Imagine what might happen if the most fanatic supporters of both sides were allowed to confront each other on or off the pitch or were to go after you? How would you deal with a panicking crowd trying to get down from the stands, pushing and shoving in the narrow aisles, then to find the gates locked?
These thoughts passed my mind when I saw the pictures of the Al-Masry supporters flooding the field at the Port Said football grounds after their team won the match against arch rivals Al-Ahly and when I read the stories of eyewitnesses recounting the horrors inside the stadium. Al-Ahly supporters were stabbed, thrown off high stadium tiers, trampled in passageways while trying to flee and suffocated against closed doors. Over 70 youngsters lost their lives in one of the worst football-related incidents in history.
The obvious questions are how this could have happened and how these events relate to the ongoing political tensions in Egypt. Because, as Wendell Steavenson put it in the New Yorker magazine: “We are in the middle of a revolution, and everything is political.”
I am not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but I must say, looking at what happened and having read several eyewitness accounts, it is hard to escape the impression that there is more to these massacres than just football violence. How else to explain that there was no search for weapons when entering the stadium? How is it possible that after the match finished, all the gates to the pitch were opened in a coordinated way, while at the same time police officers were standing by, doing nothing to prevent supporters invading the field and going after Al-Ahly players and fans? How to explain the stories told by different people to reporters from Reuters and the Guardian of unknown armed agitators that infiltrated the ranks of the Al-Masry fans before and during the match?
These kinds of questions would pop up after each similar incident in which so many were killed in such peculiar circumstances. In this case, there is a special reason to be suspicious. The fans of Al-Ahly that took the blows are part of the so-called Ultras, hardcore football fans that played a key role in defending Tahrir Square one year ago against the police forces loyal to then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The Ultras were among the fiercest fighters during the peak of the revolutionary battles that brought down the Mubarak regime. They hate the police with whom they love to pick a fight, and the police hate them. It is no coincidence that immediately after the Port Said tragedy, both the Ultras and the April 6 Youth Movement, one of the main political groups representing the revolutionary Tahrir Square spirit, accused the police, backed by the army, of taking revenge on the Ultras by allowing organized thugs to kill them. The plot fits in with other stories published before the football drama alleging that the military, in order to maintain internal cohesion and control over the country, was creating “demons,” be they Coptic protesters in October of last year or Tahririst groups in November and December. The Ultras match the profile perfectly.
It is still too early to draw any final conclusions, but what could be the political fall out of this drama? Is James Dorsey, author of the popular blog The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, right when he claims that the Ultras might have walked into a trap set for them by the military and the police who wanted to deal a lethal blow to the continued street protests that have become less popular with large parts of the population longing for stability and economic recovery? Or does respected blogger Issandr El Amrani have a point when he suggests that in the eyes of many ordinary Egyptians the army failed to guarantee basic security in Port Said and that is why many, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, are wondering if the army is allowing -- or even encouraging -- the chaos in order to justify its rule? Instead of splitting the opposition, the death of so many young football fans may have united the street protesters and the newly elected parliamentarians in their struggle to establish civilian rule in Egypt.
