How to make an international crisis out of a lousy football game

An ambassador recalled. Another embassy under siege. A level of alert we haven’t seen in years here in Cairo - it’s nothing like the original Football War but if we play our hand right, it’ll be immortalized in a Wikipedia entry of its own titled “Egyptian-Algerian football war of 2009”.

It started in June. No no, strike that - it started in 1989. A frustrated Algerian player attacks an Egyptian doctor with broken glass, blinding one of his eyes. (investigations this year proved that it wasn’t the main suspect but a teammate of his who was guilty).
Probably since then, the tension in Egyptian-Algerian football games became more than a football competition.

Fast-forward to 2009. In June, the first leg of the Egypt-Algeria is played in Blida, Algeria. Algeria wins 3-1. The game ends with no major incident, though the Egyptian players bus is stoned and their hotel surrounded by night by hooligans attempting to make noise to keep them awake.

The run-up to second leg of the game, in Cairo, is far tenser. Egypt gears up for a decisive match but - it feels nothing short of a World Cup final.
Then comes the real turning point of this entire saga: upon arrival to Cairo, the Algerian players’ bus is stoned more heavily; three players are reported injured. Though the injuries are reported ‘light’ by the team’s doctor, the very graphic images coming from that incident both calm down the Egyptians, and inflamates the Algerians.
A 96th minute goal revives Egypt’s chances for a seat in South Africa 2010; a tie-breaker between Egypt and Algeria is to be held in Sudan four days later, Wednesday the 18th.
The aftermath of the game is celebratory in Cairo but takes violent turns in Algeria, further inflamed by the Algerian sensationalist press which reported 1, than 8, then 12 Algerian deaths in Cairo - rumours promptly denied by the Algerian ambassador in Cairo, but the myth - along with mythical stories of alleged Algerians running to the embassy, their clothes torn, clutching an Algerian flag stained with the blood of martyrs... A Greek saga. The Algerian public falls for it head first.
Hooligans attack Egyptian expatriates in Algeria, in their homes and their offices. EgyptAir’s office in Algiers is ransacked and set ablaze. Major Egyptian companies there, primarily “Orascom” and “Arab Contractors”, recall a large segment of their staff out of safety. Baghdad seems safer than Algiers for Egyptians at the moment.

But hell, it’s not over. As fan travel to Sudan for the tie-breaker on Wednesday, Algeria’s government and businesses sponsor plane tickets, slashing the prices from 90,000 dinars to 20,000, then 5,000 dinars. Fans are even shipped in airplanes clearly labeled “Algerian Air Force” - B-130’s, say those in the know. Browse the audience: all male, quite young, and pretty damn angry. Not your usual sports-loving crowd.

The game ends in an Algerian victory. 1-nil.
Sudanese security plans were to hold the supporters of the winning team in the stadium for three hours, while the losers - assumed sore and prone to violent - were evacuated. That did not happen. And while disappointed Egyptians made their way to the airport, they were attacked by mobs of Algerians who stormed out of the stadium - the winning team doing the attacks, yes - with stones, kitchen knives, machetes, and swords. “Swords like that I’ve only seen in the Saladin movie”, said an Egyptian eyewitness, newscaster Wael El-Ebrashy. (you get the picture even if you haven’t see the film, right?)
They bombarded the Egyptian fans’ buses - we’re talking groups of men, women and children - with stones. With the bus windows broken, they attacked them with flagsticks from which nails were poking, they threw knives into the bus. It wasn’t about maximum injury, nor mass murder: it was about causing visible injury.
So far, upwards of 200 Egyptians are reported injured. Some injuries are severe, one woman has lost an eye.

The night of the game was long in Khartoum - and probably longer in Cairo. A frantic media receiving truncated reports and disconnected phone calls from the Sudan grew crazy. The Algerian ambassador was brought out of bed and called live on Egyptian television at 1 AM. At 1:15 AM, the Egyptian President said that if the situation wasn’t brought to order by 2 AM, Egypt would interfere and deploy military aircrafts to evacuate the Egyptians in Khartoum.
Incensed by mad television presenters, Egyptians have, for the past two days, been demonstrating non-stop in front of the Algerian embassy in Cairo - occasionally engaging in fights with the Egyptian anti-riot squads guarding the building and its personnel.
As we speak, attacks and harassment against Egyptians in Algeria are still ongoing.

The diplomatic story is getting murkier by the moment. Between the games, the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs called in the Algerian ambassador to Cairo to express his concern about the safety of Egyptians in Algeria. A diplomatic slap on the wrist.
After the second game in Sudan, the Egyptian ambassador to Algeria was “recalled for consultations” to Cairo. A diplomatic kick in the nuts, for all intents and purposes.

The Algerians are retaliating - first the Algerian ministry calls the Egyptian ambassador to Algiers, to “protest the Egyptian government’s claims that Algeria was unable to protect the Egyptians in Algeria from hooligan violence”. Algeria also decided to hurt Egyptian business interests there - demanding 597 million dollars from Egypt’s Orascom in taxes.

So where from here? I’m just waiting for the first confirmed death, on this side or that. Then it won’t be ‘complain to FIFA’ campaigns anymore, but it’ll be a withdrawal of ambassadors, potentially threats of sending armies to ‘protect our expat nationals’, and then... Well, we have to earn that goddamn Wikipedia entry, no?