to make it into the run-off because they split the vote for change. “The Mubarak camp understood that for them this first round was now or never. They had to win. We were divided in the spirit of democracy. We would have won had we decided to support one candidate,” said a militant soccer fan.

In a potentially explosive move, Mr. Sabahi has called for a partial vote recount, citing violations that he says could change the outcome given that he failed to make the cut for the run-off by a margin of only 700,000 votes. For their part, Messrs. Morsi and Shafiq secured 49 per cent of the vote in a first round in which 13 candidates stood for office. Mr. Morsi’s 25 per cent is a far cry from the 46 per cent the Brotherhood won in last year’s parliamentary election.

As a result, Messrs. Morsi and Shafiq focused barely 48 hours after the first round on seeking to convince youth groups and soccer fans that they stand for change rather than for preserving as much of Mr.

Mubarak’s repressive regime as possible or an accommodation that would secure the role, privileges and perks of Egypt’s transitory military rulers. Theirs are campaigns that are already shaping up ones that play on people’s fears – the fear of the restoration of the Mubarak regime versus the fear of Islamic rule. Nonetheless, swaying the youth and soccer fan groups is likely to prove a tall order, albeit one that may be easier for Mr. Morsi than for Mr. Shafiq.

For the youth groups and soccer fans who were at the core of last year’s mass protests that toppled Mr.

Mubarak and since then fought pitched street battles against security forces in a bid to force the military to return to its barracks Mr. Shafiq is unpalatable. Mr. Morsi, with youth groups and militant, highly politicized, well organized violence-prone, street battled-hardened soccer fan groups or ultras debating whether to rally behind the Muslim Brotherhood leader or boycott the next election, stands a reasonable chance of securing at least a segment of the revolutionary vote. Nonetheless, it remains for the youth and soccer fan groups a choice between two evils.

Mr. Shafiq, who was forced to resign shortly after the toppling of Mr. Mubarak defended the former president’s regime long after his departure and made criticism of the revolt a pillar of his first round election campaign, sought this weekend to assure the youth groups, soccer fans and undecided voters that he intended to realize the goals of their revolt. He vowed that there would be no "recreation of the old regime" and said he was “fed up with being labeled 'old regime’. All Egyptians are part of the old regime," he said.

That is unlikely to cut him much slack with youth groups and soccer fans who see him as co-responsible for the bloody street battles with security forces and pro-Mubarak thugs in which hundreds of people were killed in the walk-up to the ousting of the president. Mr. Shafiq was appointed prime minister by Mr. Mubarak four days after last year’s protests erupted in a last ditch attempt to squash the demonstrations and left office barely two weeks after the president was ousted.

Addressing the youth groups and soccer fans in an about face at a news conference this weekend, Mr. Shafiq said: "Your revolution has been hijacked. I pledge to bring its fruits between your hands. Egypt has changed and there will be no turning back the clock. We have had a glorious revolution. I pay tribute to this glorious revolution and pledge to be faithful to its call for justice and freedom."

If Mr. Shafiq’s legacy is one that he will find hard to live down, Mr. Morsi will have to alter the perception that youth and soccer fan groups believe that the Brotherhood’s repeated willingness to accommodate the military in the post-revolt phase, including its backing for last year’s March 19 referendum on constitutional amendments, helped derail their revolt aimed at achieving social justice and greater freedom.

That referendum among others contributed to a situation in which decisions of the five-member Elections Committee, headed by an obscure judge originally appointed by Mr. Mubarak to oversee his son’s succession and whose deputy is a judge believed to be close to the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, are final and cannot be appealed. It also has led to a president being elected without his powers being defined by a constitution that has yet to be drafted.

“Morsi has a lot to answer for. He nonetheless stands a fighting chance to convince at least some of us that he is the better of two evils. Shafiq will appeal to those who want a return to stability and an end to the revolution. But he won’t find any buyers among the youth and the ultras,” said one militant soccer fan who is a yet undecided whether he will vote in next month’s run-off.

JMD Webinar May 29 12:00 EST

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 28 May 2012 08:57:29 PDT

For those who get a warning screen or error message when logging in: This is the result of the US Department of Defense certificate. Just ignore the warning and click to continue. There is no threat to your computer

CKC Speaker Series: Mr. James Dorsey

Previous Post << >> Next Post

You are invited to the inaugural presentation of the CKC

Speaker Series.

Mr. James Dorsey will discuss "Soccer as an Engine of Change and Assertion

of Identity." This

seminar explores soccer’s unique role in the battle against the yoke of autocratic rule,

economic mismanagement and corruption as well as that of militant, highly politicized,

violence-prone soccer fans in this year’s popular revolts. The role of the militants

extends a tradition of soccer’s close association with politics across the Middle East and

North Africa that is evident until today inderbies in cities like Cairo, Amman,

Tehran and Riyadh.

Date: Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Start Time: 12:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

View (and listen) to the presentation using Defense Connect Online (DCO). You may enter

as a guest (no registration required). Once you click on

https://connect.dco.dod.mil/ckcspeakers and enter the "room," you should be

able to hear the speaker and see any visuals he/she presents. There may also be

downloads and links available. There is NO COST to you.

About This Speaker: James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological

University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, the author of the blog, The

Turbulent world of Middle East Soccer. He is an award winning journalist covering topics

such as ethnic and religious conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin

America for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, inical Times and The Christian

Science Monitor. James is regularly asked to conduct investigations in terrorism-related

legal cases. He most recently contributed a chapter to a book on the world after the death

of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden

Views of participants and/or speakers involved in the CKC Speaker Series, unless otherwise

noted, are their own and should not be interpreted as official US Government/Military policy

or positions.

Qatari Olympic women athletes spotlight Wahhabi schism

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sat, 26 May 2012 01:18:10 PDT

Qatari sprinter Noor al-Malki (Source: insidethegames.biz)

By James M. Dorsey

The question for Qatari sprinter Noor al-Malki is not whether she will be part of the first group of Qatari women to ever compete in a global sports tournament at the 2012 London Olympics but how she will handle the fact that the competition will take place during Ramadan.

The question whether Ms. Al-Malki would be able to compete was resolved when Qatar, alongside Saudi Arabia and Brunei the only nation never to have been represented by women in a global sporting event, decided last year to allow women to compete in the London Olympics.

The decision was the result of Qatar’s concerted effort to become a sports power and mounting international pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), not to allow countries to compete that discriminate against athletes on the basis of gender.

It saved Qatar, already threatened with a global trade union campaign against its hosting of the 2022 World Cup because of the conditions under which it employs foreign labour, from becoming the target of yet another attack on its reputation, already dented by controversy over its successful campaign to win the right to host the World Cup. The bruising debate over the soccer tournament bid contributed to the International Olympic Committee’s decision to eliminate Qatar as a candidate for the 2020 Olympics.

The debate also highlights the major divide among Wahhabis, followers of 18th century puritan warrior priest Mohammed Abdul Wahhab, with Saudi Arabia, the only other country besides Qatar with a majority Wahhabi population, and the IOC still struggling barely two months before the opening of the London Olympics to find a formula that would circumvent the kingdom’s conservative opposition to women’s participation.

A Human Rights Watch report released in February, called on Saudi Arabia to protect women's equal right to sports and urged the IOC to live up to its charter, which prohibits discrimination, or face a ban similar to that imposed on Afghanistan in 1999 partly for its exclusion of female athletes.

For Ms. Al-Malki, the Qatari decision means that she is grappling beyond wanting to perform at the London Olympics with the requirement to fast during the 30 days of Ramadan during which the tournament will be held. If the decision to allow women to compete may have been difficult because of mounting conservative opposition to Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani’s liberal policies designed to position his tiny gas-rich Gulf state on the world map, resolving the issue of Ramadan coinciding with the Olympics is easy.

While Islamic law does not grant athletes dispensation from fasting during Ramadan, it does allow travellers to break the fast during their journey provided they catch up once they return home. Ms. Al-Malki will be travelling during the Olympics.

That is a luxurious position to be in compared to her Saudi counterparts who still do not know whether they will be going to London. Initial Saudi suggestions that the kingdom would for the first time send female athletes to the Olympics were dashed when Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud declared in April that “female sports activity has not existed (in the kingdom) and there is no move thereto in this regard. At present, we are not embracing any female Saudi participation in the Olympics or other international championships.”

The IOC has rejected Saudi suggestions that Saudi women living abroad be allowed to compete under the Olympic flag rather than as part of the official Saudi delegation.

"It's not an easy situation. There is a commitment. We're working steadily with them to find a good solution,” conceded IOC President Jacques Rogge at a recent news conference. "We are continuing to discuss with them, and the athletes are trying (to qualify). We would hope they will qualify in due time for the games."

With few Saudi women athletes likely to qualify for the Olympics, the IOC has gone out of its way to encourage participation by suggesting that they would be exempted from qualifying standards and granted entry under special circumstances.

Saudi women participation appears however increasingly unlikely with conservative opposition making it difficult for the government to back down at a time that it is rallying the wagons to shield itself against the wave of anti-government protests in the Middle East and North Africa that has already sparked increased political activism and mobilisation in the kingdom. At his news conference, Mr. Rogge declined to discuss possible penalties if the kingdom refused to include women in its Olympic team.

The Saudi government has recently employed the clergy to condemn the protests that have already toppled the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and brought Syria to the brink of civil war, which, according to some, are the result of the mingling of the sexes in sports.

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh denounced the protests earlier this month as sinful. "The schism, instability, the malfunctioning of security and the breakdown of unity that Islamic countries are facing these days is a result of the sins of the public and their transgressions," Sheikh Abdulaziz said.

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

Islamistes-football, le match qui secoue l'Afrique (JMD on France TV)

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:56:54 PDT

Islamistes-football, le match qui secoue l'Afrique

Publié le 25/05/2012 | 11:15 , mis à jour le 25/05/2012 | 11:15

Des enfants jouent au foot devant une mosquée, à Niamey (Niger), le 14 septembre 2011.

(SIA KAMBOU / AFP)

Barcelone-Chelsea, demi-finale de la Ligue des champions, le 24 avril : dans le monde entier, on se souvient de l'exploit du club anglais. Sauf à Jos, dans le nord du Nigeria, où l'on se rappelle surtout l'attentat dans un café diffusant le match, qui a fait un mort et neuf blessés. Depuis, les bars de la ville sont soumis à un couvre-feu, à cause de la menace islamiste. Un condensé de la situation en Afrique où le ballon rond représente tout à la fois le sport-roi sans conteste et un casse-tête pour les islamistes. Considéré en même temps comme un "acte satanique" en Somalie, un "jeu d'infidèles" au Nigeria ou encore un tabou pour Al-Qaïda au Maghreb islamique (Aqmi), il fait office de gage de respectabilité pour les Frères musulmans en Egypte.

• En Somalie, les enfants à la guerre

En 2006, les shebabs, les rebelles islamistes qui contrôlent une grande partie du pays, ont qualifié ce sport "d'acte satanique". Une condamnation qui n'en est pas restée au stade des mots : au début du Mondial 2010, des Somaliens qui s'étaient réunis dans une maison pour regarder volets fermés et sans le son (lien en anglais) un Allemagne-Australie ont été massacrés. Un mois plus tard, en Ouganda, un bar et une discothèque qui diffusaient la finale Pays-Bas-Espagne ont été pris pris pour cible.

Un restaurant de Kampala (Ouganda) visé par un attentat organisé par les islamistes somaliens, le 12 juillet 2010.

(REUTERS)

Si les fans sont visés, les joueurs ne sont pas épargnés. Un kamikaze a tué une étoile montante du foot somalien en 2011, relate la BBC (lien en anglais). En Somalie, "le foot est une distraction par rapport à l'objectif unique qu'est le djihad, explique Hanna Ouaknine, spécialiste des shebabs. Deux ados ont été mis à mort pour avoir regardé un match. S'ils sont surpris à jouer au foot, les enfants sont punis et battus. Car pour les shebabs, les enfants sont appelés à devenir très jeunes des enfants-soldats." Et ça n'est guère mieux dans le camp d'en face : le gouvernement de transition utilise aussi des enfants comme chair à canon, relate ainsi Le Monde.fr.

Les shebabs, qui veulent créer un émirat islamique sur le modèle de ce qu'ont fait les talibans en Afghanistan, n'ont pas banni que le foot : "Ils ont interdit les cloches dans les écoles, sous prétexte qu'elles rappelaient les églises catholiques, poursuit Hanna Ouaknine. Ils ont aussi interdit l'anglais, ce qui a posé problème car la Somalie reprenait les programmes scolaires du Kenya, rédigés en anglais. Du coup, ils ont interdit l'école et l'ont remplacée par des cours sur le Coran et le maniement des armes..." Sans ballon rond à la récré, bien entendu.

• Au Nigeria, Boko Haram en lutte contre les survêts

Les membres de la secte terroriste Boko Haram se surnomment eux-mêmes les "talibans du Nigeria". Dans leur esprit, il ne peut y avoir qu'un seul opium du peuple. "Le foot est vu comme un jeu pratiqué par les infidèles, qui distrait les gens de leur devoir religieux, explique James M. Dorsey, universitaire spécialiste du football au Moyen-Orient et auteur du blog The Turbulent World of Middle-East Soccer. Et même les vêtements de sport sont vus comme contraires à l'islam."

Dans le nord du pays, les islamistes de Boko Haram ont attaqué des bars et des "viewing centers", des salles communes équipées d'une télé. Les journées de championnat de Premier League anglaise sont classées à hauts risques. La ville de Jos, sur le terrain d'action de Boko Haram, a dû interdire début mai la diffusion du footdans les cafés depuis le Chelsea-Barcelone cible d'un attentat. Dommage collatéral : la fédération nigériane a décidé de déplacer une rencontre de l'équipe nationale, prévue dans une grande ville du nord, dans le sud du pays. Officiellement, rien à voir avec la menace Boko Haram (lien en anglais). Officieusement, en revanche...

Un supporter nigérian écoute un match de l'équipe nationale pendant la Coupe du monde 2002 dans les rues de Lagos, la capitale, le 12 juin 2002.

(PIUS UTOMI EKPEI / AFP)

La secte ne prend pas un risque démesuré en s'attaquant au football, sport n°1 en Afrique et au Nigeria. Les stars viennent du sud du pays (16 des 23 joueurs retenus au Mondial 2010, par exemple), les grands clubs du championnnat se situent dans cette partie du pays... tandis que le fief de Boko Haram, et la population qui compte à ses yeux, est au nord.

• Au Mali, Ansar Dine sur la même ligne

Le groupe islamiste Ansar Dine, qui contrôle une partie du nord du pays, pratique le même programme "culturel" que Boko Haram et les shebabs. Les télévisions utilisées pour regarder des matchs ou jouer à des jeux vidéo ? Détruites. Pratiquer le foot ? C'est interdit. Les habitants de la ville de Gao, tombée aux mains de ces rebelles, ont manifesté pour le retour de leurs droits et ont été reçus par les nouveaux maîtres de la ville avec des coups de feu.

"Les interdictions sociales sont énoncées par des groupes dont le projet politique est de régenter la vie des gens. Tracer des lignes rouges, c'est un calcul politique classique des groupes terroristes. Ils savent tout de suite qui est avec eux, et contre eux",analyse Yves Trotignon, spécialiste du terrorisme au cabinet Risk&Co.

• Aqmi se désintéresse du ballon rond

Il y a deux raisons qui expliquent le silence d'Al-Qaïda au Maghreb islamique (Aqmi), le groupe phare de l'islamisme radical en Afrique, sur le football. "Interdire le foot est révélateur d'une forme de coupure avec la jeunesse. Or, qui constitue les troupes d'Aqmi ? Des jeunes, souvent en rupture scolaire, dont la seule distraction est de taper dans un ballon", constate Yves Trotignon. Qui poursuit : "Et contrairement à Boko Haram ou aux shebabs, Aqmi [dont le noyau dur, qui se situe en Algérie, est l'héritier des groupes terroristes des années 90] est un groupe terroriste qui sait qu'il n'arrivera pas à renverser le régime algérien. Donc il n'a pas besoin de chercher à contrôler la société."

En vingt ans de jihad en Algérie, il n'y a pratiquement jamais eu d'attentat contre un match de foot.

• Un Frères musulmans FC a bien failli exister

Contrairement aux shebabs, à Boko Haram et à Aqmi, les Frères musulmans veulent le pouvoir par les urnes en Egypte. Et pas se contenter d'un rôle d'éternel opposant. "Pour les Frères musulmans, le foot est considéré comme un moyen de faire de l'entrisme social, avec des équipes communautaires, explique Yves Trotignon. J'ai vu des foules plus impressionnantes pour la reprise du championnat égyptien que lors des manifestations de la place Tahrir. Ce serait une erreur politique, un handicap, que de s'attaquer au football en Egypte."

Le parti politique des Frères musulmans organise des meetings pour l'élection présidentielle dans des stades de foot, comme ici à Zagazig, à 90 km du Caire (Egypte), le 23 avril 2012.

(KHALED DESOUKI / AFP)

L'organisation islamiste organise des meetings dans des stades, ce qui serait impensable en Somalie. "Les Frères musulmans ont même envisagé de créer une équipe de foot, mais ils y ont renoncé", souligne James M. Dorsey. La nouvelle avait provoqué l'ironie des Egyptiens, qui attendaient avec impatience le match contre le FC Police (la police détient effectivement un club, Ittihad El-Shorta). Des Egyptiens curieux aussi d'assister à l'interprétation des règles façon Frères musulmans et qui en blaguaient déjà : "Tout joueur qui tire la barbe de son adversaire sera sanctionné d'un carton jaune", cite Al Arabya (lien en anglais). Mais depuis, le parti qu'ont fondé les Frères musulmans a gagné les élections législatives. "Les Frères musulmans se sont rendu compte que ce dont avait besoin le pays, c'était surtout un nettoyage de la corruption des années Moubarak dans les institutions sportives", conclut James M. Dorsey.

Moralité : dis-moi ce que veut ton groupe islamiste, je te dirais s'il interdit le football ou pas. "C'est trompeur de penser que l'islamisme est un bloc cohérent, uni, sans aspérité. Sa relation au football en est une illustration", résume Yves Trotignon.

Pierre Godon

Syrian soccer star symbolizes games importance in protests

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:12:54 PDT

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

Syrian soccer star symbolizes games importance in protests

James M. Dorsey

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

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

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

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

Syrias national soccer teams have flagrantly set rules aside in recent months in their line-ups to ensure success on the pitch in the hope that success on the soccer pitch would rub off on the regime. World soccer body FIFA in September 2011 barred Syria from competing for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil after the countrys national team fielded an ineligible player in in a qualifying match against Tajikistan.[iv] Lebanon accused Syria in November of fielding six players in an Under-19 Asian Football Championship qualifier whose ages had been falsified to qualify them for the team.[v]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[viii] Idem page 7

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

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

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:04:01 PDT

Dear All,

Those interested in participating in the Webinar, please register at

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

Hope to meet you there.

Best,

James

AFC puts Iran on the spot on women’s rights

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:11:28 PDT

(Source: BBC)

By James M. Dorsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manchester City victory threatens to strengthen Middle Eastern autocrats

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sat, 19 May 2012 02:11:55 PDT

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

By James M. Dorsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Islamist power politics threaten clean-up of Turkish soccer

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Thu, 10 May 2012 23:50:40 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saudi imams warn against mixing of sports, politics and protest

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 07 May 2012 00:08:12 PDT

Saudi Grand Mufti: Protesters are sinful

By James M. Dorsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:21:54 PDT

Cairo's Al Abbasiya battlefield (Source: MSNBC)

By James M. Dorsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:39:05 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expert (JMD): Iran and Six powers have common interests in extending talks

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:41:36 PDT

Expert: Iran and Six powers have common interests in extending talks

27 April 2012, 12:51 (GMT+05:00)

Azerbaijan, Baku, April 27 / Trend S.Isayev/

In a strange way, Iran and the United States as well as the other participants have a common interest in extending the talks, Senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, James M. Dorsey told Trend.

Dorsey explained that as long as the six-party talks are ongoing, it is difficult for Israel to launch a strike against Iran.

Baghdad is getting ready to host the next round of "Iran-Six powers" nuclear negotiations on May 23. The prior meeting of the parties was hosted in Turkey's Istanbul on April 14.

Speaking about the fact that Iran would consider a Russian proposal to halt the expansion of its nuclear program in order to avert new sanctions, Dorsey believes it can be possible.

"If Iran feels that the proposal strengthens its positions and weakens the impact of the EU sanctions, will certainly consider it. Acceptance of the proposal would not constitute a pre-condition," he noted.

Iran is considering a Russian proposal to halt the expansion of its nuclear program in order to avert new sanctions, the country's envoy to Moscow Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi said recently.

Russian plan, announced by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov last week, would allow Iran to avoid a European Union ban on its crude that is scheduled to come into force in July.

Earlier this month, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has stressed that Tehran will not accept any preconditions for the negotiations between the Islamic Republic and the world's six major powers (P5+1), expressing hope that a new round of talks would yield win-win results.

Later Salehi outlined his country's message in an interview with ISNA, saying that "if the West wants to build trust, it should begin with sanctions, because it can help speed up the talks reaching a solution".

Qatar to legalize trade union as Saudi Arabia pushes closer Gulf cooperation

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Tue, 01 May 2012 13:25:03 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

Qatar, in a bid to fend off an international trade union campaign against its hosting of the 2022 World Cup, is taking cautious steps to meet demands backed by world soccer body FIFA, to allow the establishment of the emirate’s first trade union and to scrap its controversial system of sponsorship of foreign labour condemned by human rights groups as modern day slavery.

The Qatari concessions come as the Gulf state in which foreigners account for a majority of the population envisions recruiting up to one million overseas workers for massive infrastructure projects. The projects will all benefit the World Cup but many, including a new airport, expansion of the transport system and hotel and residential compounds were on the drawing board irrespective of the sports tournament.

The Qatari decision increases pressure on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that still ban unions to follow suit. Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait have all legalized trade unions but Bahrain is the only other Gulf state to have abolished its foreign labour sponsorship system.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE are however likely to follow Qatar’s example any time soon. Qatar’s concession to FIFA and the international trade unions comes at a time that Saudi Arabia is cajoling fellow GCC states into moving from a council to a union to bolster the ability of the conservative Gulf monarchies to confront Iran and prevent the Arab uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa from further encroaching on their fiefdoms.

Persistent reports suggest that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the first Gulf state to have virtually run out of oil that last year brutally squashed a popular revolt with the assistance of the kingdom and the UAE, will declare a union at a GCC summit scheduled to be held in Riyadh later this month.

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, in a speech this week to a GCC youth conference delivered on his behalf by his deputy cautioned that "cooperation and coordination between the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in its current format may not be enough to confront the existing and coming challenges, which require developing Gulf action into an acceptable federal format. The Gulf union, when it is realized, God willing, will yield great benefits for its peoples, such as in foreign policy with the presence of a supreme Gulf committee coordinating foreign policy decisions that reorders group priorities and realizes group interests," he said.

The Riyadh summit is expected to discuss the outline of a union first proposed by Saudi King Abdullah last December. The Saudis, fearful that Bahrain’s rebellious Shiite Muslim majority could spark further unrest in their predominantly Shiite, restive, oil-rich Eastern Province, envision a GCC political union in which they would be the major power that would adopt joint foreign and defence policies.

Bahraini security forces clash almost daily with Shiite protesters despite last year’s crackdown which pushed demonstrators out of the island capital’s main square. Bahraini opposition forces fear that a union with the kingdom will further strengthen hardliners in the ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa family and open the door to a permanent presence of Saudi troops on the island.

A Gulf union would also bolster royal resistance in some states like the UAE to political liberalization and greater rights as embodied in the Qatari decision to legalize trade unions. Qatar has consistently charted its own course that has put it at odds with the Saudis. Qatar has backed in various countries in revolt the Muslim Brotherhood, a group deeply distrusted by the kingdom, while the Saudis have supported the more conservative Salafis.

GCC states have also failed to achieve unanimity on a wide range of other issues including monetary union, the building of a causeway linking Qatar and Bahrain and security front information sharing as well as the creation of a central command. The failure to cooperate more closely on security prompted by mutual distrust as well as lack of confidence in US reliability has led to the recent scuppering of the installation of a joint missile shield as a defence against Iran.

For its part, Qatar, by hosting the 2022 World Cup, the world’s largest sporting event, and bidding for various other big ticket tournaments has opened itself to international scrutiny as well as demands from various groups to liberalize so that it as a global hub can accommodate issues such as alcohol and sexual diversity that go against the region’s conservative grain. A GCC political union could complicate the Qatari balancing act.

The Qatari union concession came as a six-month ultimatum by the International Trade Union Confederations (ITUC) that the Gulf state legalize unions and ensure that labour conditions meet international standards came to an end. The ITUC, which represents 175 million workers in 153 countries, had threatened Qatar with a global campaign that would denounce under the slogan, 'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights,' the Gulf state as a slave driver.

The ITUC had charged earlier in a report that the working conditions of migrant workers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were "inhuman." Entitled ‘Hidden faces of the Gulf miracle,’ the multi-media report demanded that Qatar prove that migrant workers building infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup were not subject to inhuman conditions.

Qatari media quoted Labour Undersecretary Hussain Al Mulla as saying that the country’s emir was considering the plan to establish an independent Qatari-led labour committee to represent workers’ interests and an abolition of the sponsorship system that would stop short of allowing foreigners to freely change jobs.

The authorities have recently abandoned the requirement that foreign workers surrender their passports to their Qatari employers. Mr. Al Mulla said the plan had already been endorsed by the Qatari prime minister. It was not immediately clear if the Qatari moves would satisfy the ITUC.

“We wanted to set up the labour committee to help employees and lift off the pressure we and other Gulf countries have been under from several organisations. We are often asked about the non-existence of labour unions to defend labourers in Qatar. We had a labour committee during the days of oil companies. However, the situation in the Gulf is somewhat different because there are few Qataris who are labourers,” Mr. Al Mulla said. He said foreigners would have the right to vote in the committee but would not be able to become board members.

Mounting Israeli soccer violence reflects fading hope in Palestinian peace

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:26:06 PDT

Israeli soccer violence spiralling out of control

By James M. Dorsey

A stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a dwindling number of Palestinians participating in non-governmental reconciliation efforts and increased racism in Israeli soccer constitute two sides of the same coin: fading hope and interest in peace, hardening battle lines and a resurgence of racism on both sides of the divide.

Yet, the measures being discussed to curb mounting violence on and off the pitch threaten to reduce political and social issues to a problem of law enforcement as the heads of Israel’s 16 premier league club meet to debate how to cope with a situation that is spiralling out of control. The solution to Israel’s soccer violence no doubt involves law enforcement, but a crackdown and harsher penalties are unlikely to restore faith in future Israeli-Palestinian coexistence or mitigate the brutalizing effect on Israeli society of 45 years of occupation of Palestinian land.

Granted, the heads of Israel’s top soccer clubs lack the power to address the larger political and social issues. Their inability to influence political and security decisions has become evident over the past year in what Palestinian soccer officials say is the inability of Israeli sports officials to even ease the restrictions on travel imposed on Palestinian athletes in the West Bank and Gaza. A hotline established last year between the Israeli and Palestinian Olympic committees to tackle such issues has so far produced little results.

"The problem is the Israeli committee is not the relevant authority for the movement of people and equipment. We are trying, but I don't want to embarrass anyone," said Jibril Rajoub, who heads both the Palestinian Football Association and Olympic Committee, in an interview last year.

Nonetheless, there are things the Israeli soccer federation can do to counter an environment of increased polarisation and racially motivated violence in the absence of political will among both Israeli and Palestinian political elites to definitively tackle big ticket issues involved in peace such as settlements, refugees, borders and the future of Jerusalem.

The Israeli Football Association (IFA) and the heads of soccer clubs need to come to grips with two types of albeit inter-related violence: racially-motivated aggression against Palestinians and those that empathise with their cause and violence involving only Jewish players and fans. Their response to inter-Jewish violence is clear.

"The first thing to do is significantly increase the punishments. I have been talking about this for more than 20 years, and that was a time football was much more violent," the Associated Press quoted Maccabi Haifa Chairman Jacob Shahar as saying.

Less clear is their response to mounting Israeli-Palestinian soccer tension. " The field has become a battleground, involving not only fans but also players, coaches, officials ... it is impossible to stay silent," Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat told a recent press conference after being instructed by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to put an end to the violence.

Messrs. Livnat and Shahar were speaking after a series of incidents in which players and fans clashed on the pitch and notoriously racist supporters of Beitar Jerusalem, a club historically linked to Israel’s right-wing attacked Palestinian shoppers and workers in a mall as well as later a Jewish woman who protest against their racist attitudes. Beitar Jerusalem is the only Israeli club that has never hired a Palestinian player, who are among Israel’s highest scorers. In response to Beitar Jerusalem chants of ‘Death to the Arabs,’ Palestinian supporters of Israeli Palestinian clubs like Bnei Sakhnin have begun singing ‘Death to the Jews.’

Bnei Sakhnin supports chant 'Death to the Jews'

Writing in Soccer & Society, Israeli sports scholar Amir Ben-Porat warned already four years ago that “the football stadium has become an arena for protest: political, ethnic, nationalism, etc… ‘Death to the Arabs’ has thus become common chant in football stadiums… Many Israelis consider the Israeli Arabs (Palestinians) to be ‘Conditional Strangers,’ that is temporary citizens… Contrary to conventional expectations, these fans are not unsophisticated rowdies, but middle-class political-ideological right-wingers, whose rejection of Arab football players on their team is based on a definite conception of Israel as a Jewish (Zionist) state,” Mr. Ben-Porat wrote.

The IFA, despite being the only soccer body in the Middle East to have launched a campaign against racism, has allowed what Mr. Ben-Porat describes as ‘permissive territory’ that in which “some deviant behaviours are tolerated (such as using profanities) as long as definite rules are followed (that is, no racist chants)” to get out of hand.

The IFA has signalled a lack of sincerity by failing to impose its anti-racism rule by cracking down as hard on racism as it intends to do on what amounts to hooliganism. Forcing Beitar Jerusalem to drop its ban on Palestinian players, a violation of Israeli equal opportunity laws, and severely penalizing it for its fan behaviour rather than simply giving the club a slap on its knuckles while also taking Bnei Sakhnin to task for the behaviour of its fans would go a long way to tackling the issue of mounting racism on the pitch.

It would also send a signal to Israelis and Palestinians at a time that Palestinians are increasingly less inclined to engage with Israelis in the belief that reconciliation efforts are senseless as long as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is stalemated. An IFA crackdown on racism would to some degree counter Palestinian claims that there is no partner in Israel amidst the violence employed by Israeli security forces against protesters on the West Bank and anti-Palestinian statements by Israel’s ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Israeli peace activists warn that waning Palestinian interest in people-to-people encounters with Israelis threaten to undermine what is left of Israel’s already weakened peace movement. While peace may be beyond the IFA’s purview, a serious crackdown on racism would not only serve to counter what is an increasingly ugly trend in Israeli society but like the hotline signal that there are Israeli institutions that are willing to play their part.

JMD on ABC: Bahrain F1 + Egypt

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:34:09 PDT

Conflicting visions of society spark Israeli and Egyptian soccer violence

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:28:31 PDT

Israeli soccer violence - reflection of a brutalized society

By James M. Dorsey

Fan violence has sparked match cancellations on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide.

The stakes for Egyptian and Israeli soccer fans are high – the nature of the society they want to live in and in some cases the very existence of some of their financially troubled clubs – even if the two groups are likely to agree on little more than their passion for the game.

For militant Egyptian soccer fans the battle is about securing the goals of last year’s popular uprising that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, ending military rule and saving clubs from financial ruin as a result of initial suspension and ultimate cancellation of Egypt’s top two tournaments. A majority of Egyptian fans, who favor a more pro-Palestinian Egyptian foreign policy, have little empathy for their Israeli counterparts whom they see as thugs, many of whom are racists with their anti-Arab and anti-Muslim chants attitudes.

The Egyptian view is not unfounded even if leaders of the Egyptian ultras – militant, highly politicized, street battle-hardened fan groups modeled on similar organizations in Italy and Serbia – are struggling to keep their rank and file whose cry for dignity is often expressed in clashes with security forces under control.

Israeli soccer brawls over the past month ranged from pure hooliganism and violent clashes between players to attacks on Palestinians and more moderate Jews outside the confines of the stadium. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday called for a crackdown on violence on the soccer field, after fighting broke out on Friday between players of Hapoel Ramat Gan and Bnei Lod. "If there's violence, there will not be soccer. We must uproot this violence in order to return to games that spectators can enjoy, myself among them,” Mr. Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting according to The Jerusalem Post.

The incident in Ramat Gan followed thousands of Hapoel Tel Aviv fans rioting on the pitch after their team lost to Maccabi Tel Aviv. A few days later, two fans of Maccabi Petach Tikvah attempted to attack a referee. In late March a Hapoel Haifa player was hospitalized after being headbutted by a Maccabi Petach Tikvah coach and then kicked in the head by a team associate. The two most onerous incidents involved militant anti-Arab fans of financially troubled Beitar Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu’s notorious club, in which supporters first attacked Palestinian workers and shoppers in a Jerusalem mall and later a Jewish woman who protested against their racist attitude. Police were severely criticized for failing to intervene in the mall attack.

The situation in nationalist Israel and post-Egypt could not be more different the laxity of the Israeli police notwithstanding. Yet, they are similar when it comes to the lack of political will on both sides of the Egyptian-Israeli divide to tackle soccer violence as well as governments’ failure to create an environment in which politically motivated violence is viewed as unacceptable. To be sure, the Israeli Football Association (IFA) has responded firmly to player violence but despite being the only soccer body in the Middle East and North Africa to have launched an anti-racist campaign has been lenient in meting out punishments for politically motivated violence.

The IFA last month significantly reduced Beitar's punishment for soccer violence from three home games out of town and one behind partly closed doors to on the grounds that the measure would not change fan behavior. With the worst disciplinary record in Israel’s Premier League, Beitar has faced since 2005 more than 20 hearings and has received various punishments, including point deductions, fines and matches behind closed doors because of its fans’ racism.

Beitar’s matches often resemble a Middle Eastern battlefield. It’s mostly Sephardic fans of Middle Eastern and North African origin, revel in their status as the bad boys of Israeli soccer. Their dislike of Ashkenazi Jews of East European extraction rivals their disdain for Palestinians. Supported by Israeli right wing leaders, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist youth movement. Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British mandate authorities. Beitar is Israel’s only leading club never to have signed an Israeli Palestinian player because of fan pressure despite the fact that Palestinians are among the country’s top players.

By contrast, Egyptian teams already reeling from the cancellation of the Premier League in February following the death of 74 fans in a brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said fear financial disaster as a result of Sunday’s looming annulment of the Egypt Cup. The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) has appealed to the country’s military rulers, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), to step in after a refusal by the interior ministry, which controls the police and the security forces. The refusal was prompted by the security forces’ reluctance to engage with deeply hostile, militant soccer fans because clashes would further damage their already tarnished image as the executioners of the former Mubarak regime and the military.

The military and the police have done little in the 14 months since Mubarak’s departure to polish the image of the security forces by projecting a willingness to reform the police, holding officers accountable for their actions and being seen to investigate the Port Said incident that allows the chips to fall where they fall. The trial against 61, people including fans and nine security officials, accused of responsibility for Port Said was suspended at its opening last week after disruptions by family and friends of the dead.

Police reform is a tough pill to swallow for the Egyptian military. The military “find themselves in a classic Catch-22 situation with regards to police reform. If they listen to the aspirations of the people and fully reform the police, they lose a valuable tool of state control. Should reform take place, where would the buck stop? Real reform in state institutions might later have personal ramifications for SCAF itself, as Egyptians are already calling for civilian control over the military, which may lead to investigations of the military junta down the line. On the other hand, should SCAF choose not to fully reform the police, they risk continued clashes with the people, who no longer fear the police - and consider it one of the last remaining bastions of the old regime,” said Adel Abdel Ghafar, a PhD scholar at the Australian National University and scion of a prominent Egyptian soccer figure, writing on Al Jazeera.com.

Granted, the Israeli police does not have the problems of their Egyptian counterpart. But if the stakes in Egypt are a more transparent, more accountable society, in Israel they are the very democracy that the Jewish state prides itself on, which increasingly is less based on tolerance and respect for diverging opinions and ethnic and religious minorities and ever more so on intolerance and the brutalizing effects of 45 years of occupation of Palestinian lands.

Violence in Israel is not limited to the soccer pitch. A senior Israeli military officer was celebrated by Israel’s right wing after attacking on camera a bicycle protester on the West Bank on camera in the same week as the Ramat Gan incident. Youths on a Tel Aviv beach taunted and abused a mentally disturbed woman inviting her to have sex with them.

The battles in Egypt and Israel are fought on multiple battlefields of which soccer is an important one. That puts the onus not only on governments but also on soccer associations, club management and last but not least world soccer body FIFA, which so far for all practical matters has looked the other way by at best issuing lame protests that Israelis and Egyptians can ignore because there is no price to pay.

With an inept military more concerned about its perks than the country’s future in charge in Egypt and an Israeli government that includes many Beitar Jerusalem supporters, little can be expected beyond at best demands for law enforcement from the highest authority in the country.

That means that the national soccer federations, FIFA and the regional associations, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and the Confederation of African Football (CAF), more than ever need to step up to the plate.

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

Soccer meets politics at Doha’s Mohammed Abdul Wahhab Mosque (Play the Game)_

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:37:26 PDT

Qatar’s increasing engagement in European soccer and international sport is just

one leg in the small Gulf State’s high-risk attempts to position itself as a global player

‘on the right side of history’. But the accompanying social and political changes also

spark local opposition in a conservative culture, James M. Dorsey writes in his second

analysis on the Gulf State’s growing influence in international sport.

By James M. Dorsey

Play the Game

20 April 2012

Print version

Mohammed Abdul Wahhab Mosque in Doha. Photo: Omar Chatriwala/Flickr

A multi-domed, sand-coloured, architectural marvel, Doha’s newest and biggest

mosque, symbolizes both Qatar’s bold storm into the 21st century and the pitfalls

that that march entails. It’s not the mosque itself that raises eyebrows but its

naming after an 18th century warrior priest, Sheikh Mohammed Abdul Wahhab,

the founder of Islam’s most puritan sect

Ironically, the mosque owes its naming to the debate Qatar’s winning of the right to

host the 2022 World Cup has sparked. It is a debate that goes to the heart of the

energy-rich Gulf state’s identity and the place its ruler, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al

Thani, wants to carve out for his tiny city-state.

The World Cup constitutes a centrepiece of a strategy that seeks to reshape the

identity of the world’s only state outside of Saudi Arabia that adheres to

Wahhabism, one of Islam’s most austere and restrictive interpretations of Islam;

position Qatar as a global player capable of punching above its weight; create

opportunities to leverage its enormous wealth in a bid to reduce its reliance on

the export of one commodity; and enhance its security by establishing mutually

beneficial relations with friend and foe and ensuring that it is at the cutting edge

of history.

The sports leg of Qatar’s broader, high-risk geo-political, economic and media

strategy – involving the creation of a world class airline, Qatar Airways; Al

Jazeera as a cutting edge global broadcaster; a far more liberal interpretation of

Wahhabism than that of Saudi Arabia and support for many of the popular uprisings

sweeping the Middle East and North Africa – is emerging as a driver of imminent

restructuring of the region’s soccer landscape as well as of social change.

To achieve his goal, Emir Hamad has embarked on a buying spree of European soccer

assets such as Paris Saint Germain and top league European broadcast rights as well

as big ticket sponsorship agreements with the likes of FC Barcelona and the Tour de

France, multiple bids for the hosting of international sports tournaments and the

construction of world class infrastructure at a cost of tens of billions of dollar.

The strategy, which has exposed Qatar to an unprecedented degree of international

scrutiny, has already succeeded in putting Qatar with a population of some 1.7 million

of which some two thirds are expatriates on the global map. Doha’s massive

international airport is even before its completion an international hub connecting the

world’s seven continents. Al Jazeera competes with the BBC as the world’s foremost

global broadcaster while Qatari businessmen are beginning to reap benefits in terms of

business opportunities from their country’s investment in sports. Doha is a sought after

venue for disputing parties such as the United States and the Taliban, bitterly divided

Palestinian factions and warring parties in Sudan, to find a way to bridge their differences.

It is a strategy that envisions cost outstripping material benefit for years to come with

some individual components producing tangible results quicker than others. In many ways

however, the intangibles – regional and political change, global positioning and the

benefits of being on the right side of history – are as if not more important than a

bookkeeper’s calculation of outlays and revenues.

Sparking opposition in the emir’s backyard

Yet, it is those intangibles that are sparking opposition in Emir Hamad’s own backyard to

the social and economic changes necessary to transform Qatar into a global sports hub and the political and diplomatic path on which the Gulf state has embarked that is likely to

produce a region very different from the one conservative Wahhabis envision. These

intangibles challenge a religious and cultural environment that discourages women’s

involvement in sports, often sees Western-style entertainment and fun as irreligious,

opposes the kind of political change sweeping the Middle East and North Africa and

favours government and society’s uncompromising adherence to Islamic law.

In the latest spat, conservative Qataris, including members of the royal family, quietly

backed by Saudi Arabia have challenged the emir’s authority to allow the sale of alcohol

and pork to non-Muslims. The conservative opposition has already prompted the ban

of alcohol on a man-made island largely frequented by expatriates, a decision to make

Arabic rather than English the language of instruction in education and a boycott of

Qatar Airways. So far both sides have scored points. Sports has been exempted from the

imposition of Arabic as the language of instruction while the naming of the mosque

after Sheikh Mohammed throws a bone to the conservatives albeit one that is unlikely

to satisfy them.

Asian Cup in 2010 in Qatar. Photo: lefty1007/Flickr

Beyond forging a national identity, sports serves also as an effort to pre-empt the

kind of youth-led rebellion that has been rocking much of the region for the past

16 months. “Our goal is to create a dialogue that resonates with and talks to the

youth. This is an opportunity to inspire and engage young people…. Sports are at

the heart of Qatar’s development… Sports like education and arts are part of our

national identity,” Noora Al Mannai, CEO of Qatar’s bid to win the right to host the

2020 Olympic Games, told a recent brainstorm in Qatar designed to define the role

of government, NGOs and business in sports. She described “empowering young

people” as one reason for the bid alongside Qatar’s efforts to mediate conflicts and

reduce regional obesity and diabetes levels.

Sport as a trigger for social change

Nonetheless, sports are likely to spark a social revolution of sorts as long as the emir

is able to keep the conservatives in check. For one, it is forcing Qatar to become the

first wealthy Gulf state dependent on expatriate labour to significantly improve

working conditions and the legal environment of expatriate workers in line with

international standards. It is however not clear yet whether that will also mean

legalizing the existence of trade unions.

With international trade unions threatening a global campaign under the slogan

'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights,' Qatar has further vowed to ensure

that contractors involved in preparations for the 2022 World Cup will adhere to

international labour laws.

Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee Secretary General Hassan Al Thawadi conceded

early this year that "major sporting events shed a spotlight on conditions in

countries. There are labour issues here in the country, but Qatar is committed to

reform. We will require that contractors impose a clause to ensure that

international labour standards are met. Sport and football in particular, is a very

powerful force. Certainly we can use it for the benefit of the region."

Qatar and other oil-rich Gulf states have long been targeted by labour organizations

for their treatment of particularly unskilled and low-skilled workers. Qatar like the

UAE and others in the Gulf operates a sponsorship program under which all foreign

workers have to have a local sponsor who can make seeking alternative employment

or another sponsor difficult and who often retains the worker’s passport on

employment. Trade unionists argue that the lack of a minimum wage further

enhances exploitation of labour.

The issue of workers’ rights touches a raw nerve in countries like Qatar and the UAE

where the local population constitutes a minority. Gulf states are concerned that

improving labour conditions would not only have economic consequences but also

give foreigners a greater stake in a society which ensures they are forced to leave the

country once their contract has ended.

Qatar’s employment of sports to project itself internationally coupled with pressure

from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has also prompted Qatar to field

women’s athletes for the first time in its history at this year’s London Olympics. Qatar

alongside Saudi Arabia, which is still struggling with how to respond to the IOC, and

Brunei, is the only country never to have been represented by women at an

international tournament. To be fair, women in Qatar, in contrast to their sisters in

Saudi Arabia, are by and large subject to far less restrictions.

Increasing professionalization and commercialization in the region

Finally, in a part of the world where sports and particularly soccer are often a

battlefield for political, ethnic, religious and gender rights, Qatar’s successful bid for

the 2022 World Cup has sparked a growing push towards professionalization,

commercialization and the creation of a proper football industry as a key to

unlocking economic opportunity.

For many in the region, last year’s Asia Cup final in Doha, in which half of the

competing teams hailed from the Middle East with not one reaching the semi-finals,

constituted a wake-up call. It is an experience, Middle Eastern leaders and soccer

officials do not want repeated at the Qatar World Cup.

"Something is moving," says Santino Saguto, an Italian soccer management

consultant based in Dubai. "Qatar 2022 has prompted the region to discuss ways to

create value. The leagues, the football associations and the media are starting to buy

into the concept. That's how it started in Europe."

The UAE took a first step a few years ago when for the first time it marketed the rights

to broadcast its league matches – a key step in generating revenue and creating value.

The UAE example is reportedly being discussed by Saudi Arabia, the region's most

important league beyond Egypt.

That is not to say that the UAE's blazing of the trail is not without its birth pangs.

Commercial broadcasters charge that state-owned networks distort competition by

paying exorbitant amounts for the exclusive right to broadcast major football events.

They point to Al Jazeera's clinching of the right to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 Fifa

World Cups for an undisclosed amount believed to be in excess of US$3 billion.

Abu Dhabi Media Company, owned by the royal family, was moreover awarded the

exclusive rights to air the English Premier League in the UAE.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International

Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog,

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Expert: Israel's pressure to have little impact on the "Iran-Six powers" negotiations (JMD in Trend)

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:59:27 PDT

Expert: Israel's pressure to have little impact on the "Iran-Six powers" negotiations

17 April 2012, 16:28 (GMT+05:00)

Azerbaijan, Baku, April 16 / Trend S.Isayev/

Israel clearly wants to maintain pressure on Iran as well as on the U.S., it's a position that makes perfect sense from Israel's point of view, Senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, James M. Dorsey told Trend, commenting on Israel's position regarding the recent "Iran-Six powers" talks in Istanbul.

Two rounds of talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries have been held in Istanbul this past weekend, and, according to official statements, the discussions were "constructive".

The Iranian side was represented by ran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary,chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, while Union foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton handled the matters for the Six European powers (four permanent U.N. Security Council members Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany).

"Israel's position will have little impact on the negotiation process," Dorsey added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticized nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers, saying that the Islamic republic has been given five weeks to continue enriching uranium until the next round of talks.

Speaking about the next scheduled meeting of "Iran-Six powers" negotiations that should take place in Baghdad on May 23, Dorsey said it is too early to predict anything.

"Important is the fact that all sides feel that there was a willingness to negotiate and therefore a basis to meet again on May 23," Dorsey said.

"In the run-up to the Baghdad meeting Iran and its interlocutors will be seeking to agree on a specific agenda. Whether they succeed will be a first indication of what the chances are of achieving a negotiated settlement," he added. "As always, the devil is in the details".

The United States and its European allies suspect Iran of covertly developing atomic weapons, accusations Tehran denies. The Islamic state says it has a sovereign right to nuclear activities, which it says are entirely civilian.

Turkey and Tehran: Caught between a rock and a hard place (JMD in Turkish Review)

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:23:22 PDT

Turkey and Tehran: Caught between

a rock and a hard place

Turkish Review

19 March 2012, Monday / JAMES DORSEY, S. RAJARATNAM SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, SINGAPORE

	0

Turkey’s besting Iran in the contest for the hearts and minds of advocates of change
in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa is proving to be both a
blessing and a curse. With tension mounting over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the
perceived window of opportunity for a military strike closing, Turkey faces increased
challenges and the threat of a proxy war with Syria and the Islamic republic. This is
compounded by the fact that the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia need Turkey in their
effort to further corner the regime in Syria and to isolate Iran, but want to prevent a
shift in regional power away from the kingdom and the Israeli state to Ankara --
increasingly held up as the model of an economically successful, Islamist-led democracy.

A concerted effort by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia to further isolate Iran has laid
bare the challenges facing Turkey against the backdrop of an ever more severe
sanctions regime, increased debate regarding a military strike to prevent the Islamic
republic from developing a nuclear weapon and popular revolts sweeping the Middle
East and North Africa.

The challenges are evident in the anti-Iranian campaign’s little noticed subtext,
with the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel seeking to prevent a shift of power in the
region from Israel and the Gulf to Turkey and Iran. All three see benefit in Turkey’s
rising star as a result of its emotional support for Palestine, its deteriorating relations
with its erstwhile ally Israel, its perceived support for the Arab revolt, an impressive
economic performance and the fact that it is ruled by an elected Islamist government.
(The Justice and Development Party (AK Party), despite its Islamist origins and appeal
as well as a continued widespread perception of the party as Islamist, rejects this label,
arguing that it has put its Islamist past behind it.) However, the trio does not want
Turkey’s ascendance to be at the expense of either the kingdom or the Jewish state.

Turkey has so far largely been shielded from criticism that it, like the US, is seeking
to maintain the status quo in the Gulf and has failed to match words with deeds in its
condemnation of the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters,
one which has already cost more than 5,000 lives. The veil shrouding contradictions in
Turkish -- as well as US, Israeli and Saudi -- policy could well soon be lifted, with Syria
emerging as a crucial flashpoint in the mushrooming power struggle in the Middle \
East \ and North Africa (MENA). Increasingly it is looking like a matter of when rather
than if the wave of protests truly spreads to the energy-rich Gulf countries, Saudi
Arabia first and foremost among them.

The gradual morphing of the 11-month old Syrian protests into a civil war, much as
was the case in Libya, leaves Turkey stuck between a rock and a hard place. With
little appetite for military intervention despite its support of the revolt and warnings
that there would be consequences if Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad failed to
engage with his detractors and initiate political and economic reform, Turkey risks
being perceived as a paper tiger. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu insisted
Turkey was “ready for all possible scenarios” but had as yet not considered military
intervention and didn’t want to. Similarly, he suggested that Turkey could create a
military buffer zone within Syria, should tens of thousands of Syrians seek refuge in
Turkey, all the while insisting that such a zone was “not on the agenda.” This
reluctance to put its money where its mouth is from Turkey is not a stance it is likely
to be able to maintain for much longer, with the failure of Arab League monitors in
Syria, tightening economic sanctions and an Arab League-backed move to get UN
Security Council endorsement of its call for al-Assad to step down.

Turkey could end up in the same boat as the US, which has seen its influence and
credibility in MENA wane because of its inability to match its words with deeds. Despite
its denunciations of al-Assad, Turkey has -- like the US -- remained silent on the need
for change in the Gulf.Like the US it has a vested interest in ensuring that the revolt
does not hit the region, Saudi Arabia in particular, with full force.

Consequently, the struggle of US President Barack Obama is one Turkey may well face.
The US administration is finding it difficult to wield its influence in a region with a more
assertive Arab public opinion, one demanding that Washington make good on its
promises in terms of both the revolution and declared support for an independent
Palestinian state.

Obama’s inability to do so, particularly in an election year, means that the US is finding
it increasingly hard to perform its past balancing of diametrically opposed demands and
expectations from its allies in the Middle East and North Africa. US support for the
toppling of leaders like Egypt’s Gen. Hosni Mubarak has damaged its ties to key autocratic
allies like Saudi Arabia, while the need to be seen to be make real steps in furthering
Palestinian independence threatens to put it on a collision course with Israel.

Turkey’s potential policy dilemma is complicated by continued fallout from the 2010
killing by Israeli Special Forces of nine Turkish nationals aboard the Mavi Marmara,
a Turkish aid ship seeking to run Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Israel imposed its naval blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in
June 2007, with Tel Aviv saying it was necessary to prevent weapons being supplied to
militants in the strip. Critics of the sea and land blockade describe it as collective
punishment of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants.

Turkey has painted itself into a corner with its refusal to reverse the downgrading of
diplomatic relations with Israel to the level of second secretary and the suspension of
all military cooperation. Ankara is adamant that these measures will continue as long
as Israel fails to apologize or offer compensation for the death of the Turkish activists,
and maintains its blockade of Gaza. Short term, Turkey’s attitude has garnered it
popular support across the Arab and Muslim world, but longer term it has complicated
Turkey’s efforts to shield itself from being drawn into the region’s multiple conflicts.

Turkey’s stance on Israel means it has little (if any) ability to bring Israel and Iran back
from the brink of a military confrontation at a time that escalating tension between the
two countries threatens to impair Turkey’s efforts to project itself as a regional Islamic,
democratic, economic and military power.

While Turkish defense and military officials have little doubt that Israel would prevail
in a military confrontation with Iran, even if it is unlikely to fully destroy Iran’s
decentralized and heavily fortified nuclear facilities, they worry that likely Iranian
retaliatory attacks against Israel, as well as against US targets in the Gulf and
Afghanistan, would escalate confrontation with Iran. As a result, members of Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AK Party have criticized him for responding
emotionally to Israeli policies. While they remain critical of Tel Aviv, they have urged
Erdoğan to repair relations with Israel in a bid to ensure that Turkey can truly act as a
bridge across the West-East divide as well as MENA’s fault lines. The key to Turkey’s
role may indeed lie partially in Israel, but Turkey has only a limited window of opportunity
to keep the door open as Western nations and Israel increasingly rattle their sabers.

In the event of a pre-emptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, any effort by
Ankara to remain on the sidelines risks Turkey’s being portrayed in Tel Aviv and
Washington as having not only turned on Israel -- often a yardstick in the West
for assessing Turkish foreign policy -- but also sided with the enemy. Already
Tehran eyes Ankara’s condemnation of al-Assad, as well as its mounting popularity
in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf, with suspicion.
Tehran views these developments as a US-Saudi conspiracy designed to prevent the
Islamic Revolution of over 30 years ago getting the credit it deserves as an inspiration
for the Arab revolt and to stymie the appeal of the Islamic republic for states in the
turbulent region.

In a series of messages, Iranian leaders warned Turkey that Turkish support for an
international campaign against Syria, the Islamic republic’s foremost Arab ally, and
Syrian opposition groups would constitute a red line -- warnings Turkey has so far
ignored. Without Syria, Iran would be left only with Iraq as its foremost interlocutor in
the Arab world. Iraq lacks Syria’s relationship with groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon
and Hamas in Palestine and is unlikely to be as compliant and strategic a friend as
Syria is. Turkey compounded Iran’s narrowing options by not only setting its warnings
aside but going a step further with its agreement to install on Turkish soil a NATO
radar system believed to constitute a shield against Iranian ballistic missiles. In recent
weeks, it has also started looking at reducing its dependence on imports of Iranian oil
as Western powers crack down on Iran’s oil sales and the Islamic republic threatens to
retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Turkey sought to soften the blow by
suggesting that majority state-owned Halkbank would continue to handle Iranian oil
payments as long as that does not run afoul of the sanctions regime.

Turkish officials and analysts fear that mounting tension with Iran could produce a
covert proxy war, with Iran and Syria supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),
which has stepped up attacks on Turkish military targets in the southeast of the country.
Syria and Iran have already halted their security cooperation with Turkey with regard to
the Kurds. Conservative Iranian columnists have denounced Erdoğan’s government in
recent months as a Sunni Muslim dictatorship that does not represent half the country’s
population -- a reference to Turkey’ large Kurdish and Alevi communities. They warned
that Turkey’s minorities constituted its Achilles’ heel and a potentially destabilizing factor.

In a strange twist, Iranian soccer, pockmarked by nationalist and environmental protests
in Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province, offers a perspective of how Turkey could respond in
a proxy war with Syria and Iran -- one using ethnic minorities as pawns. The soccer
protests in the Bagh Shomal and Yadegar-e-Emam stadiums in Tabriz, the capital of the
province, signal a rise in Azeri nationalism. This trend would enable Turkey to exploit
secessionist sentiments among its Turkic brethren in the predominantly Azeri East
Azerbaijan Province, which borders the Turkic former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, a
close Turkish ally.

In the latest soccer incident in Tabriz, fans of Tabriz soccer club Tractor Sazi Tabriz F.C.
-- a focus of Iranian Azerbaijan’s identity politics owned by the state-run Iran Tractor
Manufacturing Co. (ITMCO) -- wore shirts bearing Turkey and Azerbaijan’s flags and
raised the latter emblem during a match against Fajr-e Sepasi F.C. of Shiraz. “[The]
Iranian regime will […] charge them with separatism and even arrest them. The main
[Iranian concern] is that the idea of Turkism is strengthening in South Azerbaijan,”
Azeri news website news.az quoted Saftar Rahimli, a member of the board of the World
Azerbaijanis Congress, as saying. Rahimli was referring to the East Azerbaijan Province
by its nationalist Azeri name.

A conservative, pro-Iranian website, Raja News, confirmed the incident in November,
charging that the soccer fans had employed “separatist symbols” and shouted separatist
slogans during the match. Raja News accused the fans of promoting “pan-Turkish” and
“deviant” objectives. It urged authorities to ban nationalist fans from entering soccer
stadiums.

The protests during the match against the Shiraz-based club followed similar protests in
September and October sparked by the Iranian parliament’s refusal to fund efforts to save
the threatened Lake Orumiyeh and by anti-government protests in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium.
The latter occurred both during last month’s 2014 World Cup qualifier against Bahrain and
at a ceremony in May following the death of Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed
Iranian defender and outspoken critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A decision by security forces in early October to bar fans’ entry into the stadium during a
match against Tehran’s Esteghlal sent thousands into the streets of Tabriz shouting
“Azerbaijan is united!” and “Long live united Azerbaijan with its capital in Tabriz!” Scores
were injured as security forces tried to break up the protest. Cars honking their horns
choked traffic.

“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.

Mounting Iran-focused tension serves, at least in the case of Israel and Saudi Arabia,
multiple purposes that go beyond the nuclear threat. It puts Turkey on the spot and shifts
attention away from the wave of revolts sweeping MENA.

Beitar Jerusalem fans beat Jewish musician for protesting against their racism

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:37:19 PDT

Beitar Jerusalem fans fly the flag of the outlawed racist Kach movement

By James M. Dorsey

Militant supporters of storied but controversial Beitar Jerusalem Football Club known for their anti-Palestinian, anti-Ashkenazi Jewish attitudes harassed and beat a middle-aged Jewish woman who objected to their anti-Arab slogans in the second such attack in less than a month, according to Haaretz newspaper.

Contrary to last month’s assault by the Beitar fans on Palestinian shoppers and workers in a Jerusalem mall, police launched an immediate investigation. The Israeli police force was heavily criticized for failing to initially intervene or investigation the mall incident.

The attacks as well as the police’s laxity have outraged many Israelis and raised questions about the moral fiber of a society that tolerates such incidents as well as a soccer club that is unashamedly racist.

Jerusalem musician Reli Margalit was attacked after she objected to dozens of Beitar fans chanting anti-Arab slogans as they marched on Sunday to Jerusalem’s Teddy Kollek Stadium for a match against Hapoel Acre that Beitar won 1:0.

"I heard cries of 'Death to the Arabs,' and since I was still incensed by the Malha Mall attack, I decided that I had to confront them now. I made a sign reading 'Down with Beitar's racism.' I believed that since I'm not a young woman and since I was alone, at worst it would come to curses, no more," Ms. Margalit told Haaretz.

Her assumption proved to be wrong. "Within seconds they surrounded me and started spitting at me. They took away my sign, and one of them - actually an older fan - hit me on the head with the pole of his flag. None of the fans protected me, and one girl showed up and tried to argue with me,” she said.

Police said they had escorted the militants for part of their march but had not heard racist slurs in the fans’ chants.

In a repeat of Beitar’s standard response to the racism of its most militant fans, spokesman Assaf Shaked said the team "cannot be responsible to all its supporters' actions."

Mounting Beitar fan aggression and violence is believed to stem from the growing influence among the club’s fans of a group known as La Familia that is dominated by supporters of Kach, the outlawed violent and racist party that was headed by assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane. Beitar’s management has so far failed to stymie the group’s influence.

The incidents occurred in what City University of New York scholar Dov Waxman described in a recent article in The Middle East Journal as an atmosphere of escalating tension between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. “Attitudes on both sides have hardened, mutual distrust has intensified, fear has increased, and political opinion has become more militant and uncompromising….Jews and Palestinians are currently on a collision course, with potentially severe consequences for their continued peaceful co-existence, as well as for stability and democracy in Israel,” Mr. Waxman wrote.

The incidents further highlight the failure of the Israeli Football Association (IFA), the only soccer body in the Middle East and North Africa to have launched a campaign against racism and discrimination, to rein in the Beitar fans and curb the club’s submission to its supporters’ racist attitudes. With the worst disciplinary record in Israel’s Premier League, Beitar has faced since 2005 more than 20 hearings and has received various punishments, including point deductions, fines and matches behind closed doors because of its fans’ racist behaviour.

Supported by Israeli right wing leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist youth movement. Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British mandate authorities.

Beitar is Israel’s only leading club never to have signed an Israeli Palestinian player because of fan pressure despite the fact that Palestinians are among the country’s top players. Maccabi Haifa striker Mohammed Ghadir recently put Beitar on the spot when he challenged the club to hire him despite its discriminatory hiring policies. The club refused on the grounds that its fans were not willing to accept a Palestinian player.

Beitar fans shocked Israelis several years ago when they refused to observe a moment of silence for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who initiated the first peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

JMD on Al Qaeda on The Daily Journalist

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:01:08 PDT

Jaime,

Below are the answers.

Is Al-Qaeda any longer, a threat to the U.S. Government and citizens?

1. My view is that the scope of terrorism with the caveat of the threat of militants gaining access to crude weapons of mass destruction has receded to pre 9/11 levels. Al Qaeda as such post-Bin Laden is no longer the major threat. The head of the FBI has conceded as much. Of course, militants who often operate in effect independently using the Al Qaeda label in places like Yemen, North and West Africa pose a threat to national interest more than to homeland security.

Could they still run operations in the U.S. or are they financially in trouble?

2. They probably could but its at the level of law enforcement. They are weakened financially and operationally but perhaps more importantly history has surpassed one. Few people have an appetite

They are rumors that AlQaeda could partner with Los Zetas, so they can get inside the United States and possibly plan an attack. How likely is this to happen?

3. Anything is possible. There have been links between Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate and Central and Latin American drug organizations. That does not mean that they share their interests in common. Los Zetas may not want to further escalate its conflict with the US by taking its war to US soil, particularly at a time that Latin American governments are pushing for an end to the war on drugs and legalization.

Who is AlQaeda’s new boss?

4. Ayman Zawahiri, who is not a loved leader and who has difficulty adopting to new realities.

Any other new terrorist organizations around there?

5. Political violence has always been a fact of life. The major change is that the days of global rather than local ambition are over.

What future holds for AlQaeda?

6. It depends on one’s definition of Al Qaeda: as a global organization of jihad it does not have a future; as a brand name others will exploit, definitely; as a local presence using the brand, there also is a future.

UAE cancels soccer match amid mounting tension with Iran

noreply@blogger.com (James M. Dorsey) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 02:18:27 PDT

By James M. Dorsey

Increasingly strained relations between Iran and oil-rich Arab Gulf states spilled on to the soccer pitch this weekend with the United Arab Emirates cancelling a friendly match against the Islamic republic and recalling its ambassador in Tehran.

The move against the backdrop of a war of words between Iran and Qatar and a regional battle for influence with Saudi Arabia was in protest against a controversial visit by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to two disputed islands in the Gulf 60 kilometres off the UAE coast, Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Iran occupied the two potentially oil-rich islands as well as a third one, Abu Musa, located near key shipping routes at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz in 1971 on the eve of the formation of the UAE as an independent state. The visit was part of tour by Mr. Ahmadinejad of the Iranian Gulf coast. Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if Israel or the United States were to attack its nuclear facilities.

The UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan denounced the visit as a "flagrant violation of the UAE's sovereignty'". His ministry said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Oman would meet on Tuesday, the day the match was scheduled to be played, to discuss the Iranian president's visit. The UAE immediately after cancelling the soccer match withdrew its ambassador from Teheran.

Iranian soccer officials said they would file a protest against the cancellation of the match that with world governing soccer body FIIFA. They noted that Nigeria was ordered to pay $300,000 to the Iranian football federation after cancelling in 2010 a friendly against the Islamic republic on political grounds.

It is not immediately clear why Mr. Ahmadinejad chose to provoke the UAE at a moment that Iran is engaged in six-party talks about its nuclear program in a bid to weaken international sanctions and reduce the risk of an Israeli and/or US military strike. A second round of the talks which resumed in Istanbul this weekend for the first time in more than a year is scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad.

The UAE last year emerged in remarks made by its ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, as the first Gulf state to publicly endorse military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, should peaceful efforts to resolve the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program fail. The UAE at the time also restricted Iran’s use of Dubai to imports goods sanctioned by the United Nations and the United States. The ambassador's remarks reflected the Emirates' mounting frustration with Iran’s refusal to resolve the dispute over the islands.

Mr. Otaiba described a nuclear-armed Iran as the foremost threat to the UAE, and one that needed to be neutralized at whatever cost. His remarks suggested that in case of military action, the UAE would prefer a US to an Israeli strike because that was less likely to fuel popular anger, particularly among Shiites, at a time of widespread civil unrest in the Middle East and North AFRICA

Mr. Otaiba described the UAE as the country most threatened by Iran. Contrasting the threat against the UAE with the danger a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to the US, Mr. Otaiba said that a nuclear Iran would “threaten the peace process, it will threaten balance of power, it will threaten everything else, but it will not threaten you. . . . Our military . . . wakes up, dreams, breathes, eats, sleeps the Iranian threat. It's the only conventional military threat our military plans for, trains for, equips for. . . . There's no country in the region that is a threat to the UAE [besides] Iran."

Satellite imagery last year revealed Iranian installations on Abu Musa that included three missile launch pads, an elaborate underground market, and a sports field with the words “Persian Gulf” emblazoned on it -- a provocative reminder of Iran’s hegemonic view of a region the Gulf states describe as the Arab Gulf. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Zayed last year stopped short of comparing Iran’s occupation of the islands to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. “Iran refuses to allow us to send teachers, doctors and nurses. I am not comparing Iran to Israel, but Iran should be more careful than others,” Sheikh Zayed said.

The UAE has worked to ensure that its security is closely linked to U.S. and European security interests. French President Nicolas Sarkozy last year inaugurated in Abu Dhabi France’s first military base in the region. The base, which comprises three sites on the banks of the Strait of Hormuz, houses a naval and air base as well as a training camp, and is home to 500 French troops. Alongside other smaller Gulf states, the UAE has further agreed to the deployment of U.S. anti-missile batteries on its territory. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are expected to spend up to $100 billion on arms procurement in the next five years.

With his remarks, Mr. Otaiba signalled further that the UAE was willing to pay a price for stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation, and could afford to do so now that Abu Dhabi had cemented its predominance among the UAE emirates following the financial crisis in Dubai.

“There will be backlash, and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and [being] very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country,” Mr. Otaiba said. “That is going to happen no matter what.”

But he added, “If you are asking me, 'Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran,' my answer is still the same: We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.”