Monthly Archives: March 2007

Arab Summit = Long Weekend

The best part about the coming Arab leaders summit in Riyadh is that the government have decided to give students and employees two days off in order to ensure the smoothness of traffic in the city as some major roads are to be blocked.

Now coming to my expectations of the summit, I would say “not much.” I mean it would be great if our leaders could do something about the political deadlock in Lebanon and the civil war in Iraq, but this seems very unlikely to happen, despite the speculations about a Saudi package engineered by Arabia’s Kissinger. The situation is all too similar to the latest GCC leaders summit: big speeches and big ambitions, but nothing that actually touches the lives of citizens or something they would look forward to.

Most probably I would be leaving Riyadh to enjoy the long weekend in Bahrain or to spend some time with family and friends in my hometown.

New Coach, Same Old Story

Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF) have announced earlier this week that they sacked Brazilian coach Marcos Paqueta from his position as manager of the national team, and subsequently signed a contract with his compatriot Helio Dos Angos to prepare our national team for the Asian Cup in July. Paqueta, who still had nine months left in his contract when it was terminated, learned the news from newspapers. This is, imho, unprofessional on the behalf of SAFF, who should have at least told Paqueta earlier of their intentions to replace him.

However, it is not very unusual for SAFF to act this way. They have become very well-known for sacking managers irrationally since the 1970’s. An official at SAFF who spoke to the press described sacking Paqueta as a “tough decision,” which doesn’t seem to be the case, but whatever. He said they were not satisfied with the performance of the team during the World Cup, but decided to give him a second chance. When the team lost the Gulf Cup semifinal in December they could not take it anymore, and they “had to sack him,” he added.

I can’t for the life of me understand what SAFF were expecting; he is a coach, not a magician. I mean: were they seriously thinking that our team could go to the next round in the World Cup? This is just unrealistic; this is wishful thinking. Six months later, the team goes to Abu Dhabi as a favourite to win the Gulf Cup, but they find themselves out in the semifinal after losing to the hosts by a late goal of UAE’s wonder boy Ismail Matar, who went to win the cup in the first time in his country’s history. I think this should not be considered a major failure, especially when all critics in the region agreed that Saudi Arabia (and Oman) offered the best performance in the tournament.

Local sports press, in what has become some kind of a norm for them, began to circulate rumors and speculations about the fate of Paqueta and who is the next manager of the Green Falcons, in a fashion very similar to what we have seen with his predecessor Gabriel Calderon of Argentina. Obviously, it was only a matter of time, and SAFF, as usual, did not disappoint their ever decreasing base of fans. They remained faithful to their tradition of changing coaches before we even get familiar with the name of the last one.

Ironically, SAFF always talk about how they are committed to “scientific methods” when they make decisions on the future of our first national sport. However, I think the only progress they have made in the past ten years is this: we used to sack managers “on the spot” when our team don’t win, now we give them a few months to enjoy our sunny weather before sacking them.

Thanks to their “scientific methods,” Saudi Arabia have acquired such a bad reputation in the football market that most world class managers would decline to work here despite the large sums of money offered to them. Just take a quick look at the long list of managers who took the helm of the Saudi team since 1998 and you would not see any name that can be considered an internationally top manager. Why would any self-respecting manager compromise his history only to be sacked a few months later in a manner that will only damage his reputation?

Who Are the Agitators?

The attack on French tourists on the hands of some unidentified armed men near Madaen Saleh northwest of the country was disturbing and brought back some bad memories that we hoped would fade away forever. Hadeel asked if we were back to square one, while Rasheed has posted the-story-behind-the-story.

Interestingly, Faris Bin Hizam, usually referred to as al-Qaeda expert, said it is not necessary for this crime to be attributed to al-Qaeda, but it definitely meets their agenda and ideology. So why after more than four years of our continuous war on terror we find ourselves in this position? Bin Hizam says, this is because “the agitators are still among us.” Methinks that all the efforts to halt terrorism are pointless if we still allow the agitators to keep on promoting their destructive ideas. Unfortunately, Bin Hizam does not go as far as telling the rest of us the names of these agitators, although he says clearly in the title that “we know them.”

RIBF 2007: Final Rant


I thought I would be updating this blog with news from RIBF over the past week but unfortunately there wasn’t much to report. The overall organization has improved, but the accompanying cultural events were not as good as last year’s. There were lame, but I read that Latifah al-Sha’alan has kicked some ass during a panel discussing reading in the Arab World, so I’m kicking myself for missing it. (Pictured above: some of the books I’ve purchased at this year’s RIBF)

The War of Hearts and Minds

Except for the Bush administration, almost everybody believes that the United States are losing the war in Iraq, if they have not lost it already. But there is another war the Americans are losing, one that some people, inside the administration and outside it, consider more important than the military battle: it is the war to win the hearts and minds of Arabs.

Have you ever heard of Hi Magazine? The answer is probably not. The magazine, launched in 2003, was targeted at Arab youth in order to give them a glimpse into living the American dream. The magazine proved to be a failure, and had to shut down after less than three years of the first issue.

However, Hi was not the only example of American failure to communicate with the Arab public. Al Hurra is still unable to attract even a small fraction of the audiences of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, and I wonder if anyone in the region listens to Radio Sawa. After the failure with the old media trio, only one medium is left in Uncle Sam’s bag of tricks: the internet.

According to an official at the U.S. Department of State, they are looking now for methods to use the internet to communicate with Arab youth, and they are tackling questions such as: what kind of websites appeal to this large demographic group that represent over 60% of the population in the region? Are they interested in news, sports, entertainment, blogs, social networks, or photo and video sharing? I would say any of these topics can be of interest to them, but only in one condition: it needs to be done right. And based on previous experiences in this field, the Americans just don’t know how to do that.
I believe that they are genuinely interested in reaching out to people here. They even send some of their top officials and advisers to talk with influential as well as regular people in the region. But when it comes to taking actions they utterly fail.

The failure in choosing the proper method of communication is not the only problem though. Another major problem facing the Americans here is that most people simply don’t trust them anymore. Several years of foolish and biased foreign policy in the Middle East have made people turn down anything coming with a “Made in USA” label. They just can’t expect anything good to come out of the U.S. administration.

So, what the Americans to do in their endeavors to boost more understanding between their nation and the Arab World? First, they should stop wasting resources on hopelessly failing projects. Instead, they should focus more on cultural exchange programs on different levels. Also, instead of launching their own projects online, they might consider using and supporting some of established websites to deliver their messages.

You don’t always need a standalone website to market an idea and spread the word about it online. Many good ideas on the web gained popularity depending exclusively on word of mouth. Governments, organizations and companies can make a big buzz by small gestures on the internet. Here is a few examples:

– Sponsor a competition on a community website.
– Ask a blogger for a slot as a guest blogger on his website (if you have something interesting to say, most bloggers would agree to do this).
– Support a non-profit organization.

Issues of ethics, credibility, and conflicts of interests should be clearly addressed and handled very carefully here. It could be very difficult for all parties included to deal with these issues in such situations, and therefore they should do their best to ensure transparency while maintaining a certain level of quality and respect.