IT WAS inevitable that blame would immediately be heaped on Egypt’s army for the tragedy in Port Said. Rightly or wrongly. Whether it was a case of being deliberately engineered by the army, or, more likely, a product of its incompetent inaction. Everything in chaotic, violent Egypt, stalled between revolution and counter-revolution, is essentially political, revolving around the role of the army and police and in Port Said also its nemesis, the “ultra” fans of Cairo’s Al Ahli club, once shock troops of the Tahrir Square rebellion.
The picture of what happened remains confused. Violence was clearly initiated by a pitch invasion by fans from home team al-Masry, many armed with clubs, stones and knives. But most of the 74 dead and 1,000 injured, it appears, were hapless fans fleeing the violence, trapped by closed gates and then trampled, suffocated, or thrown or falling to their deaths from terraces.
There are huge questions to be answered. Why did hundreds of black-uniformed and helmeted police stand in line unmoving as fans fought? How did the weapons get into the ground? Why none of the normal body searches at a match between notoriously bitter rivals?
Already the Port Said governor and police chief and the board of the Egyptian Soccer Federation have answered with their jobs, but many want accountability to go higher. Several MPs insisted yesterday the lapses were intentional, aimed at stoking insecurity or revenge against the ultras. Parliament voted to launch an investigation and a formal complaint for negligence with the military against interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim.
Even the promise by the military authorities to prosecute those responsible seemed to acknowledge that the tragedy was essentially political and linked to the fate of democratic transition. Top military officer, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, promised arrests and compensation in a phone call to Al Ahli’s satellite channel. “We will get through this stage. Egypt will be stable,” he said. “We have a road map to transfer power to elected civilians. If anyone is plotting instability in Egypt, they will not succeed.”
Such words are unlikely to satisfy the young men who returned to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria yesterday demanding that the army honour its undertaking to stand aside for civilian rule. “The military council lost its legitimacy today,” Mustafa Naggar, an MP from the Justice Party, said in parliament.
It is a voice that Port Said has ensured will get increasingly irresistible.