Soccer: A Middle East and North African Battlefield By James M.

Dorsey1 Introduction For much of the past three decades, soccer constituted the only major battleground that rivalled Islam in the creation of alternative public space in a swath of land stretching from the Gulf to the Atlantic coast of Africa. Away from the glare of the international media, soccer provided a venue to release pent-up anger and frustration and struggle for political, gender, economic, social, ethnic and national rights. By the time the Arab revolt erupted in December 2010, soccer had emerged as a key non-religious, non-governmental institution capable of successfully confronting security forcedominated repressive regimes and militant Islamists. Increasingly over the past two decades, soccer became a high-stakes game, a political cat-andmouse contest between fans and autocrats for control of the pitch and a counterbalance to jihadi employment of soccer as a bonding and recruitment tool. All participants in the game banked on the fact that only soccer could capture the deep-seated emotion, passion and commitment evoked by Islam among a majority of the population in the Middle East and North Africa. As a result, professional soccer inevitably emerged as an early casualty when protests spilled into the streets. Suspending league matches is one of the first steps embattled Middle Eastern and North African leaders take when mass anti-government protests erupt. They understand the soccer pitch's potential as an opposition rallying point. Syria's indefinite suspension of professional soccer in early 2011 in advance of the government's violent crackdown pushed anti-government protests back into the mosque. With soccer stadiums inaccessible to the public and serving as detention centres and staging points for security forces, protests more often than not start at a mosque, the only remaining place where people can gather in numbers. The suspension of professional soccer when protests initially erupted in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria meant that militant, highly politicised, violence-prone soccer fans shifted their protest from the stadium to the square. They often played a unique role in helping protesters seeking to rid themselves of the yoke of repressive rule, economic mismanagement and corruption to break through the barrier of fear erected by neo-patriarchal autocrats that had condemned them to silence and passivity until then.2 Neo-patriarchy is what makes Arab authoritarianism different from dictatorships in other parts of the world. Dictatorial regimes are not simply superimposed on societies gasping for freedom. Arab autocracies may lack popular support and credibility but their repressive reflexes that create barriers of fear are internalized and reproduced at virtually every layer of society. As a result societal resistance to and fear of change contributed to their sustainability.
1

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajmaratan School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The author wishes to acknowledge partial support extended by the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore 2 James M. Dorsey, Brian Whitaker's "What's Really Wrong with the Middle East": Franchised Repression, Qantara, January 8, 2009

In a controversial book3 published in 1992 that is still banned in many Arab countries, PalestinianAmerican historian Hisham Sharabi argued that Arab society was built around the dominance of the father (patriarch), the centre around which the national as well as the natural family are organized. Thus 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. With other words, Arab regimes franchised repression so that 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. In the words of Egyptian journalist Khaled Diab, Egypts problem was not simply an aging president with little to show for himself after almost thirty years in power, but the fact that Egypt has a million (president Hosni) Mubaraks.4 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 soccers values: assertion of male superiority in most aspects of life, control or harnessing of female lust and a belief in a masculine God. In breaking through the neo-patriarchal barriers of fear, militant soccer fans extended the tradition of soccers close association with politics across the Middle East and North Africa that is evident until today in derbies in Amman, Tehran, Riyadh and Cairo, home to the world's most violent encounter on the pitch. Their battle on the pitch is not just about the political and economic future of the region. It is also a battle that challenges gender prejudice in asserting women's rights to play the game against the odds of legal restriction, social pressure and religious dress codes. And it is a cornerstone in efforts by the stateless -- Palestinians and Kurds -- to obtain a state of their own or by minorities like the Berbers, Iranian Azeris and Israeli Palestinians to assert their identity. In this essay, I discuss the role of the soccer pitch as a venue for resistance to autocratic regimes and a battlefield for greater political freedom and economic opportunity, statehood, identity politics, and gender rights as well as an arena of competition with militant jihadists. This positions soccer as a platform on which multiple political battles are fought in both autocratic Middle Eastern and North African societies as well as those that enjoy some degree of political openness. Scoring political goals Soccer stadiums in the Middle East and North Africa often bear the scars of the battles fought on their terrain, serving up memories of the brutality employed by Middle Eastern and North African autocratic rulers to suppress expressions of dissent. If autocrats sought control of the pitch as part of their association with soccer in a bid to benefit from the kind of deep-seated passion soccer evokes, fans were bent on defeating their attempts by sustaining it as a battlefield. Beyond polishing their tarnished images, soccer allowed autocrats to distract attention from simmering discontent and unpopular policies. The identification of the presidents of Egypt, Iran and Yemen - Hosni Mubarak, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Abdullah Ali Saleh - as well as Libyan leader
3 4

Hisham Shirabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society, London, 1992 Brian Whitacker, What's Really Wrong with the Middle East, London, 2009

Colonel Moammar Qaddafis son, Al Saadi al Qaddafi, with their countrys national teams turned their successes and failures into barometers of how their regimes were faring. Players and coaches moved into the firing line whenever their teams failed to live up to the political expectations of their bosses, invariably members of the families of autocratic leaders and their associates. Some 150 soccer players, athletes and sports executives who had participated in mass antigovernment protests in Bahrain in demand of greater political freedom, an end to discrimination against Shiite Muslims and more economic opportunity in early 2011 were either arrested or fired from their positions. They were among thousands detained in the government crackdown that left some 30 people dead. Among the detained athletes were three national soccer team players, including brothers Alaa and Mohammed Hubail. Alaa recounted in an interview with The Associated Press how he and his brother were arrested, abused and humiliated during the governments brutal suppression of the protests.5 Mohamed Hubail was tried by a Bahraini security court and convicted to two years in prison, but later released pending his appeal after world soccer body FIFA questioned the Bahrain Football Association about the crackdown. Alaas case has yet to go to court. He and the five other national team players have been barred from playing on the national team or in Bahrains domestic league. A Bahraini court separately sentenced Zulfiqar Naji, a 16-year old Iraqi footballer to a year in jail and deportation from the Gulf state. The Bahrain soccer players were the exception to the rule. If any group in the Middle East and North Africa confirmed Shirabis concept of neo-patriarchy, it is professional soccer players and officials. In Egypt and Tunisia soccer players remained on the side lines of the momentous events in their countries while some prominent soccer officials, particularly in Egypt, declared their support for the embattled autocratic leader. It took four months of mass protests that morphed into civil war for a group of Libyan players to join the rebel forces aligned against Qaddafi. At the same time, a former captain of the team called the anti-Qaddafi rebels rats and dogs. Egyptian soccer fans responded to the attitude of their players by unfurling a banner at one of the first matches following Mubaraks overthrow that read, "We followed you everywhere but in the hard times we didn't find you." Another banner put the fans further at odds with their clubs and star players who were resisting calls for a capping of transfer prices and salaries for coaches and players. It said: You're asking for millions and you dont care about the poverty of Egyptians. Calls for social justice, a phrase rarely heard in the past in Egyptian football, are now rampant on Internet forums in which fans vent their anger against the transition military governments handling of the post-Mubarak period. Uday Hussein, deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's sadistic son, showered expensive gifts on the Iraqi team when they won, but humiliated and tortured players for a missed penalty or errant pass. Former Iraqi national soccer team coach Ahmed-Rahim Hamed experienced Udays motivational techniques that included generous rewards in the form of real estate, cars and cash when the team played well and torture with electric cables, being forced to play barefoot with a concrete ball in 130 degrees Fahrenheit or having their heads publicly shaved in Baghdads Stadium of the People6 when
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James M. Dorsey, Soccer players speak out about their ordeal during Bahrains brutal crackdown on protesters, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, August 26, 2011 6 James M. Dorsey, Syrias Latakia stadium joins long list of regions politically abused soccer pitches, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, August 18, 2011

it failed to qualify for a World Cup. A striker in the national team that competed in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, Hamed admired former English coach Kevin Keegan. I had a perm like him. After one game, Uday shaved everybodys hair. Thats when I lost my perm, he recalls. Football legend and former Iraqi goalkeeper Hashim Hassan describes being forced after losing a 1997 World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan to lie with his whole team on the stadiums grass where they were beaten by Udays goons with sticks on their feet and backs before being imprisoned for a week.7 Al Saadi, who in 2004 took command of a key unit of the Libyan armed forces that played a crucial role in his father's fight for survival in 2011, made soccer an arena of confrontation between Qaddafi supporters and opponents long before Libyans rose up against the regime. He had the Benghazi namesake of his Tripoli team, Al Ahly, relegated to the second division, its headquarters burnt to the ground and several of its officials imprisoned for refusing to quietly accept defeat. His father adorned the countrys stadiums with quotes from his Green Book that explained his idiosyncratic theories of democracy, including the notion that weapons and sports belong to the people.8 Stadiums often become mass detention centres and killing fields whenever the region's autocrats felt threatened. Syrian security forces herded anti-government protesters in 2011 into stadiums in Latakia, Deraa and Baniyas.9 The use of the stadiums evoked memories of the government's 1982 assault on the Syrian city of Hama to crush an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in which at least 10,000 people were killed. A 1983 Amnesty International report charged that the citys stadium was used at the time to detain large numbers of residents who were left for days in the open without food or shelter.10 US and Iraqi forces discovered mass graves in several Iraqi stadiums after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam. US-led international forces played shortly after their 2001 overthrow of the Taliban soccer against an Afghan team in Kabuls Ghazi Stadium to highlight the change they were bringing to the war-ravaged country. The stadium had been used by the Taliban for public executions. Afghans believe it is still haunted by the dead and are afraid of entering the stadium after dark. Even the night watchmen limit their patrols to the stadiums parameter.11 Christian militia men responsible for the 1982 massacres in the Beirut Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla to which Israeli invasion forces turned a blind eye converted a local soccer stadium into an interrogation centre and execution ground. Some 800 Palestinians were killed in the two camps. Somali jihadists used the capital of Mogadishus stadium -- once one of East Africas most impressive filled with 70,000 passionate fans during games as an Islamist training and

7 8

idem James M. Dorsey, Football Pitches: A Battleground for North Africa's Future, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, March 24,2011 9 James M. Dorsey, Syrias Latakia stadium joins long list of regions politically abused soccer pitches, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, August 18, 2011
10

Report from Amnesty International to the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, November 1983, Amnesty International, page 23
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James M. Dorsey, Syrias Latakia stadium joins long list of regions politically abused soccer pitches, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, August 18, 2011

recruitment centre until they were recently forced to abandon the city by African Union-backed government forces.12 Saleh, the embattled Yemeni leader, highlighted soccer's importance for autocrats by meeting his country's national youth team barely 36 hours after returning to Sana'a from almost four months of medical treatment in Saudi Arabia of severe wounds he suffered in an opposition attack on his presidential compound.13 Mubarak and his sons saw an opportunity to position themselves as popular Egyptian nationalists at the expense of the countrys main Islamist opposition by fanning the flames of nationalism in late 2009 after Egypt lost its chance to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. In doing so, they brought the world to the brink of a soccer-inspired conflict for the first time since the 1969 football war between Honduras and El Salvador with violent clashes erupting between Egyptian and Algerian fans on three continents.14 Egypt recalled its ambassador to Algeria while Algeria slapped Egyptianowned Orascom Telecoms Algerian operation with a tax bill of more than half a billion dollars. Libyan leader Qaddafi intervened to prevent the dispute from escalating. The violence expressed years of depression of a population that constantly witnesses social, financial and political failure. Soccer is their only ray of light," said Ahmed Al Aqabawi, a psychology professor at Al Azhar University, the worlds most prestigious institution of Muslim learning, and member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypts main opposition group.15 For a brief moment, frustrated and humiliated Egyptians forgot Arab and Muslim solidarity and their hatred of US support for Israel and Egyptian President Hosni Mubaraks regime when they cheered the American infidels in their 2010 world cup match against Algeria. Yet, Egyptians and Algerians despite their longstanding soccer rivalry were angry about the same issues: they begrudged their lack of freedom and economic prospect and resented the repression and brutal, omnipresent security services that kept their power-hungry, long-serving presidents in office. The drive to control soccer also explains government support and involvement in the game in Middle Eastern and North African nations. In football-crazy Egypt, about half of the Egyptian Premier League's 16 teams are owned by the military, the police, government ministries or provincial authorities. Military-owned construction companies built 22 of Egypt's soccer stadiums. Similarly, Irans Revolutionary Guards have in recent years taken control of a number of prominent soccer teams. In the Gulf, soccer association and club boards are populated by royals. The Syrian military and police own and operate two of the countrys most important teams with Al Jaish (The Army) have long been virtually synonymous with the national team. The stadium: Soccers grunt school Soccer stadiums across the Middle East and North Africa constituted the equivalent of the militarys grunt school as fans from Algeria to Iran resisting autocrats' attempts to politically control soccer
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James M. Dorsey, Soccer Wars: The Battle for the Future of Somalias Children, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, March 20, 2011 13 James M. Dorsey, Embattled Yemeni leader turns to soccer to polish his tattered image, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, September 26, 2011 14 Interview with Egyptian soccer analyst Hani Mokhtar, January 5, 2011 15 James M. Dorsey, Soccer vs. Islam: Football and Militant Islam Compete For Hearts and Minds, Academia.edu, July 29, 2010

turned them into venues of expression of pent-up anger and frustration, assertion of national, ethnic and sectarian identity and demands for womens rights. In Tehran, thousands of women stormed the stadium when the Iranian national team triumphed against Australia in the 1998 World Cup in protest against their banning from attending soccer matches. Rumour has it that attacks on banks and public offices by fans shouting anti-regime slogans during the qualifiers for the 2002 World Cup prompted the government to order the national team to lose its final match against underdog Bahrain because it feared the protests that a victory would produce. A sense that little had changed in an authoritarian system that took shape after the 1952 revolution and gave the Egyptian military and security services effective control of the country pushed politics into the mosque and onto the soccer pitch. Soccer is bigger than politics. It's about escapism. The average (Cairo club Al) Ahly fan is a guy who lives in a one bedroom flat with his wife, mother-in-law and five kids. He is paid minimum wage and his life sucks. The only good thing about his life is that for two hours on a Friday he goes to the stadium and watches Ahly. That's why it is such an obligation to win every game. It makes people's lives happy, said Assad, a leader of Al Ahlys ultras or organized militant fans.16 People suffer, but when Ahly wins they smile, adds Al Ahly board member Khaled Motagi, scion of the clubs first post-revolution chairman.17 Al Ahly has given its fans reason to smile, winning Egypts championship 34 and the African cup six times; rival Zamalek secured the Egyptian title 14 and the African one five times. "There is no competition in politics, so competition moved to the soccer pitch. We do what we have to do against the rules and regulations when we think they are wrong. You dont change things in Egypt talking about politics. Were not political, the government knows that and has to deal with us, said a militant Egyptian fan after his group in 2010 overran a police barricade erected to prevent it from bringing flares, fireworks and banners into a stadium.18 Weekly battles in Egyptian stadiums with security forces and rival fan groups prepared Cairos militant soccer supporters for the clashes in early 2011 on the citys Tahrir Square that forced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office in February.19 Similarly, anti-government protests on the football pitch preceded the mass demonstrations that erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, forced President Zine el Abedine Ben Ali to resign and sparked the wave of protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Tunisian fans jeered Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Issa Hayatou in November during the Orange CAF Champions League return final between Esperance Sportive du Tunis and TP Mazembe from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the first encounter between the two teams in Congo in which Esperance lost, the fans charged that the Togolese referee had been corrupt and waved banknotes at Hayatou. The protests led to clashes between the fans who, like their counterparts in Egypt, became street battled-hardened. The weekly clashes turned the ultras -- die-hard support groups modelled on similar organizations in Serbia and Italy into a force to be reckoned with. It positioned them at a key moment in Egyptian
16 17

James Monatgue, The world's most violent derby: Al Ahly v Zamalek, The Guardian, July 18, 2008 The Power and the Passion, BBC, June 14, 2010 18 Soccer Fans Key to Imminent Cairo Street Battle, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, February 3, 2011 19 The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

history at the vanguard of a people power uprising. They felt empowered by their first major victories after the battle spilled out of the stadium and into the streets of Tunis and Cairos Tahrir Square where they set aside the deep-seated animosity between the supporters of crowned Cairo arch rivals Al Ahly SC and Al Zamalek SC. Founded as an Egyptians-only meeting place for opponents of Britains colonial rule, Al Ahly SC, which means The National, was a nationalistic rallying ground for common Egyptians. Its players still wear the red colours of the pre-colonial Egyptian flag. Dressed in white, Al Zamalek SC, which first was named Al Mohtalet or The Mix and then Farouk in honour of the hated and later deposed Egyptian monarch, was the club of the British imperial administrators and military brass as well as the Cairo upper class. The clubs bitter feud has been no less political since Egypt became independent.20 Their derby is never just about soccer; it is social and political warfare. At stake is far more than pride; theirs is a struggle about nationalism, class and escapism. Al Ahlys liberal republicans representing the devout, the poor and the proud battled Zamaleks conservative royalists and bourgeois middle class. They still do. Zamalek is the biggest political party in Egypt. We see the injustice of the football federation and the government against whatever once belonged to the king. The federation and the government see Zamalek as the enemy. Zamalek represents the people who express their anger against the system. We view Ahly as the representative of corruption in Egypt, said former Zamalek board member Hassan Ibrahim.21 So deep-seated is the Al Ahly-Zamalek rivalry that the government insisted that matches be played on neutral ground with foreign referees flown in to manage the game. Hundreds of black-clad riot police, soldiers and plainclothes security personnel, worried about what the teams ultra fanatic fans may have in store, surround the stadium on game day. Routes to and from stadiums are strictly managed so that opposing fans dont come into contact with one another before or after the match. "A Zamalek fan wont answer if you ask whether he could convert to another religion, but ask him if he could change clubs and hell definitely say no. Policemen dont ask whether you are Muslim or Christian, they want to know whether you support Ahly or Zamalek, said TV sports pundit and former Zamalek star Ayman Younis.22 The depth of the animosity between the two clubs was superseded only by the intensity of their supporters hatred of the Mubarak regime. Little else could have persuaded them to at least temporarily set their differences aside and stand shoulder to shoulder in the confrontation with Mubarak loyalists. The combined skills of the two ultras groups coupled with their street battle experience were evident in the organisation and social services as well as the division of labour established on Tahrir Square as tens of thousands camped out for 18 days until Mubarak was left with no choice but to step down on February 11. Much in the way that a municipality would organize services, protestors were assigned tasks such as the collection of trash. They wore masking tape on which they were identified by their role, medic or media contact, for example.
20 21

James M. Dorsey, Football Pitches: A Battleground for North Africas Future, Play the Game, March 21, 2011 The Power and the Passion, BBC, June 14, 2010 22 Interview with the author, January 16, 2011

The ultras -- often committed anarchists who oppose hierarchical systems of government -- joined those patrolling the perimeters of the square and controlling entry. They manned the front lines in clashes with security forces and pro-government supporters. Their faces were frequently covered so that the police, who had warned them by phone to stay away from Tahrir Square, would not recognise them. Their experience benefitted them in the struggle for control of the square when the presidents loyalists employed brute force in a bid to dislodge them. The ultras battle order included designated rock hurlers, specialists in turning over and torching vehicles for defensive purposes and a machine like quartermaster crew delivering projectiles like clockwork on cardboard platters. Theirs was a battle in which they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Their weekly stadium battles with the police and rival fans were a zero-sum game for ownership of a space they saw as theirs. Much like hooligans in Britain whose attitudes were shaped by the decaying condition of stadiums, Egyptian and Tunisian ultras were driven by the regimes attempt to control their space by turning it into a virtual fortress ringed by black steel. The struggle for control produced a complete breakdown, social decay in a microcosm. If the space was expendable, so was life. As a result, militant fans would confront the police each weekend with total abandonment. The militants street battle experience enabled them to help protesters break down barriers of fear that had kept them from confronting the regime in the past. We were in the front line. When the police attacked we encouraged people. We told them not to run or be afraid. We started firing flares. People took courage and joined us, they know that we understand injustice and liked the fact that we fight the devil, said Muhamed Hassan, a 20-year-old soft-spoken computer science student, aspiring photographer and a leader of the Ultras White Knights, militant supporters of Zamalek.23 Marching from the Cairo neighbourhood of Shubra, Muhamed, a small-framed man with a carefully trimmed three-day stubble, led a crowd that grew to 10,000 people; they marched through seven security barricades to Tahrir Square on January 25th, the first day of the protests. This was the day he and his cohorts had been preparing for in the past four years, honing their fighting skills in running battles with the police, widely viewed as Mubaraks henchmen and with rivals from other teams. We fought for our rights in the stadium for four years. That prepared us for this day. We told our people that this was our litmus test. Failure was not an option, said Ahmad Fondu, another UWK leader, who proudly describes how he captured camel-mounted Mubarak loyalists attacking the protesters and held them captive in the Sadat metro station near Tahrir Square.24 A group of UWK ultras, including Muhamed, sought at one point to break through a police barrier to reach the nearby parliament building. When I see the security forces, I go crazy. I will kill you or I will be killed. The ultras killed my fear. I learnt the meaning of brotherhood and got the courage of the stadium, he said. He pointed to a scar on the left side of his forehead from a stone thrown by police who stymied the fans early attempt to break through to parliament. As blood streamed down

23 24

Interview with the author, April 1, 2011 Interview with the author, April 1, 2011

his face, he heard internal walls of fear crumble as cries rose from the crowd behind him: They are our brothers. We can do this. Soccer v. Islam First there was a bright flash, than the sky turned grey as if it was raining. Lori Ssebulime felt broken glass and plastic all around her. Everything seemed to be swirling. She heard screaming from everywhere, tasted blood in her mouth and felt burning sensations on her body. Her table in Kampalas popular Ethiopian Village restaurant had exploded. Minutes later, another bomb wracked the Kyadondo Rugby Club across town. More than 70 people died in the twin blasts timed to coincide with the 2010 FIFA World Cup final. Lori and five of her Christian missionary friends had arrived early at the restaurant for a good seat to watch the match between the Netherlands and Spain. A Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, school teacher, she and her friends were in Uganda to complete a wall that would keep intruders out of a churchschool compound their Christian community was funding. Six of Loris fellow missionaries were among the 70 wounded in the attacks claimed by Harakat Al Shabab Al Mujahidun or Movement of Martyr Youth, the Al Qaeda affiliate fighting Uganda-led African peacekeepers in Somalia. In his hiding place in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden must have cringed when he heard about his jihads latest fete. The worlds most notorious terrorist, Osama shared with Al Shabab as with the Taliban an austere Islamist worldview that proscribes music, gender mixing, womens education, gambling, drinking, homosexuality, and the shaving of beards and the belief that it can only be achieved in a holy war against the infidels. But when it came to soccer, Bin Laden and Al Shabab parted ways. They represented two sides of militant Islams love-hate relationship with the game. Soccer didnt fit into Al Shabab or, for that matter, the Talibans vision of an Islamist society; Al Shabab banned the game in the large chunks of war-ravaged Somalia that it controls. Soccer distracts the faithful from worshipping Allah, competes with the militants for recruits and lends credence to national borders at the expense of pan-Islamist aspirations for the return of the Caliph who would rule the worlds 1.5 billion Muslims as one. It also celebrates peaceful competition and undermines the narrative of an inevitable clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Al Shabab mentor and Taliban ally Bin Laden, like many jihadists, nonetheless worshiped the game only second to Allah. He saw it as a useful bonding and recruitment tool. It brings recruits into the fold, encouraged camaraderie and reinforced militancy among those who have already joined. The track record of soccer-players-turned suicide bombers proves his point. Jihadists often start their journey as members of groups organized around some sort of action like soccer. The perpetrators of the 2003 Madrid subway bombings played soccer together. Saudi players Tamer al-Thamali, Dayf Allah al-Harithi and Majid Sawat attended twice a week a Quran group alongside their regular soccer practice. Silently they made their way to Iraq as the Al Qaeda-led insurgency gained steam. Tamer and Dayf died as suicide bombers. Majids father recognized his son when Iraqi television broadcast his interrogation by authorities. Several Palestinian Hamas suicide bombers traced their routes to a mosque-sponsored soccer team in the conservative West Bank town of Hebron. Israeli intelligence believes Hamas saw the team as an ideal recruitment pool a

tight-knit group that shared a passion for soccer, a conservative, religious worldview and deepseated frustration with Palestinian impotency in shaking off Israeli occupation. At the Gaza Dialogue and Tolerance Cup in the isolated, impoverished Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, men in fatigues armed with Kalashnikovs controlled the crowds. Players, spectators and the media pray on the pitch at half time. The cups trophy was handed to the winning captain by de facto Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, one of Israel's most wanted men and a leader of an Islamist group designated as terrorist by the United States. Haniyeh, like Bin Laden and Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, has a soft spot for the game and understands the political benefits it offers, the organizing force it possesses and the threat it poses. As a youngster, he was a talented, no-nonsense defender for Al Shate, his neighbourhood team. As a political leader, he harnessed its power. In one of his first moves after Hamas in 2007 seized control of Gaza, the worlds most densely populated sliver of land sandwiched between Israel and Egypt, Hamas took control of the Strips soccer clubs. The move brought association soccer in Gaza to a screeching halt. Three years later, Haniyeh employed soccer in a tentative step to heal the rift with his arch-rivals in Al Fatah, who controlled the West Bank. Similarly, Al Ahed, one of Lebanons most successful clubs, enjoys funding by Hizbollah and sponsorship by Al Manar, its popular TV outlet. Men like Haniyeh and Bin Laden learnt the significance of soccer early on. They hail from a part of the world populated by authoritarian, repressive regimes in which soccer offers a rare opportunity for the expression of pent-up anger and frustration. At least three of the Arab worlds 22 states classify as failed; another 11 hover on the verge of failing as regimes lose credibility; governments prove incapable of providing adequate prospects and services; and ethnic, patriarchal, religious, sectarian, regional or tribal entities gain power at the expense of a weakened state. As a kid, Bin Laden organized soccer games in poor parts of Jeddah, his hometown. As if in anticipation of later rulings by radical Muslim clerics that ranged from condemning the game as a satanic invention of the infidels to seeking to provide it with an Islamic gloss, Bin Laden played centre forward wearing his headdress and long pants so as not to expose parts of his body. He used the matches as a platform to preach during breaks his conservative view of Islam and rewarded coplayers who correctly answered trivia questions about the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammed. In the 1990s, when Bin Laden based Al Qaeda in Sudan, the group had its own soccer league with two competing teams that maintained regularly scheduled practices and played weekly matches after Friday prayers. Back in Afghanistan during the US-backed Islamist war against the Russians, the Afghan guerrillas and their foreign fellow travellers fought boredom in between battles with their own World Cup; fighters competed in soccer teams representing their countries of origin. Once the Russians withdrew and foreign jihadists returned home, soccer matches were an opportunity to stay in touch. Ironically, Islamist leaders like Bin Laden and Haniyeh occupy a middle ground in the theological debate about soccer that runs the gamut. Their enthusiasm and endorsement of the game put them at odds with radical clerics who condemn the sport and more in line with more mainstream scholars who argue that the Prophet Muhammed advocated physical exercise to maintain a healthy body. Yet, the twisted rulings of the radicals provided the theological underpinnings of Al Shababs recruitment drive and inspired some to become fighters and suicide bombers in foreign lands. A

controversial ruling by militant clerics in Saudi Arabia, the worlds most puritanical Muslim nation where soccer was banned until 1951, is believed to have motivated the three Saudi players to join the jihad in Iraq. The ruling denounced the game as an infidel invention and redrafted its International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) rules to differentiate it from that of the heretics. It banned words like foul, goal, and penalty and like shorts and T-shirts. It ordered players to spit on anyone who scored a goal. All fun is bootless except the playing of a man with his wife, his son and his horse Thus, if someone sits in front of the television to watch football or something like that, he will be committing bootless fun We have to be a serious nation, not a playing nation. Stop playing, said Egyptian-born Sheikh Abu Ishaaq Al Huweni in a separate ruling published on YouTube. Bin Laden as well as more mainstream, non-violent, ultra-conservative Muslims saw a kernel of truth in the militants religious rulings. Soccer poses a challenge to both the militant and the ultraconservatives. In a swath of land stretching from Central Asia to the Atlantic coast of Africa soccer was the only institution that rivals Islam in creating public spaces to vent pent-up anger and frustration. During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Saudi Arabias religious guardians, afraid that believers would forget their daily prayers during matches broadcast live on Saudi TV, rolled out mobile mosques on trucks and prayer mats in front of popular cafes where men gathered to watch the games. An unwritten rule allowed only practicing Muslims to join the Egyptian national soccer team under the leadership of its crowned former trainer, Hassan Shehata. Players prayed before games for Gods intervention and offered up prayers of thanks for goals and victories. To join the team, players had to pass a religious litmus test; pious behaviour alongside soccer skills was a primary criterion for making the team. Without it, we will never select any player regardless of his potential, said Shehata, who dumped a talented player for visiting a nightclub rather than a mosque. I always strive to make sure that those who wear the Egypt jersey are on good terms with God. It apparently never occurred to Sheheta that his righteous squad may have lost its critical 2010 World Cup qualifier game because God loves Algeria and its team too. It seemingly never occurred to FIFA, too afraid to spark Muslim anger, to stop a dangerous trend in its tracks. Imagine what would happen if other national teams would follow suit; if England insisted that its players worship in the Church of England; Italy made Catholicism the teams central tenet; Germany booted all Turkish Muslims off the field; Japan played only Buddhists; and Israel declared itself a Jewish team for a Jewish state and exiled its Arab players. Not to speak of the limitations it would put on recruiting top players. For Palestinians - locked into Gaza by Israeli and Egyptian travel restrictions, an economic siege that isolates the Strip from the outside world and limited by the conservative social and political mores of Hamas Islamist worldview soccer too constituted a rare space for relaxation and a safe outlet for pent-up emotions. That is as long as one steered clear of the Strips politically controlled clubs. Young Gazans gathered in a Gaza restaurant to watch the 2010 World Cup match between Egypt and Algeria discussed the significance of soccer during halftime. "There is sense of despair and there is a mistrust in the leadership whether in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip," said a young spectator only weeks before soccer played its part in the Arab revolt that would rewrite the regions political map.

Turning child soldiers into soccer stars Mahad Mohamed was 11 when he joined an Islamist militia in war-ravaged Somalia. By the time he realized that doing a jihadist warlords bidding to give meaning to his life in a country savaged for two decades by civic strife and brutal militias wasnt what he expected, he was three years further. Now, he dreams of being a soccer coach, a pilot and a computer teacher and plays defence on his countrys Under-17 national soccer team. People were afraid of me when I had an AK-47; now they love and congratulate me. I thank the football federation, they helped me, he said.25 I just drifted into being a soldier; it is hard to say how it happened. Some friends of mine ended up being fighters and they used to tell me that it was a good and exciting life and much better than doing nothing or being on the streets. After I spent some time doing that, I understood that it wasnt like that at all and I was happy to get out. Mahad said. The opportunity to leave the militia presented itself after three years of fighting government troops, rival jihadis and warlords, and African Union peacekeepers when the warlord he served as a bodyguard was killed. Mahad ran away and returned home to play soccer in an open field. A Somali football association scout spotted him and offered him a chance to play on its youth team. Mahads shift from boy killer to soccer star stands out in Somalia, a football-crazy country that straddles Africas strategic Gulf of Aden along which Al Qaeda-linked jihadists draconically impose an austere lifestyle. The US-backed head of Somalias transitional government, Sheik Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, was hanging on to power by the skin of his teeth. The jihadists have reduced his authority to a few blocks around his embattled presidential palace in the crumbling, battle-scarred capital of Mogadishu. Supported by African Union troops, he has since regained control of much of the capital with the jihadists declaring a tactical retreat. Supporters of a fiercely puritan interpretation of Islam that makes Saudi Arabia seem liberal, the jihadists banned soccer as satanic and un-Islamic while Mahad was still a fighter. They also outlawed bras, music, movies, moustaches and gold fillings. Theirs is a world in which men are forced to grow beards, women can't leave home without a male relative, limbs are chopped off as punishment, and executions by stoning are a form of public entertainment. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the jihadist Harakat Al Shabab Al Mujahidin (Movement of the Martyr Youth) is a product of a failed foreign invasion that did little but exacerbate Somalias political, social and tribal fault lines. US-backed Ethiopian forces crossed the Somali border in 2006 and ousted the hard-line Islamic Courts Union barely six months after the militia had driven the warlords out of Mogadishu on the eve of the 2006 World Cup in a bid to restore law and order. One of the militias first decrees banned the watching of World Cup matches. Much like the US effort a decade earlier recounted in Ridley Scotts war movie Black Hawk Down, the Ethiopian invasion and toppling of the Islamists, sparked the emergence of the even more radical forces and a cycle of ever more vicious violence. Some 21,000 people have been killed since the invasion; another 1.8 million have fled their homes to become refugees.
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Interview with the author November 15, 2010

Mahad exemplified the serious challenge soccer posed to the jihadists dire worldview. The scout who discovered him was on no ordinary recruitment drive. His slogan was Put down the gun, pick up the ball. He was part of a Somali Football Association (SFA) campaign, backed by FIFA, soccers world body, and local businessmen to throw down a gauntlet for the jihadists by luring child soldiers like Mahad away from them. "However difficult our situation is, we believe football can play a major role in helping peace and stability prevail in our country, and that is what our federation has long been striving to attain. Football is here to stay, not only as game to be played but as a catalyst for peace and harmony in society," said Shafii Moyhaddin, one of the driving forces behind the campaign.26 Mahad was one of hundreds the association assisted in swapping jihad for soccer, the only institution that competed with radical Islam in offering young populations a prospect of a better life. "If we keep the young generation for football, al-Shabab can't recruit them to fight. This is really why al-Shabab fights with us," said Somali soccer association head Abdulghani Sayeed.27 To shield himself from threats by Al Shabab, Somalias dominant jihadist militia, Sayeed lived in and operated from a heavily guarded Mogadishu hotel. Yet, he refused to move the associations headquarters out of Mogadishus Al-Shabab-controlled Suuqa Bakaaraha to avoid giving the jihadists a further excuse to attack its members. An open air market in the heart of the city, Suuqa Bakaaraha is famous for its trade in arms and falsified documents and as the crash site of one of two downed US Black Hawk helicopters in the 1993 Battle for Mogadishu. Shoppers fire weapons in the air to test them in one part of the market dubbed Sky Shooter. A short distance away, they test anti-aircraft guns and mortars. Somalis rank as one of the worlds most heavily armed populations. Aid agencies estimate that two thirds of Mogadishus 1.5 million inhabitants own an assault rifle. Middle Eastern and North African soccer fans insist that their sport is more than a game; it's a matter of life and death. From Mahad and Sayeeds perspective, that was no exaggeration. Nowhere did enthusiasm for the beautiful game involve a greater act of courage and defiance than in their native Somalia where the sport had developed its own unique thrill - a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between enthusiasts and jihadists and a struggle for a trophy grander than the worlds largest sports event, the FIFA World Cup: the future of a country and perhaps even a region. Its the world most important football match: Soccer versus Islam. Somalia is the pitch, battle-hardened kids like Mahad the ball. Players and enthusiasts risked execution, arrest and torture. Militants in their trademark green jumpsuits and chequered scarves drove through towns in southern Somalia in Toyota pickup trucks mounted with megaphones. Families were threatened with punishment if their children failed to enlist as fighters. Boys were plucked from makeshift soccer fields. Childless families were ordered to pay al-Shabab $50 a month, the equivalent of Somalia's monthly per capita income. Local soccer club owners were detained and tortured on charges of misguiding youth. "I don't go anywhere. I just stay at home with my family so that the Shabab dont catch me, said Mahad who ran a double risk as a teenager and a deserter. Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aros28, a militant cleric, who doubled as head of operations of Hizbul Islam, a jihadist group that in 2010 merged with Al Shabab, condemned soccer as a waste of money and
26 27

Interview with the author, November 12, 2010 Interview with the author, November 15, 2010 28 Somali militants threaten World Cup TV viewers, BBC News, June 14, 2020

time and an inheritance from the primitive infidels. His campaign reaches a crescendo every four years during the World Cup a moment when most of the world is glued to the television and much of Somalia risks public flogging and execution to catch a glimpse of the game. Somalia has the sad distinction of being the only country where the worlds most popular game is a clandestine, lifethreatening activity. To Sheikh Mohammed whose warlords once were soccers most powerful supporters and providers of security, the World Cup is the equivalent of Karl Marxs opium for the masses. In his mind, soccer diverts the Muslim faithful from jihad; the World Cup offers the youth a stark reminder that watching games and waging battles on the pitch is a heck of lot more fun than the austere life of a fighter who defies death in street battles. To mark the kick-off of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Sheikh Mohammed cautioned "all Somali youth not to dare watch these World Cup matches They will not benefit anything or get any experience by watching semi-nude madmen jumping up and down and chasing an inflated object... we can never accept people to watch it. During the match between Germany and Australia, Sheikh Mohammeds fighters raided a private home in the town of Afgoye, twenty kilometers south of Mogadishu. Of the tens of fans cluttered around one of the countrys relatively few satellite TVs one eye on the game with the volume turned off to avoid drawing attention, the other on the door in case of a raid, two were killed and 30 detained among whom 14 teenagers. Soccer allowed Mahad to forget the tragedies that dominate life beyond the pitch. He took pride in flying the Somali flag at international matches and showing the world that there is more to his country than wild-eyed fanatics, suicide bombers and pirates. Yet, his transition from child solider to national star wasnt easy. I lost everything when I was a fighter, I had nothing, he said. Soccer training for Mahad and his fighter-turned-player team mates involved far more than just gearing up for the next match. Psychologists helped him transit back to a semblance of normal life in a country that is stumbling from bad to worse. They are aided by the fact that the football association constitutes an island of relative normalcy. Buoyed by its success in wrenching child fighters from the clutches of the Islamists, the association upped the stakes in its battle with the militias. In the spring of 2010, it revived for the first time in three years the countrys football championships at a ceremony on the well-protected grounds of the Somali police academy in Mogadishu. It also launched a tournament for primary and secondary school students. The jihadists were quick to respond to the associations challenge. "If we kill you, we will get closer to God," they said in an email sent to the association. Several days later, they sent a second mail." This is the last warning for you to take the path of Islam. If you don't, you have no choice but to die. Do you think the non-believer police can guarantee your security?" Against the odds Two months into his miracle performance as Iraqs national soccer coach, Jorvan Vieira was ripe for an insane asylum. "If my contract had been for six and not for two months, they would have had to take me to the hospital for crazy people," he said as he handed in his resignation immediately after

guiding the Iraqi national soccer team to victory in the 2007 Asian Cup, its second post-Saddam triumph after reaching the medal round in the 2004 summer Olympics.29 Nothing had prepared Vieira, a 57-year old multilingual, Arabic-speaking, Brazilian convert to Islam with a doctorate in the science of sports, and a 20-year track record as a coach of clubs and national teams across the Middle East, for the problems of the Iraqi squad. Iraqs troubles in the wake of the US toppling of Saddam Hussein were dumped on his doorstep. The country teetered on the brink of civil war, jihadists and criminals targeted players and their families as well as fans for kidnapping and assassination; corruption and lack of funds had left the team deprived of basic needs. To the jihadists, the team that brought rival Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds together was the single remaining totem of Iraqi national unity. Iraq was at war with itself and so was its national soccer team. The players have problems in their lives; they are not normal footballers, Vieira recalls. Team members refused to set foot on Iraqi soil, training sessions were held in Jordan; the Iraqi soccer association had its de facto offices in an Amman hotel lobby where its controversial president was beyond the reach of Iraqi authorities who had issued a warrant for his arrest. Homeless the team played away from home in front of a handful of fans in stadiums in Aleppo, Dubai or Doha. Its members played for clubs in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Those that did go home travelled mostly to relatively safe Iraqi Kurdistan and didnt always make it back for training or matches. "I lost two members of my family. It's difficult when you have no safety. Cars explode all the time. I had to pick up my two guns before going to practice, because I'd been threatened. You can buy guns anywhere in Baghdad. You need them, said Hawar Mulla Mohammad, the team's Kurdish striker, who lost his stepmother four days before the Asian finals. The team's physiotherapist was killed by a suicide bomber on the way to his travel agent to pick up his plane ticket.30 Vieira had four weeks and a shoestring budget to whip his team into shape and get them to the finals in Southeast Asia. A dramatic penalty shoot-out with South Korea secured them a place in the final. Cheering fans in Baghdad paid the price. A suicide bomber and celebratory gunfire killed 50. The team met to discuss quitting. But after watching a news report where a bereaved woman, hysterical after her son's death, begged them to continue in the memory of her child they only had one choice. Fate would produce the just result, they predicted, and indeed it did. In a soccer fairy tale, Iraq emerged against Saudi Arabia the winner of the Asian Cup with a good chance of making it to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. To win the game, a Kurdish player passed the ball to a Sunni, who scored the decisive goal. Meanwhile a Shiite goalkeeper held the opposing team scoreless to secure the victory. The teamwork was Iraqis only source of hope for a life beyond conflict in a warravaged country devoid of good news and inclusive institutions, a mirage of religious and ethnic harmony. Iraqis, separated by ethnic hatred and desperate for something to hold on to, united around their national team; nationalistic Kurds in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan temporarily replaced the Kurdish flag with the Iraqi one. Team captain and star centre forward Younis Mahmoud, alternatively nicknamed The Butcher or the Desert Fox for his aggressive, unstoppable attack style and uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time, embodied the newly found sense of national unity
29 30

James Montague, Iraq's latest kicking has little to do with war, The Guardian, October 1, 2008 James Montague, How the Lions of Mesopotamia brought a sense of unity to Iraq, The Guardian, June 12, 2009

even though he refused on grounds of security to return to Iraq for the victory celebrations. A Sunni Muslim from the disputed province of Kirkuk, where Arabs, Turkmens and Kurds live in a virtual state of war, Mahmoud sported a tattooed map of Iraq on his left arm. He restored what Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had destroyed and the US had failed to provide: a vision of a peaceful future. Shiite education ministry employee Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Hassan, met during the street celebrations Sunni friends and former soccer teammates he hadn't seen in two years because sectarian violence had forced them into different neighbourhoods. "None of our politicians could bring us under this flag like our national football team did. I wish that politicians could take a lesson from our team, AbdulHassan said. Much like relative calm in Iraq, the soccer teams symbolism of national unity did not survive for long. Barely three months after winning the cup, Vieiras assistant coach and three of his players sought asylum in Australia. In fact, the writing was already on the wall prior to the teams Asian victory. The comparison with the legendary Christmas 1915 soccer match on World War I's Western Front loomed large. That game, played between German and British soldiers in no man's land amid a remarkable unofficial truce, expressed the shared humanity among combatants of both sides. And then they went back to slaughtering each other for another four years. Bridging Divides Most soccer-centred soap operas thrive on romantic entanglement and power struggle. Palestines The Team has plenty of that too, but much of its drama reflects the hardship imposed on Palestinian daily life by conflict, occupation and conservative social mores. Soccer provides The Team a different perspective on resolving national, political, and gender disputes and economic hardship. High West Bank unemployment forces Team players Tony and Hakim to sneak across the Green Line separating Israel from territories conquered in 1967 to find work on the Jewish side of the border. Team player Abu Ayaaed is on the run from the Israeli military. Fellow player Ahmed is arrested by Israeli soldiers after he is wounded by a rubber bullet during an anti-Israel demonstration. Zeinab, the mother of another player, defies tradition when she refuses to marry her brother-in-law following her husbands death. She adds insult to injury by enrolling in Bethlehem University and launches a campaign against honour killings after a co-student is killed for bringing shame on the family. The Teams underlying themes -- equitable rule of law, the right to freedom of association, peaceful and creative conflict resolution and the importance of pursuing ones dreams contrast starkly with Palestinians harsh reality. A controversial wall divides the West Bank from Israel. Israeli checkpoints defeat freedom of movement. Palestinians and Israelis clash regularly. Israel controls the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip, a beleaguered coastal enclave on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. Violence is a fact of life. Palestinians fire rockets from Gaza into Israel and Israel retaliates three top Palestinian soccer players were killed in Israels attack on Gaza in early 2009. Rivalry between Al Fatah, the secular movement that controls the Palestine Authority on the West Bank, and Islamist Hamas, which rules Gaza, breeds frustration, distrust and uncertainty and dashes hopes that Palestinians may throw off the yoke of Israeli control and become independent. The paralysis stymies Palestines national soccer team and complicates making its mark in international competitions. Travel restrictions by Israel, and Egypt until the February 2011 fall of

President Hosni Mubarak, stopped the Palestinians the only nation granted FIFA membership even though it doesnt have a state -- from competing in the 2010 World Cup. In a twist of irony, Palestine instead made its international debut at the 2010 Homeless World Cup in Brazil with a team from the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. We are proving to the whole world that the Palestinians have a right to play," said Sameh Zeidani, a member of the Palestinian Sport Office in Lebanon who put the team together. In 2007, FIFA forced the Palestinians to forfeit a World Cup qualifier to Singapore because they failed to field a full team after Israel denied permits to 18 players and officials from Gaza. With Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas seeking United Nations recognition of Palestinian statehood, Palestine Football Association chief Jibril Rajoub sees soccer as an equally important building block in advancing Palestinian aspirations. Soccer despite lack of funds and disruptive Israeli travel restrictions has flourishing under his leadership in troubled Palestinian areas. Stadiums are being built or refurbished across the West Bank and the PFA is hosting international tournaments as it competes for a place in the 2012 London Olympics and the 2014 World Cup finals. In a twist of history, the 2012 Olympics will mark the 40th anniversary of the Palestine Liberation Organizations Black September killing of 11 Israelis during the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Making it to Brazil in 2014 is a long shot for Palestine ranked number 171 on FIFAs list of national teams. Yet, the mere fact of competing internationally helps put the Palestinians on the map. Ours is more than just a game, said PFA secretary general Abdel Majid Hijjeh. It breaks the siege on Palestinian sports and the Palestinian people. When teams come to play on our land, its a way of recognizing the Palestinian state. That benefits the Palestinian cause, not just Palestinian sports, added player Murad Ismael. Leading the charge on the soccer pitch is PFA President Rajoub, a 58-year old tough anti-Israeli activist with the bearing of a military officer, former security chief and member of the central committee of Abbas Al Fatah guerrilla group-turned political party. Rajoub, who served 17 years in Israeli jails for throwing a grenade at Israeli soldiers when he was 17 years old, worked hard to get Israeli consent to upgrade a soccer stadium in Al-Ram, a Jerusalem suburb a stones throw from the barrier that separates the West Bank from Israel, and FIFA funding for its refurbishment. He also convinced FIFA to allow Palestine to play in 2008 its first ever match on home ground rather than in a neighbouring Arab capital. The crowds in the Faisal al Husseini Stadium shouted Football is nobler than war as Palestine took the lead in its first international match in the stadium, a friendly against Jordan. We can achieve a lot for our cause through sports. The world is changing and we have to push the legitimacy of our national aspirations through sports. I hope sports will help Israel reach the right conclusion. We are 4.2 million people living under Israeli occupation; I hope that I can convince the Israelis that we should open a new page that recognizes the existence of Palestinian people, Rajoub said. I dont wish the suffering of the Palestinian people on anyone, including the Israelis. If we are for sport in the world, it has to be fair and just for all. I speak with Shimon Peres, and on this we have

some common ground, Rajoub said, referring to the Israeli presidents visit earlier this year to Real Madrid where he suggested that soccer could play a role in solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Supported by Abbas, the PFA has seen its annual budget balloon from $870,000 in 2008 to more than $6 million in 2010, according to PFA finance manger Jihad Qura. The PFA had three full-time employees in 2008, now it has 30. Five new stadiums have been built and refurbished in the past three years on the West Bank. The most recent was inaugurated in the southern town of Dura on June 12, 2011 with a friendly between the Palestinian and Italian Olympic teams. Thousands watched. The Palestinian effort kicked into high gear in October 2011 with the unveiling of an ambitious tenyear plan backed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Palestine Authority to develop sports and a womens friendly soccer match against world champion Japan. The plan drafted by Spanish consultants hired by the IOC calls for a 61 million investment in sports facilities to be funded by donors. The plan and the Palestine Authority's emphasis on sports and the presentation of its ten-year plan could not have come at politically convenient time for Palestine Authority. To be sure, the plan has been long in the making and Palestine has come a long way since becoming in 1998 the first nation without a state to become a member of FIFA. In the last year, Palestine has played its first World Cup and Olympic qualifiers on Palestinian soil. Its national women's soccer team is breaking taboos in a traditionally conservative society. Nonetheless, President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestine Authority has been politically weakened by its inability to force Israel to make concessions the Palestinians need to agree to a revival of peace talks and Israel's boost of Hamas with the swap in October 2011 of Israeli Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit for more than 1,000 Palestinians incarcerated by Israel. In emphasising sports and identifying with it, the authority is following in the footsteps of other Middle Eastern leaders who saw soccer, the region's most popular sport, as a tool to polish their tarnished images and distract attention from discontent with government policies. But in contrast to those leaders, they are promoting sports on a far more popular and transparent level and in ways that benefit the public and push the social envelope. "We want this (plan) to be seen as an integrated part of our national development plan, an indispensable component," Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told diplomats, describing the sports initiative as "a hopeful enterprise." He said recalling his recent attendance at a soccer match that sports provides "a sense of joy, happiness of the people with just being there." 31 The development plan is designed to project Palestine internationally as a nation and a state, strengthen nation-building and social development at home and focus attention on the debilitating effects of Israeli travel restrictions on Palestinian athletes. "For me, sport is a tool to realise the Palestinian people's national aspirations by exposing our cause through sports. I think that the ethics of sports and football is a rational and humanitarian way to convince the international community
31

James M. Dorsey, Palestine unveils sports plan in effort to further state- and nationhood, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, October 29, 2011

that we deserve freedom and independence," said Rajoub who doubles as Palestine Olympic Committee and Football Association czar.32 Nonetheless, the Israeli restrictions disrupt the PFAs efforts to build a coherent national team and create a national league. Rajoub met his Israeli Olympic Committee counterpart on several occasion to discuss cooperation in easing the restrictions on athletes as well as the movement of sports materials. The two committees established a hotline to facilitate the movement of athletes stuck at Israeli checkpoints on the West Bank. They also looked at ways of enabling travel between the West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Despite goodwill, the effort has so far produced limited results. Palestinians are waiting to see whether the processing in August 2011 of their last shipment from FIFA through Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport in less than a week constitutes a change in Israeli attitudes. Until then shipments were held up for up to six months, incurring storage and other costs for the Palestinians that amounted to a multi-fold of the value of the goods shipped. There has however been only limited improvement in athletes' ability to move around the West Bank or between the Palestine Authority-controlled region and the Gaza Strip. "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," Rajoub says. Nonetheless, soccer officials and players concede that crossing checkpoints has become somewhat easier this year. They attribute it primarily to improved security with Israel less concerned about the threat of terrorist attacks being launched from the West Bank. In addition, the PFA has created sleeping quarters in the Faisal Hussein Stadium so that players can get together to train without worrying whether they will be able to return home. The perceived easing has done little for 13 of the 25 members of the Palestinian national soccer team who hail from Gaza. Goalkeeper Assem Abu Assi thinks of his wife and son in Gaza whenever the Palestinian flag is raised at an international match. Mr. Abu Assi has not seen them in four years because of an Israel refusal to grant him a travel permit. Mid-fielders Maali Kawari and Ismail Al Amur too have not been allowed to return for visits to Gaza. "My dream is to just play football with my family watching in the stadium. It has never happened. Happiness is never complete. I'm always only half happy," Abu Assi says.33 Initially, the Palestinian squad recruited Diaspora Palestinians with foreign passports at the expense of gifted local players like Raad Qumsieh because they had a better chance of getting past an Israeli checkpoint to make it to training sessions and matches. Qumsieh, a West Bank player famous for scoring an absolute belter in a game against Kuwait, finally opted for a soccer scholarship in the United States. Qumsieh laughs when asked if he would consider playing for an Israeli team. Israeli teams dont scout Palestinian players, he says wryly. That is to say West Bank or Gaza Palestinians. Palestinians with Israeli passports are a different story. Abbas Suan, a devout Muslim who refused to sing the Hatikva, Israels national anthem, when it was played before a game, achieved for a brief moment in
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idem idem

2005 what politicians in more than a half-century have not: he united Israeli Jews and Arabs by securing with a last minute equalizer against Ireland Israels first chance in 35 years to qualify for a world cup. The game earned him the nickname The Equalizer and made him an Israeli hero; his cheery face and toothy smile featured in ads for the state lottery. The sense of unity was short-lived. When Suan set foot on the pitch in Israel a week later as captain of Bnei Sakhnin, an Israeli Arab team, Jewish fans of Beitar Jerusalem, Israels most nationalistic club, booed him every time he touched the ball. Suan, You Dont Represent US, blared a giant banner in the stadium. Fans shouted, We hate all Arabs. Suan, an advocate of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, an independent Palestinian state and a solution for Palestinian demands to recover land and homes lost when Israel was founded, takes the insults in his stride. I ignore them, he insisted. Theyre not worth my attention. They portray me as an Arab in a Jewish country. They try to put me in one group, but I represent both." Suans Beit Sakhnin is a story in itself. So is that of Beitar Jerusalem. Together their stories chart the fault line between Israelis and Palestinians. Beit Sakhnin is a model of coexistence: a majority of Israeli Arabs, some Jews and some foreigners. The club, the first Israel-Arab team to become an Israeli champion, and Suan did wonders for Arab pride and self-confidence. They also spotlighted the divisions in Israeli and Arab society. "Our problem is that the Arabs say we are traitors and Israelis think we are Arabs," said Palestinian building contractor Mazen Ghaneim, Bnei Sakhnins chairman and main benefactor. Bnei Sakhnins success has nonetheless enabled it to build bridges where heads of state and diplomats have failed. It won the club funding from oil-rich Qatar to build its own stadium, the Arab worlds only direct investment in Israel, and prompted Arabs from countries formally at war with the Jewish state to defy bans on travel to Israel to attend the teams matches. Beitar Jerusalems matches often resemble a Middle Eastern battlefield. Its 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 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. Its fans shocked Israelis when they refused to observe a moment of silence for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who initiated the first peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Beitars war reaches a feverish pitch when the team plays Bnei Sakhnin. Fans chant racist, anti-Arab songs and denounce the Prophet Mohammed. In response, Beit Sakhnins predominantly Palestinian fans sing Islamic and anti-Israeli chants. The outbursts have prompted the Israeli Football Association to become the only soccer league institution to launch a campaign against racism and discrimination. Playing for Nationhood The phones ring off the handle at Kurdish soccer club Dalkurd FF. Dalkurd is a hot team for agents and players. In 2009, it signed Bosnian international Nedim Halilovic and upcoming Algerian Swedish star Nadir Benchinaa. More prominent signings are in the works. Started in 2004 as a project to create jobs for Kurdish youth, Dalkurds meteoric rise has put it on the international soccer map. Kurdistan, however, does not feature on that map. In fact, Dalkurd is a product of the carve-up of the Ottoman empire in the early 20th century that turned Kurds into the largest nation without a

homeland scattered across the Middle East and the globe. As a result, Dalkurds is making its mark not in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran, Turkey or Syria where Kurds constitute a significant minority but in Sweden, where it wins league after league. Its players are Kurdish refugees who fled Saddam Husseins effort aided by chemical weapons to cleanse northern Iraq of its Kurdish identity, suppression of Kurdish cultural identity in Turkey and religious and ethnic discrimination in Iran. Dalkurd chairman Ramazan Kizil, a Kurdish immigrant from Turkey, was sentenced in 2010 in absentia to ten months in prison in his homeland for giving a speech in his native Kurdish and campaigning on behalf of a pro-Kurdish political party. Kizils ambition is to take Dalkurd into FIFAs European league where he dreams of unfurling the Kurdish alongside the Swedish flag. In doing so, he would put a dent in Kurdistans status as a soccer outcast. Kurdish players are international stars and Kurdish clubs dominate the Iraqi league, but the Kurdish flag flies only at the VIVA World Cup, a tournament that operates by a set of standards different from those of FIFA. VIVA competitors are those who hail from a tribal area, an agricultural province, an occupied nation, a semiautonomous region, an ancient city-state, a disenfranchised minority enclave or a nation that doesn't get any respect from soccer's international governing body. "The goal is ideological," said Luc Misson, a Belgian lawyer and vice president of VIVA organizer New Federation Board. "It's about allowing peoples to exist through sport."34 In VIVA, Iraqi Kurds, who are the closest to statehood that Kurds have ever come and will host the VIVA tournament in 2012, join fellow wannabe nations such as Chechnya; Tibet; Northern Cyprus; Spains Basque land; Catalonia; the Sami Tan from Lapland, which stretch across northern Finland, Sweden and Norway; northern Italys Padania; and Greenland a country FIFA doesn't recognize in part because it's too cold to grow grass there. Soccer is an important vehicle in furthering the national dream. Iraqi Kurds expect to showcase their homeland and attract business when they host the VIVA tournament in 2012. Their ultimate goal however is FIA recognition. I strongly support Kurdish attempts to join FIFA, Iraqi Kurdish President Massoud Barzani told journalists at a news conference several years ago in a rare public acknowledgement of Kurdish aspirations for independence and implicit denunciation of FIFA hypocrisy.35 A former guerrilla leader who still commands his own Peshmerga army, Barzani understands that to be a proper nation, one has to have a proper soccer team that serves as a battering ram to further claims for political recognition. Iraqi Kurdish government and soccer officials argue that FIFA is opportunistic about the applications of its rules. Britain is not a FIFA member but England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are and so is Hong Kong alongside China. The Brits owe their special status to the fact that England created FIFAs rules that recognize only one soccer association per country and played the world's first international match against Scotland in 1872. Yet, the rules and lack of statehood did not stop FIFA under Arab and Muslim pressure from embracing Palestine, making the football federation one of the few international organizations to recognize Palestinian statehood even though it has yet to be declared. A relatively peaceful, autonomous oasis with a booming economy in a country wracked by sectarian divisions, Iraqi Kurdistan is biding its time. Kurdish soccer benefited from the violence that enveloped the rest of Iraq. Iraqi soccer players, fearing for their lives from insurgents and criminal
34 35

Interview with the author, December 1, 2010 James Montague, Disparate, shirtless and unrecognised: meet team Kurdistan, The Guardian, July 14, 2008

gangs, fled north, giving Kurdish clubs their pick. Kurdistans FC Erbil emerged as Iraqs champion three times in a row and represented Iraq in 2009 in the Asian Champions League. Building and maintaining an Iraqi Kurdish national team is a political balancing act. Recruitment of Diaspora players is sensitive. Turkish Kurds are off limits. A nation whose Kurdish players and coach helped it in recent years reach the semi-finals of both the World Cup and the European Championships in recent years, Turkey fears losing some of its best players and encouraging national aspirations among its estimated 15 million Kurds who account for one fifth of the population. When we travel through Turkey we can't wear our Kurdistan outfits because it is too sensitive. The Turks remove all our T-shirts and tags from our bags. It's just too risky," said Kurdish Football Association President Safeen Kanabi.36 Iraq too is afraid that the Kurdish team will lure some of its best players. Lack of FIFA recognition means Kanabi cannot demand that Iraqi Kurds choose between the Iraqi and the Kurdish squad. Politicians Trip Players Sports commentators couldnt suppress their laughter as they watched their pot-bellied, palpably unfit leaders commemorate the 35th anniversary of Lebanons 15-year brutal civil war by running after a ball on a soccer pitch. Heavy with symbolism, the match pitted two teams based on their political allegiances against one another. Ministers and members of parliament responsible for their countrys sectarian bloodshed, corruption and economic mismanagement played for peace as Lebanon teetered once again on the brink of renewed civil strife. Then Western-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri's team bested Hezbollah deputy Ali Ammar's squad, on the strength of two late goals by anti-Hezbollah firebrand and one of Lebanons most divisive figures, MP Sami Gemayal. The Hariri teams success, Gemayal said," proved that Ammar's defense strategy is very weak" -- a shot aimed not only at the deputy's soccer skills, but at Hezbollah's reliance on its arms to protect Lebanon from Israel. Hezbollah may have lost on goals, but it won on political points. The game put the Shiite militia-cumpolitical party designated by the United States and Israel as a terrorist organization on par with Hariris US-backed March 14 coalition. Underscoring Hezbollahs pivotal place in Lebanese politics and the government coalition headed by Hariri, Ammar explained that his team had been careful not to embarrass the government. The politicians momentary display of unity did little to mask the havoc wracked by the war and the politicians sectarian carve up of the Lebanese football association. The countrys football league, its empty terraces, mistrust and hidden violence, are extensions of Lebanon's fractured political life. Lebanon has never come close to qualifying for a World Cup. During the 1982 tournament in Mexico, which coincided with an Israeli invasion, fans hooked up car batteries to mini-TV sets to watch games even as bombs smashed into their besieged, blacked-out capital. Contrast this with the sorry state of soccer in Lebanon, where clubs have played in empty stadiums for five years and sectarian tentacles have gradually poisoned the game. "Politics came into football and destroyed it," said Rahif Alameh, secretary-general of the Lebanese Football Association, who dates the "death of football" to 2001, the year when the government
36

idem

intervened in a murky match-fixing scandal.37 That was when Lebanon's politico-religious leaders began treating the association as a pie to be carved up, just as they share power among Muslim and Christian communities. Other conflict-ridden countries have harnessed sport to heal divisions or nurture new shared values - think post-apartheid South Africa and the 1995 rugby World Cup -- but not in Lebanon, whose national identity has always been elusive. Sectarian tensions, never doused after the 1975-90 civil war, revived in the late 1990s and increasingly tainted club rivalries. Hariris father, assasinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri sponsored several sports clubs and bought Nejmeh soccer club, Lebanons most popular team, which was largely cross-sectarian, but had always attracted much Shiite support. Hariri initially ventured into sports as a moneymaking venture, but later turned them into vehicles for consolidating Sunni Muslim support at political rallies and the awarding of jobs and favours. As a result, Lebanese identify clubs known as Maronite Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Druze or Armenian with certain political factions -- even though the teams might be religiously mixed. Rafik Hariris assassination in 2005 sparked Lebanons anti-Syrian Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian forces. It prompted a retreat into sectarian identity and a UN investigation into Hariris death that threatens to again tear Lebanon apart. The politicians have removed the thin veneer that separated soccer from politics. I was all my life a Nejmeh fan, but thats no longer an option because Nejmeh is owned by Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, said a Shiite soccer enthusiast as he looked down at the carnage."38 Football is one of the few things that could be fantastic if you wanted to create a national identity that was at least in parallel to, if not in lieu of, your sectarian identity, added soccer player and academic Karim Makdissi. That is a lesson that neighbouring Syria, a major behind the scenes player in Lebanon that continues to keep the country balancing on the edge of a cliff, has understood. Despite the governments brutal crackdown on mass anti-government protests, pre-revolt Syria is a rare example of Middle Eastern soccer resisting political interference. Syrian soccer broke the all-powerful militarys grip on the game by professionalizing the sport. The Syrian football association banned the countrys two most decorated teams owned and managed by the military and the police from relying exclusively for recruitment on conscription or exercising their prerogative to snatch players from other clubs. Professionalization forced them to start hiring players. The associations move constituted a brave and rare stand in a country that doesnt brook dissent. It has done wonders for Syrian soccer and made it an example for other leagues in the region. Al Jaish (The Army) still has a military chain of command with a general managing the club and a colonel as technical director. The club has won 10 titles and secured countless cup triumphs, although they weren't exactly playing on a level playing field. Highly militarized, Syria has a standing army of half a million. Soldiers patrol the streets of the capital Damascus. Whole districts of the city make their living from clothing the country's newly minted conscripts. An inordinate amount of amputees go about their daily business, testament to Syria's past, unsuccessful, conflicts with Israel and its intervention in Lebanon.
37

James Montague, 'People are afraid, but I have supported this team for 40 years, The Guardian, December 21, 2007 38 idem

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. As the league was still amateur, there was no compensation. As it was the military doing the taking, there was no argument. 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. Its soccer training grounds are still designated as military zone. In the old days it enjoyed mandatory public support in the past; today it is struggling to attract fans. "Before they took all the players," said Taj Addin Fares, vice-president of the Syrian Football Association. "Any good players, they would just take them and if they played for Al Jaish they played for the national team too."39 The military had successfully turned what should have been a partisan league club into a de facto national team, flying the flag for Syria at home and abroad. Not supporting them was akin to treason. Al Jaish was struggling until professional soccer was suspended in early 2011 when the protests erupted to compete with clubs funded by wealthy Syrian businessmen that are as good as it, if not better. Investment has produced better facilities, wages and coaches, had a dramatic effect on the game and made Syria a model for other emerging leagues. For the first time, a Syrian team, Al Karama, made it to the final of the Asian Champions League. The football associations promotion of young players produced even more promising results. The association has identified and developed talent throughout the ranks by beefing up its scouting and training structure and encouraging league teams to play more young Syrians. Syrias Under-17 and Under-20 teams were making their mark in world cups. Many of their players were spearheading Syria's attempt to qualify for their next World Cup. Iran, where politics and soccer are two sides of the same coin, could learn too much from its closest political ally, Syria. Even in the best of times, embattled Irans international isolation because of its nuclear program, its harsh gender segregated Islamic regime headed by a Holocaust denier and continued political interference in the countrys football association that have left it without effective management make it one of the worlds most unattractive destinations for international players and trainers. All but two of Irans top clubs are funded by state industries. Politics on the soccer pitch pre-dates Irans Islamic revolution. When the Shah fell in 1979, so did Taj (The Crown), the shahs hated Tehran soccer club. In protest of his authoritarian rule, Iranians rallied behind Persepolis, a team with Marxist roots. Controlling Iranian soccer is mastering Iranian politics. Celebration of an Iranian World Cup qualifier in 1997 erupted into mass demonstrations with men and women mixing freely and holding hands celebrating the electoral victory of a reformist president. People in Iran partied for three days with the usually brutal government unable to suppress it revitalized my hopes that Iran will improve. The celebrations connected Iranians, we came together irrespective of our religious, or political convictions. For the first time in twenty years Iranians became a whole hearted community again, and soccer was the uniting tool. I forever cherish that day, recalls Ali Afshar Jowa, a political analyst and sometimes soccer commentator. Optimism that Iran would change and allow global culture to intrude was short lived. Iranian soccers brief post-revolution heyday, symbolized by its 2:1 defeat of the United States in 1998 that sparked
39

James Montague, How the money men ended Syria's military approach to football, The Guardian, April 10, 2008

renewed celebrations in defiance of the government evaporated as hopes that then President Mohammed Khatami would be able to enact change evaporated. His successor, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is no fan of FIFA. "We will respect FIFA regulations, but FIFA is just an agency and should not be allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of Iran," he quipped after the world organization ordered him to allow the Iranian federation to hold free and fair elections. Nineteen of the 20 candidates dropped out by the time the elections were held. Ahmedinejads candidate, silver-stubbled Ali Kafashian, secretary general of Iran's Olympic Committee won; his first decision was to dismiss Irans foreign coach. Irans European-based stars have seen their playing time cut too. Several players were fired when they took to the pitch in a World Cup qualifier wearing green armbands in support of the opposition Green Revolution movement. Supporters unfurled banners in the stadium saying Free Iran. Iranian soccer pitches are battlefields for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a soccer player who sees the game as a way to polish his tarnished image, and fans who view it as a venue to express dissent. A 2009 cable from the US embassy in Tehran disclosed by Wikileaks40 describes how Ahmadinejad sought with limited success to associate himself with Irans national team in a bid to curry popular favour. Ahmadinejad went as far as in 2006 trying to lift the ban on women watching soccer matches in Iranian stadiums, but in an early public disagreement was overruled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The funeral in May 2011 of a famous Iranian soccer player in Tehrans Azadi stadium turned into a mass protest against the government of Ahmadinejad.41 Tens of thousands reportedly attended the ceremony for Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed defender and outspoken critic of Ahmadinejad. In a rare occurrence, some 1,000 women were allowed to be present during the ceremony. Mourners chanted Hejazi, you spoke in the name of the people in a reference to Hejazis criticism of the Iranian presidents economic policies. Hejazi took Ahmadinejad in April to task for Irans gaping income differences and budgetary measures which hit the poorest the hardest. The mourners also shouted "Goodbye Hejazi, today the brave are mourning" and "Mr Nasser, rise up, your people can't stand it anymore". The Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI) postponed in February league matches in Tehran in a bid to prevent celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution from turning into anti-government protests inspired by the anti-government protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Massive nationalist and environmental protests erupted in September 2011 in the Iranian city of Tabriz during and after a soccer match between storied top league teams Esteghlal Tehran FC and the towns Traktor Sazi FC, a flashpoint of Iranian Azerbaijans identity politics that is owned by state-run Iran Tractor Manufacturing Co. (ITMCO).

40

Irans First Fan: Dissatisfaction with Ahadinejad May Extend from the Soccer Pitch to the Ballot Box, Wikileaks Update, December 7, 2010 41 James M. Dorsey, Soccer match sparks nationalist protests in northwest Iran, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, September 16, 2011

The protests demanding unification of the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan with the post-Soviet republic of Azerbaijan as well as Iranian government measures to prevent Lake Orumiyeh in the predominantly Azeri northwest of the country from drying up began as fans made their way to the stadium to watch the match. Security forces were out in force following the arrest a month earlier of scores of soccer fans and environmental activists protesting a decision by the Iranian parliament not to allocate funds for the channelling of water from the Araz River to raise the level of the salt lake that lies between the Iranian provinces of East and West Azerbaijan near the border with Turkey. Parliament suggested instead that Azeris living near the lake be relocated. The September protest was the fourth time in less than a year that anti-government sentiment spilled onto the soccer pitch, one of the few places that strength of numbers and moments of intense passion spark expressions of dissent. It was however the first in which Azeri nationalism fueled by perceived Iranian discrimination resurfaced. 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. In a failed bid to prevent protests, security forces barred many Traktor Sazi fans from entering the stadium to watch the match against Esteghlal, which the Azeri team won 3:2. Fans were body searched and then had their tickets confiscated. In response, thousands of fans started 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 with force. Building Bridges and Healing Wounds A soccer game on a dirt field in northern Iraq between US soldiers and local Iraqis may not seem like a big deal in the scope of the wider Iraqi conflict. Especially when it's a blow-out by the Iraqis and both teams are playing in running shoes rather than cleats, the goal nets are made of thin blue mesh and only a couple of hundred fans brave the 108-degree temperature. Yet the Sons of Iraqs 9:0 thrashing of the 87th Infantry's 1st battalion bore a message that US officials believe will resound far beyond the dirt soccer pitch: soccer balls can be more powerful than bombs. "You lose a game, but you win a lot of friends," said an enthusiastic Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, commander of the 1st Armored Division and Multi-National Division North.42 The Americans, donning shorts and Salute to Our Fallen Heroes T-shirts instead of body armour faced off with former Iraqi insurgents, now on the US payroll to protect their neighbourhoods from the likes of Al Qaeda, only months after they may well have been trying to kill each other. U.S. soldiers with M-16s and Iraqi security and police forces with AK-47s and pistols patrolled the sidelines, just in case. The soccer game served as a confidence-builder in Americas effort to win if not hearts and minds of their former adversaries at least a growing sense of solidarity. "This is the sort of thing you see
42

Mike Tharp, Iraqis defeated U.S. troops in a soccer match. More importantly, the game symbolized a turning point in the war, McClatchy News Service, June 23, 2008

as a turning point. For the mayor and chief of police of Mutlaka to take the risk to be here this is history being made," said Hertling at halftime as he together with the mayor handed out soccer jerseys, pants and sweats to dozens of Iraqi boys. "Girls no play soccer," quipped Khalid, an aspiring center midfielder, as he clutched a new pair of sweat pants.43 Soccer may seem an odd foreign policy tool or military priority. But with at least half the population of Iraq and Afghanistan under the age of 18, soccer balls and shoes are as basic to mending the two countries social fabric as beams and girders are to mending the damaged buildings. Indeed, the future of Iraq as well as Afghanistan and US relations with both countries may well in part depend on soccer paraphernalia and US efforts to prevent political interference and sectarian strife from undermining the two nations soccer performance. Before US-led coalition troops entered Baghdad in 2003, Saddam Hussein's men went into the neighbourhoods and passed out guns and stored weapons in schools. Because it was too dangerous to drive the trailers away through the streets, American forces blew them up - and in the process, damaged schools and surrounding homes. Though the Army returned to clear away the debris, distribute soccer balls and help set up teams and leagues in tense towns like Ramadi and Sadr City, unexploded shells remain in fields and school-yards where children kick their balls. With an estimated 42 million land mines or two landmines per person in Iraq in a nation of 24 million, US Provisional Reconstruction Teams have partnered with Spirit of Soccer, a Johnstown, Pennsylvania NGO that employs soccer to educate youth about the risk of mines. Trained by Spirit of Soccer, Iraqi coaches, including 15 women, discuss fair play, avoiding dangers from land mines and other unexploded munitions, sportsmanship, tolerance and the need for non-violent conflict resolution while dribbling and kicking penalties. Participants return to their communities as coaches and organizers of Youth Soccer and Mine Awareness Festivals. Clearly, it will take more than a soccer training, a soccer league and a successful national team to overcome Iraq' and Afghanistans ethnic, religious and social divisions. Yet sociologists suggest that soccer can play a role in strengthening feelings of unity and national identity. It can also have a cathartic effect by channelling human aggression away from violence and into more healthy channels. Nelson Mandela used a racially integrated national rugby team to unite South Africa in the wake of apartheid -- a story now made famous by the movie Invictus. South Africa went on to become the first African nation to successfully host the World Cup. US military and civilian officials believe that reopening soccer stadiums and encouraging people to play free of fear or persecution will win hearts and minds among those scarred by regimes for which soccer was either the enemy or a weapon of terror. To Iraqis, soccer stadia are as much the focus of deep-seated passion as they are home to mass graves discovered by US and Iraqi forces. In Afghanistan, the US competes with Iran in the reconstruction of soccer pitches. US-led international forces played shortly after their overthrow of the Taliban an Afghan team in Kabuls Ghazi Stadium to highlight the change they were bringing to the war-ravaged country. Grass has since grown where the Taliban once staged public executions, but few Afghans dare visit the stadium in the evenings, believing that the souls of the victims still roam the sprawling grounds. The goalposts, where the black-turbaned Taliban used to force convicts to kneel before executing them or from which they
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hung the severed arms or legs of thieves for all to see, have been given a fresh coat of white paint. New portraits of Afghanistan's leaders, including late King Zahir Shah, President Hamid Karzai, antiTaliban hero Ahmad Shah Masood and the country's latest star, Olympic taekwondo bronze medalist Rohallah Nikpai, hang from the empty stands. But try as they might, few Afghans can put behind them the brutality of the Taliban years when men, and sometimes cowering women in their pale blue, all-enveloping burqas, were brought into the stadium to be either stoned or shot dead at close range. Others had limbs amputated for crimes ranging from robbery to adultery and murder. The stands would be full of people, including children, either coming of their own volition or brought in to witness how the Taliban enforced its version of justice. "Now nobody comes here in the evening, even we don't go inside," said Nabeel Qari, a young guard at the entrance to the stadium.44 "Everyone believes the place is haunted, that the souls of the dead people are not at rest even now." So much blood has been spilled on the football field and seeped into the soil below that Nasim said a previous attempt to grow grass there failed. Then the Afghan government asked the company that he worked for to redevelop the stadium in a project costing about $50,000. The soil was dug up to a depth of half a meter and replaced. "We put a new layer of soil so that players would not be stepping on to the blood of so many people. We are working hard to ensure this again becomes a good place for sports," Nasim said. Shattering Taboos Controversy ranks high in Sahar al-Hawaris job description. Perseverance and the subtlety of a diplomat is her trademark. A trailblazer for womens right to play soccer and only one of a handful of female trainers in the Middle East, Al-Hawari operates in a conservative mans world in which womens soccer is at best controversial and blasphemous at worst. The outspoken daughter of an international soccer referee, Al Hawari set out in the early 1990s to build the Arab worlds first association womens football team and then a regional womens soccer championship. Defying criticism that she was violating Islamic dress codes for women and tricking them into playing a mans game, she badgered the Egyptian Football Association until it recognized her team. Al Hawari canvassed rural Egypt where women suffer fewer social restrictions than in the countrys major cities for players. She cajoled and pleaded with conservative family and friends to allow her 25 picks aged 15 to 22 to join her in Cairo. She countered fears that men would be ogling the girls at games by arguing that spectators would focus on their skills, not their bodies. She sold her belongings to fund her teams stay at her home. Her battle resembles the culture clash in the 2002 comedy film Bend It Like Beckham portraying a Sikh daughters rebellion against her parents refusal to allow her to pursue soccer. However, there is one difference: in the Middle East, this culture clash is a fact of daily life. Along the way, members of Al Hawaris team bucked the trend in more than one way. As Iran and conservative women players in Europe demanded the right to cover their heads during matches, Al Hawaris girls shed their headscarves once in Cairo.

44

Sanjeev Miglani, Taliban executions still haunt Afghan soccer field, Reuters, September 13, 2008

To take her dream beyond Egypt, Al Hawari persuaded FIFA to threaten Arab football associations that do not have a womens team with sanctions. FIFA left the Egyptian association no choice but to back Al Hawaris push for an Arab Womens Football Championship. Al Hawari lobbied the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to allow women to create their own soccer team. Members of the UAE team initially kept secret from their families what they were doing in their spare time and often canceled training when they were unable to sneak away. Several bitterly fought conservative family attitudes to win the right to play. Nayla Ibrahim, a 25-year old goalkeeper and police officer, was forced to quit the team after her parents were inundated by complaints from friends and relatives. Her parents finally reneged, but wont attend games for fear they would be seen by society as overly supporting her. Nada Yousef al-Hashimi, a vivacious economy ministry official who took up swimming and track in school, chaperones the team when she is not luring foreign investment into the country. She engages critics on the teams Facebook page, which includes a lively discussion page about the merits of women's soccer, dozens of team photos and links to YouTube videos.45 Across the Middle East, womens teams fight a continuous battle for their existence. Kuwait recently lifted its ban on a womens team. Islamist lawmakers denounced it in parliament when the team returned from its first international appearance in the 2010 West Asian Football Federation championship. Women soccer players confront the toughest obstacles in Saudi Arabia, ruled by one of Islams most puritanical sects. Physical education classes are banned in state-run Saudi girls schools and female athletes are not allowed to participate in the Olympics. Women's games and marathons are often cancelled when the clergy gets wind of them. Clerics condemn womens sports as corrupting and satanic and charge that it spreads decadence. They warn that running and jumping can damage a woman's hymen and ruin her chances of getting married. In defiance, women have quietly been established soccer and other sports teams with the backing of more liberal members of the ruling Al Saud family as extensions of hospitals and health clubs. The International Olympic Committee has threatened Saudi Arabia with suspension if it does not create frameworks for womens sports. Claudia Salamehs Palestinian national team scores last in FIFAs ranking. But Claudia, a 21-year old business administration student, and her fellow team members are happy that they are playing at all. Israeli movement restrictions, no money, civil strife and no full-size pitches hold them back. West Bank team members practice on a concrete court on the grounds of Bethlehem University. A grass pitch 10 miles away is inaccessible thanks to the ring of Israeli checkpoints that surrounds Bethlehem. Gaza players, unable to leave the Strip, practice separately. But for once conflict with Israel is not the Palestinians biggest problem. Their team is most threatened by creeping social conservatism, fuelled by Islamist Hamas control of the Gaza Strip and frustration with the government of President Mahmoud Abbas. "Some women won't just wait for their husbands to come along and make children. They believe that they can change something and I'm one of them, the rest of the girls too, said Honey Thaljieh, the teams first captain. 46
45

James M. Dorsey, Womens soccer teams in Saudi Arabia and UAE encouraged to be champions, Al Arabiya, July 22, 2011 46 James Montague, The slow march to equality, The Guardian, January 9, 2008

Four of Claudias co-players are Muslim, the majority stem from Christian families. They hail from Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jericho in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Recruitment in nationalistic or religious hot spots like Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem and Hebron is all but impossible. The national women's team faced two obstacles when it met world champion Japan In November 2011 on the soccer pitch in Hebron, the West Bank's most conservative town that unlike Ramallah, Bethlehem or East Jerusalem does not count Christians among its residents. The match moreover underscored differences within the Islamist movement with the city's Hamas mayor supporting the women's team and the local Hizb ut Tahrir movement opposing it.47 Hizb ut Tahrir websites described the team as "naked bitches" even though they wore leggings and at least one of the squad's players dons a hijab, an Islamic headdress that covers the hair, ears and neck. Hizb ut Tahrir imams denounced the match from the pulpit in their mosques; school principals in Hebron banned their students from attending the match warning them that they would burn in hell if they went to the stadium. The PFA was forced to bus in supporters. Crowds cheered the team as they left the stadium even though they lost to Japan with a whopping 19:0. The team, which unlike its opponent is made up of university students rather than professionals, recovered in a second match, losing only 4:0 from the world champion. "It was a social revolution. We broke the barrier and taboo when we went to Hebron and Nablus (a conservative city in the north of the West Bank). The whole barrier collapsed, said Palestine Foortball Association president Jibril Rajoub.48 It no doubt was the beginning of a social revolution, however one that has yet to play out. A majority of the players in Palestine's six women soccer clubs as well as its national team are Christians rather than Muslims. Yet, even players from Christian families often fight battles at home to be allowed to play. Claudia said her family wanted her to stop when she got engaged but that her fianc had supported her. Other players report similar splits in their families. "Things are changing. It depends on what area of the country. Lifestyles are changing. Three years ago it was unacceptable for girls to walk in the streets with shorts. It was unacceptable to play soccer, run or ride a bicycle in shorts. Now it is ok in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem," Claudia said. Womens dress code is at the heart of the controversy over womens soccer in a conservative world in which national, ethnic, religious and social conflict fuelled by repressive, authoritarian regimes breeds more puritan social mores and interpretations of Islam. FIFA fought the Iranian football association for five years before agreeing to allow the Islamic republics womens national team to wear caps that cover players hair in international competitions rather than the hijab, an Islamic headdress that covers the hair, ears and neck and that is banned by FIFA for safety and health reasons. The dispute over the hijab led in June 2011 to the disqualification of the Iranian womens national team after they appeared on the pitch in the Jordanian capital Amman for a 2012 London Olympics
47

James M. Dorsey, Palestine unveils sports plan in effort to further state- and nationhood, Thr Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, October 29, 2011 48 idem

qualifier against Jordan because the players wore the hijab in violation of the agreement reached Singapore in 2010 between FIFA and the Iranian Football Federation (IFF) under which the Iranians agreed to the wearing of a cap that covered hair but not the neck. Three Jordanian players who wear the hijab were also barred. Efforts by members of FIFAs to find a compromise solution that would be acceptable to observant Muslim players are complicated by Irans forcing not only of its team members to wear the hijab but also of any womens team that visits the Islamic republic. When the Iranian team hosted it first foreign guests for a friendly match, players of Berlins predominantly Turkish BSV Al Dersimspor had to have headscarves, long-sleeved jerseys and fulllength pants specially made for the game. Male spectators were banned from the stadium and loudspeakers warned the 4,000 chador-clad female spectators that the game would be called off if the guardians of Islamic morality detected indecent behaviour. The battle over womens dress code is not restricted to Middle Eastern teams. Muslim players on European teams are demanding the right to cover themselves in matches. Zeinab al Khatib, a 17year old Danish striker of Palestinian origin, carries their banner. With parliaments in France, Belgium and Spain imposing restrictions on Muslim womens garb, Al Khatib, backed by the Danish Football Association, has defeated FIFAs ban on religious symbols on the pitch. Europes first covered national soccer player, Al Khatib wears a brown scarf tightly wrapped around her head when she unleashes her lightning fast and nimble skills and extraordinary ability to score with a header. The Danish association defends the headscarf of its Under-18 national teams most promising forward as a cultural rather than a religious commitment and compares it to Brazilian midfielder Ronadinho Gauchos headband, which also violates FIFAs insistence that all players be identically dressed. Players like Al Hawari, Claudia and Al Khatib have paved the way for women. Halil Ibrahim Dincdag hopes to do the same for gay men. If women, largely confront social pressures, homosexuals face legal bans that carry sentences ranging from three years in prison to execution. His soccer team gave him the red card in 2009 even though Turkey is the one Muslim country in the Middle East that has legalized homosexuality when it discovered that the countrys conscription military had rejected him because of a psychosexual disorder. Dincdag decided he would not go quietly. He came out on national television and sued the Turkish football association for discrimination. That is no mean feat in a country rife with homophobia where spectators decry opposing players and referees whose decisions they dislike as faggots. Dincdag hails from Trabzon, a Black Sea city known for its legendary soccer club, its fanatical football fans and hot-tempered, explosive inhabitants who are quicker with a knife than with their wits. "I could have left the country, or disputed everything," Dincdag said. "But I knew the media wouldn't let it go. So I decided to tell the truth -- yes, I'm the gay ref you're looking for." Dincdag believes he will ultimately win once his case has wound itself through the Turkish court system and is argued in the European Human Rights Court, the ultimate adjudicator of Turkish human rights violations. His courage has won him a groundswell of support and made him an icon of Turkeys gay movement. He says a majority of Trabzon's 80 referees have congratulated him,

Turkeys most influential newspaper published a petition in his favour signed by 30,000 people and one columnist compared him to Harvey Milk, America's first openly gay politician. Redefining Protest Space, Reconquering territory The struggle in the Middle East and North Africa has moved out of the stadium into larger public spaces and in some cases into the smoke-filled rooms of political horse-trading. Tunisia has already embarked on the road charted by the peoples power uprisings in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe as political forces negotiate the precise structure of their future democracy. In Egypt, the terms of the transition are still being negotiated in and off the street in a process that is far more convoluted and contentious. In Jordan and Morocco, the street serves to maintain pressure on a monarch who unlike most Arab rulers has opted for engagement of protesters rather than oppression in his bid to retain power. Elsewhere in the region, fierce battles involving varying degrees of violence ranging from armed rebellion in Libya to resilient pacifism in the face of regime brutality in Syria will shape the outcome of the revolts and the transition to a more open, transparent society. The contribution of soccer fans to the toppling of the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia has emboldened them to play a role in ensuring that transition governments meet protesters demands and influence the politics of the beautiful game in their part of the world. Already, they have served notice with their storming in September 2011 of the Israeli embassy in Cairo that Arab governments will have to listen to public opinion when it comes to Israel. It was a message directed as much at Egypts transition military rulers as it was at Israel itself. It reflected mounting concern among segments of the Egyptian population with perceived efforts by the military to curb hard-fought freedoms and ensure that the militarys privileged position is secured by any government that emerges from parliamentary and presidential elections later this year. The embassy storming followed clashes days earlier between Al Ahly ultras and security forces in which 130 people, including 45 policemen, were wounded. The mounting tension between the ultras and the security forces reflects deep-seated animosity between the two that stems from the years of weekly battles in stadiums, a training ground that turned the ultras into a street battle-hardened force and gave them a kind of cult status as one of the few groups able to confront Mubaraks repressive machinery. In a soccer crazy country in which for many years nothing except for soccer rivalled religion in the depth of emotion it evoked, the soccer fans constituted living proof that Mubaraks hated security forces, who had come to fear the militants, were not untouchable. That is a lesson that is reverberating throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Soccer remains a battlefield as well as a prism on social and political dynamics not only in those Middle Eastern and North African nations still governed by autocratic leaders but also those that have toppled their presidents in the course of the Arab revolt. Militant soccer fans continue to be at the forefront of efforts to hold transition governments in Egypt and Tunisia to ensuring free and fair elections in line with the protesters demands. The soccer pitch also is more than ever a key venue in the Palestinian and Kurdish struggle for nationhood, the assertion of Berber and Iranian Azeri identity and the fight for womens rights. For much of the past decades, soccer in the Middle East and North Africa was about more than just the game; its power and impact ensures that the stakes on the pitch will be far greater than the game in the decade to come.