Riots in Cairo, and an own goal for Arab brotherhood

H A Hellyer

• Last Updated: November 22. 2009 12:10AM UAE / November 21. 2009 8:10PM GMT

Zamalek is an up-market island district of Cairo, where most of the embassies and diplomatic residences are. I know it well. I used to live there, and still visit often. It’s a lovely, peaceful area, altogether less rowdy and noisy than other parts of the city.

Or rather, it was. I happened to have been visiting there over the past few days, and from Thursday night Zamalek changed. Crowds of rioters tried to march on the Algerian embassy, furious at the treatment Egyptian football fans had received from their Algerian counterparts in Khartoum after a World Cup qualifying play-off there the night before.

The rioters seemed intent on exacting some sort of revenge on the embassy, but were stopped in their tracks by the Egyptian police. Infuriated, they turned their anger on the businesses, the cars, and the streets surrounding the embassy in the worst hooligan violence this district has ever seen.

The following morning, it was like a war zone. Cars had been wrecked, shop windows smashed, a petrol station vandalised, a police car set on fire; even the road around the embassy had its asphalt surface damaged. The riots continued all through the next day, and into the night.

The hostilities were not confined to Cairo. People were injured in Algeria, and in France (which has a large Algerian community) there was damage to property, cars and businesses. All this between two members of the Arab League, between two brotherly Arab nations, and all over a football match to decide which team goes to the World Cup finals in South Africa next summer (Algeria, incidentally; they won 1-0 – if anyone cares).

What does Arab nationalism have to offer by way of explanation? Very little, it seems. This is hardly brotherly behaviour. Commentators observe that the history of hostilities between these two countries goes back a long way, but that is only part of the truth. Both these states pride themselves on being Arab nations (which does not necessarily mean becoming a single pan-Arab state); in the 1950s Algeria’s anti-French forces trained in Egypt, which was happy to help in the spirit of Arab unity against colonialism.

Arab unity dies and comes alive again on a regular basis, probably because it has the power to create a real and durable sense of community among a variety of races and religions. But in this case, while Arab identity certainly means something to Algerians and Egyptians alike, it apparently does not mean enough to prevent them from escalating a football match into an incident of international diplomatic proportions. Few bothered to bring up a common Arab identity as a reason not to raise the temperature.

And a closer look at the rioters themselves, at least in Egypt, is illuminating. For the non-elite to protest is unsurprising; they would be venting the frustrations at the many social and economic problems that face Egypt. One shopkeeper in Zamalek admitted to me that football is one of the few things that the masses feel they can get excited about. Excitement – or indeed, hope – is in short supply. These people are proud of being Egyptians, so their protests were certainly rooted in a sense of hurt after Egyptian fans were attacked in Khartoum, but they are also angry about the lack of opportunities they have. The protests are almost certainly linked to both.

But usually in these protests, we do not see the elite getting involved. On this occasion, a disproportionately high number of the protesters were from the elite and upper middle classes of Egyptian society – a tiny number of people.

The unique element in this case, at least on the Egyptian side, seems to be that a disproportionately large number of the Egyptian fans who travelled to Khartoum (not a cheap trip) were also from that elite class, and thus they felt a personal connection when many of them were abused there by Algerian fans. This was evident when many members of the elite upper classes vigorously voiced their objections in the Egyptian media, in a way that they generally do not do about the problems that face their country.

These are problems that no state or government can solve on its own. Civil society must play its part, and there is a serious responsibility upon the elites in this regard. They have a disproportionate ability to develop and improve Egypt, owing to their wealth and influence. They are the ones who hold the keys to improving matters for the majority of Egyptians, and developing civil society. When they organise, they should be galvanising people for positive social change and encouraging development. These football riots have done neither.

The national pride of both these countries will serve a useful purpose when their societies put even a fraction of the energy they showed over the past couple of weeks into building a future that their grandchildren can be proud of. When Egyptians and Algerians put their energies not into platitudes about Arab unity, or into perceived national insults over football, but into renewing and reinvigorating their own societies, the Arab world will be a better place all around.

Let there be a real, and hopefully friendly, competition between Egypt and Algeria on that score.


Dr H A Hellyer is a fellow of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick in the UK, and director of the Visionary Consultants Group