“Fair play” has been the motto of FIFA, the world governing body that organises World Cup football tournament — the world’s most popular sporting event.

However, the controversy surrounding Qatar, the host country for the 2022 World Cup, has proven to be anything but fair play. British media reports indicate that Qatari government has bribed FIFA officials and potential host countries’ representatives to swing the vote to host the tournament in Qatar’s favour.

The report published by the Sunday Times in London mentions that Qatar retained the services of top public relations firms as well as former CIA operatives to discredit other contenders, which included the United States, to host the 2022 World Cup.

If Qatar was playing in an active game, it would very likely be issued a red card. Its behaviour towards ensuring it got the 2022 World Cup is bad sportsmanship.

Qatar went through some quite extraordinary hoops to get what it wanted. One of the toughest challenges Qatar faced was the weather in Doha. The World Cup is traditionally played in June and July, summer months. However, in June and July in the Gulf, the temperature averages 45-50 degrees Celsius.

Conditions for the players, constantly running up and down the pitch for the good part of 90 minutes, were unacceptable. Qatari officials convinced FIFA to change the schedule to have the matches take place in November and December, the coolest time of the year in the Gulf.

That presented two immediate problems. First, the weather, while significantly milder in Doha in December than in July, the humidity remains quite high, so the Qataris said they would install air conditioning in all stadiums. Imagine the electric bill on that one.

Second, shifting the tournament to late in the calendar year caused concern for European clubs that will be forced to shift their league schedules to factor in the World Cup. That raises fears that this could affect some of the top league players. However, with the resources allocated to the project, it appears the Qataris can find any solution that money can buy. But for how long? There is mounting pressure for FIFA to revisit the 2022 bid from Qatar.

Football is huge around the world. In many countries it is more than a sport and akin to a religion.

There is much at stake here. FIFA is big business. It is big money and big prestige for the country that wins the nomination to host the most-watched sporting event in the world. The World Cup finals commands an audience that reaches into the billions of viewers.

Figures compiled by FIFA state:

• 5,154,386 people attended FIFA Fan Fests in Brazil during the World Cup 2014, with Rio de Janeiro’s spectacular Copacabana site attracting 937,330 — the highest number in any individual city.

• $7.2 billion in tax revenue shall be received by Brazil through investments in the 2014 World Cup.

• 3,429,873 was the total attendance for the 64 matches, the highest recorded at any World Cup since 1994. The average crowd of 53,592 at one match was the highest in two decades.

• 3,240 footballs, including training and match balls, were used during the tournament.

• 3,127,674 food and beverage transactions took place at the stadiums over the course of the competition.

• 90 countries were visited during the 267-day FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour, with 45 heads of state and 33 previous World Cup winners among those to get their hands on the trophy.

• 1 billion-plus was the attendance on FIFA’s Global Stadium, FIFA.com’s social, online and mobile hub throughout Brazil in 2014.

For the players, playing for their national team is very prestigious notch in their profession belt. For individual countries making it to the World Cup is equally prestigious, as only 32 countries make the final selection, although the World Cup will expand to 48 teams, perhaps as soon as 2022.

For those selected, aside from the prestige, making it to the finals revives a sort of primal sense of tribal loyalty. For the host country, there is the financial reward from the tens of thousands of fans who travel to the host country to watch the matches.

One Peru fan sold his apartment, his car and all his belongings to get enough money to go watch his team play in Moscow.

Making it to the World Cup has important repercussions on the country’s internal politics as has been seen with the multi-ethnic French team.

With all that in mind, it becomes a little clearer as to what might drive the tiny emirate of Qatar. What it may lack size, Qatar makes up in ego.

The ball appears to still be in Qatar’s court, though there is time left on the clock. The sad tales of Qatari unsportsmanlike behaviour are a legitimate source of concern.

Claude Salhani is a regular columnist for The Arab Weekly.

Copyright ©2018 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 August 2018
Word Count: 804
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Cairo — When a little-known group called Hasm (Arabic for “decisiveness”) claimed responsibility for the killing of six Egyptian policemen with a bomb outside a Cairo mosque, it highlighted the complex battle authorities face fighting the terrorism threat posed by numerous emerging groups.

In addition to that December bombing, Hasm claimed responsibility for killing three policemen and had attempted to kill several important figures, including Ali Gomaa, Egypt’s former grand mufti. Gomaa is an outspoken critic of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Before Hasm surfaced, six other groups had emerged, targeting policemen, army personnel, judges and supporters of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

One of the groups, Lewa al-Thawra (Arabic for “Revolution’s Flag”), said it was responsible for the assassination of army Lieutenant-General Adel Rajaaie in October outside his eastern Cairo home. Rajaaie had overseen the demolition of a network of smuggling tunnels between Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

“The impression you get after analysing the discourse, the operations and the targets of all these groups is that they are about the same thing, even as they have different names,” said security expert Khaled Okasha.

Agnad Masr (Egypt’s Soldiers), al-Maglis al-Thawri (Revolutionary Council) and Kataeb Helwan (Helwan Brigades) also have carried out operations against police and army personnel.

Security experts view these new groups, apart from the Islamic State (ISIS) in Sinai, as the most serious security threats facing Sisi’s government.

“One reason these groups are dangerous is that they are able to infiltrate into Cairo and hit at the heart of Egypt’s security establishment, which should be protecting the public against them,” said Nabil Naeem, a former jihadist. “The impression they want to give everybody is that the security establishment itself is not immune from their attacks.”

As ISIS does, the groups usually issue online statements mentioning details of operations they have just performed and aliases of the people who carried them out while vowing to maintain their war against Sisi, his supporters, police and the army.

Sameh Eid, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, said junior Brotherhood enthusiasts formed the groups to take revenge on Sisi, his security establishment and his backers soon after Muhammad Morsi’s overthrow as president in 2013. Morsi was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

“All the operatives of these groups are Brotherhood members,” Eid said. “They adopt different names only to give the impression that they are many and to distract the attention of security agencies.”

The Brotherhood usually denies links to the groups, saying its opposition to Sisi is peaceful.

Eid claimed, however, the Brotherhood was in full control, giving the groups money to buy arms and explosives and masterminding their operations.

Islamist analyst Kamal Habib disagreed, saying that, while most of the members of these militant groups have been part of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organisation cannot be in control or blamed for their actions.

“How can an organisation almost totally devastated be in full control of all these different groups?” Habib asked. “Some political forces are feeling that the way to peaceful change is blocked, which is why they are resorting to violence. You should not exclude this as you analyse the current situation.”

Hassan Abdel Zaher is a Cairo-based contributor to The Arab Weekly.

Copyright ©2016 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 30 December 2016
Word Count: 525
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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Beirut — Syrian regime forces are steadily overwhelming rebel-held strongpoints in besieged eastern Aleppo in fierce fighting backed by a pulverising Russian air campaign that is shaping up to be Syrian President Bashar Assad’s most important victory of the war.

The fall of the rebels’ last major urban stronghold will not mean the end of the war, however.

“What’s happening in Aleppo will only fuel chaos and terrorism,” France’s UN Ambassador François Delattre warned during an emergency Security Council session on November 30.

The objective of the Syrian regime and its main backers — Russia and Iran — appears to be to reconquer the sector of the northern city held by rebels since mid-2012 before Donald Trump is sworn in as president of the United States on January 20.

With all of Aleppo in regime hands, Assad and his two key allies should be able to absorb any change in US policy on Syria and hold the high cards in any US-backed peace initiative aimed at halting the conflict.

The rebel forces in Aleppo, about 8,000 strong, are heavily outnumbered and outgunned, cut off from any relief after being hammered for months by the relentless Russian-led aerial blitz and shelling by regime artillery.

The rebels, who have been losing ground since Russia intervened in September 2015 to save Assad from what looked like certain defeat, were reported to have recently lost 40% of the territory they held as the regime tightened the noose around the opposition bastion.

Eastern Aleppo is becoming “one giant graveyard”, UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien warned on November 30th as regime forces spearheaded by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan regiment advanced in fierce street fighting.

With much of eastern Aleppo in ruins and its streets strewn with bodies from day-and-night bombardment, about 50,000 of the estimated 250,000 shell-shocked inhabitants who have survived months of the regime’s starvation tactics have been seeking to flee the city.

The exodus is likely to swell as regime forces close in for the kill, with the United Nations and the United States unable to prevent the final bloodbath.

The seemingly inevitable rebel collapse in a historic city that was once the heart of Syria’s economy will greatly bolster Assad’s position and his allies in any negotiations to end the war. Some 400,000 people have died and half of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million has been driven from their homes in nearly six years of conflict.

UN-mandated and US-backed efforts have failed. Russia, its power in the Middle East restored by the 2015 intervention to save Assad, now seems to be in the driver’s seat and able to negotiate from a position of strength.

In what appears to be a fresh diplomatic effort, opposition sources reported that at least four rebel groups linked to the Syrian National Coalition are having secret negotiations in Ankara with the Russians, brokered by Turkey, with the immediate purpose of ending the bloodletting in eastern Aleppo.

These talks, the first to involve a large number of key opposition groups, have reportedly made little progress.

The gathering underlines Russia’s growing importance in the Middle East and possibly signals a new phase in the quest for a political settlement to end the war with Russian power in the ascendant while US influence in the Middle East wanes.

Moscow is reported to have been seeking to arrange a meeting in Damascus of key rebel leaders, possibly as early as January, to discuss having a national dialogue that would later be attended by Assad’s government.

The objective, according to political sources, is to achieve a political agreement that would lead to parliamentary and presidential elections in which Assad would run for a fourth term while overseeing the transition of what has been essentially a one-party state to a power-sharing arrangement with Assad remaining as president.

Amid Moscow’s efforts to secure a ceasefire, however, Russian warplanes continued their blistering day-and-night bombardment of eastern Aleppo, where whole neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble.

A political settlement to the conflict remains a distant prospect even though the impetus for getting rid of Assad by Western and Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey has grown as the war drags on with no end in sight.

The seemingly inevitable regime victory in Aleppo could unleash new dangers, not least of which would be providing motivation to the jihadist forces that have become the core of the resistance to the minority Alawite Assad regime’s sectarian policies which have tormented Syria’s Sunni majority for decades.

Nor is there any sign of a lessening of largely covert US support for rebel forces outside Aleppo where the Islamic State (ISIS) is the prime target, particularly in northern Syria where anti-regime Kurdish groups are strong.

According to British analyst Charles Lister, who has interacted with most rebel factions, they have about 150,000 fighters in the field, with only 5% of that total in Aleppo.

Rebel forces, including ISIS, still hold Idlib province in the north along with much of neighbouring Aleppo province. It is likely to be the regime’s next objective. The rebels also hold sizeable territory in southern Syria.

Ed Blanche has covered Middle East affairs since 1967. He is the Arab Weekly analyses section editor.

Copyright ©2016 The Arab Weekly — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 05 December 2016
Word Count: 847
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rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
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