By Abdelhafid Missouri

When the Phillies lost to the New York Yankees in Philadelphia a few weeks ago consequently losing their title of the national baseball championship, I asked an American friend the following day what he thought of the Phillies’ loss. He said so calmly:

It’s alright. The Phillies won the title last year.”

Nothing speaks the calmness of this people louder that such a statement. Everyone had wished the best of luck for the Phillies. Big crowds all suspensefully awaited the game and attended it. Everyone wore a Phillies T-shirt and supported the team with cheers and smiles. Septa, the Bus and Subway system in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had threatened to go on strike the very weekend the game was to take place due to budget disagreements with the City government. However, I do not remember that I heard vocal protests against this move. People wanted to attend the game and support their team. They wanted transportation to the Field. Sure enough without much clamor, negotiations had Septa decide to resume service that weekend. People were tacitly thankful and grateful. Then all of a sudden, the Phillies were losing. The spectators stood still and unhappy with the progress of the game. The Phillies were losing but the people were so disciplined and so self-containing. I saw faces of men and women, kids and adults twitching from the ugly realization that the title is not going to be for Phillies this year. And yet, none ever went wild or ran amok. None brandished batons and sticks at the opposite team and its spectators. People did not go wild on the air-waves condemning the New York Yankees and their spectators for their loss. They did not take to the street in waves to bemoan their loss and vent their anger at the Yankees and their people.

Unfortunately, such was the case during and after the two soccer games that opposed Egypt and Algeria, first in Egypt and then in Sudan during the past few weeks.

The game was the last game between Arab nations to determine what country would represent the Arab world in the World Cup finals to be held in South Africa in 2010.

The spark was all triggered when Egyptian mobs, it was reported, attacked the bus transporting the Algerian national team players in Cairo, smashed glass-windows with stones, and endangered the life of the players and their technicians.

Then came the game. Algeria scored first and was about to make it to the finals had it not been for a goal scored by the Egyptians at the very last seconds of the extra time, thereby reviving Egypt’s chances for qualification to the World Cup finals. While Egypt had chosen Sudan for the makeup game and Algeria Tunisia, it was finally decided that the game be in Sudan.

Nothing would prepare you for a media war loaded with rancor and derision other than the scenarios of animosity and hostility surrounding this game.
The Algerian and Egyptian presidents opened an emergency air line to shuttle their fellow countrymen to Sudan. All of a sudden, Khartum streets were filled with Algerian youths to the surprise of the Egyptian team and their supporters. Their anger at the Egyptians for their attack on their players in Egypt put them on edge. The governments fanned the flames and in a second it was like President Boutafliqa was sending troops to conquer Sudan or ambush Egypt. He stood up there delivering his harangue to his citizens to respond to the call of the country. It was very much as though he was saying: “O countrymen, board these military planes and march towards the enemy, for indeed he had done you harm”.

On the other side, the Egyptian President Husni Mubarak delivered his speech before the Council of the People reminding Egyptians in a political message addressed to the Algerians that they will not allow anyone to do the dignity of Egypt and the Egyptians harm.

Then came the game. The Egyptians lost. Their media, government and the art community went berserk and went as far as to portray the Algerians as savages and uncivilized Berbers. Well-known actors and actresses who have become iconic in North Africa due to heavy promotion of Egyptian movies in the region attacked the people of North Africa unreservedly. One would only wonder how come North Africans can take all the blame and remain silent instead of reconsidering what was throughout the last few decades been inculcated in the minds of their people as a one Ummah united by the bonds of Islam and Pan-Arabism.

The incidents of violence, verbal and physical, in Egypt and Sudan over a game of Soccer indeed tell us an abundance of stories and teach us a plethora of lessons on the social, cultural, and political reality in many parts of the Arab world, if indeed we are a people who learn. In an article published on Hespress.com on November 25th, 2009 titled: “Contemplations on the Loss of the Egyptian Team to Algeria”, Idriss Hani, quoting Muammar al-Qaddafi to have said that “soccer is not a sport; that is, it is a selfish game where a group play as millions of people have their nerves set on fire” portrays soccer as a violent sport that is rivaled only by lion-fighting in ancient Greece and bull-fighting in Spain. He disapprovingly pours his anger on the sheer stupidity of the people and the violence of the game, and dismisses the entire game as a trick to bring massive crowds together, provoke them, and turn them into clowns. Hani contrasts the peoples of the US and those of the Arab world stating that the united States managed to supply baseball as an alternative to the violent sports of soccer, thereby, he says, it protected its people from sharing soccer violence with the rest of the world.

The game in Sudan turned into a semblance of a battlefield between two armies, each harangued by its commander-in-chief and supplied with technical support and military aircraft to transport the soldiers to the front. So unparalleled a decision and the massive response of the Algerians to the call of their president to board planes and march in support of their national team against the Egyptian enemy bespeak two major vulnerabilities. For the Egyptians, it is their unbudging and unflinching fanaticism for their country Egypt which Hani explains as a fact deeply rooted in the Egyptian strong sentiment that Egypt is the eldest brother of all the brother Arab countries and therefore it is worthy of victory in all matters that pertain to Arabs and Moslems.

Yet, this claim betrays an enormous rift in this old Egyptian ideology that explains everything else on the basis that Arabs are all brothers wherever they may be. If that is the case, would it not have been the case to make sure the Algerian national team is not attacked in Cairo? And if that was an aberration on the part of the Egyptian government, would it not have been a great idea to make sure the game takes place in peace, security, and respect for “the brothers” from Algeria both on the field and in the media? Would it not have been a priority to make sure visitors are not done any harm and would it not have been very productive to the old Egyptian ideology that claims Egypt is the history maker of the Arab and Moslem peoples, would it not have been a priority to preserve the friendship between the Egyptian and Algerian peoples instead of fanning the flame, providing moral and logistical support for the spectators, and provoking their nationalist ardency against “the Berber savages and the brutes” as some of their actors and commentators called the North African people, who have come to eliminate us from the World Cup finals to be held in South Africa in 2010?!

In this game two shows were put up: A show by the peoples of Egypt and Algeria and another by the governments of the two countries. The people proved to the world how quickly they can be transformed into armies that can easily be moved from training fields to battlegrounds. While the Algerian people responded to the call of their president Boutaflika with surprising alacrity, the Egyptian people proved how angry they are and can get, how frustrated they are by defeats in past wars, and how easily they relinquish what is called the foundations of glories they claim to have centered upon pan-Arabism and Arab and Moslem brotherhood.

The other show was military at the highest levels. It is a war time, the tug-of-war seemed to say. Boutaflika puts military aircraft at the disposition of the people to join the fight, and the Egyptian president starts a large-scale media campaign and with unique rhetoric warns those who want to do Egypt and the people of Egypt harm.

I can only conclude this contemplation by expressing how sad and sorry I felt at the situation of the folk. They have lost all sense of direction and know neither what to do nor how to do it. In the meantime, the folk are sending important indications and signals to the free world that in those regions chaos reigns unrivalled and public anger is stirred with a mere word, as orientalist Chateaubrillant said: “Les Arabes sont sensibles au verbe” [Arabs are sensitive to words]; that is, they can easily be angered and easily put down.