Football Intelligence

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

I am not writing here to lament the footballing disgrace that unfolded between Egypt and Algeria, nor to weep over Arab nationalism and what the nation’s follies have brought it to — I am writing about Arab regimes that can only continue ruling through people’s ignorance and naivety, through their emotions overriding everything rational. What happened between Algeria and Egypt is nothing new on the Arab scene — Jordanian crowds once chanted for Sharon (“Go on, go on, Sharon — you’re in Gaza and we’re right here”) against Palestinians inside a stadium over a football match, and tensions flared between Algeria and Egypt twenty years ago over football as well.

Football Is Not the Only Culprit

Football is not the only thing that stirs hatred and animosity among the Arab peoples, nor is it the cause of the nation’s fragmentation, nor is it the sole expression of the foolishness, feigned foolishness, or induced foolishness that marks the conduct of Arab peoples trading rancor and hatred without even knowing why — or rather, because the politician’s mind is at ease only as long as the nation stays torn apart. Hatred is mutual between Palestinians and Jordanians, between Moroccans and Algerians, between Sudanese and Egyptians, between Iraqis and Kuwaitis, between Kuwaitis and Palestinians, between Lebanese and Syrians, between Qataris and Najdis, and so on.

Indeed, this hatred and rancor is no longer confined to relations among the Arab peoples — it has extended to within a single country, tearing apart the popular unity of that country itself. Egypt suffers tension between Copts and Muslims, between Upper and Lower Egyptians; Sudan between North and South, Muslim and non-Muslim, Arab and non-Arab; Yemen between Houthi and non-Houthi, North and South; Jordan between Irbid and Karak, between Palestinian and Jordanian; Palestine between Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas supporter and Fatah supporter; Syria between Aleppo and Damascus; Lebanon between North and South, Sunni and Shiite, northern Christian and central Christian; Iraq between everyone and everyone else, and so on.

The elders of our Arab nation still recall how Marrakesh once poured into the streets in demonstrations if harm befell a son of Basra, how Oran immediately expressed solidarity with Amman, how roaring Cairo did the same when Damascus was harmed, and rebellious Baghdad when Kairouan’s honor was at stake. We remember how Arab ports came to a standstill in the early 1960s when New York dockworkers refused to unload an Egyptian shipment for political reasons, forcing America to relent because all its ships in Arab ports had ground to a halt. We remember well the nation’s stand with Egypt in the Suez war, and the Arabs’ stand with Algeria in its revolution against the French. I myself remember perfectly how we used to compete, back in elementary school, to donate money to Algeria, all of us yearning to fight for freedom. I remember how a Palestinian carrying a donation box would fill it with money from just a single street in Beirut, Alexandria, or Casablanca — people gave generously.

Most of those beautiful scenes that once heralded a secure, impregnable Arab unity have now been overturned, so that peoples and governments now ready themselves to wage Arab-on-Arab wars over a football match.

The Regimes’ Responsibility

All the Arab regimes are despotic, self-indulgent, repressive regimes, ruling by iron and fire, and they cannot continue ruling unless they keep their peoples ignorant, emotional, and unwilling to use their own minds. We know from history how the despot always follows policies of lying and deception, and policies of divide-and-rule, in order to remain seated on the throne of power. These regimes used to speak, in the ’50s and ’60s, of Arab unity through their media, deceiving the masses into believing they were diligently pursuing the building of a unified, strong, dignified nation, and constantly spoke of progress across various fields of life. But it is clear they were merely aligning themselves with the general mood of the nation’s masses, while at the same time implementing policies that fragment rather than unite, that divide rather than unite — a truth that was never hidden from those capable of analysis and of connecting logical dialectical relationships, and it was easy to explain based on the nature of the Arab regimes, which can be classified as follows:

1. There are Arab regimes created by British, or Western, colonialism generally, which carved out for them a piece of this great homeland to remain a tool in its hand. These are the tribal-family regimes that can only ever side with the nation on secondary and superficial matters, because they exist to serve colonialism, not the nation, and whenever colonialism’s interest (and Israel’s along with it) conflicts with the nation’s interest, priority goes to colonialism’s interest.

2. There are Arab regimes that cannot pay their employees’ end-of-month salaries unless they receive monthly aid from the Western colonial states, or unless the wealthy Arab states, with colonialism’s permission, provide them some money — such as Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Yemen, Egypt to some degree, and Mauritania.

3. There are Arab regimes that cannot survive without military protection from Western colonialism, their future hostage to the will of that colonialism, and to Israel along with it.

4. The remaining Arab states, not falling under any of the categories above, are despotic regimes unfit for unity and progress, gradually turning into hereditary tribal regimes.

Given these objective conditions governing the Arab regimes, it was inevitable that they would produce Arab policies hostile to the Arab nation, including policies of keeping people ignorant and insisting on backwardness, particularly social backwardness, and spreading hatred and animosity among people at both the country and nation level. It is therefore not surprising that the political regimes bear a direct hand in the fighting between the Algerian and Egyptian peoples. The Egyptian and Algerian regimes are both corrupt, squandering the nation’s energies and wealth, monopolizing power, excluding those with dissenting or opposing views, arresting opponents, torturing them, and tearing them limb from limb. The Egyptian people groans under hunger, poverty, and poor health and educational conditions, its graveyards for the dead teeming with the living; the Algerian people, who ought by rights to be among the wealthy peoples, still suffers unemployment and policies of enforced ignorance and Frenchification. Both regimes are despotic, and their people’s assemblies do not perform their proper roles, most of their members receiving bribes, gifts, and special privileges from the head of the regime — afflictions weighing heavily on the shoulders of both the Egyptian and Algerian peoples. So is it truly in the interest of either regime to stir up this strife?

Both Regimes Are Complicit

Had there been any logic to it, the leaders of both regimes — at the very least at the level of their foreign ministers — would have moved to contain this foolishness the crowds carried into the stadiums. It would have been very easy for Egypt’s president to appear on screen and tell his people that Algeria is a land of free men, that it stood with Egypt in the October War of 1973, that it supplied Egypt with the weapons and food it needed after the 1967 war, that the people of Algeria are our own kin and beloved, and then offer his apology on behalf of the Egyptian people. And it would have been possible for the Algerian president to appear on screen and tell his people that Egypt is the one that sheltered the Algerian revolution, and that the assault on the Algerian team represents nothing but the folly of a few reckless individuals who could be found in any society. Or he could have apologized to Egypt for what happened in Khartoum, the assault on Egyptian fans.

But what proves both regimes’ complicity is the recalling of ambassadors. If it was merely a handful of reckless individuals who committed the assault, why recall ambassadors at all?

It is clear each regime has an interest in stirring up its crowds, for two reasons: first, each regime achieves popularity through this agitation, appearing to stand with its own masses and defend what stirs their emotions, thereby achieving gains, even at the nation’s expense; and second, it distracts the people further from the corruption being practiced, corruption that plunders the very rights of these agitated people who believe they are doing something good.

Intelligence Services as a Tool

Has anyone ever asked you who does the most harm to people in the Arab homeland? For me, it is the intelligence men, because the Arab intelligence services are concerned only with the security of the Arab regimes, even at the expense of the security of the Arab nation, and the security of the very people they spy on. The Arab intelligence services are the watchmen, the eyes, ears, and every other sense of the ruler, and it is they who guard the regime’s comfort and survival. Ask them, and they will tell you they are preserving the people’s security, but by God, they are liars. They preserve the security of the despotic, backward regime that plunders wealth and threatens the citizen’s security, doling out a few comforts to its own henchmen, foremost among them its recruited intelligence agents.

The Arab regimes recruit vast numbers of weak-willed people, concerned with nothing but their own private interests, to watch people, track their news, activities, and relationships, and write reports even against their own mothers and fathers — and it is these very people who spread fear and suspicion among people, who constantly work to strip away trust among people and spread vice and corruption, and who also spread rumors of every kind, aiming either to mislead people or to rally support for the regime. They manipulate people’s emotions, feelings, and national and religious sentiments in order to achieve political ends serving the regime.

Is it really true that the Egyptian intelligence services, spread into every nook and corner of Egypt, knew nothing of some Egyptian football fans’ intention to assault the Algerian team? And is it really true that Algerian intelligence, which contributed substantially to mobilizing large numbers of Algerians to travel to Khartoum, knew nothing of some fans’ intention to assault Egyptian fans? From what I know of the Arab intelligence services, acts of this kind do not happen without their involvement. The services instruct two or three of their own operatives to manufacture a reckless incident, and the crowds then follow, particularly since a considerable number of those present belong to the security services in one form or another. If an Arab intelligence service is concerned with what Umm Fatima is cooking today, or which café Abu Ali is sitting at, or who Abu Khayban greeted this morning, or which side Abu Habtan slept on last night, would it not concern itself with what crowds of people might do?

Sacrifice for the Sake of Freedom

If we set out to satirize the Arab regimes and their security services, we would never finish, for there is so much in them deserving satire. But what matters lies in what we ourselves are going to do. Do we have the will to avenge this nation, and our own dignity and pride, or will we continue being driven, like cattle, toward strife, calamities, and defeats, with no chivalry, courage, or gallantry stirring within us? If Israel is strong because of Arab regimes like these, these regimes are strong because of the weakness of the Arab nation’s masses. It is clear we are not doing our duty, particularly those of us who possess even a fraction of awareness and knowledge of the truth.

Many nations have risen up against injustice and enslavement, achieving strides toward freedom and liberation, while we Arabs can barely lift the shoes of injustice off our necks, and still we do not stir. The peoples of the earth rise up and achieve gains in the fields of freedom, education, social change, and cultural development, while we Arabs wallow either in poverty and backwardness, or in ever-greater indulgence in consumption, as though our bellies were the most precious thing we possess.

I have called, again and again, on Arab intellectuals to gather together so that we might become a force confronting the regimes and their intelligence services, so that we might free ourselves and begin our own march toward revival. We must do this — there is no path before us but sacrifice for the sake of freedom, and whoever does not want to sacrifice does not want to be free.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “مخابرات كرة القدم” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.