One is the price of bread. Another is soccer, as was proved again this week after Egypt’s national team was defeated by its bitter rival Algeria, losing a berth in the World Cup tournament next year and sparking a riot outside the Algerian Embassy in Cairo late Thursday night.
But there was a pronounced difference between the bread riots of 1977 and 2008 and the soccer riot of Thursday night: the government quieted those earlier outbreaks by quickly lowering the price of bread, while this week it stoked outrage against Algeria.
Egypt had defeated Algeria 2-0 in Cairo on Saturday to set up Wednesday’s climactic playoff in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. After Egypt lost the second match, the government withdrew its ambassador from Algiers and accused Algerians of menacing Egyptian fans after the game. President Hosni Mubarak’s eldest son, Alaa, a wealthy businessman, sounded as if he were calling his nation to war.
“We were being humiliated and we can’t be silent about what happened there,” he said in a telephone call to Egypt’s most popular television talk show. “We have to take a stand. This is enough. That’s it, this is enough. Egypt should be respected. We are Egyptian and we hold our head high, and whoever insults us should be smacked on his head.”
Despite the Egyptian complaints, which include accusations of stoning and machete attacks, there is no documented evidence of any Egyptians’ being seriously injured in the aftermath of the game on Wednesday, won by the Algerians, 1-0.
Dignity did seem to be a subtext, however, as hundreds of young men rushed the Algerian Embassy here, vandalizing cars and stores, burning Algerian flags and injuring 35 police officers — a rare occurrence in a police state that has made gatherings of seven or more people illegal.
Soccer is a national passion. The only time Egyptians take to the streets in flag-waving celebration is when their team wins. And in soccer terms the North African neighbor Algeria has for years been enemy No. 1. Both nations have waited a long time to get a spot in the World Cup, 24 years for Algeria, 20 for Egypt. The last time Egypt made it was in 1989, when it defeated Algeria.
From the start, the Egyptian government sought to exploit the games with Algeria for political reasons, political analysts said. State radio broadcast nationalist songs. Streets were filled with young men selling Egyptian flags. The president’s son Gamal Mubarak, who is often talked about as a possible successor to his 81-year-old father, attended the two games with other high-ranking party members.
“They excited people, thinking that this would keep them busy from other problems, but in the end it backfired,” said Osama Anwar Okasha, an Egyptian television writer and columnist who blamed leaders in both countries. “It made people here and there explode.”
Critics charged that the government — and specifically the president’s political organization, the National Democratic Party — was hoping that a victory on the field could bolster its credibility in the face of grinding poverty and political stagnation. By the time the Algerian team bus pulled into Cairo on Saturday, people were so riled up they pelted it with hunks of concrete and its players were bloodied — though Egyptians insisted the Algerians did that to themselves in an attempt to win a change of venue.
When Egypt lost the playoff, the government still tried to ride those emotions, leading with calls of outrage and indignation.
“It is strange that the regime was charging people with all these emotions from the beginning, as though this victory or loss will resolve all their problems,” said Salama Ahmed Salama, head of the editorial board of El Shorouk, an independent newspaper in Cairo. “What you see happening is that the problems, and the social and political oppression people face, pushes them to behave this way.”
The Algerians were not entirely innocent victims in all this. They goaded the Egyptians, claiming falsely that Algerian fans were killed in Cairo. A music video circulating on the Internet showed a picture of President Mubarak with a pig’s face as a rapper called Egyptians “beggars, beggars thieves, crooks, known pickpocketers.” (And much worse.)
Tensions ran high before Wednesday’s game, in which Egypt was favored, and the Sudanese sent thousands of soldiers and police officers to the stadium to maintain calm. Yet after the Algerians won, the crowd filed calmly out of the stadium without any sign of violence, witnesses reported.
But that was not the message sent back home, where Egyptians were overwhelmed with news coverage and amateur videos of injured fans and Algerians waving knives and insulting Egypt.
“What you don’t know is that the Algerian fans have been in the streets of Khartoum for the past three days purchasing daggers and knives,” the minister of information, Anas el-Feqqy, said Thursday night on one of Egypt’s most popular television talk shows. “These are not people going to cheer for soccer, these are people going to take revenge and exercise violence.”
That same night, young Egyptians rampaged in the streets. But on Friday, the government sent out a signal that it was time to stop, that perhaps things had gone too far. The Foreign Ministry said the government would not “tolerate violations against Algerian interests” in Egypt.
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