‘Hate matches’ draw Mubarak’s fury

Nadia Abou el Magd, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 21. 2009 10:10PM UAE / November 21. 2009 6:10PM GMT

CAIRO // The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, weighed in yesterday on the bitter and increasingly political row between Egypt and Algeria following two football matches between the countries that resulted in violence.

Mr Mubarak said he was angered by reported attacks on Egyptians in Algeria and Khartoum last week and vowed that they would not be tolerated.

“The welfare of our citizens abroad is the responsibility of the country. We don’t accept any violations and transgressions against them,” said Mr Mubarak, to cheering legislators, in a televised speech yesterday at a joint session of Parliament’s upper and lower houses.

“I say clearly that Egyptians’ dignity is part of Egypt’s dignity, and Egypt will not take a lax approach with those who harm the dignity of its sons.”

Ten days ago, before the first of two World Cup qualifying matches between Egypt and Algeria, the bus of the Algerian team in Cairo was reportedly pelted with rocks by Egyptian fans, injuring three Algerian players, who subsequently played the game with bandages around their heads.

After Egypt beat Algeria 2-0, Egyptians living in Algeria were attacked and Egyptian businesses were vandalised. Then on Wednesday, when the two sides met again in Khartoum and Egypt was defeated 1-0, Algerian fans attacked Egyptians and threw rocks at buses carrying Egyptian fans.

There were also clashes in France between Egyptian and Algerian immigrants following the game, shop windows were smashed and cars and boats were set on fire.

There were protests outside the Algerian Embassy in Cairo over the weekend in which dozens of police and demonstrators were injured. Egyptian fans smashed shop windows and burnt Algerian flags.

The two countries had a similar, “hate match” 20 years ago, although it was not comparable in scale.

The incident took a political turn over the weekend when Egypt recalled its ambassador in Algeria “for consultation” and summoned the Algerian ambassador to Cairo over the issue. Algiers on Friday summoned Egypt’s ambassador to protest against attacks on Algeria in the Egyptian media, APS news agency reported. It said the Algerian foreign minister, Mourad Medelci, had expressed “incomprehension and major concern” at what he called “the escalating media campaign” in Egypt.

Egyptian media have been dominated by the violence. Reports quoted Egyptian fans as saying that knife-wielding Algerians had chased them in Khartoum and surrounded their buses. Newspaper articles accused the Algerian media and regime of incitement and planning the attacks. In radio phone-ins and on television, Egyptians have called for the severing of ties between the countries and for “revenge”.

Alaa Mubarak, the eldest son of the president, called for “a unified Egyptian stance against the Algerian attacks” in a telephone interview on Friday with Egypt’s prime time talk show, The House is Yours. He said: “We as Egyptians won’t accept any Algerian apology after these attacks”.

Mr Mubarak, who attended Wednesday’s match in Sudan, along with his younger brother Gamal, called for boycotting all sports with Algeria, saying “we don’t want them to come to us or to go to them”.

He also criticised Egyptians who are emphasising common history and brotherhood between the two Arab and Islamic nations.

“There is nothing called Arab nationalism or brotherhood, this is just talk, that doesn’t mean anything in reality,” said Mr Mubarak. “When Algerians learn how to speak Arabic they can then come and say that they are Arabs.”

Mr Mubarak junior also mentioned that the Algerians in Khartoum were shouting insults at Egyptian fans over Egypt’s stance on Israel’s war against Gaza earlier this year, when Egypt refused to open its borders to let Gazans escape Israeli strikes.

Egyptians have set up groups on Facebook calling for Algeria to be disqualified from the World Cup, to boycott film festivals and arts exhibitions in Algeria and to ban Algerians from participating in the Cairo international Book Fair in January.

Some observers here are saying Egyptians feel humiliated in a way they have not felt since the 1967 defeat in the war with Israel. People who are calling for calm seem to be in the minority as the nationalist chorus grows.

Some Egyptians are in a state of shock and are wondering why the Algerians showed so much anger towards them; many here still think of Egypt as the leading Arab country.

Analysts ascribe the Algerian violence to their 132-year struggle for liberation from French occupation, which it achieved in 1962, and the civil war in the 1990s between Islamists and the regime that left up to 250,000 dead.

Nabil Abdel Fattah, the head of historical research at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said Algerians, also mired in poverty, used sporting occasions as an outlet for frustration.

Algeria “is suffering from an identity crisis, violence, poverty, unemployment and corruption, causing a surplus of frustration that is expressed in football games, both local and international games”, Mr Abdel Fattah said.

However, Mr Abdel Fattah also blamed the Egyptian media and the authorities for sensationalising the events and using them to their own ends.

“Part of the Egyptian reaction is normal, but a large part of it reveals media demagogues, lacking the minimum of professionalism and seeking fame at any cost,” he said.

“Egypt is also sharing with Algeria similar problems of unemployment and corruption – as well as the football mania – so the ruling elite here is using the crisis.”

nmagd@thenational.ae

* With additional reporting by the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse