"When are they going to pronounce the death of the Arabs?" Nizar Qabbani once asked angrily. The famous poet's question was a cry of despair against the backwardness and folly that had caused so many Arab defeats and setbacks. Decades later we feel compelled to ask the same question in response to the savage attacks on Egyptians by Algerians because of a football match, the winner of which qualified for the World Cup finals. I stress the word qualify, as opposed to standing any real chance of even coming near to winning the cup. Arab backwardness and fanaticism transformed a sporting event from a means to strengthen relations between countries and peoples to one that stirs hatred and rancour. The Algerian zealots turned the match into a variation of the race between the horses Dahis and Ghabra which sparked such vicious conflict between pre-Islamic Arabic tribes. Sadly, it was not even the passionate desire to win that moved Algeria's fanatics. If it had been they would have been content with their cheap victory on the Sudanese "battlefield" on 18 November. Rather, they were driven by blind hatred and appalling ignorance to commit outrages against Egyptians. One can only feel horrified by the spectacle of crazed and hate-filled Algerian mobs racing through the streets of Algiers, Khartoum and other cities in the Arab world attacking Egyptians, Egyptian property or anything else they associated with Egypt in their befuddled minds. Their flagrant racism struck a debilitating blow at Arab nationalist ideals and principles for which Egypt has always stood. It is impossible to justify this scandal. It has cast a shadow over the region from the Atlantic to the Gulf. But one can certainly detect other agendas, some connected to internal politics in Algeria, others to the types of conspiracies Arabs like to hatch against each other, yet more to designs to fuel hatred and division between the Arabs. There is evidence, for example, that the mobs were mobilised, with the support of Algerian army officers who control the press and other media, with the express purpose of compromising the $6 billion worth of Egyptian investments in Algeria which French and Qatari firms have been eyeing greedily. Whatever agendas came into play, however, they could not have produced the results they did without an Arab climate conducive to them, a psychological frame of mind disturbed enough to accept them, and a sense of morality sufficiently stunted to carry them out. The crimes committed against Egypt have left a tremendous stain on the record of Arab nationalism. The blot is of such a magnitude that it could well have furnished the answer to Nizar Qabbani's question. The Algerian football mobs may not have issued Arabism's death certificate but they certainly made it clear it has one foot in the grave.
