3 September 1999
Letter from the Levant
Arab sports: A case of pride and prejudice
No where else in the world has sport become an extension of politics as it is the case today with Arab sports. The 9th Pan Arab Games, which were held in Amman this month, have underlined this fact. The sports arena has become a reflection of the Arab political landscape, which is rife with narrow nationalistic prejudices, dogmas and divisive policies.
The official, and very romantic, interpretation of such events is quite different. Arab sporting events are seen as an enhancement of Arab unity and the ideal of one Arab nation. But I wonder if this is really the case. There is no doubt that any pan Arab gathering, especially in such noble arenas as sports, fans the dying embers of the old Arab dream of a great Arab nation extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arab Gulf. That in itself is a political goal that has long become part of history. And yet political commentators and newspaper columnists pay homage to this goal every time two or more Arab leaders meet. The standard cliché is that they are meeting to enhance bilateral relations at one level, and support pan Arab cooperation at another.
Is this typical, bordering on the stereotypical, perception of affairs too unrealistic and naïve? There are two arguments to this case, through none other than sporting events. On the one hand pan Arab sports, in my view, awaken deep ultra-nationalistic, as opposed to pan nationalistic, pride as in the case of Jordan playing Iraq in the final football match, for example. Jordanians were not expected to sympathize with Iraq and naturally they backed their home team to the very end, as did Iraq supporters, who cheered their team. In some incidents pro Palestinian crowds clashed with Jordanian fans, as did Libyan and Palestinian—for no apparent reason. So one could say that such events in fact cement division.
The second argument works like this. In World Cup matches, and other international competitions, we support teams and athletes from any Arab country as vehemently as we would support our own national teams and players. Egyptians, and indeed all Arabs, supported wholeheartedly Saudi Arabia’s football team in the World Cup last year and embraced it as their own. That’s a plus for those arguing that the dream of Arab unity is still alive in people’s hearts, isn’t it? The Italians were not about to cheer the French team just because it is European when the latter played Brazil in the 1998 football final. It doesn’t work that way.
The Gulf War has polarized the Arab world and that polarization has filtered into Arab sports. In 1997 Iraqi players were prevented from participating in the 8th Pan Arab Games by the host country, Lebanon, to please Kuwait. The Jordanians tried their best to make Al Hussein tournament a truly Arab event. Kuwait refused to send its players but agreed to make a symbolic gesture by showing up in the opening ceremony. In recent years it was the United States that took the initiative of politicizing sporting events when it boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the invasion of Afghanistan. That was a departure from the ground rules of Cold War politics that were in place since the 1950s.
Even the seemingly harmonious political group of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), comprising six Arab Gulf countries, sports has sometimes been marred by politics. The prestigious Gulf Cup tournament had in since its early days included Iraq as a participating team. But Gulf War realities have changed that and Iraq has been banned from the tournament.
Since Olympian times sporting activities have had a unique affinity to politics. Competition among athletes substituted for warfare on the battlefield but not at the expense of boosting national pride. This remains true to this day. We see it when winning athletes brandish their national flags and tour the stadium, or when gold medalists stand proud facing their country’s flag as the national anthem of the victorious country is played.
Inter-Arab sport presents a different perspective to inter-Arab politics. You have national teams brandishing the flags of no less than 20 sovereign Arab states competing in a variety of sports activities. But football stands out the ultimate expression of national pride and, sadly enough, political bigotry.
Was bigotry the driving force that led Libyan hooligans to riot and destroy assets at an Amman stadium recently when their national team lost to Iraq? Hooliganism in sports is today an international phenomenon that was born in English and other European football fields. But inter-Arab sports contributed another dimension. It has become politics by other means, an opium for the masses where winning a match is tantamount to a political or even military victory. Who wouldn’t like to see Iraq’s football team battling the US national team? And how would our political commentators interpret the outcome of such a match, especially if Iraq ends up winning.
For the Arabs winning has a double importance. Our recent history is riddled with military defeats and political setbacks. We cherish the dream of Arab unity but we find expression of our own limited national belonging when our athletes score a vital win. This hunger for meaningful victories, no matter how unrelated they are to our political realities, has become an extension of our national sovereignty. That’s probably why we see our leaders making regular appearances in such events, which somehow transform them into political rallies. And that’s probably why the job of leading national teams to victory is given to political appointees, sons of presidents, kin of kings and emirs. And naturally these victories, when they do take place, are immediately attributed to the caring and wise leadership of who else but the leaders.
The way we view sporting victories will continue to be intrinsically linked to our political and social evolution. One has to admit, though, that even at the global level there is a tribal element to the way nations identify with sports. It remains, and will continue to be, a source of national pride and—alas—prejudice since victory for one party means defeat for another. Of course it doesn’t have to be this way. The more developed the society, the more civilized it handles both outcomes. In the end it’s just sport, and victories in the field, inspiring as they are, should not be given more credit that they deserve in the real world; a world of mounting social and economic challenges that we still have to address no matter who wins or loses.