• World
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Central & South Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America & Caribbean
    • Middle East & North Africa
    • North America
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
    • US Election
    • US politics
    • Joe Biden
    • Brexit
    • European Union
    • India
    • Arab world
  • Economics
    • Finance
    • Eurozone
    • International Trade
  • Business
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Startups
    • Technology
  • Culture
    • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Film
    • Books
    • Travel
  • Environment
    • Climate change
    • Smart cities
    • Green Economy
  • Global Change
    • Education
    • Refugee Crisis
    • International Aid
    • Human Rights
  • International Security
    • ISIS
    • War on Terror
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Weapons
  • Science
    • Health
  • 360 °
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice
  • About
  • FO Store
Sections
  • World
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Sign Up
  • Login
  • Publish

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

Close

Egyptian Ultras Are Down, But Not Out

By James M. Dorsey • Apr 02, 2018
Egyptian news, Egypt news, Masr, Al Masry Al Youm, Egyptian ultras, Egyptian football, Al Ahly SC, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Hosni Mubarak, Arab news

© Aleksandar Mijatovic

Sisi will have to ensure that economic reform trickles down to the ordinary Egyptian.

In late March, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi won a second term virtually unchallenged in what was widely seen as a flawed election. But the run-up to the poll, including a soccer protest, suggests that it will take more than a democratic whitewash to get a grip on simmering discontent in Egypt.

The protest in early March signaled that militant soccer fans, who played a key role in the 2011 toppling of President Hosni Mubarak, may be down but not out. To be sure, the differences between 2011 and 2018 could not be starker. Sisi presides over the worst repression in recent Egyptian history that has targeted even the slightest form of dissent, making Mubarak’s rule look relatively benign.

Potential challengers in the recent election were either jailed or persuaded, sometimes in a heavy-handed manner, to withdraw their candidacy. They included serving and former military officers as well as Mortada Mansour, a controversial member of parliament and head of a starred Cairo-based soccer club, Al Zamalek SC. It was Mansour’s withdrawal that prompted a last-minute race to find a non-threatening challenger who could muster the endorsement by at least 26 members of parliament and 47,000 voters in time to meet the nomination deadline.

Mousa Mostafa Mousa, a largely unknown politician who had earlier declared his support for Sisi, registered 15 minutes before the deadline, ensuring that the government could claim the election would be competitive. Moussa secured 3% of the vote, while Sisi won by a 92% landslide.

Egyptian Ultras

Among Egypt’s estimated 60,000 political prisoners are scores of militant supporters of soccer clubs — known as ultras — who were not only prominent in the 2011 uprising, but also in subsequent anti-government demonstrations. These include a wave of student protests in the wake of the 2013 coup d’état that initially brought Sisi, when he was still serving as Egypt’s top military commander, to power. The student protests, which turned the country’s universities into security fortresses, were brutally squashed by law enforcement, abetted by the adoption of a draconic anti-protest law, tight control of the media, and a crackdown on nongovernmental organizations.

The seeming revival of the ultras comes at a time that soccer is re-emerging in Egypt as one of the few, if not the only, arenas for the release of pent-up frustration and escape from daily worries in an economic environment of austerity. This situation has seen improved macro-economic indicators while fueling inflation and making it harder for many Egyptians to make ends meet.

In the latest incident, 17 supporters of storied Cairo club Al Ahly SC — which traces its history back to the early 20th century, when it was founded as an anti-monarchical club whose supporters played an important part in the 1919 anti-British revolution that paved the way for Egyptian independence — were remanded in custody in March. The fans stand accused of participating in protests and clashes with security forces toward the end of a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League match in Cairo, which pitted Al Ahli against Gabon’s CF Mounana. They reportedly chanted slogans against the police and in favor of freedom.

As an international competition, the match was one of the few games exempted from a ban on public attendance of soccer games, which has been in place for much of the last seven years in a bid to prevent stadiums from re-emerging as potential venues of anti-government protest. The latest incident threatens to delay plans to lift the ban that has been enforced uninterrupted since early 2012, when 72 Al Ahly supporters died in a politically loaded brawl after a match in the Suez Canal city of Port Said.

The potential charges against the fans include being part of a group that incites disregard of the constitution and the law, preventing state institutions and public authorities from carrying out their work, and threatening the safety and security of society. Public investigators said the detainees included members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which won Egypt’s only free and fair election in 2012 but was toppled a year later by Sisi.

Ultras Ahlawy, the club’s militant support group, denied involvement in the protest. It said those involved did not represent the group and that it did not want the incident to be construed “in a political way.”

Sports and Politics

PhD student Hesham Shafick, however, described the CAF match as a return to the days prior to the 2011 revolt, in which militant fans or ultras dominated the stadium with their highly artistic, choreographed support for their club that was often laden with overt and covert political tones. “Their famous flames lit up the stadium and their famous song ‘liberta’ resurrected the moribund spirit of the January 2011 revolution,” Shafick wrote.

Shafick’s description and pictures of the Cairo stadium during the match suggest that the ultras — as a group — staged the choreographed support for their club. The staging defied a 2015 court ban of all ultras groups, even if individuals rather than the group itself may have been involved in the last-minute protest.

In a statement, Al Ahly President Mahmoud el-Khatib seemed to take the Ultras Ahlawy position into account by asserting that “a few people interfered with our great supporters and did these shameful acts. They wanted us to return back to the past years that witnessed the team playing behind closed doors.” Khatib was among a host of club presidents and athletes who attended a news conference hosted by the Egyptian Football Association to endorse Sisi’s candidacy in a seeming violation of a ban on mixing sports and politics, which is arbitrarily imposed by world soccer body FIFA.

The revival of soccer as a release valve was evident in a Cairo coffeehouse on the second day of Egypt’s three-day election, where men had gathered to watch a friendly match between Egypt and Greece. “Our voice is heard when we cheer and make a difference to the players, who are also doing something for the sake of this country. But if we go and vote in the election, our voice does not count — it makes no difference,” Hassan Allam, 28, told an Arab News reporter. “There was no real competition against [Sisi] and many of the people I know were harassed by security forces for their political affiliations. The only safe route for us to support the country is by cheering on our national football team; we have nothing else to do,” he added.

It is this sentiment that Sisi will want to turn to his advantage, much like Mubarak tried — with at best mixed results — when he sought to either polish his tarnished image by identifying himself with the success of the national team or, at times, manipulate soccer emotions into a nationalistic frenzy that involved rallying around the leader.

To succeed, Sisi will have to do more than support the Egyptian national team, which has qualified for the 2018 World Cup for the first time in 28 years, or adopt a nationalist approach by creating a fund that would incentivize players to play for Egyptian rather than foreign teams.

Sisi will have to ensure that economic reform trickles down to the ordinary Egyptian, get the upper hand in an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai, and ultimately loosen his grip on power to create space for political groupings and individuals to voice alternative and dissenting opinions. So far, there is little indication that Sisi is rethinking his approach along those lines.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Aleksandar Mijatovic / Shutterstock.com

Share Story
CategoriesArab News, Middle East & North Africa, Middle East News, Opinion, Politics, World Leaders News, World News TagsAbdel Fattah Al Sisi, Al Ahly SC, Al Masry Al Youm, Arab news, Egypt news, Egyptian football, Egyptian news, Egyptian Ultras, Hosni Mubarak, Masr
Join our network of more than 2,000 contributors to publish your perspective, share your story and shape the global conversation. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world.

Fair Observer Recommends

The Muslim Brotherhood: Islam and Democracy in Egypt The Muslim Brotherhood: Islam and Democracy in Egypt
By Anando Bhakto • Jan 24, 2014

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious The Daily Devil’s Dictionary: Facebook’s “Mission”
Next PostNext Time to Make a Change This World Autism Day
Subscribe
Register for $9.99 per month and become a member today.
Publish
Join our community of more than 2,500 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse.
Donate
We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible.

Explore

  • About
  • Authors
  • FO Store
  • FAQs
  • Republish
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact

Regions

  • Africa
  • Asia Pacific
  • Central & South Asia
  • Europe
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • North America

Topics

  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Environment
  • Global Change
  • International Security
  • Science

Sections

  • 360°
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice

Daily Dispatch


© Fair Observer All rights reserved
We Need Your Consent
We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Learn more about how we use cookies or edit your cookie preferences. Privacy Policy. My Options I Accept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Edit Cookie Preferences

The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.

As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media.

 
Necessary
Always Enabled

These cookies essential for the website to function.

Analytics

These cookies track our website’s performance and also help us to continuously improve the experience we provide to you.

Performance
Uncategorized

This cookie consists of the word “yes” to enable us to remember your acceptance of the site cookie notification, and prevents it from displaying to you in future.

Preferences
Save & Accept