Planned mass protests in Egypt echo Cairo’s Tahrir Square uprising
Ultras play cat and mouse
By James M. Dorsey
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and militant, street
battle-hardened soccer fans, in a replay of the run-up to mass protests two
years ago that ousted Hosni Mubarak are positioning themselves for planned
watershed mass demonstrations for and against the government this weekend.
In a statement almost identical to the one they issued on
January 24, 2011, the eve of 18 days of protests that toppled Mr. Mubarak,
Ultras Ahlawy, the militant support group of crowned Cairo club Al Ahli SC that
played a key role in the former president’s overthrow, said this week that as
an organization it would not participate in the demonstrations on the
anniversary of Mr. Morsi’s ascendancy as Egypt’s first freely elected president,
but that its members were free to do so.
The statement insisted that that Ultras Ahlawy was a group
of soccer fans “that has nothing to do with politics.” It said the group had
decided “not to get involved in politics again after realizing that the
opposition doesn’t care about the country but simply aims to rule.”
Militant Egyptian soccer fans, who constitute one of Egypt’s
largest civic groups, have a history of publicly defining themselves as
non-political and as a group refusing to openly underwrite political protests.
Ultras leaders told their tens of thousands of followers privately two years
ago after officially declaring that they would not take part in the Tahrir
Square uprising that the protests were the litmus test they had been preparing
for and that they were free to participate.
The tactic employed by similar groups in Turkey and
elsewhere was designed to shield soccer fan groups from being exposed to
allegations that they were political organizations and as a result more
vulnerable to government attempts to suppress them. 74 members of Ultras Ahlawy
were killed last year in a politically loaded brawl in the Suez Canal city of
Port Said.
Ultras Ahlawy as well as the Ultras White Knights (UWK), the
supporters of Cairo arch rival Al Zamalek SC, and fans of two other Egyptian
clubs last weekend stormed stadiums where there clubs were playing in protests
against a ban on fans attending soccer matches. Egypt’s league that restarted
in February after a one-year suspension in the wake of Port Said has again been
suspended in advance of this weekend’s protests. Zamalek coach Jorvan Vieira
announced that he was taking extended leave because of Egypt’s mounting
volatility.
This weekend’s protests were organized by ad hoc grassroots
group Tamarud (Rebel) that hopes to commemorate Mr. Morsi’s anniversary with a
million-man march on the presidential palace. Tamarud has reportedly collected
15 million signatures, two million more than the 13 million votes the president
garnered a year ago, on a petition demanding Mr. Morsi’s resignation and new
elections.
The petition that a significant number of militant soccer
fans are believed to have signed, takes Mr. Morsi to task for his failure to
tackle the country’s economic crisis, dispel fears that he is pursuing an
Islamist agenda, and his haughty style of government that many see as a
continuation of Mubarak’s authoritarianism. It calls on the military and the
judiciary in violation of the constitution to lead the country to new elections.
In an echo of terminology used by Mr. Mubarak and more
recently Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to denounce their
detractors, Mr. Morsi said that the interior ministry had established a special
unit to combat thuggery. The ministry controls the police and the security
forces that are among Egypt’s most hated institutions because of their
execution of the Mubarak-era repression and the deaths of some 900 protesters
since the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak for which officials have yet to be held
accountable. Brutal police force turned recent smaller protests in Brazil and
Turkey into massive anti-government demonstrations much as the brutality of
security forces on Tahrir Square two years ago strengthened protesters’
resolve.
Fears of violence this weekend have been further fuelled by
the expectation that Morsi supporters will hold counter demonstrations this
weekend. Those fears were reinforced by recent attacks by Morsi supporters on
Tamarud representatives as they publicly collected signatures on street corners
and other public spaces.
Supporters and opponents of Mr. Morsi clashed earlier this
month for hours in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. Two people were killed
and more than 200 injured this week in clashes in the Lower Egyptian cities
Mansoura and Tanta. Four Shiites were stabbed, lynched and mutilated by a mob
in a village near Cairo last Sunday in an attacked that had been motivated by
opposition by militant Sunni Muslim sheikhs to a religious feast.
The ultras in past protests in Egypt, much like like-minded
groups more recently in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, often see their role as protecting
protesters against abuse by the security forces. Their approach is rooted in a
deeply rooted sense of having been abused and mistreated for years in clashes with
security forces in stadiums. The Black Bloc emerged earlier this year as a
group of masked black clad vigilantes founded primarily by battle-steeled
soccer supporters with the aim of protecting protesters against violence by
Morsi supporters.
The sense that this weekend could mark a watershed in Egypt’s
volatile transition from autocracy to a more open society was heightened by a
statement this week by the country’s top general describing the role of the
security forces as a safety valve against political conflict. Security
officials said the military had moved troops closer to Egyptian cities in
advance of this weekend’s protest and armored vehicles appeared this week in
the streets of Cairo.
Mr. Morsi, in a carefully worded rebuke insisted he was the
commander in chief and that the army's role was solely to protect the country's
borders. Amid wild speculation of what the military may do, much rides on
whether the protesters, who see this weekend’s demonstration as a launching pad
for a second revolution, succeed in mobilizing large numbers and whether events
and to what degree they turn violent.
The last two years have demonstrated that the leaders of
violence-prone militant soccer fans are struggling to control their rank and
file which often itches for a confrontation with security forces whom they see
as the symbol of their perceived misery. Said a young militant earlier this
year: “To hell with our leaders. This is not the moment to backdown.”
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s
Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog.
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