The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

By James M. Dorsey The line-up of contenders for the presidency of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), promises everything but the wind of reform and change the group badly needs after almost two years of controversy and scandal that are still reverberating through the world of soccer. With five days left to the March 3 deadline by which candidates have to announce themselves, the list of contenders so far reads like a cast of characters from a B-movie. In many ways, the line-up reflects a scandal-ridden world of questionable governance in global soccer in which officials project themselves as proponents of change, albeit change that does not fundamentally rock their comfortable boat. The 46-member AFC is scheduled to elect its new president at an extraordinary congress on May 2 following the banning for life from involvement in professional soccer late last year by world soccer body FIFA of Mohammed Bin Hammam, the AFC’s most recent elected head. Three of ...

Beitar fans insist that their club remain racially pure (Source: Reuters) By James M. Dorsey When militant supporters of right-wing soccer club Beitar Jerusalem last month vowed to keep their team pure in protest against the hiring of two Chechen Muslim players they went beyond what are usually accepted expressions of racism in Israel to unwittingly challenge a founding principle of Israeli foreign and defense policy coined by the country’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion: the need to ally Israel with non-Arab Muslim nations to compensate historically for the lack of and more recently uncertainty of its relations with Arab neighbors. In doing so, they provoked a rare national outcry against the club’s racist policy – Beitar Jerusalem is the only top league club to have never hired a Palestinian player despite the fact that Palestinians rank among the country’s top performers – that in many ways reflected last month’s outcome of national elections and a growing...

(Source: Fox News) By James M. Dorsey Military troops are protecting factories and government offices on the fifth day of a general strike in the Suez Canal city of Port Said that has brought together two groups with working class roots that played key roles in the toppling of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak: militant, highly politicized, street-battled hardened soccer fans and the labor movement. Operating independently both groups constituted key centers of resistance to the repression of Mr. Mubarak’s regime during the years that preceded his downfall. The fans fought police and security forces in the stadiums in a battle for control of one of the country’s most crucial public spaces while workers in industrial towns like Mahalla organized strikes against Mr. Mubarak’s economic liberalization policy and corrupt and nepotistic privatization of state-owned assets. Yet, it took perceptions of a majority of the population of Port Said, a city of 600,000 hist...

Protesters block government offices (Source: Al Jazeera) By James M. Dorsey Thousands of militant soccer fans, in an indication that emergency rule will not squash mass protests, blocked government buildings as part of a general strike in the Suez Canal city of Port Said that is at the center of mounting anger at the brutality of police and security forces and demands that those responsible for the death of more than 800 protesters since mass demonstrations erupted in Egypt two years ago and toppled president Hosni Mubarak be held accountable. The protest that forced the closure of the port authority and disrupted rail and telecommunications services constitutes a reaffirmation of a deep-seated sense among residents that Port Said is being made a scapegoat for at best the failure by law enforcement to prevent and at worst to have instigated a politically loaded soccer brawl a year ago in which 74 fans were killed. By targeting the port authority but stopping shor...

David Ignatius Opinion Writer In Egypt, the kids are not all right     Text Size Print E-mail Reprints By  David Ignatius ,  Saturday, February 16,  8:36 AM If you’re trying to understand the rampaging soccer fans who have become a political force in the new Egypt, you might consult Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel “ A Clockwork Orange .” The book is about a chaotic future shaped by roving gangs of “droogs” (Burgess’s imaginary word for young male toughs). Led by Alex, the droogs get stoned on milk-and-drug cocktails and then commit brutal acts of what Burgess called “ultra-violence.” 0 Comments Weigh In Corrections? Personal Post David Ignatius Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog. Archive @IgnatiusPost Facebook RSS You may also like... Anne Applebaum After the revolution Fareed Zakaria Oba...

RSIS presents the following commentary Post-revolt Arab Transitions: Driven by  Distrust and Inexperience by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this  link . (To print it, click on this link .). Kindly forward any comments or feedback  to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at   RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg No. 027/2013 dated 13 February 2013 Post-revolt Arab Transitions: Driven by Distrust and Inexperience By James M. Dorsey        Synopsis Post-revolt Middle Eastern and North African countries are struggling to  manage  the transition from autocratic to more transparent, accountable  societies.  Increasingly prejudice, distrust and inexperience are proving to be  greater obstacles  to a successful transition than resistance of vested interests...

(Source: Construction Weekly) By James M. Dorsey Qatar, in a bid to fend off a possible move to deprive it of the right to host the 2022 World Cup because of its failure to adopt international standards for foreign workers, is drafting a charter for laborers involved in the construction of infrastructure related to the tournament. The announcement of the planned charter by the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee comes amid a rare series of articles in Qatari media depicting workers’ difficulties and a call to offer laborers relief in part through sports. It further follows a rare news conference in the Qatari capital Doha by Human Rights Watch in which it charged that the Gulf state had failed to live up to its promise to address the fundamental rights of foreign workers who account for about a third of the population in a country in which non-nationals are the majority as well as condemnatory statements by international trade union leaders. "We are currently in ...