Egypt defeated Algeria this weekend in a World Cup qualifying match that was preceded and followed by violence. Days before the game, three Algerian players were slightly injured in Cairo when Egyptian youth attacked their bus. Then, following the stunning last-minute victory by Egypt (watch the video above), near riots broke out in the streets resulting in 32 injuries.
Having lived in Cairo and watched intense national rivalry games on small television sets at dusty coffee shops in dark alleys surrounded by over-caffeinated and over-zealous young men, I can picture perfectly the scene Hannah Allam describes:
Fireworks are exploding, police sirens are blaring, horns are honking, music is thumping and at least six processions of young men with drums have passed noisily in front of my building. Sporadic gunfire is keeping the whole block’s residents in from their balconies.
Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Egyptians are flooding the streets draped in the red, white and black of the national flag and generally whooping it up. They have reason to celebrate: the Egyptian national soccer team beat archrival Algeria tonight in a World Cup qualifier. The two teams will play again Wednesday in Sudan.
“This is what a revolution could look like,” an Egyptian friend observed, wistfully, of the fervor in the streets.
With a completely calcified political scene, football serves as one of the only outlets for national pride and competitive domestic politics in Egypt. Elections for the position of president of the two main Cairo clubs - Al-Ahly and Zamalek – are more hotly contested than any government position in the country.
Imagine what the pent up frustration of millions of young Egyptians could do if focused on a political target? Perhaps Gamal Mubarak? Could this happen if Hosni suddenly passes away or, if before that, he unconstitutionally attempts to hand over power to his son? Given the police state that is modern-day Egypt, this revolution en masse may never take place. But no one knows for sure until the fortitude of the carefully calibrated system of repression is truly tested.
And this finally brings me to what else happened on Saturday. Kareem el-Shae’r, an Egyptian blogger and political activist, was found beaten, injured and covered with his own blood. A member of the opposition Al-Ghad party of Ayman Nour (who also has spent much of the last few years in prison), Kareem had been arrested and harassed previously during the protests calling for judicial independence in 2006.
His case unfortunately is not unique and it will certainly not be the last. For so many years, the Egyptian security service has systematically intimidated, harassed, and tortured those in Egypt who have publicly challenged the system. It is this quiet form of repression – that looks much different, for example, than the wholesale political cleansing of Saddam’s Iraq – that keeps Mubarak safely in power, but continues to stir a boiling pot. When change does finally come to this petrified and decaying state, few know whether the political status quo can be maintained or whether, like after a staggering football victory or defeat, thousands of young men will flow out into the streets firing their guns and setting off explosions.
With no dramatic political reforms on the foreseeable horizon, such could be a frightening future for Egypt.
gamal and alaa mubarak were in the audience, in a pathetic attempt to appropriate the last thing in egypt they haven’t yet stolen–the occasional outburst of pride the average emotionally and financially distraught egyptian is still able to muster every now and then. and make no mistake, they were “cheering”…they are after all egyptian and have the same nationalist impulses the rest of us riffraff have…but only in spite of their political calculations…the fact that a nation half of which lives on $1 or less a day and a quarter of which is clinically depressed can still dance in the streets all night long scares the living daylights out of them and it should. instinctively, gamal cheers for egypt, but when he sits at his desk (presumably made of the human remains of subversives of every stripe, or just bought with the trillions stolen from me and my compatriots) and thinks about it, he wants egypt’s football team to be mediocre, like everything else in that shithole i love so much called egypt.
note that ‘rigal al-amn’ [the security people] made sure to seat gamal and alaa quite far apart…you never know might bring live ammunition to a military parade on october 6, 1981 or a loaded gun to a football stadium in november 2009. i suppose there’s always hope!
Wow. I guess the question is whether football is fanning or defusing these forces.
The French Revolution started with the Tennis Court Oath…
[...] has more coverage about the politics of Egyptian soccer in which they also nicely summarized my post from yesterday. They write: Soccer is more than just a sport for Egyptians. A recent victory in [...]
ok sir , what about the lawyers who burned the algerian flags in cairo .
I am begging the egyptians to show as better than that . Now we understand why alaa and gamal sent the complet egytian show-biz to khartoom , it’s a film they made there , a big one , the experience of the actors gave its fruits , even the educated society is now involved in the mascarade , how can we hope that an arab lawyer could be respected outside ? especially after this ,burning the nationnal flag of a foreign country and gonig against all the internationnal laws . i feel sorry for theme.