Egypt - Tag Search

As U.S. policymakers debate whether to hand Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a "stunningly deferential," nearly strings-free endowment to be used over the next five to ten years -- an endowment that Cairo has proposed should reach a whopping $4 billion -- it might be useful to remind ourselves about the reality of life in America's ahwa-sipping, shisha-smoking Arab best friend in the Middle East.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a potential candidate for the Egyptian presidency, released a video on his Facebook page on Saturday urging citizens to join his new National Association for Change. Supporters of political reform in Egypt hope that ElBaradei, 67, challenges 81-year-old incumbent Hosni Mubarak in next year's election, and it seems as though ElBaradei is willing to flirt with the possibility.

My Arabic isn't nifty enough to offer a translation for the video (after the jump), but we'll work on it, and in the meantime, our Arabic-speaking readers should feel free to offer their thoughts in the comments:

With elections for Egypt's People's Assembly, the lower house of parliament, set for this fall, the government has already begun its usual crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist social organization and political party that is banned by law but allowed to operate with a low profile by the government. Following the arrest in February of high-ranking Brothers, police arrested dozens (perhaps hundreds) on Friday and Tuesday at protests.

The Brotherhood won 88 seats in the 454-seat Assembly during landmark elections in 2005. Since then, the leadership of the Brotherhood has changed and signaled less of an interest in electoral politics, but President Hosni Mubarak's approach to the organization has remained the same: Mubarak's government looks like it's in the process of turning the screws on the Brotherhood in the run-up to this year's elections, just as it did in 2005.

Egypt's ultra-rural and often aggrieved Sinai Peninsula Bedouin population has long been one of the country's major unreported stories, so it's nice to see Time magazine reporter Abigail Hauslohner making the trek into the sand dunes to cover Bedouin life.

But Hauslohner's story, posted on the Time's Web site today, paints an unnerving picture of a people on the edge of violent revolt. The Bedouins have long been ignored or scorned by the authoritarian central government in Cairo. Lately, according to Hauslohner, they've been raking in cash by controlling the Egyptian side of smuggling tunnels that snake into the Gaza Strip. But with President Hosni Mubarak moving to shut down those tunnels, Hauslohner theorizes, the Bedouin might now get the spark that finally sets them off.

The Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood held an impromptu internal election over the weekend to decide on a new makeup of its 16-member Guide's Office. The Office functions as a kind of cabinet, or executive branch, for the banned-but-tolerated Brotherhood. Marc Lynch, rounding up the events of the past 72 hours and citing a plethora of Arabic sources, says that conservative Brotherhood elements appear to have won out over moderates who favor democratic political engagement.

"I'm sorry but we had to blow up your laptop." That's how 21-year-old U.S. student Lily Sussman entered Israel two weeks ago. After being questioned by Israeli Border Police for two hours, Sussman heard an announcement over the loudspeaker about the need to blow up suspicious luggage. It turned out her MacBook made the cut. Somehow, according to Sussman, she managed to salvage her hard drive.

Sussman's story made the Haaretz newspaper. This raises the question: What do Israelis have against Steve Jobs?

Five young Americans have been arrested in eastern Pakistan, reportedly for possible links to terrorism, NBC News reports. Citing anonymous government sources and leaders of Islamic-American groups, NBC says the five men left a "farewell video" for their families in Northern Virginia featuring "scenes of war and casualties and saying Muslims must be defended."

Family members took their concerns to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which got them a lawyer and notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to NBC. The men range in age from 19 to 25.

One of them, Ramy Zamzam, is a dental student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. I've been told second-hand from someone in Zamzam's program that he is a "straight A student" and was likely to be class president next year. Zamzam is likable and "charismatic," according to this person, and he apparently left during his program's finals, which can't be made up.

Well, this is rich. Egyptian men, who are allowed under the country's Shari'a-tinged family law to divorce their wives on the spot, have formed an organization to complain that a woman's right to get a no-fault divorce if she forsakes all her financial interests is "tyranny."

Here's a question I've been mulling the last few days during moments when I haven't been chained to a separate piece of "real journalism" that I hope to be wrapping up today: Will Egyptians root for the United States in the World Cup?

As many of you undoubtedly know, FIFA held its random draw for the Cup's first round on Friday, and America found itself in a group with Algeria, as well as Slovakia and England.

Given the anger we're hearing from Egypt over how its fans were allegedly treated during a Cup-qualifying playoff game with Algeria in Khartoum, and the resulting diplomatic fallout, I wonder if Egyptian soccer fans will decide to support America, the villain of the Middle East, over their Arab - or at least African - neighbors to the West?

What say you, readers?

I just got done reading a piece by Shaden Shehab in Al-Ahram that does some news analysis on the November Algeria-Egypt soccer match that has resulted in weeks of violence, protests and political grandstanding.

Shehab's article would be a funny bit of Arab-world satire if it wasn't real: He quotes prominent satellite television talk-show host Emadeddin Adib as saying that the alleged attacks by Sudanese on Egyptians who visited Khartoum for the match were part of a "conspiracy" organized by a "Gulf state."

Shehab follows that up by writing that "it is no secret that the Algerian newspaper Ech- Chorouk, which has taken an insulting editorial line towards Egypt, is financed by Qatar."

You'll recall that Majlis correspondent Patrick Friedel reported on this nearly two weeks ago.

The streets of Cairo are loud with celebration tonight, after the country's soccer squad beat Algeria 2-0 in the waning seconds to force a one-game playoff on Wednesday that will determine which team qualifies for the 2010 World Cup.

You'll recall that Egyptian hooligans attacked Algeria's team as it arrived by bus to its Cairo hotel on Thursday. Video showed two or three Algerian players bleeding from the head and face; one held what looked like broken pieces of concrete in his hands - apparently what the mob was throwing.

Egyptians, powerless to hold their leaders to account, suffer beneath the yoke of authoritarianism and the government's disregard for their basic safety and well-being, Sara Khorshid writes in an op-ed published Sunday in Egypt's Daily News (h/t Octavia Nasr).

In other news, the sky is blue. But seriously, cheers to Khorshid for adding more weight on the peoples' side of the scale.

By Patrick Friedel

The temperature is dropping in Cairo, and the sneezing and coughing Cairenes are all concerned about the Swine Flu (H1N1).

That's understandable. It takes only one visit to Cairo to realize it is a petri dish of germs. The transportation system is at a breaking point, garbage litters the streets, and the countless coffee shops offer passed-around shisha pipes to their patrons.

Egypt's government is hardly in a position to offer a solution to the first two problems, but they are attempting to manage the latter issue by prohibiting shisha at public cafes. (Editor's note: The Egyptian government could be said to have contributed to the overflowing trash problem by culling its population of garbage-eating pigs, in response to swine flu fears. -Evan)

Shisha is a staple of Egyptian culture. It is flavored tobacco that is smoked through a water pipe. There are many flavors, but most cafes offer only two brands: light Apple flavored tobacco and maasil. Maasil is for the hardcore lot only. It is unflavored and packs a wallop. You have been warned.

As far as I can tell, the ban started last Tuesday and is only in effect on the main streets - particularly downtown. Those café owners able to afford bribing the police do so, and those that cannot are closing shop. Unfortunately, my favorite café, Mushrebeya, falls into the latter category and has shut down. The owner told me it will renovate and reopen as a tourism agency.

Great, I thought. I am losing my favorite watering hole and getting another tourism agency. There are already three agencies doing business across the street.

It has been hard to get a solid beat on the shisha situation here. No shop owner wants to tell their customers that there will not be shisha available, or that the police are enforcing a ban. Shisah is their livelihood. As a result, it has been difficult to understand what the government is doing and how the shops are handling the situation.

The Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, has yet to report anything regarding the ban.

If the ban is enforced, it would do wonders to prevent the spread of H1N1. Most cafes only give a cursory pipe-water change after each use, leaving all those germs from previous users readily available for the next smoker.

The drawbacks are numerous, though. The innumerable cafes across Egypt will suffer a large drop in business. More generally, this is a problem because shisha is a cultural cornerstone of Cairene life. It is more than habit-forming drug; it is a social release valve for the deluge of under/unemployed Egyptian men. I wonder how this will affect the temperament of the local men and young men in such a desperate economic time.

I hope to learn more about this issue and its impact. In the meantime, I am stocking-up on shisha coals and tobacco. Otherwise, it is going to be a long winter in Cairo.

Friedel is a 2007 graduate of the University of Iowa, studied abroad at the American University in Cairo from 2005-06 and recently returned to Cairo to study Arabic.

"Marriage is like a besieged citadel," a columnist wrote recently in Al-Ahram, "those outside want to enter it, while those inside are looking for a way out."

According to a recently released study, more and more Egyptians appear to be looking for that way out. The study, the subject of an article on the National's Web site today, shows that 84,430 Egyptian couples divorced in 2008, an 8.4 percent increase from the year before. Additionally, there are now 13 million Egyptians aged 30 or older who have never been married at all, according to the study, released by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.

For a conservative, family-oriented society such as Egypt's, that 13 million number is surprising - it represents a fifth of the entire population over 15. If you slice off 15- to 29-year-olds and consider that a large majority of Egyptian seniors (65 and up) have probably been married at some point, you're talking about a huge swath of young and middle-aged Egyptians who've never been hitched - probably more than a third of citizens ages 30 to 65. That rate would rival or exceed the corresponding percentage of never-married Americans.

In today's edition, we move past definitions and start getting into the good stuff - figuring out exactly how screwed the Arab world really is. First up in the cavalcade of depressing facts: Chapter Two of the Arab Human Development Report, which focuses on environmental threats to human security in the region.

First, a brief reminder about the 2009 AHDR: It's all about "human security." We covered the definition of that term in Part One. By approaching the Arab world from the point of view of human security - the problems confronting everyday citizens, rather than the state as a whole - the authors hope to address the roots of a wealth of problems in today's globalized world. Now, let's get started.

As we've been following today's developments regarding Iran's "secret" nuclear facility, we've left unaddressed several federal terrorism cases that, by accident or design, are popping up in the news right now, the foremost among them being the prosecution of Najibullah Zazi.

I had planned on summarizing the cases, but now I see a more useful line of analysis that connects Iran with the home-grown terrorist threat: Conservative and neoconservative ignorance.

Egypt's decision to cull its entire pig population as a swine flu defense tactic has backfired in one very smelly way: The unofficial garbage collectors who used to use the pigs to clean up organic waste are now forced to let garbage rot in the streets.

Gregg mentioned in his roundup this morning that George Mitchell, the United States' special envoy to the Middle East, is meeting with high-level Israeli officials in Tel Aviv today. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, won't be there.

But don't fret: Netanyahu, much as he might like to, isn't ducking Mitchell. He's in Egypt, discussing regional peace and the fate of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

The Jerusalem Post, reporting on Netanyahu's visit, says Israel isn't pleased with the state of peace negotiations:

Happy Labor Day to all our U.S. readers, and to those of you abroad who'd like to have a Labor Day of your own. The Majlis will be taking it pretty easy today and resting our weary fingers. For now, here's your dose of timely news.

Iraq experienced its worst month of violence in more than a year in August, BBC News reports. The Iraqi government estimates that 393 people were killed, including 60 police officers and soldiers. You can view our map tracking the recent violence here. The death toll in August was far below the violence seen in 2006 and 2007, when more than 2,000 civilians were killed every month, but the rising disorder makes posts like these seem somewhat incoherent.