The Sinai arrests

Josh Stacher — an academic expert on Egypt and Syria who will soon start contributing to this site — has sent me this CSM story by Dan Murphy that wraps up some recent events that have to do with Egypt-Israel relations and the crackdown on Egyptians living in Sinai since the Taba bombings (I had briefly mentioned this in early November.) This, I think, has been under-reported in the Western press. Here’s what HRW’s Joe Stork told Dan:

In Egypt’s case, the new economic deal comes even as the country is alleged to be engaged in one of its most wide-ranging crackdowns against its own citizens in years. Foreign and local human rights organizations claim that as many as 3,000 Egyptians have been detained near the city of Al-Arish on the Sinai peninsula over the past six weeks in a crackdown connected to a terrorist attack in the resort of Taba in October. Some of the attackers were from Al-Arish.

Amnesty International alleges that some of those arrested have been tortured, and that most have been held without charges or access to lawyers. Many of those arrested have since been released, but human rights organizations estimate that hundreds remain in detention.

“I was out there for two days and I managed to talk to about 20 people some of whom were tortured. I find their stories very credible,” says Joe Stork, Washington Director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. He says two of those he spoke with detailed torture by electric shock and being tied up and hung from door-frames.

“The torture is very consistent with Egyptian state security’s modus operandi… You don’t just bring in suspects, you terrorize the population and say any more funny business and this will keep happening,” says Mr. Stork.

Egyptian officials have told local media that the allegations have been exaggerated, with one Interior Ministry official telling the government-owned Al-Ahram weekly that no more than 800 people have been arrested. The US Embassy in Cairo declined to comment on the allegations.

Yesterday, at the anti-Mubarak demo, there were also a few activists from the “popular committee” formed in support of the torture victims in China, who also has several international members. One of the main Egyptian activists, a man called Ashraf, told me about that over 6000 people have been arrested. He explained that although the police or state security had initially aimed at arresting 950 people, a lot of their relatives were also arrested — what he described as “taking the families hostage.” He also said that lawyers and human rights activists have been denied access.

Another thing he mentioned is that the government was destroying houses of these families — a policy that reminded him of Israeli home demolitions in Palestine. He also mentioned something rather weird about elite troops with laser-sighting equipped rifles doing raids on villages and Bedouin camps. I believe a report is being prepared by local and/or international human rights group on what’s happening, which is probably the biggest crackdown on the general population since the skirmishes with the Gamaa Islamiya in Upper Egypt in the 1980s.

Anti-Mubarak protest pictures

You can find a few pictures I took at the demo with my phone here. Unfortunately, they’re not very high-res. I also a few video clips but I think most users won’t be able to view them without special software. I can put them up on demand or if I can find a way to convert them to a more universal format.

On another note, as I watched the clips again, I realized that when the demonstrators sang the national anthem, they were actually not using the right words. I didn’t realize at the moment but when re-listening it became quite clear. It was also confirmed by this AP story on the event.

On Sunday, the protesters dispersed peacefully within an hour, singing a revised version of the Egyptian national anthem: “My country, you still have oppression in politics and economics. You need revolution, my country.”

The real lyrics are: “My country, you have my love and my heart.”

If you can view 3GP files (I can with Quicktime Pro for Mac OS X), click here to see that clip.

Protest against Mubarak’s rule

I’ve just returned from the first demonstration ever to take place against Mubarak’s rule — a significant milestone in the evolution of Egypt’s pro-democracy movement.

There were some 500 activists, mostly from left-wing groups and human rights organizations, who gathered near the highest appellate court in the land in Downtown Cairo — the same place that overturned the verdict against Saad Eddin Ibrahim a couple of years ago.

As usual, they were surrounded by an incredible number of black-clad troops from Central Security, the riot-control police, who must have been in the thousands around the demo and in the surrounding streets.

The demo lasted a couple of hours and was mostly silent — I think they didn’t want to escalate things and let it get out of hand with the topic being so risky and so many troops around. Most of the time, they stayed silent with some protesters wearing stickers over their mouths that said “kefaya” — Arabic for “Enough.”

That has become the slogan of the people calling for Mubarak to step down — as can be seen on websites such as kefaya.org and others. The main slogan when they did shout something seemed to be “Haram! Kefaya!”, meaning “Shame! Enough” At one point, they also broke into a heartfelt and moving rendition of “Biladi”, the Egyptian national anthem that celebrates the movement led by one of Egypt’s early nationalist leaders, Saad Zaghloul, which demanded representation at the Versailles peace conference.

Although the demonstration was small and mostly uneventful, this group of people — which calls itself the “movement for reform” and was also behind the recent petition calling for Mubarak to stand down — just crossed a major red line. As far as I know, this is the first demonstration specifically against Mubarak that has ever been held. People did shout anti-Mubarak slogans during the Iraq war or pro-Palestinian protests, but they were never about that issue.

I spoke to Abdel Haleem Qandeeel, the editor of Al Arabi who was kidnapped and beaten up in the desert last month, who was the main organizer of the demo. He explained that the main idea of the movement, besides specific aims like constitutional reform to change the way the president is elected, was to make sure Mubarak was not elected for a fifth term and did not install his son Gamal, who has grown hugely influential over the past few years. He also stressed that the movement did not represent any of the official opposition parties but was more closely allied to illegal groups like the Egyptian communist party, the revolutionary socialists and other left-wing trends who have led the opposition to the Iraq war and support for the Intifada over the past few years.

But he said the movement was open to everyone who wanted to participate. One of its most discreet backers, for instance, is the Muslim Brotherhood, which sent a few token representatives. The Brotherhood is obviously not throwing its full weight behind this — if so there would be tens of thousands of protesters and very possibly a huge clash with security forces — but it is keeping its options open.

Nawal Saadawi and her husband Sherif Hetata were also there, as well as a smattering of prominent left-wing intellectuals. These people are often dismissed as irrelevant and without popular support, which is largely true, but at the same time you have to admire their balls for taking considerable personal risk and coming forward. I didn’t see any of the prominent liberals there, for instance. If these people don’t start taking the risks that the “loony left” has taken over the years by defending poor people and victims of police brutality, for instance, they’re going to be hard to take seriously.

I’ve just received a phone call this very minute saying that one of the opposition headquarters in the Giza district of Cairo is being surrounded right now by armored vehicles and a bunch of top army brass. It looks like Kamal Khalil, their leader, will be arrested. More on this when I can. I will also post some pictures and videos of today’s demo in a few hours.

US envoy meets opposition leader

The Egyptian regime has always been weary of opposition forces consulting with foreign powers, especially if that foreign power is the US. The history of the last fifty years in the Middle East, after all, is of Arab states trying to influence each other, infiltrate parties and gain a foothold to spread their particular take on what the Arab nation should look like. Regimes like Saddam Hussein’s and Hafez Al Assad’s spent generously on cultivating opposition groups in other countries, and the Egyptians and Saudis went through a period of fomenting coups against each other. When it came to the US — after all the current regime’s main patron along with a few Gulf princes — they are particularly sensitive: after all they stand to lose their livelihood. For this reason, the government has always cracked down very hard on any attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to hold contacts with American diplomats, as was attempted about a year ago (and this is one occasion about which we know about because it also involved European diplomats.)

Which is why the indignation at the meeting between US Ambassador to Egypt David Welch and the head of the irrelevant left-wing party Tagammu is pretty silly. Take a look at this:

Other opposition circles, and especially the Nasserist Party, were furious about the meeting. Nasserist leader Diaaeddin Dawoud said his party strongly condemned El-Said’s decision to sit and speak with Welch on behalf of the opposition alliance. “This meeting would have been all right if it had only concerned the Tagammu Party,” Dawoud said. He questioned, however, El-Said’s decision to agree to the meeting on behalf of the opposition alliance, considering “Welch’s tendency to always act like a new High Commissioner in Egypt,” and in light of his being “the ambassador of a country whose soldiers are killing Iraqis”.

According to Dawoud, “El-Said’s meeting with Welch has definitely tarnished the opposition’s image.”

Nasserist Party Secretary-General Ahmed Hassan even threatened to withdraw from the alliance, and condemned El-Said for choosing not to inform the bloc before agreeing to the meeting with Welch.

Even the NDP was upset. Its Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif told the independent Al-Osbou newspaper that it was unacceptable that coordination among local opposition parties become coordination with “external forces”. El-Sherif described El-Said’s meeting with Welch as being “dangerous and negative, not only for partisan life, but also for the parties in the opposition alliance”.

The NDP secretary-general said that Welch should not act like a high commissioner. “He is just a representative of a foreign country, and must not exceed that limit.”

I can understand the other opposition being jealous or even genuinely indignant, since they generally have a strong stance against American policy in the region. But for the head of the regime’s own party to object is laughable. The regime is itself America’s biggest client! And his veiled threats about the meeting being “dangerous and negative, not only for partisan life, but also for the parties in the opposition alliance” is distasteful. All it shows is the insecurity Egyptians feel, across political lines, about being an American client state — the fact that the US ambassador really does have an influence akin to the British High Commissioner. Most of the time, they deny that reality.

(I should clarify that I don’t think the US directly controls Egypt, but simply that it is a if not the major player in Egypt, in a macro sense. The reality is one of negotiation, maneuvering and opportunism.)

More on the Coptic conversion to Islam

It appears that the conversion to Islam of Wafaa Kostantin, wife of a Coptic vice Bishop in Egypt, is a done deal. According to today’s Al Hayat, the woman responded to attempts to convince her to return to the Coptic fold by reciting aloud half of the Koran. She has also taken to wearing the hijab, Al Hayat reports. It appears that Church officials are now concerned that she will become a spokesperson of sorts for Islam. Coptic officials are requesting that she not appear in the media or work to spread the call to Islam, “so as not to provoke the feelings of Copts.”

The Islamic reform debate

Neil MacFarquhar of the NYT has a story about the debate on interpretation of the Quran that Charles mentioned in his recent post:

The long-simmering internal debate over political violence in Islamic cultures is swelling, with seminars like that one and a raft of newspaper columns breaking previous taboos by suggesting that the problem lies in the way Islam is being interpreted. On Saturday in Morocco, a major conference, attended by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, will focus on increasing democracy and liberal principles in the Muslim world.

On one side of the discussion sit mostly secular intellectuals horrified by the gore joined by those ordinary Muslims dismayed by the ever more bloody image of Islam around the world. They are determined to find a way to wrestle the faith back from extremists. Basically the liberals seek to dilute what they criticize as the clerical monopoly on disseminating interpretations of the sacred texts.

Arrayed against them are powerful religious institutions like Al Azhar University, prominent clerics and a whole different class of scholars who argue that Islam is under assault by the West. Fighting back with any means possible is the sole defense available to a weaker victim, they say.

The debate, which can be heard in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, is driven primarily by carnage in Iraq. The hellish stream of images of American soldiers attacking mosques and other targets are juxtaposed with those of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beheading civilian victims on his home videos as a Koranic verse including the line “Smite at their necks” scrolls underneath.

I don’t think that this debate is essentially about the Iraq war or provoked by it — that’s just a subset of it, and perhaps a distracting one considering that from an Arab (and international) standpoint the war was after illegal. There are, for instance, organizations in Italy (old-style communists mostly) who are encouraging the Iraqi insurgency as legitimate resistance.

But the problem to a deeper rethinking about the liturgy of Islam has more to do with a fossilized and increasingly irrelevant institutionalized Islam such as that of Al Azhar.

The Hitler-Stalin pact of our times?

More on the unusual alliance Issandr mentioned between leftists and Islamists in this month’s Commentary. It’s the “Hitler-Stalin pact of our times” says David Horowitz’s in his new book, “Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left.”

The fact that radical Islamists hold social and cultural values diametrically opposed to those of American leftists is not, Horowitz maintains, as big a problem for either party as it might appear. As in a previous era, when the hard Left dealt with Stalin’s widely acknowledged crimes by turning its attention to more attractive proxies of the cause like Vietnam and Cuba, today’s radicals tend to pay tribute not to al Qaeda but to groups like Hamas, whose extensive social-service network can be invoked to soften the horrors perpetrated by its terror cells.

Al Jazeera on Arab elections

Here is Faisal al Kassem’s framing of the debate on Arab elections in the introduction to his weekly program on Al Jazeera “Al Itagah Al Muakas” or “The Opposite Direction.” I’ve translated it here, though surely without the eloquence it deserves. It’s not a precise translation, so don’t quote it. An ellipsis (…) indicates that a word or two is missing from the translation. I’ve linked to the original Arabic transcript if anybody is interested.

Reducing margins of victory by two or three percent, this is how Arab elections and referendums are developing. Do Arab leaders think that they can trick their people with small reductions in their margins of victory in elections, by reducing their official vote rigging from 99.99 percent to 97 or 95 percent? When will they stop this farce and this cheap theater? Do any of these leaders wonder why the Arab world is crying out about the leaders’ double-talk about elections, saying one thing here, and another elsewhere? Has anything changed after hundreds of referendums and elections have been fabricated in the cellars of Arab intelligence agencies? When will the people tell these regimes that have no shame that enough is enough? The young and the old in Ukraine turned out to protest elections in which incidents of fraud did not exceed one percent. Meanwhile Arab votes are robbed year after year and no one has the courage to so much as speak up about these violations. When will [Arab leaders] realize that if they had true elections they would get negative 99.99 percent of the vote?

To what extent are [Arab leaders] wasting millions of dollars on election charades (…)? Is it not better to use those millions to fix some of the Arab hospitals that are not suitable for wild animals, much less domesticated animals? Is it not preferable that, instead of using millions of meters of cloth [as signs] for empty election slogans, we give that cloth to the poor and the destitute to cover their naked bodies?

Does one of the [the Arab leaders] wonder if we are in need of elections and referendums after all of that? However, from the other side, why do we not consider the reductions in the margins of victory to just 95% of the popular vote a positive step that indicates that Arab leaders have begun to feel a little bit of shame? Why do we not say that the Arab elections, in spite of their weaknesses, are a necessary exercise needed to achieve a true democracy? Should we not encourage the changes that have begun to occur with respect to Arab elections instead of denouncing them? Should we not work on the principle that just because one can’t have everything, doesn’t mean you can ignore the matter in its entirety? And is it not unfair to lump all Arab elections in one basket? Did the Algerian president not win by just 85 percent of the vote? Didn’t the Mauritanian president win one time by 60 percent? And didn’t the Tunisian president allow the opposition to participate in the elections?

Hopefully this helps illustrate why Al Jazeera is a welcome addition to the Arab and global media.

Follow up on Coptic-Muslim tensions

Al Hayat reported today that 34 Copts have been detained by Egyptian authorities in connection with the demonstrations that followed the conversion of a vice-bishop’s wife to Islam. Among the seven charges against them: inciting unrest, exploiting religion to incite ethnic discord, resisting authorities, and using force and violence. Also, implications or accusations that the woman’s conversion was less than voluntary appear to be unfounded. Al Hayat reports that church officials have spent the past two days trying to convince the woman to renounce her conversion– but in vain.