Month: November 2006

Farouk Hosni, the accidental martyr

Conversations at Thanksgiving dinner last night (mostly Egyptians of various religions) generally went like this: “I would have never thought I’d say this, but we need to help out Farouk Hosni.” One suggestion was to circulate a petition along the lines of “Farouk Hosni is a scumbag, but…” Among this extremely liberal crowd, the attack on Hosni is seen as an attack on secular values and the ability to speak your mind out. Among a certain segment of Egyptian society (in this case it was more artists and writers rather than wealthy people) the thoughts that Farouk Hosni expressed in his honey-drizzled comments to al-Masri al-Youm (“women are like delicate flowers that must be admired,” etc…) are self-evident. Egypt has gone through a surge of conservatism in the past two decades and many people from this milieu feel almost betrayed by their country. What Hosni said out loud is routinely uttered sotto voce. But I wonder if some frank dialogue might not be more useful than the delicate, elaborate scaffolding of white lies that most people generally hide being when discussing this type of issue.

The turkey was delicious.

(Background on the Farouk Hosni affair here.)

Skeptic in Damascus

Check out Elijah’s post from Damascus. I love Damascus, having lived there in the mid-1990s, and he gets a lot of the things about it right. Even if Syria is largely depressing, it’s a fantastic country and people. And even better than Damascus is Aleppo. Both cities have a “den of spies” 1950s feel to them, which may or may not be because up to a quarter of the population informs the mukhabarat…

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See the full set of Damascus pics.

Bastawissi at AUC

An arabist.net reader was at Judge Hisham Bastawissi’s AUC lecture last night and shared impressions with me. I regret not attending.

The man was brilliant, first-class public speaker. Eloquent and utterly scathing in a gentlemanly-legalistic sort of way. He was supposed to speak on Articles 76 and 77 but really focused more on issues of basic human rights and freedoms, and the kafkaesque structures of governance in Egypt. Started off with a fairly stirring defence of why judges must engage issues of concern to the people and had to defend basic freedoms because the judiciary was essentially the only independent institution left in a position to do so, and while judges could not in their capacity as judges comment on political issues, no one can take away their freedom as individuals to think and express themselves, and the taboos preventing judges from connecting with the people were finally broken in the past year and that was a good thing. He spoke about different articles in the constitution and international legal conventions that supported the independence of judges, why the Judges Club has the freedom of a syndicate and does not come under the law on societies/associations, and listed the ways in which regime efforts to deny judges the right to free association ran counter to all these norms. He didn’t spare his fellow judges who had agreed to cooperate with the regime in the “supervision” of elections and be willing accomplices to large-scale fraud, and noted ironically that this was not considered a violation of judicial neutrality while speaking out on human rights and free expression issues was.

On the topic of elections, he spoke at length on the importance of real, independent judicial supervision, and tore apart the regime’s argument that external or foreign observers would undermine the autonomy of the Egyptian judiciary, saying in fact that he welcomed such supervision and the judges themselves agreed to it. He remarked that the parts of the electoral process that should be secret – i.e. the secret ballot – were the most open to public knowledge and interference in Egypt, and in a bizarre reversal, the process became more secretive instead of more transparent as it went up the chain of authority, with vote-counting in secret and the declaration of results in secret, and noted ironically the Minister of Justice (if I heard correctly) was the only human being who really knew the actual vote count.

He insisted that Article 41 must be defended above all, and that amendments to Article 76 wouldn’t have much meaning if basic individual rights continued to be violated as they have been. He listed random arrests, limits on freedom of expression and the press, and the emergency law, and sarcastically observed that the government had got so attached to its freedom to pick people up and arrest them at random that it wanted to pass laws on terrorism under which only they could decide who was a terrorist, to replace the emergency law they had promised to repeal. He spoke strongly against the use of military courts for purposes that were not strictly military, even for the trials of military personnel accused of common crime. Mentioned that the government wished to copy the Patriot Act from the US, and noted that it only worked in the US to the extent that it worked because there were other institutions to protect freedoms and a working democratic process; he ribbed the government for taking what was worst from each foreign constitution or country, including (I think – I didn’t catch this entire section very well) the presidential system of government and constitutional court from France, and something else from Russia – rather than what was good, like democratic institutions.

He also skewered the regime’s claim to put economic reform before political reform and the common claim that it was ensuring transparency and a favourable environment for business, by noting that surely business and investors would want greater judicial independence and transparency so that their interests could be guaranteed, and would rather not be subjected to the changing whims of the regime. He also lashed out at corruption and authoritarianism (and used the word “diktatura” a fair bit, which had the scribes furiously taking notes) as barriers to progress, and asked to what extent the government was actually able to look out for the people, given widespread corruption and pollution and even the chickens were diseased, etc etc.

He made a couple of interesting rhetorical moves towards the end. One was to trace the development of the Egyptian judiciary and judicial independence as part of the march of national independence and dignity, noting that the colonialist argument that Egyptians could not rule themselves was disproved and while early on (in the 1940s?) there were both foreign and Egyptian judges working in Egypt, the judiciary was soon Egyptianised and there was no excuse any more for denying it. Then he argued that the Judges Club derived its legitimacy from the fact that the people supported it, and from recognition by international institutions and agreements to which Egypt was a signatory (including the EU for institutions and some Milan convention for judicial independence), essentially telling the regime that they were not the ones who gave the judges their authority. He also remarked that even God, when he sent down his Word, accepted that people had the right to interpret it for themselves, but this regime did not want to grant people the most basic intellectual independence to interpret laws (I think he referred to a specific set of legislations, I forget which) differently from the party line. He then accused the government of acting as though they were the only ones capable of thinking, and the only ones who could be trusted with reason, and everybody else was only capable of obeying, and behaving as though only they could grant freedoms to the Egyptian people, even though freedoms came with being a human being.

There was some other stuff about working with civil society, and defending the freedom of the press, and journalists getting locked up, too, I just don’t remember the details. It was a long speech, over an hour. He got a good reception, lots of knowing laughter and nodding along with many of his points, and lots of applause for a few minutes at the end. I didn’t stay for the Q&A because the first few questions were sort of silly, though someone did challenge him for risking losing his neutrality. I can see why the civil society folks and democratization people and activists love this man, it would be difficult to find a more eloquent champion for their cause.

Top Jew in Kazakhstan

Top Kazakh Rabbi: In My Country There’s No Problem

In the fictional version of Kazakhstan in the hit movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the only Jews in the country are larger-than-life caricatures that get trotted out for a ceremonial “Running of the Jew.”

In the real Kazakhstan, the top rabbi, Menachem Mendel Gershowitz, has never been forced to run anywhere. In fact, Gershowitz said, Kazakhs frequently treat him like royalty.

“One time, I spoke with a Kazakh businessman,” Gershowitz told the Forward. “He asked me: ‘Tell me, Bush is Jewish also, yes? Clinton is Jewish?’ They think the opposite — not that Jewish is strange, but that Jewish is the whole world.”

Read on, very funny.

PINR on Gemayel

I’ve been getting these PINR reports for over a year but could never figure out who they (PINR) were exactly – they never replied to my emails. Still, they often have interesting stuff, as in their take on the Gemayel assassination.

Intelligence Brief: Pierre Gemayel Assassinated in Lebanon
Drafted By:
http://www.pinr.com

On November 21, Pierre Gemayel, a prominent Christian Maronite politician, was assassinated in the Christian Beirut suburb of Jdeideh. The assassination adds a new, powerful element of instability to an already fragmented political scene characterized by increasing tension between the different political, ethnic and confessional factions in Lebanon.

Several important members of the anti-Syrian coalition, such as Sunni leader Saad Hariri and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, accuse Damascus of ordering the assassination. They accuse the Syrian leadership of seeking renewed influence in Lebanon, and they consider the killing an attempt to further weaken the pro-Western Lebanese government led by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. Syria, however, denies any involvement in the murder.

The assassination of Gemayel occurred the same day that Syria took an important foreign policy step by restoring its diplomatic relations with Iraq after 25 years. This decision was a breakthrough for Damascus’ diplomatic attitude because such a step displayed Syria’s will to play a new role in Iraq, which, for Washington, is a critical concern.
Continue reading PINR on Gemayel

Syria: The wannabe China of the Middle East?

There are few articles in the Western mainstream press on single Middle Eastern economies, and this one by Damascus-based freelancer Gabriella Keller on the Syrian economy for the online edition of Der Spiegel is quite well researched and sharp. She argues that while the political leadership has realized the need to open up the economy, to substitute domestic energy sources and to build up a competitive private sector, the lower levels of the administration as well as certain clans are opposing any change.

Very much what can be observed in other Middle Eastern countries in their economic transition.

Some excerpts (own rough translation):

“At the highest level, we received a lot of support�, says Hanna [an investor that started a local production of La Vache qui rit]. “But the authorities on the lower levels have not yet made that about-turn. When we needed permissions, we had to get signatures at some 20 places. So everything took a lot of time and efforts.�

Continue reading Syria: The wannabe China of the Middle East?

Palestinian land

Some 40% of the land on which Israeli settlements are built is the private property of Palestinians (who have the papers to prove it).

This info comes from data leaked by Israel’s Civil Administration to the advocacy group Peace Now, and reported in, among other places, the New York Times yesterday.

Some settlements are built on up to 80% privately held Palestinian land. The settlements are protected by the military and legal rulings in favour of Palestinian owners are not enforced.
Also worth noting is that other than the average 40% that belongs to Palestinians, the rest by no means belongs to Israelis. It belongs to “the state,” which seems a difficult category when one is in the Occupied Territories.

The maps indicate that beyond the private land, 5.8 percent is so-called survey land, meaning of unclear ownership, and 1.3 percent private Jewish land. The rest, about 54 percent, is considered “state land� or has no designation, though Palestinians say that at least some of it represents agricultural land expropriated by the state.

Many of the settlements sitting on stolen Palestinian land will be annexed to Israel in any future two-state plan, and are included by the path of the infamous Wall.

Speaking of which, there are some excellent short films available on the website of the Alternative Information Center about the Wall–one about a portion of it that has been built across the yard of a school (!) and one about a Palestinian man fighting to keep his house, close to the path of the Wall, from being demolished. You can see them here (they’re the top two on the page).

Farouk Hosni won’t step out of his house

The oddest controversy has been taking place in Cairo over the last few days. Last Friday, al-Masri al-Youm published an interview with Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni in which he regretted that the veil had become so popular in the country. By Friday afternoon, the Muslim Brotherhood had already issued a scathing statement condemning Hosni and accusing him of having insulted the Egyptian people. On Sunday, he did not attend the opening of parliament and Hosni Mubarak’s speech there (more on that later), allegedly because of “high tension.” On Monday, parliament discussed the scandal and a coalition of Muslim Brotherhood and NDP MPs – 130 altogether – put out a joint petition calling his resignation. He was attacked in parliament by top NPP figures such as Speaker Fathi Surour, presidential chief of staff Zakariya Azmi and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Moufid Chehab. At least two MPs accused Hosni of being gay, and many more wanted him to resign or be sacked. Rarely has an attack against a minister gotten so personal. Even though Hosni had issued an apology (albeit a pretty mild one), the government promised to bring him to parliament to answer MPs’ questions. There are even lawsuits being prepared against him, although I’m not sure on what grounds. Yesterday, Hosni told the press he would refuse to come out of his home “until I have been rehabilitated and my honor restored by the Assembly.”

Farouk Hosni has been culture minister since 1986. He is known for being close to First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, and was protected by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif (read: someone higher up) last year after calls for his resignation over the Beni Suef theater fire scandal. There must be some interesting conversations taking place around the presidential dinner table these days…

One thing that strikes me about all this is that religious politics have been coming back with a vengeance for the last third of this year. For the first six months, all the MB could talk about was political reform. Now they grab every opportunity to score points on the religious issues. And why is the NDP tagging along? Who in the regime wants to get rid of Hosni? To make room for another Gamal Mubarak acolyte maybe?

Too much TV (20)

My friend Abu Ray, a journalist in Baghdad, sends regular personal dispatches from there. His latest is about something we both like a lot — Battlestar Galactica. This season (the third) is replete with references to tawhid, the Islamic concept of monotheism or “oneness of God” that is unfortunately more famous as a jihadi terms. Not only that, but the humans engage in suicide bombing operations against the Cylon occupier and then debate the morality of it. All in all, a lot of the stuff in this season hits close to home if you’re living in the Middle East. Here’s Paul’s take on the unsettling parallels between his job as a journalist and what he watches on his downtime.

Today two suicide bombers walked into a police commando recruitment center and blew themselves up, killing 35 recruiting hopefuls. The night before I watched a TV show where a young cadet blew himself up at the police graduation ceremony – killing, as I recall, 35 people.

That was a bit of a shock.

The moments after I leave the desk at night, after a long shift, are very special to me. I read, listen to music, decompress and drink my whiskey. Most importantly I watch the movies that I’ve been patiently downloading while in Egypt, or copying off friends.

The best things are television series, discrete one hour shows – they aren’t too long and don’t require too much brain power. Frankly after a day on the desk my attention span is pretty shot.

For the last few months the series that’s been really holding my attention is the remake of Battlestar Galactica. No surprise, I’m a big geek from way back and have learned to live with it. Actually, the series is quite good. I was also heartened to discover that it’s a big hit over at the LA Times and NY Times houses.

By season three, though this well written, well acted series which had been liberally borrowing from the politics of real life turned chilling.

The last remnants of the human race were now occupied by the evil robot foe (the “Cylons”). So they formed a resistance, an insurgency and started planting bombs and attacking their occupiers.

They hide their weapons in the places of worship, prompting unfortunate raids and massacres. The Cylons then recruit a local police force of humans. The insurgency responds by sending suicide bombers into the graduation ceremonies.

The police force then carry out midnight raids, rounding up the humans, putting flex cuffs on their wrists and hoods over their heads and driving them off in trucks into the wilderness to execute them.

I admit it, the metaphors are mixed. US soldiers put flex cuffs on people and bags over their heads, while it was Saddam’s soldiers took people out into the wilderness to shoot them down. But you get the point.

It was like a kick in the stomach, my entertainment turned against me. Science Fiction, the ultimate escapism, wasn’t letting me escape any more.

I watched the show and remembered a US lieutenant colonel explaining that the first rule of counter insurgency was to recruit a native police force.

I recalled being on a raid where they arrested so many people they had to radio for more flex cuffs to bind people’s hands.

And it was only a few weeks ago that I sat in Saddam’s court room and heard two witnesses for the prosecution describe how they were driven out into the desert in trucks in the middle of the night. And then, as they sat, stinking of their own fear, they heard machine gun fire as the people in each truck were taken out and shot in the desert.

The witnesses survived because when it was their turn, they rushed the guards, most died, but these two stumbled across a moonlit, nightmarish desert filled with shallow graves, and escaped.

The most arresting thing about the whole series, though, is the way the good guys are the insurgents. The big metal machines oppressing the people are clearly meant to be the helmet and flak-jacketed US troops with their Iraqi police allies.

And the insurgents argue among themselves about civilian casualties and the morality of suicide bombing while the Cylons debate whether the occupation is worthwhile and if they should pull out.

Do you get the feeling the show’s writers are trying to tell us something? It’s been a long time since I’ve been back to the States or watched much TV – makes me wonder if it’s all getting like this.

It does, however, put the recent election win for the Democrats a little more context. I reckon I spend a few more years out here and the States may actually return to what it was when I left almost a decade ago.

Every now and then, when I’d be out with the US soldiers, hunting insurgents, winning hearts and minds or whatever it is that we were supposed to be doing out there, some soldier would sort of offhand remark that, “well, yeah, I mean if someone occupied by hometown, I guess I’d be fighting them too… certainly better than these guys.”

In another twist, the human-looking occupiers are extremely religious – they believe in the one true God while the humans are polytheists (Zeus, Apollo, and what not). At one point one of the Cylons looks earnestly at a human and reminds them that “there is no god, but God.”

Oh god.

Of course, I hope the show doesn’t take the metaphor too close to heart. If full scale civil war breaks out between the cast members, I think it just might break my heart. As it is I have to turn up the volume some nights or wear ear phones because of the mortar barrages between rival Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods outside my window.