Tag: egypt

Police ban pro-Gaza demo

Police banned a solidarity demo with the Palestinians that had been scheduled today noon in front of the Arab League HQ.
Central Security Forces trucks were all over Tahrir Sq since early morning, and in Ramsis St close to the lawyers’ and journalists’ syndicates. More troops were also stationed behind the Mugama3 near the US embassy. While CSF conscripts mostly remained inside their trucks, Tahrir was swarmed with uniformed and plainclothes police officers, State Security agents, and the paramilitary brigades of criminal thugs whom the police are increasingly depending on to keep “law and order� in the street. There was also a battalion of thugs stationed around the corner of the Egyptian Museum on the side of 3abdel Mon3eim Riyad Sq (I’m sure Western tourists on their way into the museum felt safer and secure with such a lovely sight.)
A handful of activists who showed up early (11:40am) in front of the Arab League HQ were soon surrounded by thugs, plainclothes State Security officers, who ordered them to leave. The activists had formed a delegation that was to get into the Arab League HQ to present a message to its secretariat, denouncing the League’s (as always) weak response to the Israeli attacks.
Mohamed Waked, one of the activists present in the scene, told me the State Security officers intimidated and pushed nine activists inside the HQ, saying they could either get into the League’s building swiftly to meet the assistant secretary general, or get into the prisoners’ trucks. The police was very nervous, and did not want a crowd that can draw more attention of the people in the square. Waked, who was not part of the delegation, said he was pushed by the officers inside against his will. Others included, Kamal Abu 3eita, Mohamed 3abdel Quddos and Ahmad Rami, MB activist at the pharmacists’ syndicate.
The activists were met by Ahmad Bin Hilla, 3amr Moussa’s assistant. They protested their treatment by the police, but Bin Hilla said this was an “Egyptian internal affair� that the League did not want to intervene in. The activists presented him with a statement, denouncing the League’s weak stand and lack of support for the Palestinians. Bin Hilla replied, giving them the expected we-are-doing-our-best diplomatic crap.
Meanwhile, small scattered groups of activists were trying to assemble in Tahrir, but were intimidated by the police, who threatened them with arrest, and were pushing them across the streets to disperse. The activists, mainly socialists and Nasserists from the Karama faction, were exponentially outnumbered by the police, who kept on shoving them all the way from Tahrir Sq to Tal3at Harb sq. The scene was bizarre, and reminded me of the Labor Day demo, where security intimidation against an exponentially outnumbered activists meant run for-your-life kinda situation. After being cornered in Tal3at Harb, around 20 activists decided to head to the Press Syndicate. They were marching in the street, and sometimes running, followed by at least 300 plainclothes security. Whenever any activist stopped walking, even to light a cigarette, battalions of security agents would start pushing him or her to move. The security also kidnapped Wael 3abass in Qasr el-Nil St, and kept him in custody for few minutes, before the rest of the activists assembled and started screaming and shouting till he was released. The same situation happened few minutes later with another activist from the Karama faction who raised Nasser’s poster while walking. The activists decided then if they can’t demonstrate or chant, the least they could do is to raise their hands up with V signs to attract attention of the public, as they ran for refuge at the press syndicate.
It was around 1:15pm that the CSF conscripts were moved to surround the syndicate, but did not bar those who wanted to get in. Under Cairo’s burning July sun, 30 or 40 at best, activists stood with banners denouncing the US, Israel and Mubarak, waiving Palestinian flags, and chanting. They were joined by Kamal Abu 3eita and Mohamed 3abdel Quddos after they were “released� from the Arab League HQ.

Egypt vs. Lebanon vs. Morocco

Elijah wonders about Lebanon and Egypt, a comparison I’ve often made myself:

Coming from Egypt, all this Lebanese success actually annoyed me. If Lebanon—a few years after a 15-year civil war, and with no natural resources to speak of—can do so well, why is Egypt so screwed up? OK, there are only something like 4 million people in all of Lebanon, or about the population of Shobra and Bulaq. But is population all there is to it? Egypt borders two seas, it has the Suez Canal, natural gas reserves, unparalleled tourist destinations, and it hasn’t just emerged from a long civil war. You’d think that’d be enough to outweigh the population differences. So why is Lebanon so nice?

Indeed, it’s sometimes mind-boggling.

Continue reading Egypt vs. Lebanon vs. Morocco

Back to “serving the people”

I don’t know when, but it was likely sometime during the 1990s Dirty War that the Egyptian Interior Ministry decided to change its motto, usually printed on dusty signs that top police stations’ entrances, from “The Police is in Service of the People,� to “The People and the Police are in Service of the Nation.�
Whenever I came across those signs while driving or walking by a police station, or during a demo where I’m getting my share of beatings on the hands of the CSF, I always wondered what “nation� exactly was the Interior Ministry’s motto referring to, that we, the people, together with our brave police officers should protect? Mubarak’s posters were usually present somewhere near the signs, and that always gave me a quick answer to my naïve question.
Well, it seems an Egyptian lawyer by the name Nabih el-Wahsh has been a bit upset with the Interior’s motto too, so he filed a lawsuit against it, demanding the return to the old motto. I had no clue about the case, till I came across this Wafd report. The lawyer has won the case (don’t know when?), and scored another triumph yesterday with the Higher Administrative Court rejecting the Interior’s appeal, and ordering the ministry to lift off the new motto from police stations and security directorates in all provinces, as it was deemed “unconstitutional.�
Thus, now our Interior Ministry is to return to be “in service of the people.” So fellow Egyptians, cheer up… you will be served… yes, served awi awi..

The Bush doctrine and Egypt

Amr Hamzawy, a prolific Egyptian analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, and someone else I don’t know called Michael McFaul (a professor at Stanford) have penned an editorial wondering what happened to the Bush doctrine and Egypt. Cutting down to the bottom line:

The major challenge facing the United States in this region is how to help democratize Arab polities and in so doing giving peace, stability, and moderation a chance in the struggle against dictatorship and violence. So it is downright mysterious why American aid to Egypt should continue to flow with no political strings attached.
America could make the linkage very explicit, by putting forward clear benchmarks and timelines on political reform. At a minimum, if Bush were serious about his liberty doctrine, U.S. aid could be restructured to give less to the Egyptian military and more to domestic civil society and to American nongovernmental organizations involved in democracy promotion. Yet, ironically, these organizations are now under siege in Egypt.
Bush’s retreat on democracy promotion has implications well beyond Cairo. Autocrats throughout the Middle East are watching. To date, the lesson is obvious: Do a few minor reforms to appease the Americans when they are paying most attention during elections, then roll these reforms back after the vote.
In retrospect, it may have been a better strategy for Bush to not have delivered his second inaugural speech about liberty, but instead quietly pushed for incremental reforms. At this stage, however, the words have already been spoken. Bush must now back them up with real policies that show his commitment to freedom. If he fails in Egypt, he fails throughout the Middle East.

Too bad Hamzawy wasn’t making the expert testimonies (almost all against cutting or changing aid) at the recent congressional hearing on the matter. His conclusions are definitely spot on. Whether you care about democracy in the Arab world or not, as an American foreign policy maker you can’t afford to just abandon a “doctrine” like that. It’ll discredit you in the region and elsewhere. I mean, the Monroe Doctrine (originally America’s refusal to let Europeans colonize Latin America, later the perpetuation of America’s dominance over Latin America that Chavez is now prying apart) lasted about 180 years before it started falling apart under Bush’s guard. His own doctrine — at least the part about democratizing the Middle East, since the part about unilateralism seems to have already died — never even got off the ground.

More on top regime prosecutor appointed head of Supreme Constitutional Court

This follows from the previous post on the same issue.

A reader who follows judicial issues in Egypt writes:

Al-Misri al-Yom has reported that Maher ‘Abd al-Wahid has been appointed to replace Mamduh Mar‘i as the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court. This continues a pattern of political appointments to that position in a manner that has effectively subjugated what had been a very vigorous (if sometimes idiosyncratic) defender of constitutional rights during the 1990s.

Continue reading More on top regime prosecutor appointed head of Supreme Constitutional Court

Most foreign Jihadis in Iraq are Egyptians, US military says

A journalist friend of mine sent me an AFP report, including allegations by the US military that most foreign jihadis in Iraq come from Egypt.
I’ve been a bit interested in that issue since early 2003. In interviews prior and during the war, experts in Cairo were warning then of the prospects of Iraq breeding a new generation of Islamist militants, or “Iraqi Arabs� (a la Afghan Arabs).
President Mubarak himself expressed his concern over the war in 2003 saying it would produce “100 Bin Ladens.”
(Mubarak expressed privately more urging concerns. In the rather long and extremely boring memoirs of General Tommy Franks, the former head of US army CENTCOM recalls his visit to Cairo on January 23, 2003:

Hosni Mubarak was as friendly as always. But he was clearly concerned with our military buildup and the tension in Iraq.
He leaned close and spoke to me in an accented but readily comprehensible English. “General Franks,� he said, choosing his words carefully, as (Jordanian King) Abdullah had done. “You must be very, very careful. We have spoken with Saddam Hussein. He is a madman. He has WMD—biologicals, actually—and he will use them on your troops.�
An hour later, in the Embassy communications room, I passed this message to Don Rumsfeld.

This is mentioned in Tommy’s–again, rather long and extremely boring–memoirs, American Soldier, on pages 418-9)
Since the start of the war, the US has inflated the Arab volunteers’ importance and involvement in attacks. I myself admit I was guilty of the same mistake. I was following the Iraqi scene from my comfortable place in Cairo. Media reports and Islamist sources in Egypt and Europe were my sources of information. And I think it suited everybody in the beginning to blame the attacks on the “foreign terrorists.â€� The US then U-turned after the first all out assault on Fallouja, and I recall coming across reports saying it was “discoveredâ€� the foreign fighters constituted actually a minority of the Islamist jihadis caught.
The cycle of exaggerating or underestimating the contribution of foreign jihadis has been ebbing and flowing… and always the question of which country has the lion share of volunteers, comes up.
There have been conflicting reports. A former colleague of mine at the LA Times told me once she obtained some study claiming Algerians constituted the majority. And if I’m not mistaken, I recall coming across reports that talked about either the Saudis, Syrians, or Jordanians constituting the majority.
I don’t honestly buy the reports about “Zarqawi’s networks� in Europe and about how he was exporting fighters there. I think these reports are trumped up by the European security agencies. Still, the threat of “Iraqi Arabs� or “returnees from Iraq� is present. Up till now, the militancy has spilled over to Jordan, with the suicide bombings that targeted the tourist hotels, and the attacks on Eilat and US warships in 3aqaba Gulf.
(I am not monitoring the situation in Saudi, but if any of you dear readers are, please inform us if the recent spate of attacks in the kingdom involved an “Iraqi link.�)
This new report on Egyptian jihadis in Iraq, as well as the presence of an Egyptian on top of Iraq’s Al-Qa3da now, means there will be more “cooperation” between the US and our Egyptian Mukhabarrat… i.e., it’s an additional incentive to forget “democracy” issues when it comes to bilateral relations, since “counterterrorism” (a terrorism produced ironically by the lack of democracy in the first place) tops everybody’s agendas. Continue reading Most foreign Jihadis in Iraq are Egyptians, US military says