Posts by James M. Dorsey.:
Egyptian president asserts power in Sinai and on the pitch
August 11th, 2012By James M. Dorsey
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is negotiating his working relationship with the country’s powerful military in the battle against armed militants in the Sinai and on the soccer pitch.
Taken together, the Egyptian military’s effort to restore control in the Sinai, a region that had become a no-man’s land in the wake of last year’s toppling of president Hosni Mubarak, and efforts by Mr. Morsi’s sports minister, El-Amry Farouk, to resume suspended professional soccer in the presence of fans despite opposition from the interior ministry constitute indications of how the new president will manage his complex relationship with the military as well as the security forces.
If the Sinai is any indication, the military after having given itself broad legislative and executive authority on the eve of last month’s election of Mr. Morsi and securing the defence ministry in Prime Minister Hesham Qandil’s cabinet, appears primarily concerned with shoring up its image tarnished by 18 months of at times brutal transition rule.
The military, long Egypt’s most trusted institution, suffered loss of credibility because of its post-Mubarak efforts to retain its political role as well as its perks and privileges and violent clashes between security forces and youth and soccer fan groups, the military’s most militant opponents.
Mr. Morsi’s response to this week’s killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers by militants has allowed him to position himself as the country’s co-commander-in-chief by firing intelligence chief General Murad Muwafi and ordering troops to restore control in the Sinai. Mr. Morsi is the first Egyptian president since the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy not to be Egypt’s official commander in chief, a title that is reserved for his defence minister Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, who is also head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
General Muwafi’s firing suggests that Mr. Morsi and the military both considered him to be a convenient scapegoat despite the fact that he was respected by US, Israeli and European intelligence officials and had long advocated a crackdown on militants in Sinai. The general’s popularity with foreign intelligence services may have been the real reason for his downfall. Many saw him as a potential Omar Suleiman, the late general who was Mr. Mubarak’s charismatic intelligence chief and his closest adviser and enforcer.
If the troubles in Sinai suggest that Mr. Morsi and the military have found common ground, the soccer pitch will put to the test the new president’s relationship not only with the military but also with the police and the security forces. Sports minister Farouk by pushing for a resumption of professional soccer is taking on the hard-line interior minister, General Ahmed Gamal el-Din, who is widely believed to be responsible for last year’s vicious street battles with youth and soccer groups in which scores of people were killed and thousands injured. General El-Din justified the casualties as “self-defense.”
General El-Din, who was deputy interior minister prior to Mr. Morsi’s election, has opposed lifting the ban on professional soccer imposed in February after 74 militant soccer fans were killed in a politically loaded soccer brawl in Port Said on security grounds. He sees the ban as a way of controlling expressions of dissent by militant, highly-politicized and street battle-hardened soccer fans who played a key role in the demonstrations that toppled Mr. Mubarak and agitated against the continued political role of the military and the security forces. General El-Din insists that the ban can only be lifted once stadiums have been equipped with enhanced security, including electronic gates, airport-style scanners and security cameras.
Although the demand for enhanced security is not unreasonable, maintaining the ban on soccer constitutes a risky strategy. For one it seeks to avoid the fact that addressing stadium security involves far larger issues including a reform of the interior ministry and its security forces who are Egypt’s most distrusted institutions because of their role as enforcers of the repressive Mubarak regime.
Mr. Farouk, a former board member of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC whose fans died in the Port Said incident, is also betting on the fact that the ban risks the government being held responsible for the mounting financial crisis experienced by soccer clubs because of the suspension of matches and the poor performance of Egypt’s national team and top clubs in African championships because they are forced to play in the absence of their fans. The national squad and Cairo’s two clubs, Al Ahly SC and Al Zamalek SC, are among Africa’s most crowned teams.
“Football resumption will be my priority in the coming period. I’m considering allowing fans back to the stands, given the financial losses clubs have incurred during the past period — due to the absence of fans. I’m trying to coordinate with all the relevant authorities to settle on the best possible way to resume football and allow fan attendance. The fans usually breathe life into football matches. We saw how Ahly, (Cairo club) Zamalek and the Egyptian national team were affected because they had to play behind closed doors,” Mr. Farouk said in an interview with state-owned Al Ahram newspaper.
Mr. Farouk’s efforts are backed by the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) which has seen its efforts to resume professional soccer in later August rebuffed by General El-Din. He said earlier that his efforts were also backed by Messrs. Morsi and Qandil.
Mr. Farouk in his first move as sports minister earlier this month fired the EFA board appointed by the military in February after the Port Said incident and appointed former Al Ahly goalkeeper Essam Abdel-Moneim as caretaker chairman with the task of organizing elections within 60 days. The sports minister rejected a FIFA protest against what it said was political interference on the grounds that the dismissed board had not been elected.
“FIFA has received wrong information about the issue. They thought that we sacked an elected board of directors, but this is not the case,” Mr. Farouk said.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Afghanistan’s Future: Civil War or Soccer Rivalry?
August 9th, 2012By James M. Dorsey.
Thousands of young men hope to play in the Premier League.
Soccer symbolizes Afghanistan’s choices coming full circle as U.S. forces prepare to withdraw from the Central Asian nation more than a decade after they invaded it. Back in late 2001 and early 2002, US troops fresh from overthrowing the Taliban viewed soccer balls and shoes as just as basic to mending Afghanistan’s social fabric as beams and girders were to mending war-damaged buildings. Soccer paraphernalia served as a tool to win hearts and minds and counter Iranian efforts to exploit the beautiful game for the same purpose.
A decade later, a major Afghan telecommunications company, Roshan Telecom Development Co., and media tycoon Saad Mohsen’s Moby Group are launching Afghan Premier League soccer in what David Ignatius of The Washington Post juxtaposes as Afghanistan’s post-withdrawal options: televised soccer rivalry or armed civil war.
Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) president Keramuddin Karim backed by sociological analysis argues that “to establish peace and stabilize a country, one must not only focus on training soldiers. Sport is also a strong base for peace, as it embodies values such as unity, integration, pride and prevents racism, drugs and other elements that bring insecurity to the country.”
Mr. Karim is taking a leaf out of the experience of other countries where sports in general and soccer in particular have had a cathartic effect by channeling human aggression away from violence and into more healthy channels. Nelson Mandela used a racially integrated national rugby team to unite South Africa in the wake of apartheid — a story now made famous by the movie Invictus. South Africa went on to become the first African nation to successfully host the World Cup.
In a letter announcing the premier league that will include eight teams, the AFF said that it would cut “across all ages, socio-economic groups, regions and tribes.” In fact, it will cut across regions and ethnic, tribal and religious groups that have in the past been at loggerheads with one another.
Abdul Sabor Walizada, a trainer for the project and former national team players, said the AFF hoped that the league would also help stimulate business and build bridges. “After years of civil conflict and war, people will focus on football and the businessmen from each zone will try to have the best players. It will create national unity because if the central zone, for example, has a really good player, the southern zone team will want to buy him. They will not care about his ethnicity. They will not care about his tribe. They will care that he is one of the best players,”Mr. Walizada said.
The launch of the premier league comes among fears that the Afghan army will split along ethnic and sectarian lines following an American withdrawal, plunging the country into chaos with the Taliban stepping up its insurgency and various groups that fought each other in the past picking up arms again.
US military and civilian officials believed a decade ago that reopening soccer stadiums and encouraging people to play free of fear or persecution would win hearts and minds among those scarred by regimes for which soccer was either the enemy or a weapon of terror. The premier league is one way of putting that to the test.
US-led international forces played shortly after their overthrow of the Taliban an Afghan team in Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium to highlight the change they were bringing to the war-ravaged country. Last December, Afghan leaders together with US ambassador Ryan Crocker and the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, attended the festive opening of Kabul’s completely refurbished 25,000 seat Ghazi stadium to highlight progress from the days that the Taliban used it for public executions amputations of limbs.
The hope now is that the new league’s eight teams who represent different parts of the country with a history of being at loggerheads with one another will compete on the pitch instead of the battlefield once US forces have left despite the fact that some of them bear the names of fiery birds: the Eagles of the Hindu Kush in central Afghanistan, the Goshawks from southeastern Afghanistan and the Falcons of Kabul.
The recruitment of players also serves the effort to bridge the country’s fault lines. Selection takes place on a reality television show, Maidan e Sabz or Green Field, for which thousands of Afghans have applied. The audience of each show selects 18 out of 30 candidates whose performance is judged by a group of former Afghan national team players and coaches who pick 15 players while the studio audience votes for the final three.
The reality show broadcast from six cities, including Kabul, Jalalabad and Mazar-e Sharif, is intended to involve from day one a once soccer-crazy public that failed to embrace recent amateur leagues. Soccer enjoyed enormous popularity until 1979 when the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan spawned fierce resistance followed by a civil war once the Soviets withdrew.
“We are doing (player selection) on TV so that people can know the players. They will be famous thanks to the reality show. This will help us to promote football,” said AFF board member Sayed Ali Reza Aghazada.
League matches broadcast on Afghanistan’s two main television channels will be played in September and October. Sponsor Roshan predicted that the league would be a “unifying institution” a Afghanistan.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
The Syrian Crisis: Russian Policy Risks Wider Conflict
August 4th, 2012Synopsis
Russia’s pro-Assad policy bodes ill for Moscow’s ability to contribute to preventing a
Russia’s Islamist militants
Recent attacks on two prominent Muslim clerics in the Russian autonomous oil-rich republic
The two men, Valilulla Yakupov and Idius Faizov, were known for their criticism of militant
The influx of radical clerics was in response to a call by Chechen separatist leader Doku
A small price to pay
Umarov’s ideological and geographical ambitions go a long way in explaining Russia’s
That may be a relatively small price to pay from Russia’s perspective which views the
The civil war in Syria where Islamists dominate the insurgency, the Islamist electoral
Then president George W. Bush, in a rare recognition of the pitfalls of decades of US
Russian suspicions of Western sanctions against Syria and non-military support for the
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Qatar and UAE hire fired AFC Bin Hammam associates
July 24th, 2012
Mohammed Bin Hammam
By James M. Dorsey.
Qatari and United Arab Emirates soccer bodies have provided employment for dismissed former Asian Football Confederation (AFC) senior staff implicated in an independent auditor’s report that questions the financial management of the group by its suspended president, Qatari national Mohammed Bin Hammam.
The fact that the Qatar and UAE soccer bodies agreed to hire personnel that AFC let go because of their relationship to Mr. Bin Hammam is likely to prompt further questions about his links to the Qatari royal family and his potential involvement in Qatar’s controversial winning of the right to host the 2022 World Cup.
Mr. Bin Hammam is fighting charges of bribery and corruption and potentially allegations of money laundering, busting of US sanctions and tax evasion as a result of the auditor’s report as well as his ousting last year as vice president of world soccer body FIFA. Mr. Bin Hammam is at the center of a number of soccer corruption scandals that have rocked world soccer and FIFA in recent years.
Qatar has long downplayed Mr. Bin Hammam’s involvement in its World Cup bid despite his past close relationship to the Gulf state’s emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and key role in world soccer.
Mr. Bin Hammam has appealed against an AFC decision earlier this month to suspend him as president for 30 days pending review of the report by PriceWaterhouse Cooper (PWC) that alleges financial mismanagement of AFC accounts to his own benefit as well as that of family, friends and soccer bodies across the globe.
The report also raises questions about Mr. Bin Hammam’s management of a $1 billion master rights agreement (MRA) with Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG) and a $300 million broadcasting rights contract with the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera television network as well as his financial relationship to parties with possible vested interests in those deals.
The report provides the Kuala Lumpur-based AFC with the reasonable suspicion of a legal offence that it under Malaysian law is obliged to report to authorities. It also leaves the AFC with little choice but to launch a full-fledged investigation of its own. The AFC, which has Malaysian nationals, including a member of a royal family on its executive committee, can extend Mr. Bin Hammam’s suspension for a maximum of another 20 days, ten of which must be used to prepare a case against him. It also has to report its finding to Malaysian authorities within that period.
The report says former AFC assistant secretary general and director of finance Amelia Gan managed AFC accounts which Mr. Bin Hammam used “to facilitate personal transactions as if they were his personal bank accounts.” It also alleges that Ms. Gan was involved in negotiating AFC’s contract with WSG that is being questioned. Ms. Gan is currently employed as club licensing officer by Qatar Stars League, which is headed by a member of the Qatari royal family, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Bin Ahmad Al Thani.
Similarly, the former director of Mr. Bin Hammam’s AFC office, Jenny Be, who like Ms. Gan, AFC assistant secretary general Carlo Nohra and AFC’s director of Vision Asia, Michelle Chai, was let go last year after Mr. Bin Hamman became embroiled in the FIFA scandal, is also employed by Qatar Star League as club liaison officer.
Mr. Nohra, a former WSG vice president for corporate strategy whose $19,767 car loan was paid by Mr. Bin Hammam according to the PWC report, “played a prominent role in negotiating the detailed clauses of the MRA,” PWC said. Mr. Nohra was chief executive officer of the UAE football league until January of this year. He has since become CEO of UAE soccer club Al Ain FC LLC. Ms. Chai is the UAE professional league’s director of club licensing and professional affairs.
The league is managed by the UAE Football Association headed by Yousef al-Serkal, an AFC executive committee member who is widely seen as close to Mr. Bin Hammam. Mr. Al-Serkal is campaigning to succeed Mr. Bin Hammam as AFC president. Ms. Chai, according to AFC sources, has accompanied Mr. Al-Serkal to AFC meetings.
Supporters of Mr. Bin Hammam who like some former AFC employees credit him for his turning around of Asian soccer and generosity describe him as a man who embraced new ideas, enjoyed trying out new concepts and was eager to adopt best practices. “But there’s also that baggage that is universal in world soccer. He’s just the one who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar,” said a former AFC employee. He said he like many others in AFC had been aware of Mr. Bin Hammam’s questionable financial management. The PWC report came to a similar conclusion.
It is nonetheless not clear if the allegations in the PWC report prove to be true why Mr. Bin Hammam used AFC accounts for questionable dealings that could have been done through accounts that would have been harder to trace. Similarly, it is not clear why a man of Mr. Bin Hammam’s global stature apparently openly flaunted international standards of conflict of interest and good governance even if some of those practices are endemic to post-oil wealth Gulf culture.
The former employee said Mr. Bin Hammam had promoted personnel to positions they would have unlikely been able to occupy otherwise. He said Ms. Gan had been a bookkeeper prior to becoming assistant secretary general and director of finance. Ms. Be, he said, was a secretary before being elevated to head of Mr. Bin Hammam’s office and Ms. Chai was a development officer before also being appointed assistant secretary general.
The employee said the WSG contract had enabled Mr. Bin Hammam “to live an extravagant life style” and shower his extravagance on AFC itself. He described “over the top” AFC functions at which personnel and guests were given jewelry.
He said Mr. Bin Hammam’s decision in 2008 to invite the heads of member associations of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to stop off in Kuala Lumpur for a shopping spree before continuing on to that year’s FIFA congress in Sydney instead of travelling to Australia together with other FIFA members had sparked irritation among Asian football bodies, particularly those of Japan and South Korea.
The employee as well as sources close to the AFC investigation of Mr. Bin Hammam said that the Japanese, South Korean, Jordanian and Kuwaiti soccer associations have long been unhappy with the WSG contract which they saw as unfavorable to the Asian confederation. More than half of the revenues derived from the contract are believed to originate in Japan and South Korea. “Everybody who had a look at the contract could see that it was completely in favor of WSG,” one of the sources said. “Japan fought it hard. A number of associations, including Jordan and Kuwait protested. Nothing however was taken into consideration at the 2009 AFC congress,” said another source.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer
FIFA moves closer to investigating Qatar’s World Cup bid
July 18th, 2012FIFA prosecutor Michael J. Garcia: Eyeing Qatar
By James M. Dorsey.
World soccer body FIFA moved closer to investigating its controversial awarding to Qatar of the 2022 World Cup hosting rights with the appointment of two prominent crime fighters mandated to look into past allegations of corruption.
Speaking at a news conference in Zurich, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said that Michael J. Garcia, a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, which handles high profile white collar fraud, international terrorism and national security cases, would have a free hand in choosing his investigations.
The appointment of Mr. Garcia as head of the soccer body’s investigatory committee and German penal court judge Hans-Joachim Eckert as head of its judicial chamber marks a milestone following two years of repeated scandals that together constitute the worst crisis in the soccer body’s 108 year-old history. The scandals were not exclusively related to Qatar, but often involved either the Gulf state or Mohammed Bin Hammam, a disgraced Qatari national who until last year was vice president of FIFA and president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
Swiss court documents in a case unrelated to Qatar revealed as late as last week that Mr. Blatter’s predecessor Joao Havelange and Brazilian Football Association boss Ricardo Teixeira had received millions of dollars in kickbacks from FIFA’s collapsed marketing partner ISL. Mr. Blatter said the documents would be handed over to Mr. Garcia.
The appointment of Messrs. Garcia and Eckert at the very least means that allegations of Qatari wrongdoing are likely to resurface despite the Gulf state having so far successfully denied charges of illegal payments, unethical favours to FIFA executive committee members and allegations that Qatar, Spain and Portugal had violated bid rules by agreeing to swap voted.
The core of the allegations of Qatari bribery collapsed last year when a disgruntled employee of the Qatari bid committee admitted that she had fabricated documents and allegations that the Gulf state had paid two FIFA executive committee members $1.5 million to secure their support for its bid.
Focus on Qatar is however likely to be renewed in coming weeks with Mr. Bin Hammam becoming news again. The AFC announced on the eve of the appointment of Messrs. Garcia and Eckert that Mr. Bin Hammam had been suspended for 30 days as the result of a year-long audit by Pricewaterhouse Coopers that revealed “infringements” in the “execution of certain contracts” and tampering with AFC bank accounts.”
Meanwhile, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland, is expected to rule next week on Mr. Bin Hammam’s appeal against his banning for life by FIFA from involvement in soccer on the grounds that he last year tried to buy the votes of Caribbean soccer officials in a bid to defeat Mr. Blatter in FIFA presidential elections.
Qatar has in the past year sought to distance itself from Mr. Bin Hammam arguing that he did not play a role in the Gulf state’s World Cup bid. That is likely to be put to the test by Messrs. Garcia and Eckert given Mr. Bin Hammam’s key position in world soccer and his close ties to Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
Few doubt that Mr. Bin Hammam would have been aware of the fact that Qatar and Spain and Portugal had colluded to trade votes in the World Cup bids. Spain and Portugal lost their joint bid for the 2018 World Cup to Russia. Mr. Blatter last year confirmed the collusion but played it down on the grounds that it had not helped either of the two bidders.
Qatari officials have at times with reason dismissed allegations about their bid as sour grapes on the part of failed bidders, including the United States, Australia and England, who had far less funds for their bid campaigns at their disposal. Qatar nonetheless Qatar has never revealed its budget for the bid nor has it publicly addressed in any serious fashion pledges it allegedly made for soccer-related investments in the home countries of some FIFA executive committee members in an effort to influence their vote. Such investments are legal under the FIFA bidding rules but raise ethical questions.
Speaking at a conference in London last year, Qatar 2022 secretary general Hassan al-Thawadi insisted that Qatar had conducted its bid to the ”highest ethical and moral standards.” He portrayed the Gulf state as the victim of a campaign in which ”baseless accusations were made against our bid. We were presumed guilty before innocent without a shred of evidence being provided,” Mr. Al-Thawadi said.
A FIFA investigation of Qatar’s bid is likely to make the Gulf state more vulnerable to pressure from the international labour movement to adhere to global standards. With Qataris accounting for an estimated 25 per cent of the population, Qatar is expected to import up to a million workers to build the infrastructure needed for the World Cup. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has threatened to launch a global boycott campaign if Qatar fails to recognize workers’ rights to collective bargaining, freedom of movement and independent union representation.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer
Sudanese anti-government protests mushroom
July 4th, 2012
By James M. Dorsey
Sudanese students are demanding the fall of President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir’s government in growing daily demonstrations that come 15 months after student protests nearly forced the African Football Confederation to deprive Sudan of the hosting of an African soccer tournament.
Like in February of last year, attempts by security forces using tear gas have only boosted the demonstrators’ ranks with other population groups joining the week-old protests that erupted after the government announced spending cuts.
Hundreds of Sudanese of various walks of life joined the students after Friday prayers chanting the Arab world’s all too popular slogan: “The people want to overthrow the regime.” Mr. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Sudanese crackdown against rebels in the Darfur region.
This week’s protests have already lasted longer than last year’s and it remains to be seen whether the eruption will fizzle out as it did last year. The killing by security forces of a student last year proved insufficient to give the protests the momentum witnessed in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world.
The student protesters were born largely after the popular revolt in 1985 that forced then President Jaafar al Numeir from office. Nonetheless those protests, that like in Egypt last year prompted the military to step in and replace the disliked leader are one of the few, if not the only ones, in which an Arab leader was forced out of office by popular will prior to the current wave of revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. That revolt led to Sudan for a period of time becoming the first country ever to be effectively ruled by a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate rather than a democracy.
What makes this round of protests different from those last year is the fact that they feed on government measures intended to reduce a $2.4 billion budget deficit fuelled by last year’s secession of South Sudan that robbed Sudan of three quarters of its oil production that effect the pocket book of every Sudanese. The measures include lifting subsidies for fuel, and increased taxes and custom duties on luxury products.
Disagreement over the price that landlocked South Sudan should pay Sudan to pump its oil to northern ports has prompted the newly created nation to shut down production and brought Sudan and South Sudan to the brink of war.
Some analysts suggest that the myriad problems Mr. Bashir faces rather than popular discontent that struggles to maintain momentum the absence of a viable alternative to the disliked president could ultimately prove to be his downfall. “But an economic crisis, armed conflict along the borders, a stalemate with South Sudan on sharing the oil yield and a malfunctioning political system might all render a popular uprising unnecessary, and cripple the government from within,” said Sudanese analyst Nesrine Malik in an article in The Guardian.
If Darfur is one of Mr. Bashir’s problems, Darfur United, the region’s fledgling soccer team made up of survivors of the vicious battles against Bashar-backed forces who live in refugee camps in neighbouring Chad is happy to contribute its bit. The team plays in a bid to offer a violence-ridden and destitute region a ray of hope, keep it on the world’s map and serve as a reference point that allows a far-flung refugee Diaspora to maintain contact. Newly formed with the support of an American NGO, singer Macy Gray, National Basketball Association Tracy McGrady and Adidas, Darfur United earlier this month participated alongside Kurdistan, the Western Sahara, Provence, the Tamils and Northern Cyprus in the 5th VIVA World Cup for nations world soccer body FIFA refuses to recognize.
“Soccer united people. It keeps Dafur on the international agenda. Competing in VIVA in Kurdistan is more important than winning. We are now part of the world,” said a Darfur United player putting a good face on the fact that his team ended at the bottom of the tournament.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.
Amid development failures, some see reduced foreign aid as a boon to Afghanistan
June 26th, 2012By James M. Dorsey.
Two small boys hold socks they received during a humanitarian aid mission organized by the U.S. Air Force in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Photo by: isafmedia / CC BY-NC-SA As
Afghanistan braces for reduced foreign aid as part of the NATO drawdown over the next two years, some government and aid officials – current and former – view an expected drop in international support as a blessing in disguise despite the likely negative impact on the local economy. These officials argue that lower aid levels will force Afghanistan to become less aid dependent and limit opportunities for rampant corruption. More importantly, they say, foreign aid that builds up the Afghan government and tackles long-term objectives like infrastructure could create a path to truly sustainable development in a country long plagued by development disappointments.
Interviews with these government and aid officials, as well as with analysts and businessmen working in the country, suggest the prospect for Afghan development is less tied to overall aid funding and more to the specific projects selected for support and the way funds are channeled to those projects.
“Poor donor coordination and flaws in most international development assistance models are so profound in Afghanistan that I am not sure reducing the level of aid will cause great problems because most aid has not caused great good,” said Jeremy Pam, who participated in a U.S. Central Command high-level review of US strategy in Afghanistan and recently returned from an 18-month stint in the country where he oversaw local governance initiatives for the U.S. State Department.
There is evidence that development in Afghanistan is not simply a question of money. Under the belief that more is better, the U.S. doubled its assistance in 2010 from roughly $2.3 billion to $4 billion only to go back to $2.3 billion in 2011 without either the increase or the reduction having had any visible impact according to knowledgeable sources. The sudden and temporary increase may have highlighted the limits of Afghanistan’s ability to absorb aid and, perhaps more importantly, put a spotlight on the limitations of a foreign aid system designed largely to serve donors’ political goals.
“The international donors have been a major problem. We internationals wanted big symbolic statements. We doubled the resources and didn’t care about absorption capacity,” added Pam.
All in all, the impact of fluctuating aid levels on the local economy may be less than expected because, some say, most foreign aid is not spent in Afghanistan and much of what is spent there, leaves the country through imports, expatriated profits and outward remittances.
Wadan Farahi, a former spokesman of the Afghan women’s ministry asserts donor spending has focused on “quick fixes” and that “money spent did not produce long term benefits.” Having left government service to become a consultant, Farahi argued that strengthening the government’s capacity to handle large amounts of aid should be a priority. He said a litmus test would be the government’s willingness to enforce the law and hold those accountable who were responsible for past financial mismanagement. “Our economy cannot withstand another Kabul Bank crisis. It would spark hyperinflation,” Karahi said referring to last year’s discovery that $1 billion had vanished from the bank as a result of insider loans. He said the Tokyo Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan this coming July was expected to help the government streamline its procurement procedures in a bid to roll back corruption and focus on its development priorities.
Ironically, at least one well-placed official says Afghanistan’s government, despite rampant corruption and limited capability, has so far achieved a significantly higher rate of effective aid delivery than donor managed funds. “The money spent through the government had an 80 percent effect. In contrast, the money spent by donors had a 15 per cent local impact. There is not a lot of transparency in donor community spending. It involves multiple layers of contracting and sub-contracting. If they go through the Afghan government a lot of layers are eradicated. It is much easier to have the Afghan government as a single source to coordinate and monitor,” said Arian Sharifi, a partner in Afghan Financial Services, a privately owned consultancy, and former senior finance ministry official.
Sharifi and others may be overstating the evidence to argue their case. Nonetheless, donors implicitly admitted that the Afghan government was more efficient at aid delivery with their decision at the Kabul conference in 2010 that 50 percent of all aid would be channeled through the government (so called ‘on-budget’ spending) by the summer of 2012. Analysts and Afghan officials note that the country’s GDP rose in 2011, the year aid was cut back, although economic growth was also aided by increased agricultural production as a result of the end of a four-year drought in the country.
“That is what we demonstrated to the World Bank,” revealed Najib Manalai, an advisor to Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal, arguing that foreign aid is not the only socio-economic driver in the war-torn country.
Local officials like Manalai say that a decade of channeling aid through donor agencies, nongovernmental organizations and contractors oriented development strategy toward vested interests of donor country institutions and a rush to allocate budgets – all at the expense of considering a project’s local results.
“Billions of dollars were spent, projects were developed that were not doable. For example, a school but no teachers, desks or chairs, a clinic with no nurses and no doctor. Every aid organization had specialists apply examples from elsewhere, money spent was not producing long term benefits,” Farahi said. Mikhael Shahmahmood, the United States Institute for Peace representative in Kabul, noted the failure to exploit Afghanistan’s economic strengths in agriculture. “We are sitting with French imports of chicken and eggs; we import 200 million chickens a year from Brazil. We import grapes and yoghurt from Iran,” he said, suggesting those could easily be produced by Afghanistan itself. Sharafi recalled being pushed by the World Bank during his days with the finance ministry to spend his $600,000 budget for capacity building despite his lack of qualified candidates.
“I organized a few training workshops in Dubai and New Delhi but could not find a single person with sufficient English to participate,” he said.
A decade of ineffective aid coupled with the imminent drawdown of international forces has likely cost Western donors the ability to significantly influence the future course of Afghan development. That future will be determined to a large extent by domestic and regional players, and involves the ability of the Taliban, the Haqqani network and the Hekmatyar group to undermine the government of President Hamid Karzai as well as the roles of Pakistan, India, Iran, former Soviet Central Asian republics, Russia and China.
Complicating planning for the transition is lack of clarity around what funds donors have poured into Afghanistan over the past decade and how those funds were used. “No one actor – international or Afghan – knows how much money overall is being spent and where it goes. How do you plan a transition under those circumstances?” Pam, the former U.S. government advisor, asked. Critics argue that neither the United Nations nor the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, other donor nations, the World Bank or the Afghan government has ever published a transparent assessment of the flow of aid to Afghanistan, its impact of the civil and security aid programs or an assessment of how aid has impacted the Afghan economy. Neither has any of these organizations developed credible measures for the effectiveness of aid, according to a recently published study of aid to Afghanistan by analyst Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies as well as a report late last year by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In contrast to Iraq, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan has no criteria to validate plans and requirements for civil and security aid efforts in Afghanistan that go beyond the traditional audits which simply document past failures.
As a result, donors may find it difficult to assess the required financial support to ensure the troop drawdown and expected aid cuts do not drive the country into recession. Those eventualities would reduce demand for Afghan goods and services as well as public sector investment. The economic fallout is likely to occur amid an uncertain post-drawdown security vacuum and a deteriorating humanitarian situation. Without a baseline to work from, it will be challenging to ensure that the Afghan government can spend enough to offset the reduced international funding flows. Last November, a World Bank study of Afghanistan’s post-2014 funding and aid needs warned that a cut-off of aid could spark a fiscal meltdown and resulting chaos. Under such circumstances, the study said, Afghanistan could witness the eruption of a civil war with rival warlords and a militant Islamist faction battling one another much like in Somalia.
Cordesman’s first working draft report, “Afghanistan: The Uncertain Economics of Transition,” concluded that if “the level of future U.S. aid and other donor military and civil aid efforts is to have any chance of creating a reasonable level of post-2014 security and stability” planners would have to “approach economics with a level of integrity that has been sadly lacking to date.” That would involve being “honest when the data and sources are in conflict, or so conflicting and poorly based that they cannot credibly be used for planning – a state of affairs that is more often than not the case.”
Overall, some local officials and development experts are calling for delinking aid from military objectives and making jobs, human security, justice and governance a priority. Those interviewed for this article all argued for a shift away from quick impact projects driven by donors’ need to demonstrate progress against military and political objectives to less flashy, long-term development and infrastructure initiatives.
“Afghanistan has been doing quick impact projects for the last 30 years. The effect is obvious, they are not the solution,” said Shahmahmood.
Contradicting this view, a majority staff report of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended last summer that “our aid should be visible among Afghans, and we should have a robust communication strategy in place so that Afghans know what U.S. aid in Afghanistan is accomplishing.” The report defined a sustainable U.S. strategy as one that would “pursue a limited number of high-impact programs that do not require complex procurement or infrastructure.”
If Western donors are to change their strategy, they are likely to increasingly rely on Islamic organizations and regional institutions such as the Aga Khan Foundation, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Asian Development Bank, according to Brad L. Brasseur of the Brussels-based EastWest Institute. The Aga Khan Development Network has already contributed around $700 million to large-scale rural development, health, education and micro-finance in Afghanistan. Moreover, Islamic and regional agencies could help develop and finance feasible annual provincial development plans involving transparent transfers of development funds in line with government capacity to implement projects. This larger role for the Afghan government and regional players, some say, may be the unexpected development benefit of the coming reduction in foreign aid.
James M. Dorsey James M. Dorsey is a Devex correspondent, senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of “The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer” blog. James has written frequently about Afghanistan, reporting as a foreign correspondent regularly from the country since he first covered the Soviet invasion in 1979 from Kabul.
A sleeping dragon awakes: Kurds Take Centre Stage in West Asia
June 12th, 2012
The election of Abdelbasset Sieda, a Sweden-based Kurdish activist and historian, is intended to unite Syria’s fractured opposition as the country reels from mass murders of civilians believed to be by militias loyal to embattled President Bashar al-Assad and teeters on the brink of civil war. The attacks on civilians and mounting armed opposition have all but stymied the joint United Nations-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan’s efforts to put an end to the 16-month bloodshed in Syria.
Uniting Assad’s opponents is no easy task. The SNC unlike the Libyan National Council on which it was modeled, has not been able to build a consensus among a myriad of opposition groups. Nor has it succeeded in bridging the gap between Assad’s opponents in Syria and those in exile. As a result, the SNC has failed to project itself as a credible alternative to Assad’s government despite backing from the United States, the European Union, the Arab League and Turkey. Critics claim that the SNC is dominated by Islamists, which has allowed Assad to either garner support from the country’s religious and ethnic minorities or ensure their neutrality.
In the spotlight
By electing Seida, the SNC wittingly or unwittingly has moved the struggle of the 26 million Kurds, who are spread over Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, into the spotlight. For much of their post-World War history the various Kurdish communities have campaigned for greater political and cultural rights rather than for independence from their host countries. Even the Turkish Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the only major group to have called for a pan-Kurdish state, has lowered its sights, calling for greater freedom for Kurds in Turkey who account for up to 20 per cent of the population.
For its part, Iraqi Kurdistan has flourished under the US air umbrella that shielded it from deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s wrath for 12 years and has since the fall of Saddam in 2003 become a country-in-waiting as it puts all the building blocks of a state in place. Kurdistan last week demonstrated its ability and intention to conduct a foreign policy at odds with that of Baghdad with its hosting of a World Cup for nations that world soccer body FIFA refuses to recognize. It was significant that Morocco protested against the inclusion of the disputed Western Sahara in the tournament to the Kurdish department of foreign relations rather than the Iraqi foreign ministry, and negotiating a deal under which the Saharans were not allowed to fly their flag during ceremonies and matches.
Sieda’s election offers the SNC an opportunity to draw the Kurds, Syria’s largest minority who account for nine per cent of the country’s population, into the anti-Assad front. They have been straddling the fence until now because the Syrian leader’s opponents have been unable and unwilling to make Kurdish rights a part of their vision for Syria’s future. Winning Kurdish support would deal a significant blow to the Assad regime that until now has been able to rely on the neutrality or support of the country’s minorities who make up an estimated 45 per cent of the Syrian population.
Syria’s minorities – Alawites, Christians, Druze and Kurds – have remained on the side lines of the revolt because of fear of what Syria may become in a post-Assad era. The opposition’s inability to set aside internal differences and form a united front has heightened minorities’ sense of risk and uncertainty. Alawites, the religious sect to which Assad belongs, fear a cycle of sectarian violence and revenge if the Syrian leader were forced out of office. Christians are concerned that their relative secure status would be undermined in a post-Assad Syria that would likely be dominated by Islamist forces.
The opposition has so far been unable to convince Kurds, Syria’s most disenfranchised minority, that it would adopt a policy that recognizes the group’s minority rights by, for example, promising to redefine Syria as a multi-ethnic rather than an Arab state. Iraqi Kurds have advised their politically divided brethren not to take sides in the Syrian insurrection until the opposition takes Kurdish concerns into account.
Strengthening the revolt
Winning the support of the Kurds whose grievances include the stripping of hundreds of thousands of Kurds of their citizenship in 1962, clashes with security forces in 2004 after an incident in a soccer stadium in Qamishli that left 60 people dead and 160 wounded, and last October’s assassination of a prominent Kurdish opposition leader Mashaal Tammo, would significantly strengthen the revolt against Assad. Tammo’s son Faris warned at the time of his father’s death that “my father’s assassination is the screw in the regime’s coffin.”
The Syrian president sought to prevent Kurds from joining the revolt last year by promising to reinstate Syrian citizenship for those who were made stateless. However, only several thousand of the more than 300,000 Kurds who were deprived of their citizenship have seen it restored in the past year.
Even if Sieda’s election fails to enable Faris to make good on his promise to nail the regime’s coffin, Syrian Kurds may well see their opportunity approaching soon. With no end to the violence in sight, the likelihood that Syria will further fragment politically and the possibility that the revolt will eventually undermine the country’s territorial integrity, Syrian Kurds could well see a chance to carve out a political entity of their own on the model of Iraqi Kurdistan.
That would not go unnoticed in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey where attitudes are hardening after last year’s break-off of talks between the government and the PKK and the killing of 34 mostly teenage Kurds last December in a Turkish air force strike that was supposed to target Kurdish guerrillas. Similarly, it would likely reignite fervour for autonomy in Kurdish populated areas of Iran just across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan. Thus the rise of a Kurdish leader from the Kurdish diaspora could awaken the sleeping dragon of Kurdish nationalism across West Asia.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He has been a journalist covering the Middle East for over 30 years.
AFC puts Iran on the spot on women’s rights
May 22nd, 2012
By James M. Dorsey
Iranian women soccer fans have set their hopes on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to return them to the terraces after having been banned from stadiums for years to prevent them from looking at men’s bodies.
The women expect the AFC’s insistence that Iran adhere to the Asian soccer body’s standards when it hosts this fall the AFC Under-16 Championship to grant them access to matches during the tournament but would like to see that spark a permanent lifting of the ban imposed after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.
“So far as AFC is concerned, there should be no sex discrimination regarding the presence of men and women at stadiums,” AFC Director of National Team competition Shin Mangal was quoted as saying by Shiite news agency Shafaqna.
The AFC said it had received assurances from Ali Kaffashian, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Football Federation (IRIFF) that it would comply with AFC regulations.
The AFC quoted Mr. Kaffashian as saying at the drawing of the groups for the tournament that the IRIFF is “fully ready to follow all the requirements and instructions from AFC.” The Iranian soccer boss repeated his position in remarks to Iranian reformist newspaper Sharq.
In an editorial the newspaper said “the youth championships could create a great change in Iranian football. They are an excellent opportunity.
” The IRIFF’s apparent willingness to counter Iranian policy and adhere to international standards has sparked significant domestic debate that pits conservatives against liberals. Proponents of a permanent lifting of the ban are weakened by a power struggle within Iran’s soccer elite.
Two proponents of lifting the ban are at each other’s throats.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an avid soccer fan who at times micromanages the affairs of the IRIFF and six years ago unsuccessfully attempted to lift the ban, is trying to get Mr. Kaffashian’s re-election in March as head of the Iranian soccer body annulled by the courts.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s attorney general has argued that Mr. Kaffashian could not hold public office as a former civil servant even though that was not an issue four years ago when he was first elected with the president’s backing.
Mr. Ahmadinejad turned against Mr. Kaffashian because Iranian soccer has failed to perform internationally under his leadership. The president had hoped to shore up his tarnished image and dropping popularity by associating himself with the country’s most popular sport. For that tactic to work, he needed a soccer success that Mr. Kaffashian failed to deliver.
In effect, Mr. Kaffashian is the fall guy for the failure of successive national coaches to deliver performance even though Mr. Ahmadinejad took a direct interest in their appointment. The coaches failed to take Iran to the 2010 World Cup finals or triumph in the 2011 Asian Cup. Iran still stands a chance for qualifying for the 2014 Brazil World Cup but that will do Mr. Ahmadinejad little good after his supporters were trounced in parliamentary elections in March.
Mr. Ahamdinejad, however, also turned against Mr. Kaffashian because the soccer pitch on Mr. Kaffashian’s watch has repeatedly in Tehran and Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan, has become a venue for protest against his government. The government, aware that the pitch was an important incubator of the revolt that toppled Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and has played a role in popular revolts elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, last year suspended soccer matches in Tehran during celebrations of the anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
While Iran is almost certain to comply with AFC rules to ensure that it does not lose the hosting of the games, more difficult will be turning the breaching of the wall into its destruction. It would not be the first time that Iran opportunistically complies with international soccer requirements only to return its discriminatory practice afterwards. Iran allowed women into the stadium during World Cup qualifiers played in the country in 2007 but maintained the ban for all other matches.
“Women looking at a man’s body, even if not for the sake of gratification, is inappropriate. Furthermore, Islam insists that men and women should not mix,” said Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani back in 2006 when Mr. Ahmadinejad failed to get the ban lifted permanently.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s effort was in part sparked by the fact that significant numbers of Iranian women were succeeding to circumvent the ban by sneaking into stadiums dressed as men. The practice attracted attention when Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi won international acclaim for his documentary Offside that tells the story of a group of young girls who dress up as boys to pass through stadium gates only to be detained. A second more recent movie, Shirin Was A Canary, recounts the tale of a girl who is expelled from school for her love of soccer.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.
Egyptian military’s loss of popularity brings ultras in from the cold
May 16th, 2012
By James M. Dorsey
It took Egypt’s military brass less than six months to first isolate street-battle hardened soccer fans, the country’s most militant opponents of military rule, and then restore their waning popularity amid mushrooming protests demanding an immediate return of the armed forces to their barracks and a transition to civilian government.
The ultras– militant, highly politicized, violence-prone soccer fans modeled on similar groups in Italy and Serbia – chanting “Where are the Baltagiya (thugs)? The Revolutionaries are here” and “Tantawi is Mubarak,” joined this weekend thousands of protesters in a confrontation with security forces in Cairo near the defense ministry.
The timing of the protest could not have been more symbolic – the 84th birthday of ousted President Hosni Mubarak with whom the protesters have come to equate Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
The health ministry said a soldier was killed and more than 400 people injured in clashes between the protesters and security forces barely three weeks before the first scheduled presidential elections since the toppling of Mubarak more than a year ago. A group of doctors aiding wounded protesters said two demonstrators had died of shotgun wounds.
The government declared a night curfew in the area around the defense ministry in Cairo’s Al Abbasiya neighborhood. Similar protests occurred in other Egyptian cities, including Alexandria and Suez. An effort by protesters to defy the curfew was repelled in part by residents of Abbasiya, a stronghold of support for Mubarak and the military.
The joining of forces of Salafists – proponents of return to life as it was at the time of the Prophet Mohammed –, Islamists, youth and left wing groups and ultras in their demand for an end to military rule in defiance of a warning by SCAF that it would not tolerate protests near the defense ministry or military facilities symbolizes the military’s misreading of the public mood.
The coming together of protesters of all walks of life was a far cry from the scene in late November and early December when protesters on Tahrir Square first called on the ultras to protect them against attacks by security forces but then abandoned them as they fought vicious street battles with the police in a street just off the square. Some 50 people were killed at the time in the fighting and more than a thousand wounded.
The then isolation of the youth groups and ultras – respected for their years of resistance in the stadiums to Mubarak’s brutal security forces and celebrated for their key role in toppling the hated leader — reflected growing protest weariness at a time that the public retained confidence in the military despite its brutality, was frustrated by the lack of economic fruits of their popular revolt and longed for a return to normalcy that would put Egypt back on the path of economic growth.
The ultras’ increasing marginalization was evident in their lonely battle in recent months to demand justice for the 74 soccer fans killed in early February in a soccer brawl in Port Suez, the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history that was widely seen as an effort by the security forces to teach the militants a lesson. Security forces failed to intervene in the brawl in which pro-government thugs armed with sticks and knives were believed to have been involved. The government has charged 61 people, including nine security officials, with responsibility for the incident. The incident led to the cancellation of this season’s top two soccer competitions. A majority of the dead were supporters of Al Ahly SC, Egypt and Africa’s foremost soccer club.
A series of unpopular measures widely seen as an effort by the military to manipulate the outcome of the presidential election to ensure that a civilian-led Egypt is governed by a president and government sympathetic to safeguarding the role of the armed forces in politics and its stake in the economy and shield them from external oversight has over the past week brought protesters back in to the streets in ever growing numbers.
The measures included the banning of popular Islamist politicians and others from standing for president and culminated in an attack by thugs on anti-military protesters last Wednesday that left 11 people dead, some of them shot, others reportedly with their throats slit. Like in the case of Port Said, few doubt that the military at the very least had turned a blind eye to aggression by unidentified pro-regime thugs.
The mounting tension has strengthened the resolve of the ultras to force justice for their fallen comrades in Port Said and press for an end to military rule. In a show of unity in March, ultras of crowned Cairo arch rivals Ahly and Al Zamalek SC warned that they would sacrifice their lives to achieve their goals.
The statement at the end of a historic meeting between the two groups who have bitterly fought each other since their inception in 2007 suggested a sea change in Egypt’s soccer politics and a cementing of relationships among rival groups that have the organization and street battle experience to turn the military’s effort to mold Egypt in its image into a bitter and bloody struggle.
State-owned Al Ahram newspaper warned earlier this year that the ultras were “a time bomb ticking due to lack of justice for fallen comrades following the Port Said disaster.”
In a statement almost two months after the Port Said incident, Ultras Ahlawy said: “You can call us thugs, you can call us crazy, but we will be crazy to regain our rights, either through legal avenues or with our bare hands. We are ready to die for our rights; we are ready to add to the toll of 74 deaths.”
The ultras bring to the demonstrations against the military in Al Abbasiya the same degree of fearlessness, recklessness and abandon that they brought to last year’s mass protests on Tahrir Square that forced Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office.
“The government has turned the ultras into their enemy. That was a mistake. The ultras are passionate; they don’t have a specific agenda and don’t want to be labeled politically. They go into battle with abandon impervious to what it may produce,” said Mohammed Gamal Bashir aka Gemyhood, a founder of the UWK and author of a recent Arabic-language book about the ultras who is widely seen as the movement’s Egyptian godfather.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.