Making news out of Yemen this week: Huthi rebels in the country's north have returned a prisoner of war to Saudi Arabia, and Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab told investigators that he trained with other English-speaking Al-Qaeda terrorists-to-be in the country.
Not making news out of Yemen this week: American aid to the hundreds of thousands of Yemenis displaced by the Huthi rebellion.
BAE Systems, a multibillion-dollar defense contractor based in England, announced on Friday that it would settle a long-running corruption investigation brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, which had been looking into allegations of corruption and bribery connected to several arms deals, including the roughly $67 billion "Al-Yamamah" contracts with Saudi Arabia initiated during the mid-1980s.
BAE will pay a $400 million fine to the DOJ and around $46.8 million to the British Serious Fraud Office, which was the first to investigate the deals but controversially dropped the case in 2006, after Saudi Arabia reportedly used its intelligence on Al-Qaida as leverage to force a halt.
As the Jan. 28 London conference on Afghanistan approaches, the government of President Hamid Karzai is playing up its ambitious new plan to lure "moderate" Taliban fighters away from the Islamist movement and toward reintegration with Afghan civil society.
But bringing the Taliban in from the cold and securing the movement's political participation is fraught with obstacles, including the potential recalcitrance of perceived hardliners such as Mullah Mohammed Omar and the need to balance the desires of various and competing power centers, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Karzai's own government and the U.S. military.
Apparently when somebody asked Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud whether it might be too soon and too risky to finance and build a 1.1 km-tall tower in the desert, Saud shook his keffiyeh'd head and said, "لا."
Saud's business conglomerate, Kingdom Holdings, is planning to build the monstrosity known as Kingdom Tower and make it the centerpiece of the as-yet-nonexistent Kingdom City, "one of the largest and most ambitious projects" in Saudi Arabia, designed to house some 80,000 people, according the National.
The 828-meter tall Burj Dubai finally opened Monday in the Gulf emirate of the same name, only to be promptly renamed the Burj Khalifa in honor of the ruler of neighboring Abu Dhabi, who was kind enough (or self-interested enough) to loan Dubai $10 billion to bail out troubled, government-owned investment authorities and their real estate arms.
The Hajj pilgrimage, one of the most important events in Islamic life, begins in 10 days, and the Saudi Gazette reports that 35,000 pilgrims left Medina for Mecca following prayers on Friday.
Think of this as the Islamic equivalent of Christians attending Easter service at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
"This is the largest single movement of pilgrims as the vast majority of those who come to the Kingdom for Haj will not miss the opportunity to conduct Friday prayers at the Prophet's Mosque before moving on to Makkah," said Yousif Hawalah of the National Establishment for Guides, according to the Gazette.
This entry is part of an ongoing series, Blogging the Arab Human Development Report.
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.
There's a rule that discerning news readers of all stripes should keep in mind: Always be skeptical when a journalist interviews another journalist, because (to be crude) it's probably going to end up something like this (and I'm not saying I'd be any different, for the record).
Eli Khoury isn't exactly a journalist, but as the publisher of the liberal, pro-West NOW Lebanon, he's close enough. His like-minded interviewer in this case - Michael Totten. Qifa Nabki already ripped apart the portion of the interview where Khoury insists that Maronites aren't Arabs, but the fun doesn't end there. While I agree with much that they have to say, the interview is just a little too sychophantic for my tastes.
Robert Fisk reports that the Gulf Arab states will stop selling oil in dollars by 2018, moving to gold in the short term and perhaps some other reserve currency in the long term. (Coincidentally -- or perhaps not -- the price of gold hit an all-time high today.)
I'm covering a Senate hearing this morning on Iran sanctions, so I don't have time to write more on this story, but I do want to highlight one particularly troubling paragraph:
The Americans... are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs... Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review.
In other words: The Middle East will be the battleground for yet another proxy war, this time between the U.S. and China.
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.
The United States expanded its share of the global arms market in 2008, signing weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion, or about two-thirds of all weapons trade, the New York Times reports. Despite a worldwide decrease of 7.6 percent from 2007, the U.S. actually saw its sales increased by about 48 percent. To give you a sense of scale, the second biggest arms dealer was Italy, with $3.8 billion.
Meanwhile, four major players in the Middle East are planning on spending a combined $100 billion on defense budgets over the course of the next five years. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Iraq are on course to become the top defense spenders in the region, Al-Shorfa, the CENTOM-funded news agency, reports (h/t The Arabist). Of course, a not-insignificant amount of their money will go to buy U.S.-made weapons.
Al-Shorfa suggests that this ramp-up comes in response to fears about Iran's nuclear program and regional ambition.
Here's a gem from the Saudi Gazette today:
JEDDAH - Two Saudi men who allegedly photographed 30 convicts being lashed recently at Az-Zahra Square on Al-Arbaeen Street will soon go on trial.
So these poor guys, who took pictures of public lashings, are probably going to get lashed. Doesn't it make you slightly uncomfortable that we're so cozy with the Saudis?
Don't understand what's going on in Yemen? We don't blame you. Almost two decades have passed since the once-split country reunited in 1990, and fighting between rebels in the north and the government has flared periodically since 2004, yet Yemen has remained constantly in the West's peripheral vision of the Middle East.
It is with a heavy heart that we pass on the news that Elias Muhanna, otherwise known as the writer of Qifa Nabki, is packing up and leaving Beirut, destined for the cloisters of Harvard University. He has a PhD in Near Eastern Studies to attend to, after all.
As a (temporary) goodbye, Muhanna leaves us with a few links and instructs his readers to "send me an email when Lebanon has a government." I'll miss that Qifa Nabki snark.
But seriously - what's the deal with the Lebanese cabinet?
It has been 80 days since the Lebanese elections, for those of you keeping score at home, and there's still no government. But Saad Hariri says he's getting closer -- that's one of the developments in an omnibus political story in the Daily Star this morning.
A few items of note. First, Hariri insists that Hizballah will be a part of the final Lebanese government.
"Hizbullah will be part of the government since the country's interests necessitate the party's participation," Hariri said during an iftar at his residence in Qoreitem.
This will surely prompt the usual caterwauling from Jerusalem about how Hizballah shouldn't be part of the government. But -- whatever you think of Hizballah -- the group won a sizable number of seats in the June election, and Hariri's government won't work unless it includes Hizballah in some kind of a national-unity scheme.
Saudi Arabia has arrested 44 suspected Al-Qaeda members in Riyadh and surrounding provinces. A spokesman for the interior ministry, Mansur al-Turki, described the men as recruiters.
"These people, I would describe them like a base, they actually work in the area, recruiting young people, giving young people the ideology of al Qa'eda, and financing terrorism in the kingdom."
Police say they found two arms caches: One in Riyadh, with 70 machine guns and 280 detonators; and another north of the capital that contained 96 detonators.
Human Rights Watch has an insightful report out today about Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism program.
The report found that Saudi Arabia's domestic security police, the mabahith, often detain suspects without charges and then ignore court orders to release them.
Human Rights Watch spoke to over two dozen families of mabahith detainees in 2006 and 2007, only two of whom reported that their relatives had received trials. According to the families, these two men had completed their sentences but remained in detention. One former detainee of the mabahith prison in the northern Juf province, arrested for his dissident views, said in November 2006, "There is a group of about 20 persons in Juf, arrested for acts of violence [related to national security], whose sentence has expired, but they have not been released."
The Daily Star has a summary if you don't feel like reading the whole report. The Saudi counterterrorism program is run in close collaboration with the U.S. and U.K. governments, by the way.
If you've ever spent a summer in Cairo, you probably developed a dislike for the Gulf tourists (mostly Saudi) who flock there during July and August to enjoy Egypt's comparatively liberal culture and cool weather. They fill up all the taxis; they sit on their balconies and wolf-whistle at women for hours; they prowl cafes and hotels at night looking for prostitutes.
They do, however, spend a lot of money -- so they provide a useful source of income for Cairenes.
But they seem to feel they're spending too much.
Israel on Monday joined Saudi Arabia in reporting its first confirmed death from swine flu. Agence France-Presse reports that the deceased was a 35-year-old man who died at Eilat, a resort town on the Red Sea near the Egyptian and Jordanian borders.
As Gregg noted, the Saudi man's death has stoked fears of how the flu will spread during the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina this November. As of Sunday night, the World Health Organization had cataloged 232 swine flu cases in Saudi Arabia.
Arab countries have agreed to try to restrict their Hajj pilgrims to people between the ages of 12 and 65. The WHO has reported 1,104 cases in the Middle East, including 80 in Palestine. (If a reader can tell me why it appears that the WHO doesn't recognize Israel, I'd appreciate it.)
Saudi Arabia is none too happy about the news that Arab health ministers want to restrict hajj travel by young and elderly pilgrims.
Saudi officials have insisted the ban, which is pending the approval of Saudi authorities, will not result in a reduction in any country's quota of pilgrims. Every country is allotted a number of Haj visas amounting to 0.1 per cent of the total population, or 1,000 pilgrims per million people.
Lest you think Saudi Arabia is just concerned about the ummah's spiritual well-being, remember that the hajj is a $7 billion-a-year industry for the kingdom.
Interestingly, according to The National, the Saudi government is accusing Arab health ministers of imposing the young-and-old ban for their own economic reasons -- since people will spend their money at home, instead of in Saudi.
Things not to do on Saudi television:
A Saudi man who boasted about his sexual conquests on an Arabic TV station has tearfully apologised as calls mounted for him to be punished.
Mazen Abdul Jawad talked about his sexual conquests, starting with a neighbour when he was 14, and how he picks up women in the kingdom.
Premarital sex is illegal in Saudi, so this gentleman could face quite a few lashes or a long imprisonment.
The BBC article also mentions "Bluetooth dating," always one of my favorite examples of modern technology meeting ancient morality. Unrelated men and women can't legally interact in Saudi Arabia, so they use Bluetooth to exchange phone numbers. (In the dark ages -- the early 2000s -- paramours had lower-tech solutions, like writing their numbers on balls of paper and throwing those through car windows.)
