Jeune Afrique and Morocco

Moorishgirl highlights a Jeune Afrique special on Morocco, focusing on the old secularists vs. Islamists debate (a largely misleading debate, in my opinion) and then says:

I was disappointed by the piece on the media: No mention of the problems that Tel Quel, Le Journal Hebdo and other news magazines have had with the judiciary.

Want to know why? Because Jeune Afrique is bought and paid for by the Moroccan regime to provide positive reporting. Le Jounal Hebdo, a real independent weekly, did a great piece on how the whole setup works, with on one occasion Jeune Afrique receiving 950,000 euros for its work. I’ve seen similar paeans to autocratic regimes much worse than Morocco’s, such as Tunisia’s. The magazine’s publisher is doing little more than accepting blood money to keep silent, even if the odd article (notably on culture) is interesting.

Ahmed Fouad Negm in the NYT

A reader sends in this NYT profile of the great colloquial Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm:

Mr. Negm is a bit of a folk hero in Egypt, and has remained popular even while the street, his street, has turned away from his largely secular vision of modernity. The changes on the street have only fueled his contempt for the ruling elite. Their illegitimate government, he said, has made Egyptian identity less distinct and more defined by faith.

“The government has always been run by pharaohs, but in the past they were honorable,” Mr. Negm said, returning to one of his favorite topics. “Now, Egypt is ruled by a gang, led by Hosni Mubarak, and he is only there because America and Israel support him. He does not have the support of the street.”

It is that contempt for power, his giving voice to a desire for justice, that seems to keep him popular, keeps his books selling and recently led to a revival of a popular play called “The King Is the King,” which showcases his poetry.

HE had laughed and smoked his Merit Ultra Lights as he climbed the rickety wooden ladder through a narrow hatch onto the rooftop above his apartment in a public housing block. He loves to smoke. He loves to curse. He loves to boast with a wink and a smile that he was married six times, that his current wife is 30 and that his youngest daughter, Zeinab, who is 11, is not forced to adhere to the strict religious practices that have spread throughout his country in recent years.

“I am free,” Mr. Negm said, as he scratched his head with long, carefully cut fingernails. “I am not afraid of anybody because I do not want anything from anyone.”

And then, looking down from his rooftop perch upon a pile of rotting trash, where children, dogs and donkeys competed for scraps, he lamented what has become of Egypt.

“This is not Egypt,” he said. “I weep for Egypt.”

I received this Negm poem earlier this week:

Ahmadnegm1

GAO report on military aid to Egypt

The slow crusade in the US Congress to cut down on military aid to Egypt went a step further yesterday with the publication of a report, requested by leading anti-Egypt congressman Tom Lantos, on the effectiveness of the aid program. Haaretz reports:

The study was requested by Rep. Tom Lantos, senior member of the opposition Democrats on the House of Representatives International Relations Committee.

Lantos said in statement the study proves his long-held belief that the “Egypt program is meant more as a political entitlement program, with no real performance standards.”

“For all of the $34 billion that U.S. taxpayers have spent on this program over two decades, it is clearly not a serious effort to enhance the military capabilities of an ally to better participate with U.S. forces in joint actions,” he said.

“This is a massive military entitlement program on autopilot.”

The study, which can be downloaded in PDF here, concludes:

For the past 27 years, the United States has provided Egypt with more than $34 billion in FMF assistance to support U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East. Most of the FMF assistance has been in the form of cash grants that Egypt has used to purchase U.S. military goods and services. Like Israel, and unlike all other recipients of U.S. FMF assistance, Egypt can use the prospects of future congressional appropriations to contract for defense goods and services that it wants to procure in a given year through the FMF program. Until 1998, DSCA limited the number of new commitments to less than the annual appropriation thereby allowing more than $2 billion in undisbursed funds to accumulate. If the plan to eliminate the undisbursed funds for the Egypt FMF program is realized, these funds will be depleted by the end of fiscal year 2007. As Congress debates the appropriate mix between military and economic assistance to Egypt, the inherent risks of such flexible financing warrant careful attention and assessment by State and DOD.

Similarly, both State and DOD could do a better job assessing and documenting the achievement of goals as a result of the $34 billion in past U.S. FMF assistance and the $1.3 billion in annual appropriations planned to be requested. Periodic program assessments that are documented and based on established benchmarks and targets for goals would help Congress and key decision makers make informed decisions. We agree that expedited transit in the Suez Canal; support for humanitarian efforts in Darfur, Sudan, and elsewhere; and continuing offers to train Iraqi security forces are important benefits that the United States derives from its strategic relationship with Egypt. However, without a common definition of interoperability for systems, units, or forces, it is difficult to measure the extent of current and desired levels of interoperability, nor is it clear how the Egyptian military has been or could be transformed into the modern, interoperable force articulated in the U.S. goals for the Egypt FMF program.

The report also cites some forms of Egyptian payback for the aid:

Egyptian and U.S. officials cited several examples of Egypt’s support for U.S. goals. For example, Egypt:

• deployed about 800 military personnel to the Darfur region of the Sudan in 2004;
• trained 250 Iraqi police and 25 Iraqi diplomats in 2004;
• deployed a military hospital and medical staff to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, where nearly 100,000 patients received treatment;
• provided over-flight permission to 36,553 U.S. military aircraft through Egyptian airspace from 2001 to 2005; and
• granted expedited transit of 861 U.S. naval ships through the Suez Canal during the same period and provided all security support for those ship transits.

36,553 flight sorties between 2001 and 2005? That sure seems like a lot for a country that officially is not providing logistical aid to US forces in Iraq.

The leader

A poem in a Pakistani English textbook contains a hidden message:

The leader

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn’t afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn’t conform to the usual mold,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won’t do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he’s right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won’t hear.
Growing in strength, he won’t be unnerved,
Ever assuring he’ll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.

If you don’t see it, go here.

Hitchens, maker of prophets

Christopher Hitchens decides who can and can’t be a prophet:

Hitchens, an editor for Vanity Fair, described himself as an atheist and issued a sharp rebuke of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

“Of course, he’s not a prophet,” he said. “He’s an epileptic plagiarist.”

He said the Quran — Islam’s holiest book — was full of “evil fairly tales” that were “unimaginably recycled.”

“It’s a boring plagiarism of the worst parts of Christianity and Judaism,” he added.

Hitchens said he has personally expressed concern to British Prime Minister Tony Blair about Europe’s accommodation of radical Islam. He said that some Muslim leaders have said their growing population means they will eventually take control of Europe.

Read on for the increasingly delusional mind-wanderings of a once-contrarian. It’s odd that the headline of the article says “Radical Islam criticized” when in fact it is Islam itself that is being attacked with apparently no other end but to offend and appear controversial. What a loss.

The arms trade and Iraq

When a few years ago, before I became a journalist, I worked as a researcher for NATO, I was very interested in the arms trade. At the time, new NATO members in Eastern Europe had to upgrade their military capabilities from Soviet-era equipment to the type of equipment that would work in joint actions with other NATO members. That meant that a lot of old weapons, particularly small arms (i.e. guns), ended up on the black market, presumably with military officers from these countries getting a nice commission. This was the time when you could buy a Kalashnikov in the Great Lakes region of Africa for a few dollars, which contributed enormously to the civil conflicts in that area.

The arms trade gets little attention from the press these days, despite the fact that it is estimated to be one of the top three biggest businesses internationally (alongside sex and drugs). Much of it is illegal, and as Americans in particular now know, even the legal part is morally dubious when your system of governance relies on a revolving door system with the military industrial complex of the kind Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney used. The arms trade is not only part of providing deadly systems (as the military calls weapons) to a lot of people who should not have them, but it has also been a largely corrupting influence. Take US military aid to Egypt: it is the lubricant that greases a vast system of payoffs and commissions that keep this military regime in place, while also keeping US arms manufacturers in business. There is a vast and little-reported human rights dimension to the arms trade that this Amnesty International report exposes in all of its complexity:

The report shows how, partly as a consequence of the “export rush” that followed the end of the Cold War, arms trade routes are becoming more complex, requiring even more differentiated logistical, transport, brokerage, and financial arrangements. The use of private transport contractors and brokers for arms transfers is not adequately covered by national legal and regulatory frameworks, and the responsibility of states for the shipment of hundreds of thousands of tons of weapons and other military and security equipment, ammunition and spare parts to armed forces and law enforcement agencies around the world can be easily obscured by complex supply chains. The resulting lack of transparency, monitoring and effective control of such arms supply chains are contributing to the diversion and easy availability of arms by those perpetrating serious violations of human rights during armed conflicts and law enforcement operations. Examples in the report also show how arms are destined or diverted to arms-embargoed countries, criminal organizations and armed groups, including those believed to engage in terrorism, and are paid for with cash or bartered for narcotics, precious stones, metals, oil, timber and other natural resources.

International relations is not about institutions like the UN, as they’ll teach you in universities. It’s about international business and the process of distribution of money, goods and resources. One of the reasons these things can keep on going is the reluctance by even powerful democratic countries to do anything about the corrupting effect of international financial black holes like the Bahamas and the logistics of the arms trade in general. Only every now and then, as in the Clearstream affair in France, do these issues come up in the public eye.

For our region, the report has some interesting tidbits about the arms trade around Iraq:

International and local observers in Belgrade say that arms stockpiles of newly manufactured weapons and ammunition from Serbia and Montenegro are being transferred to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Taos executives mentioned the involvement of a previously unknown Israeli-registered company, “Talon,” which they said was an arms-brokering company “based in Tel Aviv, Israel”, playing a major role to facilitate the transfer of weapons from Serbia to the Middle East. A Montenegrin arms company executive also stated that Talon acted as an “agent” on behalf of Taos in Serbia & Montenegro, but that a confidentiality clause in their contract forbade them for discussing the company’s identity. Moreover, the Serbia & Montenegro Ministry of International Economic Relations (MIER) stated that the company involved in procuring weapons for Iraq in Serbia & Montenegro is Talon Security Consulting and Trade Ltd, registered at an address in the “Diamond Tower” Twin Towers complex in Jabotinsky street, Ramat-Gan, Tel Aviv.

Talon’s owner is Major Shmuel Avivi, according to the Federation of Israeli Chambers of commerce website. An Israeli source described Shmuel Avivi as “former Israeli military attaché in Switzerland.” Mr. Avivi declined to say whether he was currently a serving member of the Israeli defence forces. Mr. Avivi appears to have served as Israel’s military attaché in Denmark and Sweden. The Israeli source stated that “He [Mr. Avivi] operated out of Switzerland with a Swiss business partner whose first name is Henri.” Henri goes by the name of Heinrich in Switzerland where he is known as Mr. Heinrich Thomet, associated with at least two companies involved in arms dealing, Brugger & Thomet AG and BT International Ltd. Mr Heinrich Thomet stated that he worked together with Mr. Shmuel Avivi “occasionally” and that his company “are supplying Taos Industries on the US SOCOM business” but that his company was not “actually providing any services for Iraq or Afghanistan, we are mainly working on the US government contract which is a SOCOM transaction.”

Another company involved in arms transfers to Iraq is a UK-based company called Global Trading Group Ltd. Global have purchased large quantities of small arms and light weapons for Iraq, including an order for 1000 sniper rifles. In documentation supplied to the Ministry of International Economic Relations, Global Trading Group Ltd give as their address premises currently used by a high street store selling hi-fi equipment. This is a different address from the one supplied in their official UK company registration papers. Global Trading Group Ltd is a new company, incorporated on April 5, 2005, the only publicly available document is the appointments report which describes the company as a “private limited company”; no information is supplied under section entitled “Nature of business” and no accounts have been filed to date. According to UK company house data, Global’s business address is a private one, which appears to be the home of one of the directors of the company.

One of the directors of Global Trading Group Ltd is listed in the Company house documentation as “Fawzi Francis Toma”, who is described as a British citizen born in 1958. Mr Fawzi Toma is known in Iraq as Mr. Fawzi Hariri, a one-time aide to Kurdish faction militia and political leader Massoud Barzani and now a senior figure within Barzani’s political party the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). Mr. Hariri liaises with foreign governments on behalf of the KDP and currently serves as chief of staff of the Iraqi foreign ministry, currently headed by Mr. Hoshyar Zebar, also of the KDP. According to Companies’ House documentation, Global Trading Group Ltd’s registered business address is at the home of another company director, Praidon Darmoo, who lobbied the UK government to support the war in Iraq in 2003. A Global Trading director stated that the weapons supplied by Global Trading Group Ltd were on behalf of another company in Jordan who held the contract with the Iraqi Ministry of Defence but that he had seen the e
nd user certificate which he said was issued on behalf of the Iraqi ministry of defence and was sent to Belgrade.

The report is also available as a 149-page PDF. And remember that just two days ago it was revealed that:

SOME 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday.

The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.

Orders for the deal to go ahead were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders.

And the Moldovan airline used to transport the shipment was blasted by the UN in 2003 for smuggling arms to Liberia, human rights group Amnesty has discovered.

It follows a separate probe claiming that thousands of guns meant for Iraq’s police and army instead went to al-Qaeda

Amnesty chief spokesman Mike Blakemore said: “It’s unbelievable that no one can account for 200,000 assault rifles. If these weapons have gone missing it’s a terrifying prospect.” American defence chiefs hired a US firm to take the guns, from the 90s Bosnian war, to Iraq.

But air traffic controllers in Baghdad have no record of the flights, which supposedly took off between July 2004 and July 2005. A coalition forces spokesman confirmed they had not received “any weapons from Bosnia” and added they were “not aware of any purchases for Iraq from Bosnia”. Nato and US officials have already voiced fears that Bosnian arms – sold by US, British and Swiss firms – are being passed to insurgents. A Nato spokesman said: “There’s no tracking mechanism to ensure they don’t fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some may have been siphoned off.” This year a newspaper claimed two UK firms were involved in a deal in which thousands of guns for Iraqi forces were re-routed to al-Qaeda.

The Rabat Summit: The Admin Responds

Obviously peeved at poor press reviews, the admin is responding that some good did come out of the Moroccan-held “Fourm of the Future,” according to the post this morning.

The key passage:

“The Arab-Israeli issue is a very important issue in that region, just to state the obvious,” one official acknowledged at a briefing for about two dozen journalists. But he said reporters, who were not permitted inside the conference rooms during the Rabat session, missed the bigger picture.

“There is a sense of urgency that you felt in the room as you heard countries talking about the importance of reform,” he said. “What has changed is that we have created a mechanism now for countries to participate fully with their neighbors in the room to talk about issues of reform.”

Created a mechanism? What does that mean? A meeting is now a mechanism to facilitating reform?

A sense of urgency? Are we now meeting and interpretating the atmosphere as a sign of conferences’ success/failure?

This is “project 3000” – refoming the Arab world by year 3000.

Excuse me for being critical and cynical…. I did not understand the fuller picture. I need to start reading between the subtle feelings and lines of such events before lashing out.

I am glad the world is ordered again and progress/reform is coming. I’ll just sit and wait for it to come…..

The Empire Attacking Academic Freedom

Today’s Guadian Reports that the Tariq Ramadan saga in the States is ending. Ramadan, swiss citizen and grand-son of Egyptian MB founder Hassan al-Banna, is one of Europe’s most important Islamist thinkers. He won joint- appointments at Notre Dame last spring to teach Islamic studies and religion, conflict, and peace-building. A week before arriving Stateside in August, Homeland Security revoked his visa because of a security threat which was neither disclosed nor clarified.
Despite attempts, including petitions signed by the most prominent of US academics working on the ME, the government chose to say and do nothing.

Yesterday it more or less ended with Ramadan resigning his appointments at Notre Dame.

There is a direct and aggressive assault on thought on behalf of the American Empire. The last MESA presidential address by Laurie Brand at the San Franscisco meeting in November cogently argued such a line. When it is published on the web, it will be posted.

Academics, intellectals, and thinkers have for centuries struggled with various types of governments about their ideas. Now the world’s latest Empire has joined the rather poor company of governments that oppose intellectuals.

After 9/11 there was a moment to deepen understanding, spread lines of inquiry, and increase integration. The Bush administration missed the chance by opting for the conservative more long-term detrimental route. Shame on them.

Some of my Egyptian friends happily rushed to say that “America is not allowing Tariq Ramadan to teach there” so as to flaunt the US mistake last fall. Unfortunately, a fact not revealed in the Egyptian press is that Ramadan has not been allowed into Egypt since 1995.
The sad part is that I bet a high majority of Americans do not even know this is going on. Oh….the empire does not have to disclose what is not happening.

It is ok though – these is an ebb in government-intellectual relations. Academic disciplines will continue. Thankfully, hard-working, serious thinkers that push the envelop would not have it any other way….from where ever they find the space and tolerance to practice their trade.

Keep thinking…it pisses them off.

More on AHDR

This is from the NYT today:

Basically, The UN’s version of events coyly supports Friedman’s editorial while the State department is denying the pressure.

From the text of the story:
“A senior State Department official, asking not to be identified, said some officials at the department had made “a couple of inquiries” about when the report would be issued by the development program and whether it would contain a repetition of criticism of administration policies that has been a feature of at least one previous report in the same series.

The official said the inquiries did not amount to criticism, however.”

And:
Another unnamed State department official stated, “”The idea of suppressing a report like this is the last thing on the minds of the administration.”
_______________________________________

Issandr is going to talk to Nader Fergani next week so hopefully we will get more on this to see who is lying.
___________________________________________
I can report this – In an interview I conducted with Fergani on 8 March 04 in Cairo, we discussed the then hot topic of the GMEI.

He said, ” While the US is leaning on the AHDR for help in developing the plan, they are trying to kill it. Each paragraph begins by citing something from the AHDR, but the US was cutting $12 million from its contribution to the UNDP’s core budget (he said this was approved by congress).” Hence the bureau which publishes the AHDR.

He attributed the financial pressure as US objections to criticism of Israel and American policy; He said Arab states did not have much to say about the AHDR, much less criticism of it.

Fallujah on the silver screen

The Guardian reports:

Hollywood has joined the war. Universal Pictures announced yesterday that it is to make The Battle for Falluja. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency.

The article goes on to say that the movie will tell the story of the Battle of Fallujah from the point of view of US Marines and US politicians.