The Cairo Magazine Archives
The Boursa Exchange has a good post on what he sees as the Egyptian middle and upper class rejection of a new real estate tax could signify the slow but ineluctable rise of a demand for better representation in government: the classic "no taxation without representation" dictum that motivated those calling for American independence from Britain.
A protestor in Tehran, from Flickr user Green Movement
POMED's account of a recent Congressional hearing on what policy to pursue towards Iran, and most notably whether and how to support its opposition movement, made for some interesting reading. Several of those testifying — former Bush administration officials, regional experts, etc. — made the case of a human rights-based approach, with the US taking steps to challenge the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic's regime on human rights grounds. The approach being suggested by, if you compile the different witnesses' testimonies to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is basically:
I should add that Genevieve Abdo in particular was less gung-ho, and suggested that a reconciliation between the regime and opposition leaders could very well take place by the next parliamentary elections, which would leave the more radical elements of the Green Movement out on their own. I don't know much about Iran but I also see no reason a more democratic government in Iran would not be attached to a nuclear program considering the threats the country faces in the region. Logically, all of the larger Middle Eastern powers should pursue WMD programs of some sort, and indeed they all have (mostly chemical and biological for Egypt, Syria and Iraq and of course Israel's nuclear arsenal).
All of this to say: we are seeing considerable Congressional enthusiasm for a tough, democracy-driven (at least on the surface) policy towards Iran. Yet, at the same time, democracy is effectively absent from the relations between the US and Arab states (no, I will not count the State Dept. annual rights report). It is true that Iran's opposition is potentially much more credible than opposition movements in Arab countries, with seemingly real elite and popular traction. But that's also because in many respects are less democratic, and have less healthy political systems, than Iran's theocracy.
I am very supportive of the Green Movement, whatever it may actually be, and the goal putting an end to the militarization of the Islamic Republic, its corruption and its human rights abuses. I hope it's possible, and am conscious the US can influence this. But when I see US policy elsewhere in the region, I would warn Iranians: don't take this democracy talk too seriously. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan (invoked in the Congressional hearing for an uncompromising stand on Iran): don't trust, and verify.
Issandr El Amrani
Incidentally, Juan Cole outlines some of the scaremongering by SecState Clinton about Iran's nuclear program.
Iran, US, congress, democracy promotion, sanctions 
Get your Muslim Brotherhood T-shirt while stocks last!
A conciliatory attitude by the new Guide, Mohamed Badie, has not protected the Muslim Brothers from another string of arrests. That they include people from five provinces and a key electoral planner — Essam al-Erian — and an organizational strongman — First Deputy Guide Mahmoud Ezzat — suggests that it's largely to do with forthcoming elections. This arrest is notable because Ezzat had not been arrested in years, as most top leadership rarely are. It may have also to do with the state noting his ascendancy, and wanting to send disruptions into the group: many have suspected in the past that the regime selects who it arrests in partly in function of the MB's internal politics, to allow an opportunity for rival factions to dominate.1 As for Al-Erian, one of the key planners of the MB's 2005 electoral strategy, it's clear he's long been one of the leaders most intent in contesting elections as widely as possible.
Can the regime push the MB, by this fall, into a strategic withdrawal from the electoral field? Not a total one, but one that reduces the numbers of seats it has in parliament to around the level they won in 2000 (i.e. 17)? A few NDP and government figures have suggested that they expect the MB to return to the levels of that time, but it's a hard thing to guarantee unless you have very rigged elections. This is tricky this time around not so much because of the Obama administration, which has systematically downplayed the importance elections in its concept of democracy-promotion, but perhaps because Mohamed el-Baradei had focused much attention on the electoral system and may gain domestic and foreign traction over the next few months if he finds support for his project. So the alternative would be to push the MB into a deal whereby they present fewer candidates and restrict themselves.2
At this point the regime appears to be less looking for a deal with the Brothers than a kow-tow from them. The MB has already for all intents and purpose frozen its reform process, put aside its political party program, and reduced the influence of those most attached to the idea of a political party (aside from al-Erian). The next questions will be, will it drop its new policy of contesting all elections and not run for the Shura Council (most likely) and reduce its footprint in the next parliament (inevitable, but the question is how?)
1. Some Brothers believe this was the idea behind the prison sentence handed to Khayrat al-Shater in 2007.
2. With the caveat that it can't be about the Muslim Brothers' electoral strategy alone. It is also about the NDP's ability to impose discipline on its members to avoid the pattern of the last few elections where NDP independents ran against the party's official candidates, thus splitting the pro-government vote and giving candidates from the MB a fighting chance. I would venture that, for now, we have no indication that the NDP will be any more disciplined, since government policy has basically moved the intense competition for seats from the public competition into one inside the NDP.
Egypt, elections, ikhwan, mb, muslimbrotherhood There probably should be — or at least a fatwa against people who use Facebook as an alternative to email, thus adding another thing to check — but the report going around about al-Azhar issuing a fatwa against Facebook does not appear to be true. Marc Lynch has done the public service of debunking the story, so take heed.
Worth noting:
* Geoff Wysner, at Words Without Borders, reviews the memoir Algerian White, by Assia Djebar.
Algerian White was written as a tribute to three men. Each was a friend of the author. Each was a writer himself, in addition to his regular profession. All three were killed in the space of less than a year, and the stories of each of their deaths are at the emotional heart of the book.
* Interesting cyber-publishing venture: An Iranian novella is translated thanks to a collaboration between three websites, excerpted and put on sale online. The translator writes about the process here. The story has a stream-of-consciousness, Kafkaesque quality:
When I get to the hotel, the smiling deskman portends bad things and I am right. He gestures to a woman sitting on the couch in a corner of the lobby. And from here, I see only her salt and pepper hair and when I can almost see her profile, she sees me. There is no time to run away. Although I am really tired. I didn’t talk to a woman on the phone and I was not waiting for a woman. My thoughts are lining up. I see her hand come toward me and with no choice I shake her hand and start to say how are you, with no choice, and that is the way of life no choice, apparently. Automatically, without thinking, we go and sit down where the woman had been seated. So quickly you got to know the city.
Good piece on Saudi rehab center, and the story of what Gitmo produces.
Palestinian playwright Amir Nizar Zuabi.
Details on the MB's new leaders.
Review of Shahid Alam's "Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism".
When elected American officials are more loyal to Israel than America.
Good op-ed from a member of Le Journal's staff.
Inanities, reliably funny as always. The linked Tim Sebastian op-ed is just bizarre.
Seymour Hersh's memo from his interview with Bashar al-Assad.
Interesting post on the Whitaker, Massad and now Ibish debate on the notion of gay rights in the Arab world.
On setting a minimum wage in Egypt.
More tokenism from Egypt's anti-normalizers — why don't they join the BDS campaign instead and start harassing Salah Diab and Naguib Sawiris, who do business with Israel?
On a new biography of Egyptian-French-Jewish communist Henri Curiel.
State Dept. on Facebook. Ask them about why Obama lets Bibi humiliate America.
New antiquities law passed after controversy over its restrictions.
The formerly WaPo and now NYT Middle East correspondent Anthony Shadid delivered this lecture at AUB's Issam Fares Institute:
Media, anthonyshadid 
Photograph by Maha Maamoun
One of our favourite art critics, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, reviews one of our favourite writers, Maria Golia, who has just published a book on the history of Egyptian photography, and finds that Photography and Egypt:
..does not even try to jam its subject into an elegant or orderly art-historical narrative. Rather, it traces the development of photography in Egypt over the last 170 years through a chaotic and unruly field of social, political and economic contexts. Golia does not view the medium in isolation, nor does she focus solely on its aesthetic attributes or technological advancements. Instead she considers photography as a dynamic practice whose means and ends cannot be disentangled from the overlapping twists and turns of the country’s history.
Photograph by Hala Elkoussy
Golia also points out how Egypt is connected to the earliest beginnings of photography, and is one of the most photographed landscapes ever. We have been waiting expectantly for this book to come out--how can we get a copy?
Egypt, photography Q: Are you disappointed with Barack Obama?
A: I have been disappointed by Obama in a number of respects. First of all I think it’s worth saying that Obama is still a significant improvement over [George] Bush. There’s been a very notable improvement in presidential rhetoric but a failure to apply that rhetoric in many cases. Obama has given a series of quite inspiring speeches but then has not built a policy around those speeches. In Accra, for example, he distinguished himself from [Bill] Clinton’s policy of embracing the so-called new generation of African leaders that turned out to be authoritarian dictators: Paul Kagame [in Rwanda] or Meles Zenawi [in Ethiopia]. Obama said Africa doesn’t need strong leaders, it needs strong institutions and spoke about the rule of law, free press, independent civil society and the like. That was an excellent message, well-tailored to the audience. But the Obama administration has put very little pressure on Meles or Kagame to reverse their authoritarian trends. Similarly, in Cairo, he talked about the importance of democracy and made clear that, unlike Bush, who promoted democracy until the wrong person won, until Hamas won in the Palestinian territories or until the Muslim Brotherhood did better than expected in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, Obama was going to respect whoever was the victor. It was suggested that he would even respect the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. A very important message but he then did not follow up by pressing [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak to democratise. Mubarak visited the White House and there was no public mention of democracy. There’s been no pressure on the Saudi royal family, no pressure on other autocratic U.S. allies in the Middle East to democratise.
For someone who made a new approach to the Middle East such an integral part of his foreign policy platform, the outcome of a year in power is strikingly meagre. If anything, President Obama's first year has been marked by a surprising lack of leadership on the Middle East. The expectations Obama created about a "new beginning" for America in the region are fast dissipating. While the frustration of the peoples of the Middle East could be of little political significance for the American president, the policy ramifications of missing leadership are not.
On the crown jewel of the region's problems, the protracted Arab- Israeli conflict, Obama's administration failed to come up with a meaningful policy. Unable or unwilling to spend political capital on a showdown with the Israeli rightist government, the administration adopted a hackneyed, stopgap policy. The sterility of its stated goal -- getting Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table -- is plain for all to see. Palestinians and Israelis have been sitting at that table for years; we are all familiar with their endless arguments, complaining and manipulations. Everyone knows that returning them to that table is not going to bring peace or security to either of them, or to the region. But it is a goal that the administration thought attainable and serving to its image at an affordable political price. To add insult to injury, a year has passed without achieving this modest, useless goal. The sense of historic mission of the Cairo speech about reconciling Arab and Jewish narratives has faded, leaving behind a real life-sized political president admitting his earlier miscalculation.
He concludes:
Is this but another complaint by a disappointed Middle Easterner who hoped that Obama would be fair to his region? Not in the least. I don't think that the peoples of the Middle East are politically relevant in this story. They don't vote or fundraise in American elections, they don't take initiative or even help when asked, and they always complain about US policies anyway. What is politically relevant, though, is the consequence of Obama's Middle Eastern choices on the region and on the US standing in it. Inaction and lack of leadership are not a recommended policy for the indispensable superpower. It means passing the initiative to local actors who either advance their own interests regardless of regional stability as a whole, or create crises in order to draw the US back in. In either case, the US administration would be setting itself up for ad hoc reactions. Presidents who choose not to invest in the Middle Eastern quagmire were eventually sucked into it unprepared. This could take the form of another "unexpected" eruption in the Arab-Israeli saga, a "surprise" collapse of a friendly regime, or a major terrorist attack. In a nutshell, every American president who gave the Middle East low priority lived to regret it.
Here I partly disagree, or would go further. The US has an opportunity to redeem itself and re-adjust its involvement in the region by encouraging the emergence of a stable regional order that does not need US initiative to prevent or solve crises. In the long term, this would be the best thing for the region and for the US (in terms of its heavier than necessary footprint in the region and the economic, political and security costs that brings) while still guaranteeing key interests (which should include stable flow of oil and safety of sea traffic, not supporting Israeli expansionism). Obama could have been the president to start this, but instead we see him be half-Carter, half-Bush. What a disappointment.
Obama A new issue of Middle East International is out, with Mustafa Barghouti writing in the leader:
International involvement over the course of an 18-year peace process has not slowed the colonisation of Palestinian land. The number of illegal settlers has risen from 200,000 to 500,000 during this time. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s proposed ‘freeze’ promises to continue this policy. Construction in East Jerusalem will accelerate over the 10-month period, driving record numbers of legitimate residents from their homes. Some 3,000 pre-approved units will be constructed elsewhere in the West Bank and settlement heads have the discretion to build more if they see fit. Public buildings such as schools and synagogues, are excluded from the freeze. After the 10 months are over, the government will revert to the policy of previous administrations which presided over a marked increase in settlements.
Time is running out. We Palestinians must combat these acts of aggression, firstly by creating our own ‘facts on the ground’. The illegal regulations that force us into ghettos and Bantustans in our own lands can no longer be tolerated. Mass non-violent resistance is the answer: through protests like the ‘stop the wall’ campaigns in Bil’in and Ni’lin, where every week unarmed villagers risk their lives to oppose the theft of their land; through building in ‘Area C’ lands that the occupation controls; and through farming the land rendered off-limits by settlements and the Israelis-only roads which connect them. Such actions require the support of an entire population, so differences must be put aside if we are to have any hope of breaking Israel’s stranglehold.
There's tons of great material on Iran's domestic and foreign problems, Iraq's and Sudan's upcoming elections, Turkey's aborted military coup, what the Ethiopian Airlines crash in Beirut says about migration patterns, Bibi Netanyahu's housekeeper, Canada's pro-Israel lobby, David Hirst on the region's two nuclear rogue states — Iran and Israel — and a whole lot more. I have a piece on the rising profile of Egypt's internal security services and another on Arab (and American) attempts at satellite media censorship and what it means in the context of the "regional cold war." Do subscribe to MEI to read all this great stuff, every two weeks!
mei Sameh Sawiris in talks to partner on purchase of Independent newspaper.
Extracts from the book Françalgerie, on the recently deceased mafiosi-general.
By Rachid Khechana [PDF]
Someone punch him again, please.
Active duty CIA agents working for hedge funds. No wonder Bin Laden hasn't been caught and the economy is in a shambles.
Heavy construction activity in last two days.
This shores up the Egyptian claim that weapons are delivered to Gaza by sea rather (or on top of) the tunnels.
WTF?
Oh, the joy of this reporter:
A high level Pakistani diplomat has been rejected as Ambassador of Saudi Arabia because his name, Akbar Zib, equates to "Biggest Dick" in Arabic. Saudi officials, apparently overwhelmed by the idea of the name, put their foot down and gave the idea of his being posted there, the kibosh.
Akbar Zib is no newcomer to politics, in fact you could say he's a pretty big deal. This long-ranging high level diplomat has worked with some of the largest members of world governments, players charged with negotiating the outcome of the world's current events.
Other GCC countries have refused [Ar] his credentials, too. Via Anonymous Arabist.
"The high one built the High Dam; the low one built the Low Barrier"
I have an article on Egypt's underground barrier with Gaza just published at MERIP. It's a bit of a round-up of reactions so far: the criticism by the opposition, the arguments and creative bluster of government officials, the strategies adopted by international and local activists.
A pinch and a punch for the first of the month:
✪ Arabic and the Roman alphabet | Brian Whitaker chimes on the Arabic transliteration debate.
✪ Sunday Afternoon Thoughts: Arabic transliteration « The Moor Next Door | Bottom line, let's not get too anal about it, but be consistent. I agree.
✪ Coptic orgs call for voting against Mubarak in next election | Bikya Masr | Free Copts and American Coptic Assembly goes against the Pope!
✪ Dubai police say Mossad may have killed Hamas chief - Yahoo! News | So let's not hear complaints when there's retribution.
✪ Egypt could face sanctions over sectarianism | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt | Chairman of US Commission on Int. Religious Freedom said Egypt's could be cut over discrimination.
✪ Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | When the alternative is not so different after all | al-Anani on the MB's murky politics.
✪ Mahmoud Abbas: Israel's West Bank occupation leading to one-state solution | World news | The Guardian | Interview with Abu Mazen, still trying to scare the Israelis with talk of one-state solution they perfectly know he's not serious about.
✪ Le jour où l’Egypte a frôlé la catastrophe : foot, télévision et conflits asymétriques | Culture et politique arabes | A very nice post on the politics of Al-Jazeera's purchase of the Orbit sports channel.
✪ Michael Totten: Muslim Arabs hate everybody « the human province | Why do Totten and Smith hate us?
✪ gulfnews : UAE editors back emiratisation of media | Goodbye expat journos? Not likely soon...
✪ Panetta traveled to Israel - Laura Rozen - POLITICO.com | And also to Egypt to meet with Omar Suleiman last week.
✪ In Egypt, Religious Clashes Are Off the Record - NYTimes.com | Slackman reports from Naga Hammadi.
✪ Repopulating an antique land: Egypt’s forbidding Western Desert - The National Newspaper | A look at the New Valley project by Jack Shenker.
Victims of the torrential flooding that inundated the city of Arish two weeks ago in the northern Sinai Peninsula were forced by police to evacuate their makeshift tents during a visit Sunday by First Lady Suzanne Mubarak. The media, meanwhile, was barred from covering the visit, while the road from the airport to municipality headquarters--where Mrs. Mubarak met with the governor of North Sinai--was closed completely. "They left us here with no food or water," said Raqia, who lost her home to the recent floods. "And now they want to move us out."
Over the last two weeks severe floods killed several people in Sinai. Lina Attallah of al-Masri al-Youm has a slideshow up on Flickr of the damage. The paper also has a story that refugees from the floods were moved ahead of a visit by Suzanne Mubarak:
Egypt, floods, sinai, suzannemubarak 
I came across this interesting blog, devoted in part to Saudi Arabia's economics, by Essam al-Zamel [Ar]. In this post he discusses land speculation in Saudi Arabia and its dampening effect on entrepreneurship. The graphic is from his site.
Issandr El Amrani
While on the topic of the Saudi economy, it's worth mentioning a new book by Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, And Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia. I got to talk with Hertog about his book at a conference over a year ago, and it sounds fascinating. Hertog conducted participatory observation in Saudi Arabia by working in a state institution for over a year, gaining unique perspective into Saudi administration and society. According the to publisher's page:
In Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats, the most thorough treatment of the political economy of Saudi Arabia to date, Steffen Hertog uncovers an untold history of how the elite rivalries and whims of half a century ago have shaped today's Saudi state and are reflected in its policies.
Starting in the late 1990s, Saudi Arabia embarked on an ambitious reform campaign to remedy its long-term economic stagnation. The results have been puzzling for both area specialists and political economists: Saudi institutions have not failed across the board, as theorists of the "rentier state" would predict, nor have they achieved the all-encompassing modernization the regime has touted. Instead, the kingdom has witnessed a bewildering mélange of thorough failures and surprising successes.
Hertog argues that it is traits peculiar to the Saudi state that make sense of its uneven capacities. Oil rents since World War II have shaped Saudi state institutions in ways that are far from uniform. Oil money has given regime elites unusual leeway for various institutional experiments in different parts of the state: in some cases creating massive rent-seeking networks deeply interwoven with local society; in others large but passive bureaucracies; in yet others insulated islands of remarkable efficiency. This process has fragmented the Saudi state into an uncoordinated set of vertically divided fiefdoms. Case studies of foreign investment reform, labor market nationalization and WTO accession reveal how this oil-funded apparatus enables swift and successful policy-making in some policy areas, but produces coordination and regulation failures in others.
Murtaza, Sanam and Benazir Bhutto
I am a huge fan of the documentary film-maker Adam Curtis, the author of wonderful films about our times such as The Power of Nightmares, The Trap and The Century of the Self. Curtis recently launched a blog, and in his latest missive he tracks down the parallel rise of Benazir Bhutto and post-Soviet Russian reformist Yegor Gaidar. It's a blog post that feels like one of his documentaries, with their eerie juxtaposition of politics and sociology with footage of ephemera, old newsreels and experimental music.
Make sure you watch the videos, especially the ones of Russian musician Sergey Kuryokhin.
Blogs, adamcurtis My op-ed on the closure of Morocco's Le Journal Hebdomadaire is here, at the Guardian's Comment is Free site. It's a personal appreciation of the role it played in the last decade and a half, as well as a note of concern at the direction Morocco has taken in recent years.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the magazine's closure, and I'm sure more organizations will soon follow suit.
