Egypt and Algeria: “This has to stop immediately”

Egyptian crowds are massing in Zamalek to protest about Algerian violence in Khartoum ...
For more than a week, Gamal Fahmy has watched in mounting dismay as the simple question of who would qualify for the 2010 World Cup has exploded into a violent threat to the relationship between two Arab peoples.

“This has to stop immediately,” says Fahmy, editor of the Nasserist weekly Al Araby. “We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like we're at war with Algeria suddenly.”

Now Fahmy and a collection of high profile artists and cultural leaders are fighting back against what they describe as patriotism and national pride gone horribly wrong. Together they are launching an initiative called A Call for Rationality and Conscience. The campaign, which will be announced this afternoon, calls for a series of public goodwill gestures between Algerian and Egyptian cultural leaders.

“We’re asking intellectuals in both countries to campaign for an immediate end to this,” says Fahmy, who listed an array of prominent Egyptians who have signed on to the initiative, including authors Alaa Al Aswany and Sonallah Ibrahim, sociologist Galal Amin and columnist Salama Ahmed Salama.

The process, according to Fahmy, begins with restraint and some honesty on the Egyptian end—particularly on the part of the media. Fahmy, who is a member of the board of the Journalists’ Syndicate, says he has been particularly shocked by the way local newspapers and television programs have fanned the flames of the dispute.

“We look like garbage in front of the international media,” he says.

Attacks by rock-throwing Algerians on buses of Egyptian fans following the 18 November match in Khartoum have been highlighted and hyped with exaggerated casualty figures, he says. Meanwhile the attack earlier that week by Egyptian fans on the Algerian team's bus in Cairo has been downplayed amid hints that the Algerian players somehow faked their own stoning.

“I know what happened in Khartoum,” he says. “But honestly it happened in Cairo first. We have to confess to that and stop playing dumb.”

Fahmy accuses the Egyptian and Algerian governments of encouraging tensions and exploiting their peoples' natural pride and patriotism. “Both governments are encouraging this,” he says.

“This is all distracting us from the fundamental issues—the hunger, the unemployment and the oppression in each country.”