Month: August 2006

New Saudi opposition group

Never heard of this before:

CAIRO — A Saudi opposition group is set to breathe new life into the kingdom’s dormant political reform movement. But in a sign of changing alliances, its founder hopes for a boost from public anger over government criticism of Hezbollah.
Founded in Paris by the exiled son of the last ruler of part of present-day Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Democratic Opposition Front claims about 2,000 members, mostly in Saudi Arabia.
It aims to provide an umbrella network for secular and Islamist activists both inside and outside the country who are campaigning for the overthrow of the al-Saud ruling family.
“We have founded the Saudi Democratic Opposition Front to push for 100 percent democracy in the country,” said Talal Mohammed Al-Rasheed, the son of the last ruler of the independent Rashidi emirate, which reigned in Saudi Arabia’s northwestern region of Hail from 1835 to 1921.
“If the al-Saud [family] introduce genuine democracy, we will support them. But if they do not, we will push by all peaceful means to make them give up their power,” said Mr. Al-Rasheed, 72, who still likes to be addressed as Prince Talal.

I don’t know what to think of these people. I found this interesting though:

Earlier this month, Mr. Al-Rasheed gave an hourlong interview to the Paris bureau chief of the Pan-Arab, Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite news network. After announcing the formation of his party and advertising the forthcoming interview with Mr. Al-Rasheed on its news bar at the bottom of the screen, Al Jazeera suddenly removed the information and the interview was spiked.

“My sources told me that after they saw the information on Al Jazeera’s news ticker, the Saudi government called the station more than five times in one hour, pleading with them not to air it,” Mr. Al-Rasheed said, adding that Al Jazeera had “obviously caved in to the pressure.”

Et tu, Jazeera?

“New Middle East” gets Daily Show treatment

I’ve just uploaded a brilliant recent Daily Show interview with their Middle East correspondent in Beirut to YouTube. Instead of their usual correspondents, they has a guy act as their Arab correspondent. And while Jon Stewart was expressing concern about the carnage, the correspondent kept reacting as if he loved the whole birth pangs of a new Middle East thing — i.e. as if he lived in Condi and W’s alternate reality. It’s very moving comedy, and make sure you watch it to the end. (The first few seconds are blacked out, but then it’s fine.)

(Smaller download version here – 3MB)

Updates from Qalyoubiya…

I’ve been on the phone since the morning with a journalist friend present in the scene, and with Photographer Nasser Nouri who managed to make it to Qalyoub.
I was told the rescue services did not show up to the scene, except after at least an hour and half, during which ordinary citizens and uninjured passengers were trying to help the victims and bring them out of the trains.
The Military Police is all over the scene, as one of the trains had a big number of poor peasant army conscripts, and they laid siege on the area.
There are at least 15 Central Security Forces trucks parked few hundreds of meters away from the accident scene. As always the regime takes no chances what angry relatives (angry at what happened, and angry at the state’s incompetence) could do… just like what happened with the Red Sea ferry crisis.
UPDATE: mini clashes started already. A reporter present in the scene just called in to say an MP named Mohssen Radi showed up and started shouting accusing the govt of corruption and negligence. The security services and Mubarak’s National Democratic Party supporters tried to silence him, so the victims’ relatives started shouting accusing the NDP and the security: “You are the ones to blame!” Then they started chanting: “Ihmal! Ihmal Ihmal! (Negligence! Negligence! Negligence!)”
UPDATE: Nasser Nouri sent me pix, that I’ll be uploading in few minutes. Nasser braved his way there as soon as he heard about the tragic accident, and called me again as he got home, his clothes all soaked in blood.
UPDATE: You can find the photos on my flickr account.
UPDATE: The mini clashes I was told about were swiftly contained by the security services, according to a journalist present in the scene. “It lasted for few minutes only, as there are LOADS of security troops around,” he said. MP Mohssen Radi belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary block. He represents the Banha Constituency. My journalist friend had to hung up, as rescue services managed to drag another body from the rubbles.

Peasant conscripts pulled out of the train

Train tragedy

Poor Lebanese had their country’s civilian infrastructure ruined by aggressive Israeli air strikes. In our case, we don’t need the Israelis. We can ruin our country and do the job ourselves…..

UPDATE: Reuters updated the story Issandr posted, including some quotes by govt officials… The families of the dead will receive only US$871 from the authorities as a compensation!
Continue reading Updates from Qalyoubiya…

Al Ustaz

I just got off the phone with Gamal Al Ghitany (a famous novelist, the editor of the literary magazine Akhbar Al Adab and a good friend of Mahfouz’s for 40 years now). He says Al Ustaz is “better.”

I met Mahfouz last Spring. I was invited to one of the “nadwas” he has with groups of friends and admirers in different hotels around town (he always used to meet his friends, regular as clockwork, in qahwas. After the 1994 stabbing attack that was no longer considered safe). Mahfouz came wrapped in a huge coat that he never took off. He’s nearly blind and nearly deaf, and if you want to say something to him you have to yell into his left ear. It’s clearly an effort for him to speak at any length. His hands (the 1994 attack severed nerves) sit curled like talons in his lap. He dozes off now and then if the conversation doesn’t involve him. And yet he’s still clearly in command of his faculties. He makes jokes and he loves it if other people do–he still has an incredibly sweet, deep laugh that seems to light up the room. Halfway throug the evening, he sipped one coffee and smoked one cigarette. A lot of the time I think he doesn’t answer question not because he can’t hear them but because he can’t be bothered. He told me Shakespear and Proust were two of his favourite Western writers.

I’m a Mahfouz groupie. I think his novels are spectacular. Right now I’m reading a lovely book about him, actually by Gamal Al Ghitany, called “Al Magalis Al Mahfouzia“–it’s notes on conversations with Mahfouz over 40 years. When I met him I noticed the overwhelming affection and loyalty that he inspires in his old friends (one of the men who was there, actually, was the same friend who drove Mahfouz to the hospital on the day he was stabbed, holding on hand on the wheel and one on Mahfouz bleeding neck). In his book, Al Ghitany talks about Mahfouz as the ultimate “ragil tayyeb” (“good man”), an embodiment of wisdom, humility and humour. I felt that when I met him–not to sound too romantic, but he seems to radiate the essential, traditional Egyptian qualities: honesty, patience, good cheer, and an unwillingness to take oneself and life too seriously.

Today is my last day in Cairo for a while. I’m going to NYU to do a Masters in Middle East Studies (expect posts on the world of Middle East academia soon). I hope very much to get a chance to see Mahfouz again when I get back.

IMG_2151.jpgIMG_2156.jpg

Mahfouz critically ill

It’s been a week that Naguib Mahfouz has been hospitalized, and the latest reports say he is critically ill and no longer taking food. At 95 and after many health complications since he was attacked in 1994, his chances don’t look very good. I haven’t had a chance to go through much local press coverage of this, but I get the feeling Hizbullah and the embarrassment of Arab leaders has been hogging all the limelight.

Naguib Mahfouz S
Naguib Mahfouz by Youssef Nabil

What can make you an enemy combatant

One detainee was judged a threat in part because he was a karate expert and had taught martial arts to Bosnian orphans, tribunal records show. He was also classified as potentially dangerous because he was familiar with computers. Another detainee was flagged because he had performed mandatory service in the Algerian army more than a decade ago, as a cook.

As if we needed more evidence that Guantanamo is useless, farcical and cruel, there comes this article in today’s Washington post that details how six Algerians were kidnapped from Bosnia in 2002 despite being completely exonerated by the Bosnian authorities for allegedly planning an attack on the US Embassy. Not a proud moment for the US government, which threatened Bosnia with the withdrawal of peacekeeping troops to have legally innocent men handed over to them.

Train accident near Cairo kills over 80

There’s been serious train accident not too far from Cairo this morning in Qalyoub. At least 80 dead so far, but the death toll has been steadily going up all morning.

QALYOUB, Egypt, Aug 21 (Reuters) – A collision between two trains killed 80 people and injured 131 on Monday in a Nile Delta town north of Cairo, a security source said, in Egypt’s worst rail disaster since 2002.

About 25 ambulances rushed to the crash site, along with hundreds of bystanders and relatives anxious for news of passengers who might have been killed or injured, a witness said, adding that damage to the trains was extensive.

The accident took place at about 7.30 a.m. (0430 GMT) near the town of Qalyoub, about 20 km (12 miles) north of Cairo, official sources told the state news agency MENA. They said one of the drivers had apparently ignored railway traffic signals.

A Reuters photographer at the scene said one of the trains had derailed and was on its side. It had split into four parts and there were signs of a fire, he said.

MENA quoted official Egyptian sources as saying the death toll was at least 20. The crash happened when one train ran into the rear of another, causing one of them to derail and overturn.

This will remind a lot of people of the Al Ayyat train disaster of 2002, the worst in Egypt’s history, in which at least 360 people died, caused the resignation of the transport minister at the time and discredited the Atef Ebeid government. I wonder if there will be an investigation into what has been done since Al Ayyat to improve train safety.

Update: Just saw a French AFP news report saying the accident occurred after a collision of two trains that were on the same track and had not respected signals.

Les deux trains circulaient sur la même voie en direction de la capitale, l’un en provenance de Mansoura (130 km au nord du Caire) et l’autre de Benha (50 kms au nord). Selon les premiers éléments de l’enquête, l’un des trains n’a pas respecté un feu de signalisation, percutant violemment l’arrière du second. Les deux trains ne sont plus qu’un enchevêtrement de ferraille, autour duquel des dizaines de secouristes s’affairent pour tenter de retrouver des survivants, selon une journaliste de l’AFP. Deux wagons ont basculé sur le bas-côté de la voie. Des ambulances passent sirènes hurlantes, pour transporter les victimes dans sept hôpitaux de la région. Parmi les passagers figuraient des paysans ainsi que des fonctionnaires, dont de nombreux policiers, qui se rendaient au Caire pour y travailler, a affirmé un policier, Mamdouh Amer. Le 1er mai, 45 Egyptiens avaient été blessés lors d’une collision entre deux trains dans le gouvernorat de Charquiya, au nord du Caire. Fin février, 20 personnes avaient également été blessées dans un accident similaire près d’Alexandrie (nord).

Alterman: Likudniks take on the Jews

Eric Alterman on how neo-cons and Israel Firsters are attacking American Jewry for putting America’s interests before Israel’s:

Things can become a little confusing when the same neocons who insist it is ipso facto anti-Semitic to ask what role Israel plays in their calculations instruct American Jews that they are paying too much attention to their own country’s best interests and not enough to Israel’s. Writing in–of all places–The Weekly Standard, David Gelernter attacks American Jews for their “self-destructive nihilism” in remaining “fervent supporters of an American left that is increasingly unable or unwilling to say why Israel must exist.” (This is nonsense about the vast majority of the left, of course, but ignore that for a moment.) Gelernter argues that “grassroots Democrats are increasingly dangerous to the Jewish state (not to mention the American state).” Note that the question of the “American state” is literally a mere parenthetical to Gelernter’s principal concern–the well-being of Israel. Over at National Review’s “The Corner,” Mona Charen can be found making the same sneering argument. She calls American Jews “stubborn and downright stupid” because they “despise George W. Bush and will donate time and money to any Democrat in 2008, while Bush is indisputably the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States.” Again, it’s highly “disputable,” but never mind that. More to the point is the fact that Bush’s presidency–a complete and utter failure by virtually any empirical measurement–is also deemed irrelevant. It’s Israel alone that matters, according to these anti-American conservatives. (And woe unto American Jews when Christian America starts paying attention to their unpatriotic perfidy.)

What’s most immediately worrisome about the neocons’ long march through our institutions of government is the possibility that they may succeed a second time. According to Sidney Blumenthal’s reporting in Salon, neocon staffers for Dick Cheney and the NSC’s point man on the Middle East, Elliott Abrams (Norman Podhoretz’s son-in-law), “have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries.” They are looking, according to this NSC source, “to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.”

Four wars simultaneously? Led by this crew? After what we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is it me, or are the people who run this country dangerously out of their minds?

Reminder to self: move to South America (but not too close to Castro or Chavez).

Roy: Hizbullah has redrawn the Middle East

French specialist on Islamist movements Olivier Roy has a very interesting op-ed in the FT, reproduced below.

Hizbollah has redrawn the Middle East
Published: August 17 2006 20:29 | Last updated: August 18 2006 01:49

The perceived victory of Hizbollah in Lebanon may be short term but has highlighted some new and important developments. For the first time, the Israel Defence Forces were unable to prevail in an all-out war. More significantly, the winner this time is a Shia Muslim, non-state, armed movement supported by Syria and Iran. In Israel’s previous wars, from 1948 to 1982, the challengers were Sunni Arabs.

Continue reading Roy: Hizbullah has redrawn the Middle East