Quartz: US intelligence sees soccer as indicator of discontent
To locate the next Arab Spring revolution, look to the soccer stands
Future revolutionaries. AP Photo
It’s been said that soccer
tells us all we need to know about
life, parenting, even globalization.
Now
a Singapore-based blogger says soccer can tell us which
Middle East or North
African government will be the next to
blow. At the top of the
list: Algeria and Saudi Arabia.
Over at his blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer,
James M. Dorsey looks at
soccer as a lens through which to
view the fault lines
carving up the Middle East and North Africa.
In Egypt, Tunisia, Libya,
and other countries, he says, soccer
played a key role in
allowing pent-up anger and frustration to
percolate into organized
protest that forced transitions from
autocratic rule to more
open societies.
In
these countries, those engaging in public forms of dissent are
often tortured and
“disappeared.” Soccer fans, in contrast, are
allowed to vent as much as
they want, and in large numbers.
Stadiums become incubators
of protest and insurrection. One only
has to watch the action off
the pitch to accurately gauge the mood
of the people and see how
close they are to erupting into mass protest,
Dorsey tells Quartz.
Dorsey, a former Wall
Street Journal foreign correspondent, has
been writing his blog for
three years. In February 2011,
he focused on the
role of the militant, highly politicized, and well
organized soccer
fans, known as Ultras, in Egypt’s uprising.
Here’s a taste:
One catch: Often, especially in family-run
monarchies, the
countries’ leaders own soccer clubs as a status
symbol, so
fans might just be mad at the government for the latest
losing
streak. That might have been the case recently in Saudi
Arabia,
where fans booed Prince Faisal bin Turki, the owner of
Riyadh
Middle East Soccer blog
Dorsey doesn’t think so,
and contends the Saudis are in trouble.
Washington-based Saudi
dissident Ali al-Ahmad agrees, based on the
increasingly militant
behavior of young male soccer fans in the stands
as well as on Facebook and YouTube.
“It has reached a breaking
point. They are calling for overthrow, and
using very similar chants
to fans in Tunisia and elsewhere,’’ said
al-Ahmad, of the Institute
for Gulf Affairs. “When they are all together,
they are not afraid
anymore.”
Dorsey predicts the next revolt
will be in Algeria. Soccer fans there are
increasingly voicing
opposition to 76-year old president Abdelaziz
Bouteflika, who is
recovering from a stroke in Paris. Recently, they
interrupted a moment of
silence during a match to commemorate the
death of a former leader,
chanting “Bouteflika is next.”
Dorsey
says some very influential security types, as well as soccer officials,
follow his blog for hints
as to what is to come. One US intelligence official
agrees with Dorsey’s
premise. The official, who has spent decades in the
Middle East and North
Africa, said CIA officers routinely attend matches
to glean clues as to where
a country is headed.
Often, the official said,
an autocratic regime would cover up burgeoning
dissent by blaming it on
hooliganism. The CIA person on the ground would
mention that, too, in the
cable back to headquarters: “They would take note
of it all, and put it in
context. As soon as the prince shows up, everyone
starts booing. That sort of
thing.’’
Comments
Post a Comment