More often than not, sports have shown to have a life and
significance beyond the realm of “sports”. Defined as a form of
“physical activity” and mostly coupled with culture and media by world
governments, sports is often seen as a form of “entertainment” for its
audience. The tragic events at Port Said earlier this month where the
Al-Masry met Cairo’s Al-Ahly for a football match, was far from the
description above when it turned into a debacle with 74 dead and many
more injured. More sadly, it was yet another moments in history where
politics killed innocent lives and the sport became the “murderer”.
To me personally, the incident was a stark and painful reminder of
the attacks on the Sri Lankan team in Pakistan and the Pakistani driver
who lost his life. It is still unclear who was behind those attacks
but it was extremely clear that this wasn’t sparked by hatred for the
Sri Lankan, probably the only team after Pakistan that Pakistanis
actually have a sense of affection for. There was “politics” in play
and it won in its aim of hampering the morale of Pakistanis, a proud
nation that breathes cricket.
Egyptians, too, are a proud nation whose self-confidence was further
boosted in the revolution earlier last year. Like cricket is for
Pakistanis, Egyptians too breathe football. And like the Sri Lankan
team attack killed the sport in Pakistan, it has marred football in
Egypt too. The Al-Ahly team’s goal keeper immediately came out saying
they would be unable to play the sport again knowing it killed 74
Egyptians. The tournament, for very obvious reasons, had been called
off indefinitely. Like Pakistanis, Egyptians are convinced 74 people
don’t just die due to football match riot and “other hands” are
involved. Al-Ahly fans were amongst the fore-front revolutionaries whose protests led to Mubarak’s ouster.
Andrew Strenk in his paper called “
What Price Victory? The World of International Sports and Politics”
points out quite rightly that there has been “a long tradition of
mixing sports and politics which dates all the way back to the ancient
Greeks. The development of the Turner movement in the German states of
the 19th century, the rise of the Sokol movement in neighboring Bohemia,
and the formation of the International Olympic Committee by Baron
Pierre de Coubertin later in the same century all served to reinforce
earlier traditions linking sports to politics. The result of these
developments was to produce a war without weapons.”
Pakistan and India have been playing this war for years now where
every loss is felt painfully across the world and every victory hailed
as a victory of many sorts beyond “sports.” Andrew Strenk will have to
reconsider his thoughts today. Unfortunately, as politics becomes more
volatile, perhaps even more militarized than before, weapons are
demonstrating a direct impact on sports too. When 74 lives are lost at a
football match, its not a war without weapons.
Unfortunately, in this war who loses the most? It is the sport and
the people! In Pakistan, cricket lost and Pakistanis lost as the label
of a “terrorist” nation became difficult to shed off. In Egypt,
football lost and the people did when many on Twitter and elsewhere
voiced their concern at media showing Egyptians as “violent.” The
sooner we realize that sports is beyond sports, and its politicization
may lead to its weaponization the sooner we can protect our only ray of
genuine happiness.
