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For weeks Brazilian, German, Spanish, Italian and Argentine flags have fluttered from cars in Lebanon, where fans adopt top World Cup teams with an exuberant passion most countries reserve for their national side.When their favourites win, Lebanese supporters take to the streets, hanging out of cars in honking, flag-waving cavalcades, setting off fire-crackers or even shooting guns in the air.Lebanon has never come close to qualifying, but not even war can dampen local ardour for the World Cup. During the 1982 tournament in Mexico, which coincided with an Israeli invasion, fans hooked up car batteries to mini-TV sets to watch games even as bombs smashed into their besieged, blacked-out capital.Contrast this with the sorry state of soccer in Lebanon, where clubs have played in empty stadiums for the past five years and sectarian tentacles have gradually poisoned the game."Politics came into football and destroyed it," said Rahif Alameh, secretary-general of the Lebanese Football Association, who dated the "death of football" to 2001, the year when the government intervened in a murky match-fixing scandal.That, he said, was when Lebanon's politico-religious leaders began treating the association as a pie to be carved up, just as they share power among Muslim and Christian communities.Other conflict-ridden countries have consciously harnessed sport to heal divisions or nurture new shared values -- think post-apartheid South Africa and the 1995 rugby World Cup -- but not in Lebanon, whose national identity has always been elusive.Sectarian tensions, never doused after the 1975-90 civil war, revived in the late 1990s and increasingly tainted club rivalries, said Karim Makdissi, a keen footballer who teaches international relations at the American University of Beirut.Former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri sponsored several sports clubs and bought Nejmeh soccer club, which was largely cross-sectarian, but had always attracted much Shi'ite support.Makdissi said such activities may have started out as moneymaking ventures by the billionaire businessman, but later turned into vehicles for consolidating Sunni Muslim support."It was used to recruit Sunnis and it was used for political purposes to rally Sunni voters and pass round jobs and favours."SECTARIAN LOYALTIESPeople now identify clubs known as Maronite Christian, Sunni, Shi'ite, Druze or Armenian with certain political factions -- even though the teams might be religiously mixed."Unfortunately, this reflects how this system co-opts any potential for cross-sectarian identity," Makdissi said.Soon after Hariri's assassination in 2005, the government barred spectators from football stadiums citing "security reasons" in the charged political atmosphere of the time.Acknowledging that Lebanon is inherently unstable, Alameh said it was the government's job to provide security, not to ban crowds. Fans can still only watch their teams on television.So sponsorship money has dried up. The federation gets no help from the state, surviving on the $250,000 a year that FIFA, football's ruling body, distributes to its members."We are in a very black situation," Alameh said.In April, palpably unfit Lebanese politicians donned shorts to mark the civil war anniversary with a football match in an empty stadium, under the slogan "We are all one team".The gesture, greeted by Lebanese with anything from mild appreciation to derision, was fatuous, Makdissi argued.He said the politicians were keeping football stadiums empty because they feared their own on-off incitement of sectarian tensions could get dangerously out of control on the street."The politicians are in bed with each other and always will be," the academic said. "The friction has gone down to the people -- they are the ones in need of a football match."Flags of World Cup favourites are on sale across Lebanon as fans in despair at their own team's low fortunes try to back a winner. Lebanese flags are understandably scarce.World Cup hosts, such as France in 1998, Germany in 2006 and South Africa this year, have used the tournament to showcase a national identity or to reveal how it is evolving.Lebanon hosted the Asian Cup in 2000, but has yet to express a sense of belonging in sport or transcend the fears of its mutually suspicious communities -- and their foreign patrons."The football team should reflect your nation, however you want to define it," Makdissi said. "It is the national symbol.""Football is one of the few things that could be fantastic if you wanted to create a national identity that was at least in parallel to, if not in lieu of, your sectarian identity."(Editing by Matthew Jones)
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