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No. 230

Street, Shrine, Square and Soccer Pitch: Comparative Protest Spaces in Asia and the Middle East

Teresita Cruz-del Rosario and James M. Dorsey

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Singapore

8 November 2011

About RSIS

The S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) was established in January 2007 as an autonomous School within the Nanyang Technological University. Known earlier as the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies when it was established in July 1996, RSIS’ mission is to be a leading research and graduate teaching institution in strategic and international affairs in the Asia Pacific. To accomplish this mission, it will:

 Provide a rigorous professional graduate education with a strong practical emphasis,

 Conduct policy-relevant research in defence, national security, international relations, strategic studies and diplomacy,

 Foster a global network of like-minded professional schools.

GRADUATE EDUCATION IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

RSIS offers a challenging graduate education in international affairs, taught by an international faculty of leading thinkers and practitioners. The Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree programmes in Strategic Studies, International Relations and International Political Economy are distinguished by their focus on the Asia Pacific, the professional practice of international affairs, and the cultivation of academic depth. Thus far, students from more than 50 countries have successfully completed one of these programmes. In 2010, a Double Masters Programme with Warwick University was also launched, with students required to spend the first year at Warwick and the second year at RSIS.

A small but select Ph.D. programme caters to advanced students who are supervised by faculty members with matching interests.

RESEARCH

Research takes place within RSIS’ six components: the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS, 1996), the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR, 2004), the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS, 2006), the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (Centre for NTS Studies, 2008); the Temasek Foundation Centre for Trade & Negotiations (TFCTN, 2008); and the recently established Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS, 2011). The focus of research is on issues relating to the security and stability of the Asia Pacific region and their implications for Singapore and other countries in the region. The school has four professorships that bring distinguished scholars and practitioners to teach and to conduct research at the school. They are the S. Rajaratnam Professorship in Strategic Studies, the Ngee Ann Kongsi Professorship in International Relations, the NTUC Professorship in International Economic Relations and the Bakrie Professorship in Southeast Asia Policy.

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INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION

Collaboration with other professional schools of international affairs to form a global network of excellence is a RSIS priority. RSIS maintains links with other like- minded schools so as to enrich its research and teaching activities as well as adopt the best practices of successful schools.

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Abstract

Shrines, squares and soccer stadiums have provided the settings for anti-government protests and people power in Southeast Asia and the Middle East in recent decades. At times used for mass detentions and torture of regime opponents by the security forces in the Middle East and North Africa, soccer stadiums became battlefields of resistance by soccer fans against autocratic rulers as the fans became politicized, clashing with security forces and increasingly using matches to shout anti-government slogans. The authors project those spaces as venues of political entitlement. They enabled protestors to overcome fear in confronting the regime in ’s Tahrir Square, Benghazi and elsewhere. They also generated a sense of entitlement and demands for far-reaching reforms in post-revolution and other North African and Middle Eastern countries.

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Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario is a Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

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Street, Shrine, Square and Soccer Pitch: Comparative Protest Spaces in Asia and the Middle East1

In , a shrine to the Virgin Mary at a parking lot on EDSA, the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, symbolizes Filipino people power. It lies at the intersection of , the main thoroughfare that cuts across the upper and middle class commercial and residential areas of San Juan and near the .

EDSA is Manila’s main thoroughfare, a 26-kilometer stretch of asphalt and concrete that traverses the city’s eight municipalities from Caloocan City in the north to City in the south. It is no coincidence that the shrine rose at this particular intersection as a site for secular pilgrims in search of a home for their moral vision.

Thousands of miles to the west from where the ancestors of the Arab community in the and South-east Asia set sail, soccer stadiums symbolise the battle in the Middle East and North Africa for political freedom, economic opportunity, ethnic, religious and national identity, and gender rights. The soccer pitch constituted a world in which the game was played as much off as on the pitch.

Until the eruption of the Arab revolt in December 2010, alongside the mosque, the stadium was the only alternative public space available for the venting of pent-up anger and frustration against military and security force-dominated regimes. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and where militant soccer fans prepared for a day in which their organization, militancy and street battle experience would serve them in the final showdown with autocratic rulers bent on clinging to power.

Soccer had its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militant enthusiasts and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. The soccer match offered the disenfranchised

1Paper presented at the first workshop on Asia’s Civil Spheres: New Media, Urban Public Space, Social Movements. Asian Research Institute. National University of Singapore, 29-30 September 2011.

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a voice in an environment of forced silence and official misrepresentation, challenged the political and social boundaries set by authoritarian regimes and thrived on goal

posts enlarged by globalization.

Non-violent revolts such as those in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and have and are changing the political landscape in emerging nations. Protesters transform public spaces, or what Harry Sewell calls “spatial agency,” from constrained physical landscapes into venues of people power. The revolts in Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Cairo, Tunis, Manama, Sanaa, Amman, Damascus and Casablanca turned streets, pedestrian corridors, avenues, and roundabouts into stages for uninhibited political expression. Many of these venues have acquired the aura of a holy ground, a pilgrimage site where protestors seek redemption and deliverance from various forms of social and political injustice.

In this essay, the authors compare the various protest spaces in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Whether street, square or soccer pitch, these sites have created the political architecture for collective enactment as protestors across both regions turn the constraints of a built-up environment to their political advantage in a unique act of shared creativity aimed at advancing the social and political struggle. In doing so, protestors refashion political meanings and reconstruct and renovate physical spaces. They convert them into battlefields over competing visions of the future of a country or region with demands for greater transparency, accountability, accommodation and tolerance. They turn them into venues that give a voice to the disenfranchised and provide a unique platform for building bridges across gaping divides.

The authors project EDSA and the soccer stadium as venues of political enactment. Both became over a matter of years the stages for political expression in an environment of repression and autocratic rule. They employ Sewell’s (2001) notions of “spatial structure” and “spatial agency” that are based on Zhao Lee’s (1998, in Aminzade, 2001: 72) description of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square as the ideal ecology for a student protest to explore EDSA and the soccer stadium as perfect settings for popular uprisings. Shrine connotes a demarcation in people’s minds. For Filipinos, Edsa is a sort of political Promised Land perceived in terms of time, place, and

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sentiment. For Middle Easteners and North Africans, the soccer stadium represents the reclamation of dignity and the assertion of identity in a show of strength and force bolstered by numbers.

Street, shrine, stadium and era

The EDSA shrine was erected within a year after the first Filipino uprising in 1986 to commemorate what many Filipinos see as a shining moment in their history. A gigantic statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary painted in gold rose on an elevated portion of the parking lot. Her image is a reminder of the first supposed EDSA miracle in which rosaries, statues, scapulars and medals bearing her image halted the tanks of President and ended his 21-year dictatorship.

Mass is held in a chapel beneath her statue. Surrounding the chapel are shopping malls, high rise condominiums, a bus stop and an underground parking lot. A flyover above the shrine and across both avenues affords commuters and passengers a full view of the Virgin Mary, a religious reminder of the sanctity of popular protest in a world of hyper-secularism.

The shrine is large enough to contain a stage. The anniversary of the people power uprising is celebrated every February with a Mass first officiated by the late and later a host of other church luminaries. It is followed by a program recalling the dramatic events of the four-day uprising. Key actors return to the shrine garbed in the clothes they wore during the protests over the flab and wrinkles acquired with each passing year. After the reenactments, the stage is transformed into an entertainment platform with showbiz personalities celebrating Marcos’ departure from the Philippines. The combination of pious, political and entertainment activity marks the popular uprising as an ecclesiastically approved political struggle-cum-revelry.

The ecology of EDSA

In the consideration of contentious politics, Sewell (2001: 54) notes the vital role of “spatial structures”:

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geographical structures (that) might be regarded as parallel to economic structures, occupational structures, political structures, or demographic structures --- that is, as entrenched facts of social life that have their own autonomous (or at least relatively autonomous) logics and that determine or at least tightly constrain social action.

Sewell, echoing Giddens (1979: 161), argues further that while structures are “durable and constraining”, they also provide an “enabling effect” which allows “humans to reproduce themselves and their social world . . . [and] also are subject to transformation as a consequence of the very social action that they shape”. In studying contentious politics, Sewell directs attention to “spatial agency”, the ways in which protestors confront the constraints of space and convert these into political advantages that will advance the social struggle, refashion political meanings, and restructure the “strategic valence of space” (Ibid.). Thus, while space is characterized by fixity and givenness, it is also subject to reconstruction. Protestors create, produce, and renovate space not just to imbue fresh meanings to it, but to convert it into a strategic resource that transforms the overall environment for protest.

The role of space in protest requires the considerations of “copresence” the “bodily force of numbers” and “time-distance” conditions - factors key to staging an uprising. Harvey (1989, in Sewell: 60) argues that “time-space compression” is a crucial consideration for protestors to manage the “response times” once the protest momentum is generated. As in theatrical productions, the ability to “pack the theater” and generate audience response is a largely a matter of faithfully following the overused dictum “being at the right time and at the right place.”

If the soccer stadium, with its enclosed infrastructure designed to evoke competition, passion, rivalry and confrontation, is a natural site for an uprising, EDSA would seem at first glance a strange, if not curious venue for protest. Unlike China’s expansive Tiananmen Square or Argentina’s Plaza de Mayo, EDSA in 1986 was a comparatively narrow six-lane highway divided by an island which organized, albeit unconvincingly, the flow of traffic. Instead of a vast quadrangle on which most collective action tends to take place EDSA is a long narrow asphalt worm traversing

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metropolitan Manila that hosts thousands of vehicles transporting urbanites across the city. The omnipresence of vehicular traffic alone would pose a ready-made limitation to any massive gathering.

EDSA’s long stretch of highway is an artery fed by hundreds of road capillaries that run in both directions, making it easy for the public to get to the highway from anywhere. A network of commercial establishments --- shops, eateries, banks and hotels --- as well as outdoor vendors hawking towels, bottled water, cigarettes, paper fans and snacks abut the road network. Daily commuters negotiate the highway in both directions, the quickest way to traverse the metropolis, their trek made slightly more convenient by the various amenities on offer.

EDSA’s built-up environment includes gated communities for the upper and middle class that are surrounded by thick walls to keep out vehicular noise. The artery branches out into these communities and the amenities that provide them the comforts of urban life. As one travels deeper into these tentacles, one encounters the enclaves of the poor -- the squatter settlements. They are relatively far from the main artery, but close enough to be visible from the middle-class households. This is particularly true in , and San Juan, where wealthy communities dot both sides of EDSA.

General Fidel Ramos and Defence Minister Juan Ponce-Enrile, whose defection in February 1986 from the Marcos regime marked the beginning of the popular revolt, may not have realized that their choice of as their base was the perfect site for protestors to negotiate the fine balance between structure and agency. Located along EDSA on the borders of San Juan, Mandaluyong and , the military camp was easily accessible to the residential communities.

When Cardinal Sin called on the public in a Catholic radio broadcast on the evening of February 22, 1986 to go to EDSA to protect the mutineers, neighbours offered one another transportation to one of the road capillaries where they would park, and then walk to EDSA. From the north, the Quezon City residents drove to the commercial district of Cubao where they left their cars to join protestors ready for the march to Camp Crame. To the east of Quezon City within about a kilometer radius from the

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military camps were the residential communities of White Plains, Blue Ridge, St. Ignatius Village which converged with those of Loyola Heights and the university further up north. On the western side were Greenhills, WackWack Subdivision, and Little Baguio in San Juan. Directly adjacent to the south of Camp Crame is Corinthian Gardens and Valle Varde. This network of neighborhoods provided the warm bodies in the first hours of the revolt. One of the more famous meeting places was the Isetan Department Store located in the heart of the Araneta Commercial Center in Cubao. Agapito “Butz” Aquino, the younger brother of slain senator Ninoy Aquino, went on the air on Radio Veritas, to call on friends and volunteers “. . . to meet me at Isetann in Cubao . . . . to join us and increase our number so that we can prevent a bloody confrontation” (quoted in Mercado 1986: 106).

Shortly after the cardinal’s and Aquino’s radio announcements, approximately 100,000 people gathered in front of the gates of Camp Crame (de Manila 1986: 27). Time and distance were compressed by the mobilization of networks of neighbourhoods who quickly responded to the radio calls. Copresence was achieved almost instantaneously as people poured out from the sideroads of EDSA into the main avenue with the crowds swelling through the night. They brought food for the mutineers and soldiers as the cardinal bade them to do. The camps welcomed the arrival of local and foreign journalists.

This scenario repeated itself fifteen years later during a second uprising, against President . On January 19, 2001 at around 9 a.m., several university professors and hundreds of students from universities and schools in Quezon City marched from the Diliman campus down EDSA. Marchers formed groups along the 10-kilometer stretch to join them on their way to the shrine. By the time they arrived around noon, their ranks had swelled to approximately 30,000. It was a “traveling copresence,” facilitated by past experience and text messages on the ubiquitous cellular phone network urging users to gather at EDSA. EDSA’s narrow lanes became wide avenues of protest. The artery hosted a new generation of protestors, a young constituency raised with the advantage of advanced technology. From the southern business district of Makati City, protestors formed a human chain that ran the seven- kilometer stretch from Ayala Avenue to the EDSA shrine, forcing traffic to be redirected.

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From an avenue that seemingly limits large gatherings because of its architecture, EDSA was transformed by protestors into a roadway that led them to their shrine of political change. They converted a mundane avenue into “a matrix of power” (Sewell 2001: 68). As the protestors took over EDSA, the notion of people power was born, and the term entered Philippine political discourse for the first time. EDSA was “power-charged;” it no longer was a neutral, empty territory. With the achievement of a Durkheimian sense of “collective efflorescence” during the uprisings, EDSA was permanently transformed.

The shrine as stage, sentiment and resentment

The shrine that was built shortly after the first uprising constitutes a “setting” which involves

furniture, décor, physical layout, and other background items which supply the scenery and stage props for the spate of human action played out before, within, or upon it. A setting tends to stay put, geographically speaking, so that those who would use a particular setting as part of their performance cannot begin their act until they have brought themselves to the appropriate place and must terminate their performance when they leave it (Goffman 1959: 97).

The shrine was the physical setting of people power in both uprisings, the locus of performance where human actors played out their social roles. In 1986, Cory Aquino was the quintessential bida, the animator of the protest theater, supported by a cast of millions who were all determined to bring down the curtain on Marcos’ presidency. The stage décor was an avalanche of banners, streamers and insignias wrapped in unmistakable yellow. It was a grand symphony of people surrounding themselves with the colors of protest - a sudden burst of expression against a repressive regime gone pale and colourless after 21 years of misrule. The theatrical backstage fuelled people power: a public address system to keep the protestors informed; a hook-up to Radyo Bandido or Bandit Radio, which operated in secrecy from an undisclosed transmission tower after Marcos loyalists raided and destroyed Radio Veritas, the Catholic radio station; an endless supply of food and water for the rebel soldiers;

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portable toilets installed at strategic locations along the highway; and of course, the rosaries and religious statues of the Virgin Mary with which protesters confronted Marcos’ army and weapons. Communication networks were mobilised via telephone and citizen band radios. Taxi drivers spontaneously organised themselves to transport protestors to the shrine.2

The evening vigils extended into mornings that transformed EDSA into an entertainment stage on which showbiz personalities adopted a political stance and the posture of protest. Freddie Aguilar, one of the Philippines’ best-known singers, left the club where he regularly sang to head for EDSA on the second night of the uprising. On an improvised stage on the roof of a six-wheel truck, he and his band played past midnight. Television crews provided the floodlights, converting EDSA into a big outdoor ballroom.

Nonetheless, EDSA is also a venerated public space, a repository of meanings collectively crafted and brought into fruition by shared sentiments, sanctified by the Church and the rituals of adoration and blessing. During the early hours of the second day of the first uprising, Enrile recalls the active mobilization of religious rites:

When daylight came Father Niko of the Magallanes Village arrived with Father Bernas and Jimmy Ongpin (business and former minister of finance in the Aquino government)], and we held mass at the social hall (in Camp Crame). Read to us during the mass was the story of the Exodus, the liberation of the Israelites from bondage. We all attended the mass and received communion. Afterwards, General (Ramon) Farolan and I were asked to kneel by Father Nico and President Bernas of the Ateneo (a Jesuit university). And they gave us the blessing and poured holy water on us (quoted in de Manila: 36).

A central meaning of EDSA like that of soccer stadiums in the Middle East and North Africa was the conquest of the fear that governed life for decades of martial law, and

2 Former Manila Vice Mayor Herminio Astorga recounts that a group of taxi drivers congregated at the Luneta Park in downtown Manila, about 10 kilometers from where the uprising was taking place, to shuttle hundreds to the uprising for free. Quoted in Mercado 1986, p. 109

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hindered the effective galvanizing of oppositional energies. Martial law enabled military forces accused of human rights violations to keep the population quiescent. The millions who gathered at EDSA to defy Marcos’ military machinery and the thousands who confronted security forces in the stadiums rediscovered their courage to end a long tyranny of silence. Many who participated at Edsa and in stadium protests and confrontations feared a military attack, yet bolstered by large numbers of others, they experienced a newfound bravery with which to stop tanks, security forces and loyalist thugs dead in their tracks.

More importantly, the meaning of EDSA and the stadium was passed on to the next generation as protesters turned their revolts into a family affair. The depth of meaning that this evoked was boundless, as parents witnessed the success and the continuation of the spirit of EDSA and the stadium as well as the power of collective sentiment, channeled towards political change in the generation that succeeded them.

The shrine is more than just a vessel that contains the historical memories of a nation in protest. In the words of David Cole (1975: 7), the shrine is the embodiment of an “illud tempus”,

a time of origins, the period of Creation and just after, when gods walked the earth, men visited the sky, and the great archetypal events of myth --- war in heaven, battles with monsters, the Quest, the Flood, the Fall --- took place.

For Filipinos, EDSA is a gathering place for the expression of a collective sentiment; it represents an era when it all began, a symbol of a political cosmology in which Filipino society was said to have truly emerged, not from the artificial demarcations created by the past maneuverings of competing colonial powers, but from the singular action of millions of anonymous citizens who left the security of their homes to craft a nation in their own image. For a country whose 500-year history was a series of colonial misadventures, political let-downs and bungled attempts at nationhood, those four days at EDSA marked a triumphant departure from an overburdened past. For once in five centuries, Filipinos experienced the nation as truly their own creation, a

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tangible possibility, an “imagined community” (Anderson: 1991) with which to display to the world the result of their own handiwork.

Soccer – playing for the future of a region

If EDSA is a shrine, Middle Eastern and North African soccer stadiums are battlefields layered with multiple struggles. They often are also simultaneous symbols of resistance to the price tag autocratic rulers put on expressions of dissent.

Autocratic rulers and militant soccer fans fought in recent decades for control of the pitch and the credibility that emanates from the one institution and venue that commands the kind of deep-seated passion evoked by religion in a conservative swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Gulf. For militant soccer fans or , who emerged as soccer increasingly became a political football, it is a battle against the yoke of autocratic rule, economic mismanagement and corruption. It also signifies the quest for dignity; for national, ethnic and sectarian identity and women’s rights.

The ultras’ key role in this year’s popular revolt extended a tradition of soccer’s close association with politics across the Middle East and North Africa evident until today in derbies in cities like Cairo, Amman, Tehran and Riyadh. In Egypt, the tradition dates back to when the then British colonial power introduced the game to the North African country in the early 20th century. Founded as an Egyptians-only meeting place for opponents of Britain’s colonial rule, , which means The National, was a nationalistic rallying ground for common Egyptians. Its players still wear the red colors of the pre-colonial Egyptian flag. Dressed in white, , which first was named Al Mohtalet or The Mix and then Farouk in honour of the despised and later deposed Egyptian monarch, was the club of the British imperial administrators and military brass as well as Cairo’s upper class. The clubs’ bitter feud has been no less political since Egypt became independent.3

3 James M. Dorsey, Football Pitches: A Battleground for North Africa’s Future, Play the Game, March 21, 2011

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For rulers, the soccer pitch is a key tool to polish their tarnished images and divert attention from simmering discontent, and at times a symbol of their brutality. Egyptian and Iranian presidents Hosni Mubarak and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well as Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi’s son, Al Saadi al Qaddafi, identified themselves with their country’s national teams, turning their successes and failures into barometers of how their regimes were faring. Uday Hussein, the deposed Iraqi dictator’s sadistic son, humiliated players for a missed penalty or errant pass by having their heads publicly shaved in Baghdad’s Stadium of the People. Football legend and former Iraqi goalkeeper Hashim Hassan recalled being forced, after losing a 1997 World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan, to lie with his whole team on the stadium’s grass where they were beaten by Uday’s goons with sticks on their feet and backs before being imprisoned for a week.4 Mubarak and his sons fanned the flames of nationalism in late 2009 after Egypt lost its chance to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, bringing Egypt and to the brink of a soccer war. Qadaffi adorned his country’s stadiums with quotes from his Green Book that explained his idiosyncratic theories of democracy.5

Soccer also goes a long way to explain the military's support and involvement with the game in various Middle Eastern and North African nations. In football-crazy Egypt, at least half of the 's 16 teams are affiliated to the military, the police, government ministries or provincial authorities. Military-owned construction companies built 22 of Egypt's soccer stadiums. Similarly, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have in recent years taken control of a number of prominent soccer teams.

In times of crisis, stadiums often become mass detention centers and killing fields. Syrian security forces have in recent months herded anti-government protesters into stadiums in Latakia, Dera’a and Baniyas. The use of the stadiums evoked memories of the 1982 assault on the Syrian city of Hama to crush an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in which at least 10,000 people were killed. A 1983 Amnesty

4 Syria’s Latakia stadium joins long list of region’s politically abused soccer pitches, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer (http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com), August 18, 2011 5 Football Pitches: A Battleground for North Africa's Future, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer (http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com), March 24,2011

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International report charged that the city’s stadium was used at the time to detain large numbers of residents who were left for days in the open without food or shelter.6

US and Iraqi forces discovered mass graves in several Iraqi stadiums after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam. Shortly after their 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, US-led international forces played soccer against an Afghan team in Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium to highlight the change they were bringing to the war-ravaged country. The stadium had been used by the Taliban for public executions. Afghans believe it is still haunted by the dead and are afraid of entering the stadium after dark. Even the night watchmen limit their patrol’s to the stadium’s perimeter. Christian militia men responsible for the 1982 massacres in the Beirut Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla, to which Israeli invasion forces turned a blind eye, converted a local soccer stadium into an interrogation center and execution ground. Some 800 Palestinians were killed in the two camps. Somali jihadists used the capital of Mogadishu’s stadium -- once one of East Africa’s most impressive filled with 70,000 passionate fans during games – as an Islamist training and recruitment center until they were recently forced to abandon the city by African Union-backed government forces.7

Fans from Algeria to Iran have resisted the efforts by the region’s autocratic rulers to politically control stadiums by repeatedly turning them into venues to express pent-up anger and frustration, assert national, ethnic and sectarian identity and demand women’s rights. “There is no competition in politics, so competition moved to the soccer pitch. We do what we have to do against the rules and regulations when we think they are wrong, You don’t change things in Egypt talking about politics. We’re not political, the government knows that and has to deal with us,” said a militant Egyptian fan after his group last year overran a police barricade erected to prevent it from bringing flares, fireworks and banners into a stadium.8

6 Report from Amnesty International to the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, November 1983, Amnesty International, page 23 7 Syria’s Latakia stadium joins long list of region’s politically abused soccer pitches, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer (http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com), August 18,2011 8 Soccer Fans Key to Imminent Cairo Street Battle, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, (hhttp://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com), February 3, 2011

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If defeat created political opportunity, so did victory. Thousands of women stormed the stadium in Tehran when the Iranian national team triumphed against Australia in the 1998 World Cup, in protest against their banning from attending soccer matches. Rumour has it that attacks on banks and public offices by fans shouting anti-regime slogans during the qualifiers for the 2002 World Cup prompted the government to order the national team to lose its final match against underdog Bahrain because it feared the protests that a victory would produce.

Weekly battles in Egyptian stadiums with security forces and rival fan groups prepared Cairo’s militant soccer supporters for clashes on the city’s Tahrir Square that forced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office in February.9 Similarly, anti- government protests on the football pitch preceded the mass demonstrations that erupted in Tunisia in December 2010 and sparked the wave of protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Tunisian fans jeered Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Issa Hayatou in November during the Orange CAF Champions League return final between Esperance Tunis and TP Mazembe from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the first encounter between the two teams in Congo in which Esperance lost, the fans charged that the Togolose referee had been corrupt and waved banknotes at Hayatou. The protests led to clashes between the fans who, like their counterparts in Egypt, became street battled-hardened.

The eruption of popular revolts across the Middle East and North Africa starting in December 2010 prompted embattled autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen to cancel all professional matches in a bid to prevent the soccer pitch from becoming an opposition rallying point. The suspension failed to produce dividends. On the contrary, the ultras – die-hard, highly politicised, violence-prone support groups modeled on similar organisations in Serbia and Italy -- at the vanguard of a people power uprising, won their first major victories when the battle spilled out of the stadium into the streets of Tunis and Cairo’s Tahrir Square. A sense of empowerment coupled with the organisational skills and street battle experience garnered in four years of weekly clashes with security forces that the ultras

9 The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com

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of Cairo arch rivals Al Ahly SC and Al Zamalek SC brought to Tahrir Square made them a force to be reckoned with.

The ultras’ influence was evident in the organisation and social services as well as the division of labour established on the square as tens of thousands camped out for 18 days until Mubarak stepped down on February 11. Much in the way that a municipality would organise services, protestors were assigned tasks such as the collection of trash. They wore masking tape on which they were identified by their role, for example, medic or media contact.

The ultras -- often committed anarchists who oppose hierarchical systems of government -- meanwhile joined those patrolling the perimeters of the square and controlling entry. They manned the front lines in clashes with security forces and pro- government supporters. Their faces were frequently covered so that the police, who had warned them by phone to stay away from Tahrir Square, would not recognise them. Their experience benefitted them in the struggle for control of the square when the president’s loyalists employed brute force in a bid to dislodge them. The ultras’ battle order included designated rock hurlers, specialists in turning over and torching vehicles for defensive purposes and a machine like quartermaster crew delivering projectiles like clockwork on cardboard platters.

Theirs was a battle in which they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Their weekly stadium battles with the police and rival fans were a zero-sum game for ownership of a space they saw as theirs. Much like hooligans in Britain whose attitudes were shaped by the decaying condition of stadiums, Egyptian and Tunisian ultras were driven by the regime’s attempt to control their space by turning it into a virtual fortress ringed by black steel. The struggle for control produced a complete breakdown, social decay in a microcosm. If the space was expendable, so was life. As a result, militant fans would confront the police each weekend with total abandonment.

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Breaking down the barrier of fear

The militants’ street battle experience enabled them to help protesters break down barriers of fear that had previously kept them from confronting the regime. “We were in the front line. When the police attacked we encouraged people. We told them not to run or be afraid. We started firing flares. People took courage and joined us, they know that we understand injustice and liked the fact that we fight the devil,” said Muhamed Hassan, a 20-year-old computer science student, aspiring photographer and a leader of the Ultras White Knights, militant supporters of Zamalek.10

Marching from the Cairo neighborhood of Shubra, Muhamed, a small-framed man with a carefully trimmed stubble, led a crowd that grew to 10,000 people; they marched through seven security barricades to Tahrir Square on January 25th, the first day of the protests. This was the day he and his cohorts had been preparing for in the past four years, honing their fighting skills in running battles with the police, widely viewed as Mubarak’s henchmen, and with rivals from other teams.

“We fought for our rights in the stadium for four years. That prepared us for this day. We told our people that this was our litmus test. Failure was not an option,” said Ahmad Fondu, another UWK leader, who proudly describes how he captured camel- mounted Mubarak loyalists attacking the protesters and held them captive in the Sadat metro station near Tahrir Square.11

A group of UWK ultras, including Muhamed, sought at one point to break through a police barrier to reach the nearby parliament building. “When I see the security forces, I go crazy. I will kill you or I will be killed. The ultras killed my fear. I learnt the meaning of brotherhood and got the courage of the stadium,” he said. He pointed to a scar on the left side of his forehead from a stone thrown by police who stymied the fans’ early attempt to break through to parliament. As blood streamed down his face, he heard internal walls of fear crumble as cries rose from the crowd behind him: “They are our brothers. We can do this.”

10 Interview with the author, April 1, 2011 11 Interview with the author, April 1, 2011

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The battles on Tahrir Square like those on Sana’a’s Change Square, and Manama’s now destroyed Pearl Monument like those years earlier on Manila’s EDSA, have changed society and imbued significant segments of the population with a sense of unity and power that inevitably weakens but remain a distinct memory marking an entire generation. A transition of power had taken place even before presidents like Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine el Abidine Ben Ali were forced to resign after decades in office and as thousands in Syria for months faced down tanks and naval vessels. The courage to take a stand exercised initially by activist soccer fans in Tunisia and Egypt was embraced by a wider population no longer afraid to speak or assemble.

Twenty-five years ago, the same wall of fear broke down in the Philippines. Ana, a middle class housewife, recalls her outrage when Benigno Aquino, the opposition senator was shot. It was her anger that broke through the wall. And the sight of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos gathered in the streets to express their rage and also their pride. “There was a groundswell of people,” she said. “It felt so good to see all of those people, hundreds and thousands of people, day in day out. It made me feel good to know that there are still many, many Filipinos who love our country.”

Soccer as Background to the Benghazi Revolt

Qaddafi’s controversial soccer-playing son, Saadi, a leader in his father’s fight for survival, took manipulation of the game to garner public support to the extreme. Football became an arena of confrontation between Qaddafi supporters and opponents long before the eruption of the revolt six months ago. Resentment against the Qaddafis in the eastern opposition stronghold of Benghazi started to build up when the fortunes of the city’s soccer team, Al Ahli (Benghazi), tumbled on and off the field a decade ago when Saadi took a majority stake and became captain of its Tripoli namesake and arch rival.

Saadi’s association with Al Ahli (Tripoli) meant that the prestige of the regime was on the line whenever the team played. Politics rather than performance dictated the outcome of its matches. When Al Ahli Benghazi had a 1:0 lead on its Tripoli namesake in the first half of a match in the summer of 2000, the referee helpfully imposed two penalties against it and allowed al-Ahli Tripoli an offside goal in the

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second half. Benghazi's players walked off the pitch but were ordered to return by Saadi's guards and Tripoli won 3-1.

That summer Al Ahli (Benghazi) also played against a team from Al-Baydah, the home town of Saadi’s mother and the place where the first anti-Qaddafi demonstrations against corruption in public housing were staged. Benghazi fans were so outraged by a penalty that they invaded the pitch, forcing the game to be abandoned. Off the pitch, the angry fans set fire to the local branch of the Libyan Football Federation headed by Saadi. In response, the government dissolved the Benghazi club, demolished its headquarters and arrested 50 of its fans. Public outrage over the retaliation against Benghazi forced Saadi to resign as head of the federation, only to be reinstated by his father in response to the federation’s alleged claim that it needed Qaddafi’s son as its leader.

The Benghazi – Tripoli rivalry was still being played out as opponents, aided by the imposition of a no-fly-zone above Libya by an international military coalition, and supporters of Qaddafi, battle for the future of Libya. For Al Ahli (Benghazi) fans, the wresting of control of the city from Qaddafi’s forces represents payback time. By contrast, Al Ahli (Tripoli) fans cheered Saadi in March as he toured Tripoli’s Green Square on the roof of a car, waving and shaking the hands of supporters, who chanted “God, Libya and Moammar only.”

Redefining Protest Space, Reconquering territory

Egypt’s post-revolution mood is one marked by a newly-acquired sense of entitlement and demand for far-reaching reform. Protesters imbued with what people power can achieve continue to demonstrate in a bid to clean out the remnants of the former regime, ensure that Mubarak era officials are held accountable and maintain pressure on the country’s military rulers to fulfill their pledge to lead Egypt to democracy. The road to reform and nation-building in a post people power context promises to be a very long and arduous one.

Much like what the Edsa experience has become ---- an illustration of the challenges that confront a country after a peaceful uprising has successfully dethroned dictators.

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A grandiose battle in public discourse over a vision of society continues long after the departure of President Marcos.

The shrine itself has hosted far less numbers every year during the people power anniversaries. Gone are the lengthy ceremonies to re-enact the events of February 1986 that brought together the urban middle class, the Church, and the military. In the ensuing years after a few other failed attempts at people power, many celebrants and well-wishers decided to stay home instead.

During the 16th anniversary in February 2002, the of the shrine, Father , declared it as “off limits” to political activities. Former president Fidel Ramos, himself a beneficiary of people power, echoed the same sentiment. “I do not think there should be another momentous event like EDSA. What we Filipinos have to do is to strengthen democratic institutions that will lead to sustainable development and peace and security.” An entire contingent of police cordoned off the shrine. Their presence was so ominous as to elicit public reaction to what the shrine has become: a heavily-patrolled arena that was once a symbol of freedom and openness.

In February 2008, twenty-one years after EDSA, the shrine was again besieged by protestors, though in far smaller numbers, over a whistle blower’s confession to a corrupt deal that allegedly involved the Philippine president. To calm fears of another people power uprising, the protestors gathered there to hold a “prayer vigil.” Officials of the , nonetheless, requested the Philippine National Police to prevent protestors from using the shrine for political purposes much in the same way that the Egyptian military have cordoned off Tahrir Square to ensure it is no longer a protest site.12 Eager to put people power firmly in the past, the church said the shrine is now exclusively religious territory, no longer available for protest. The Egyptian military has restored Tahrir to its decades-old role as a key traffic artery. Both are sites where people power began and both are being demystified by forces that had played a key role in the revolt’s success - the Catholic Church and the military.

12 http://www.sunstar.com.ph/breakingnews/2008/02/10/cops-guard--shrine-vs-protests-732-pm/

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There is confusion and uncertainty as Filipinos and Egyptians grapple with the contested meanings unleashed by people power. The discourse about the direction of social and political development is being reshaped in ways that echo Ramos’ emphasis on building and strengthening the institutions of governance to deepen and consolidate democracy and preserve the military’s perks and privileges in the process.

As the national conversation in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa proceeds with a renewed spirit of citizenship, protest spaces will continue to be reconfigured. The soccer pitch and the shrine will evolve as collective meanings and values slowly take form. In post-EDSA Philippines, this occurred off-site, away from the shrine, the street and the stage. Instead, it took place in the structures of decision-making, among groups of officials, citizens, and ordinary people who participate in these socially- sanctioned mechanisms. It is an often tedious and painstaking process that requires the skills of negotiation and compromise rather than the slogans and media sound bytes of a protest site.

The struggle in the Middle East and North Africa has moved out of the stadium into larger public spaces and in some cases into the smoke-filled rooms of political horsetrading. Tunisia has already embarked on the road charted by the Philippines as political forces negotiate the precise structure of their future democracy. In Egypt, the terms of the transition are still being negotiated in and off the street in a process that is far more convoluted and contentious. In Jordan and Morocco, the street serves to maintain pressure on monarchs who unlike most Arab rulers have opted for engagement of protesters rather than oppression in their bid to retain power. Elsewhere in the region, fierce battles involving varying degrees of violence ranging from the armed rebellion and civil war in Libya that in October 2011 led to the downfall of the Qaddafi regime to resilient pacifism in the face of regime brutality in Syria, will shape the outcome of the revolts and the transition to a more open society.

19

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185. U.S. Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia: From Manifest Destiny to Shared Destiny (2009) Emrys Chew

186. Different Lenses on the Future: U.S. and Singaporean Approaches to Strategic Planning (2009) Justin Zorn

187. Converging Peril : Climate Change and Conflict in the Southern Philippines (2009) J. Jackson Ewing

188. Informal Caucuses within the WTO: Singapore in the “Invisibles Group” (2009) Barry Desker

189. The ASEAN Regional Forum and Preventive Diplomacy: A Failure in Practice (2009) Ralf Emmers and See Seng Tan

190. How Geography Makes Democracy Work (2009) Richard W. Carney

191. The Arrival and Spread of the Tablighi Jama’at In West Papua (Irian Jaya), Indonesia (2010) Farish A. Noor

192. The Korean Peninsula in China’s Grand Strategy: China’s Role in dealing with North (2010) Korea’s Nuclear Quandary Chung Chong Wook

193. Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010) Donald K. Emmerson

194. Jemaah Islamiyah:Of Kin and Kind (2010) Sulastri Osman

195. The Role of the Five Power Defence Arrangements in the Southeast Asian Security (2010) Architecture Ralf Emmers

196. The Domestic Political Origins of Global Financial Standards: Agrarian Influence and the (2010) Creation of U.S. Securities Regulations Richard W. Carney

197. Indian Naval Effectiveness for National Growth (2010) Ashok Sawhney

198. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) regime in East Asian waters: Military and intelligence- (2010) gathering activities, Marine Scientific Research (MSR) and hydrographic surveys in an EEZ Yang Fang

199. Do Stated Goals Matter? Regional Institutions in East Asia and the Dynamic of Unstated (2010) Goals Deepak Nair

200. China’s Soft Power in South Asia (2010) Parama Sinha Palit

201. Reform of the International Financial Architecture: How can Asia have a greater impact in (2010) the G20? Pradumna B. Rana

202. “Muscular” versus “Liberal” Secularism and the Religious Fundamentalist Challenge in (2010) Singapore Kumar Ramakrishna

203. Future of U.S. Power: Is China Going to Eclipse the United States? Two Possible Scenarios (2010) to 2040 Tuomo Kuosa

204. Swords to Ploughshares: China’s Defence-Conversion Policy (2010) Lee Dongmin

205. Asia Rising and the Maritime Decline of the West: A Review of the Issues (2010) Geoffrey Till

206. From Empire to the War on Terror: The 1915 Indian Sepoy Mutiny in Singapore as a case (2010) study of the impact of profiling of religious and ethnic minorities. Farish A. Noor

207. Enabling Security for the 21st Century: Intelligence & Strategic Foresight and Warning (2010) Helene Lavoix

208. The Asian and Global Financial Crises: Consequences for East Asian Regionalism (2010) Ralf Emmers and John Ravenhill

209. Japan’s New Security Imperative: The Function of Globalization (2010) Bhubhindar Singh and Philip Shetler-Jones

210. India’s Emerging Land Warfare Doctrines and Capabilities (2010) Colonel Harinder Singh

211. A Response to Fourth Generation Warfare (2010) Amos Khan

212. Japan-Korea Relations and the Tokdo/Takeshima Dispute: The Interplay of Nationalism (2010) and Natural Resources Ralf Emmers

213. Mapping the Religious and Secular Parties in South Sulawesi and Tanah Toraja, Sulawesi, (2010) Indonesia Farish A. Noor

214. The Aceh-based Militant Network: A Trigger for a View into the Insightful Complex of (2010) Conceptual and Historical Links Giora Eliraz

215. Evolving Global Economic Architecture: Will We have a New Bretton Woods? (2010) Pradumna B. Rana

216. Transforming the Military: The Energy Imperative (2010) Kelvin Wong

217. ASEAN Institutionalisation: The Function of Political Values and State Capacity (2010) Christopher Roberts

218. China’s Military Build-up in the Early Twenty-first Century: From Arms Procurement to (2010) War-fighting Capability Yoram Evron

219. Darul Uloom Deoband: Stemming the Tide of Radical Islam in India (2010) Taberez Ahmed Neyazi

220. Recent Developments in the South China Sea: Grounds for Cautious Optimism? (2010) Carlyle A. Thayer

221. Emerging Powers and Cooperative Security in Asia (2010) Joshy M. Paul

222. What happened to the smiling face of Indonesian Islam? (2011) Muslim intellectualism and the conservative turn in post-Suharto Indonesia Martin Van Bruinessen

223. Structures for Strategy: Institutional Preconditions for Long-Range Planning in Cross- (2011) Country Perspective Justin Zorn

224. Winds of Change in Sarawak Politics? (2011) Faisal S Hazis

225. Rising from Within: China’s Search for a Multilateral World and Its Implications (2011) for Sino-U.S. Relations Li Mingjiang

226. Rising Power… To Do What? (2011) Evaluating China’s Power in Southeast Asia Evelyn Goh

227. Assessing 12-year Military Reform in Indonesia: Major Strategic Gaps for the Next Stage (2011) of Reform Leonard C. Sebastian and Iisgindarsah

228. Monetary Integration in ASEAN+3: A Perception Survey of Opinion Leaders (2011) Pradumna Bickram Rana, Wai-Mun Chia & Yothin Jinjarak

229. Dealing with the “North Korea Dilemma”: China’s Strategic Choices (2011) You Ji

230. Street, Shrine, Square and Soccer Pitch: Comparative Protest Spaces in Asia and the (2011) Middle East Teresita Cruz-del Rosario and James M. Dorsey