By Hussein Ibish, Now.
When Libya’s national football team held off powerhouse Ghana for 90 minutes of full-time, another 30 minutes of extra time, and then won a nail-biting finish in a penalty shootout in last Saturday’s final of the African Nations Championship, perhaps we were looking at something more than just a game. For a country beset by warring militias, rival tribes and clans, and eastern secessionism, this dramatic upset victory in a major tournament could have significant implications in reaffirming Libya’s sense of shared national identity and pride, commonality of purpose, and, indeed, united future.
It doesn’t matter that the African Nations Championship – which excludes any players working outside their home countries – is secondary to the more prestigious Africa Cup of Nations. The unexpected and inspiring victory set off celebrations not seen since the success of the 2011 revolution. For countries in the grip of transition, or groups seeking to reinforce their identities or create new national narratives, high-level sports can, and historically frequently have, been an unlikely focal point, with impossible to measure but unmistakable political ramifications. Indeed, in the immediate wake of the fall of Ben Ali, Tunisia’s victory in the same tournament also helped reinforce national identity at a crucial time, and everything from the role of Egypt’s “ultras” football hooligans in the various uprisings and protests in the country, to Qatar’s fraught (and, it would seem, increasingly implausible) bid to host the 2022 World Cup, demonstrates that football, football politics and dynamics, and football fans have been harbingers, barometers, and sometimes even key factors in Middle Eastern developments in recent years.
Historically, sports, and football in particular, have often been seen around the world as metaphors for national identity, reassertion or reemergence, or, alternatively, as a vehicle for sub-national tensions or interstate rivalries that have sometimes boiled over into conflict.
In Spain, Catalans and Basques have relied on football as a vehicle for expressing their unique identity, sometimes in an aggressive and hostile manner to traditional Castilian dominance. The first harbingers of open warfare in the former Yugoslavia came in football stadiums. Anyone paying attention to the chanting could not have been surprised by the various Balkan wars, including the war in Kosovo
In 1969, a brief but bitter armed conflict – La guerra del fútbol (“the football war”) – erupted between Honduras and El Salvador. It wasn’t actually caused by the rioting following a highly contentious World Cup qualifying match, as many mistakenly think, but those tensions were the breaking point for a whole series of pre-existing disputes, largely involving territory, population, and the treatment of Salvadorans living and working in Honduras.
In the case of Libya, however, the operative examples are more likely to relate to the way major football victories have reinforced national identities with direct, and often stabilising and uniting, effects.
It was famously (although perhaps exaggeratedly) observed that “[o]ther countries have their history. Uruguay has its football.” But there’s no doubting the impact of Uruguay’s astonishing football successes on the tiny, otherwise undistinguished country: its victories, stunning the world by winning the 1924 and 1928 Olympics and then the first World Cup in 1930, and again by beating mighty Brazil in the 1950 final in Rio de Janeiro, have clearly had a disproportionately positive influence on Uruguayan identity and national pride.
There is also little doubt that Argentina’s first World Cup victory in 1978 gave the ruling military junta a new lease on political life and extended their rule for several years. Indeed, many of the players involved in that triumph have since expressed regret that a dictatorship fighting a “dirty war” against political opposition was able to benefit from their success. It may have left a bitter taste in many mouths over the long run, but in its immediate context Argentina’s victory was galvanising and unifying.
It would be naïve to think that the Libyan team’s brilliant triumph is a turning point in that country’s post-dictatorship future: it cannot be a panacea to its most serious woes, or even a solution to any of them, and it may indeed prove a mere blip in the unfolding Libyan saga. But it would also be naïve to dismiss the possibility that Libyans just got an invaluable reaffirmation of national unity, identity, and confidence at a crucial point, when all of these are under profound threat. Take it seriously.
Hussein Ibish is a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.
This article was originally published on Now.
