BAMAKO, Mali - Enraged Mali soccer fans set cars ablaze, looted shops and destroyed monuments early Monday, hours after rushing onto the field and forcing the suspension of a World Cup qualifying game against Togo.
Mali Soccer Fans Riot After Loss (washingtonpost.com)

First of all, to those of you who have written to ask, we're fine.

We watched the game on TV. Some friends of ours had gone to the match, and several times during it I remarked, "You couldn't pay me to be there." My lack of faith in Malian construction alone was enough to keep me out of the stadium. That, and I hate being in huge crowds in enclosed places.

After Togo scored the final goal (in the extra 2 minutes of penalty time), everything turned chaotic. They never finished the final minutes. People ran onto the field and it looked like there was tear gas being fired. Nothing particularly violent seemed to be happening, but it was clearly not a situation under control.

After a few minutes we noticed that the commentators weren't saying anything. "They got the hell out of there," someone watching the game said. That seemed likely. The camera stayed fixed on the field for a few more minutes, than cut to an Ikatel commercial.

Not having any idea what was happening, we went out to dinner. We drove up to daGuido, a nearby Italian restaurant. We said hi to some friends we saw, ate pizza, drank red wine, and drove home. We saw nothing out of the ordinary. After dinner we talked by phone with the friends who had been at the game -- they had wisely chosen to leave in the 80th minute, and didn't know of any violence.

The next morning E. called me from work. The first thing he had seen out of the ordinary was the Folyblon, a club not far from our house. It was burned to the ground. (It wouldn't have taken much, since the place was basically built out of bamboo and dry thatched grasses.) There was broken glass all over the street, the kind of safety glass that car windows are made of. Down closer to the center of town, by the grande mosquee, there was more rubble in the streets, tires and broken glass.

At work, his program assistant Amadou gave him the scoop. Amadou, who lives in Badalabougou, heard a lot of noise around 10:00 and went out to investigate. There was a mob of people out in front of Amandines. They trashed the veranda at the restaurant -- all the tables and chairs and umbrellas -- and turned over the kiosks next to the restaurant.

Apparently the mob also tore down the ridiculous soccer-playing hippo monument (I always thought it was a dinosaur!) at the foot of the old bridge. In the state paper today there was a paper of a destroyed cyber cafe, and the poor traffic lights, once again, were targeted. (I think they've been torn down every few months since I got here.)

Various rumors were floating around: The referee was Ghanaian, so Ghanaian businesses were targeted. Mali's loss was blamed on the players' fondness for drinking and dancing, so bars and discos were targeted. Who knows if any of that is true.

There were apparently death threats against Freddy Kanoute, who doesn't want to come back and play for Mali anymore. And who can blame him?

The strangest things about the whole rioting:

• The delay between the end of the game (around 8:00) and the violence (around 10:00). That may have been due to the game's location, at the CAN stadium on the road to Segou.


• As E. pointed out tonight, the lack of any security forces on the scene was discouraging, to say the least. Those of you who have been here know there's no shortage of gendarmes riding around in the backs of trucks -- where were they Sunday night? And where is ATT's official condemnation? I've heard nothing.

More than anything I feel really disappointed and angered at the people who destroyed property. Mali has so many things working against it already; it doesn't need its own people to tear down what hard-earned progress it's making.

Update:

Mali's president fired the chiefs of police, state security and paramilitary forces on Thursday, national radio announced, days after enraged soccer fans ransacked parts of the West African country's capital.
- The Star, South Africa