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Al-Azhar mosque

So Obama is planning to speak in Egypt on June 4, a choice some are saying is a signal that America wants our "autocratic ally" to be a model for other Arab nations. He's rejected the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in favor of Cairo, a move that is considered bold, since anything in Cairo will be harder to secure.

Now the question is finding a venue within Cairo, and there's talk that it may be Al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world and Egypt's center of Islamic learning. Pro: Al-Azhar can hold 1,000 people. Con: What to do with all the shoes?

I doubt this will be the final choice, but I'll be interested how the media in both countries will respond if it is. In Egypt Al-Azhar is the center of state-sponsored Islam; Sheikh Tantawi is known as a mouthpiece of the government, always giving Muslim cover for Mubarak's policy decisions. Obama speaking there would be an endorsement of Mubarak, not the Islamists. But would that be understood in the U.S.? Or would it just be read as Barack HUSSEIN Obama speaking at a mosque?

Short documentary about Cairo's new suburbs and satellite cities

At a time when countries like the U.S. are re-thinking the environmental cost of suburban living, Egypt is just beginning to build green spaces outside its largest city — and in the desert, the environmental toll is potentially even higher than in the U.S. and Europe. But urban areas in the U.S. and Europe don't face the level of overcrowding Cairo does, either. So it's a conflict.

This video is excellent. At almost 24 minutes I know it can't compete with memes and lolcats, which makes me reluctant to even post it, but — related to what I was saying yesterday about Facebook activists, and how America is viewed as neutral to the point of cold in the foreign press — I think it gives a good picture of why American rhetoric about "democracy" rings so hollow in a country like Egypt. We in the U.S. hear "America supports democracy abroad!!ELEVENTY!" so much that it's become a cliche, so much that we assume the government must be just killing themselves doling out of democracy instruction booklets around the world. We complain that their reality doesn't match their rhetoric, but that criticism concedes half the argument — it assumes the rhetoric, at least, is there.

It's not. In Egypt all the American rhetoric about democracy comes with so many caveats and explanations of what's meant by the word "democracy" — explanations Egyptians hear and Americans don't — that no one sees it as 'America failing to live up to its promise' or anything so forgiving. The issue here isn't rhetoric without teeth: it's that no one has been promised democracy in the first place. They've specifically been told that the U.S. will not be promoting democracy if it threatens to come at the expense of stability. Meanwhile American foreign aid dollars are the only thing holding up Mubarak's regime.

The last time I was here hardly anyone had satellite. Obviously, that's changed. I've never had satellite before so I naively believed everyone when they said you could get "everything" on satellite.

This isn't true.

WHAT I WAS EXPECTING: People would be watching all the crap TV we export, including our crap news, including FOX. If someone spoke enough English, and cared enough, they could, in theory, watch all this crap American TV and come to the conclusion that the American people are either bombastic and stupid or decent and well-intentioned but either way they are separate from their government. Which is criminally insane.

WHAT I'VE FOUND INSTEAD: It's the other way around. The government looks smart, the people invisible (at best) or (at worst) in need of guidance from our overlords.

I was thrilled to get CNN International, since it's so much better than the regular CNN and in Boston we only get it for one hour a day. The problem is… it's too good. When Jesse Helms died there were no sappy and embarrassing obituaries, nor any glee from other corners. It was just reported. Here's who he is, he's dead now, moving on to unrest in Pakistan or child soldiers in West Africa. And the John Edwards affair? Only made the scroll on the bottom of the news. If I didn't have internet I would have missed it entirely. (I'm assuming they made more of it at home.) There's none of the joking about politicians, nothing about Bush's gaffes and failed policies. He does stuff and it's reported. Objectively and without context. Like he's a real politician, the kind other countries have.

I never thought I'd miss the underbelly of American media, but after being here for almost two months, watching only CNN and BBC and Al-Jazeera English, I've started seeing the U.S. in a different light. On television, our government looks scary-competent. It looks cold. And the American people — when they are featured at all, which is rare — look like cold and calculating minions of it. We look much more intentional than we really are. "Yes," we are saying to the world (unsmiling), "George Bush is our president. We like him, because he is powerful. We are more powerful than you."

One can, and I probably would, argue that this is closer to The Truth than the Jay Leno/Jon Stewart version of America, where George is a fuck-up who lies and bumbles, but not really Darth Vader, and the American people just kind of got stuck with him ha ha oh well.

Yet this cold version also misses the level and intensity of American opposition. I've gotten frustrated with German friends in the past who are critical of the U.S. government, particularly this administration, but obstinately refuse to acknowledge that I am too, probably way more than they are. But now I can kind of see it, because people who speak for me are not in power, and in this kind of news format, where it's Australia (60 seconds) –> France (30 seconds) –> South Africa (60 seconds) –> U.S. (30 seconds) –> Russia (60 seconds)….. there's no room at all for people like me. So why WOULD they think I exist? They watch the news, right, they're informed? And they don't see me. So my opposition looks like a defensive posture I'm adopting only because I'm under fire, in the moment, rather than the thing that drives me every day of my life.

It's making me re-think some of my reactions to Egyptian, and more broadly Middle Eastern, reactions to American policy. If you imagine an America with NO Left — not an ineffectual, underfunded, oppressed, or just generally embarrassing Left, the kind we complain about to each other, but literally NO Left, no anti-racist movement, no religions outside of God-told-me-to Crusader Christianity, no voices at all other than those of 5 or 6 politicians who are photographed disembarking from airplanes — I can see why it probably seems hopeless that anyone could ever deal with us. And maybe it really is! That's not my point. My point is that at home I feel American opposition and diversity. Here, I don't see it.

I meant to post this earlier — two articles about how young people in Egypt have been using Facebook as an organizing vehicle (interesting!), and how the government has responded (imprisonment!).

Virtual politics

A tool to mobilise?

"Foreign embassies follow up on these blogs and groups and report back to their countries," said Yassin. But most, if not all, of the bloggers' posts distort and misrepresent reality. "They send the wrong information about Egypt to the world," he claimed. Councilor Murad Hassan went further, insisting they deliberately manipulated facts, circulated fabricated pictures, and magnified individual incidents to mislead public opinion. "In addition, the kind of language they use to express their opinions is unsuitable and strange to our society," Hassan told Al-Ahram Weekly.

I said, before I even came here, that I was amazed how popular Facebook is in Egypt. Now that I'm here I've seen firsthand how common it is — even with people as old as me — to end conversations with "Are you on Facebook?" rather than "What's your phone number?" or "What's your e-mail?" I've started doing it myself.

I'm still not sure why it's so big. (One woman told me it was because "we're Arabs – we'll chat for hours with anybody about nothing." Ha.) But I think a real reason is that people are so mobile, especially with going back and forth to the Gulf. And Europe and elsewhere abroad, but especially to the Gulf, which is something members of all classes do. (Europe etc. is more of an upper-class thing.) On Facebook your information stays stable, even if your address and phone number change two or three times a year. And the 'groups' feature lends itself to organizing in a way that's less risky than it would be in Real Life.

This has been going on for several months now. It'll be interesting to see what comes of it.

ETA: rfmcdpei adds more links on this.

I hate haggling. In the movies it looks so easy. He wants $400 for that carpet; you offer him $50; after some charming banter in broken English you settle for maybe $125 and both of you walk away feeling like you got a deal. What's missing there is the pervasiveness of it, and the level of dignity at stake in every minor encounter.

Today the bowab came upstairs with a top of mine that had fallen off the clothesline on my balcony. I thanked him profusely, he was very nice, and then said he wanted money. I thought that was strange, because people don't usually ASK to be tipped for small favors like that, but whatever so I gave him a few pounds.

He took it and I started to shut the door and then he called me back. No, he said, it's the first of the month and he wanted his monthly fee. "Adil has it," I told him. (Adil is his brother, the regular doorkeeper; this guy is filling in for a few weeks while Adil is in Aswan.) No, he repeats, this is the first of the month. I need to pay again. "Adil I pay two month," I tell him. No, that was only one month's fee. I pretend not to understand. He knows I'm lying and goes to get the landlord, who lives upstairs.

Seriously? I don't care. We're arguing over $10, which I'm more than happy to pay to a guy who really needs it, who is going to be the first person I scream for if I encounter an intruder (or, more likely, a gecko), and the guy who can potentially make my life really difficult if he decides he doesn't like me.* But when I first got this place I was told by others that the bowab fee I was being quoted was outrageous, more than twice what they normally charge, and that my landlords were probably trying to scam me by making me pay their fee, too. I was told I absolutely under no circumstances should pay this sum again in August, because if I do the landlords will think I'm a gullible foreigner and charge me more for furniture they'll claim I damaged when I move out, or make me overpay the electricity bill.

They have a point. Yesterday the garbage guy came and asked me for the trash fee, which he claimed was twenty pounds. But then my neighbor across the hall opened his door and he told him it was five pounds. "Eh?!" I said. "He five pounds, me twenty?" Okay, he said, he'd charge me five, too. Since I mentioned it. And because that IS the going fee I wanted to shriek, but I let it go, because I wasn't as mad as I was stunned that I'd actually successfully bargained for something.

So I feel the need to do this with the bowab and the landlord, too, at least for the sake of appearances. I'm not worried about losing ten dollars, or honestly even being overcharged for the electricity bill, which is pretty cheap here, too, but I AM worried about being one of those horrible Americans who just goes around dripping cash everywhere without arguing, not realizing that that can be just as offensive as failing to tip at all. When every interaction is loaded with the expectation of future favors being granted or rescinded, a dollar is never just a dollar. You overpay this guy now, it means he owes you later. Do that too much and you're building up a mountain of obligations the other person can never hope to reciprocate, thereby solidifying your dominance over him. Some people thrive on that dynamic, and do it on purpose, making sure they're never the one who owes, only the one who's owed. There's a fine line there between "noble and generous" and "asshole." Since I never know where that line is, these situations always stress me out.

Another example: a few days ago I got a Coke from the kiosk. I took it out of the cooler, paid for it, drank it, and returned the bottle. I've done this hundreds of times and never thought twice about it. This time, the friend I was with discreetly told me what I've been doing is mildly offensive. I should drink it first, then return the bottle, and then pay for it, and that I should hand over the money in a low-key way. I had been treating this as An Official Financial Transaction, you-give-me-soda = I-give-you-cash, but culturally I should have been pretending that they were happy to host me and that the money I give them is just sort of a tip or an expression of appreciation; an afterthought. To be so obvious about paying for something made me seem rude and unappreciative of their hospitality. That would never in a million years have occurred to me if someone hadn't pointed it out. I can see it now, but before it would have seemed like "here, I'm just helping myself to your stuff, and I'll pay you on my own terms, servant."

I met a guy the other day originally from Guatemala but now living in L.A. who finally got his citizenship and was celebrating his right to leave the country by traveling around the world. He wanted to know how much a cab from the airport was. I told him twenty pounds. He said okay, I got screwed. I said yeah but I don't think it's malevolent? It's like there's a sliding scale operating all over the country; you're charged by what it's assumed you can afford. Tourism is a major industry and we're how a lot of people earn their living. He agreed with this.

But that only works if you're here for a couple weeks, if it's understood you don't know A from B, and if there's no expectation of an ongoing relationship. What confuses me more is the shopkeeper around the corner who saw me admiring some skirts in his window the other night. He invited me to have tea with him and his nephews. Do I politely refuse, not wanting to put him out? Or do I politely accept, not wanting to turn down his hospitality? Am I _expected_ to buy something afterwards, or does he merely hope I will?

We start to chat and it turns out he's really nice, a lovely older man who speaks English with a slight British accent. I tell him my father's coming in two weeks and he wants to take us to see whirling dervishes and the mosque near the Khan, even invites us to his house in Alexandria. If I take him up on this, which I'd actually like to do, how do I go about paying him? To say how much do you charge? would be unthinkable; we're having tea; we're pretending we're friends. On the other hand I would rather pay him directly than to waste half an afternoon being pressured to buy something from his friend of a friend who will slyly give him a kickback from my purchase while he carries on with the charade that he's doing this out of pure generosity. It feels cheap and cynical to worry about that, but stupid and naive not to.

So how to address it? When X's sister paid the driver she hired for the day she made me get out of the car before she did so because the conversation was so awkward she didn't want to embarrass him any more than was strictly necessary, or maybe she was worried I'd say something stupid. Neither of them wanted to admit our pleasant day driving around town had, at root, been a matter of us hiring him, that our whole facade of a relationship was in fact marked by hierarchy.

Americans don't care. They'll say right out loud HOW MUCH DOES THAT COST? like they can buy their way into anyone's good graces. What's troubling is that in a third world economy like this one, they often can. But that doesn't mean anyone's in love with that dynamic.

In the end I paid the bowab. Of course. And now I'm all worried anyway that I argued with him in the first place. Do I look miserly? Ungrateful? I'm especially embarrassed that I gave him a few pounds for bringing my top upstairs. I honestly thought that's what he wanted, but now I know I look like I was shitting on his good deed by giving him this tiny amount of money for it, which said both "I'm paying off my obligation to you" and "that obligation is worth almost nothing to me, or I would have given you more."

I could, no lie, spend my entire summer torturing myself over things like this.

* This article's tone is offensive. The information is basically true, though. Kitty was deported once because her bowab fed someone in power information about the number of men she was entertaining in her apartment.

Friday I went to see a movie. I've seen American movies in Egyptian theaters and Egyptian movies in my American house, as well as here of course, but this was my first time watching an Egyptian movie in an Egyptian theater. Suddenly I understand the parts that feel cheesy or over-the-top when you're sitting alone in your living room — it's a completely different experience watching it in a theater, where 200 people are laughing with you. (It's like how I don't get people who own Rocky Horror and watch at home, by themselves.) I wonder it's the same with Bollywood movies?

The movie was Hassan and Markus, with Omar Sharif and Adel Imam. Omar Sharif played a Muslim cleric who denounced Islamism, had his house firebomed, and was put into some kind of witness protection program where he was given a Christian identity. Adel Imam played a Christian who denounced pro-Christian violence, had his car blown up, and was put into the same program, posing as a Muslim. They unwittingly move into apartments across the hall from each other and their families become friends, each thinking they are "secretly" the same religion as the other. Wacky hijinks ensue.

Best line: After a building is blown up in a terrorist attack, some government PR guy trying to do damage control has a meeting with the press and says, "We are happy to report 75 were killed, all of them Egyptians! Not a single foreigner was harmed in this event!" The audience was rolling.

I really liked it and thought it was funny, but it was definitely a "message" film, with the Muslim (but really Christian) saving the lives of the wife and daughter of the Christian (but really Muslim) at the end, after their house is set on fire, and ending with both families bravely walking arm-in-arm through a riot scene between Muslims and Christians who are all screaming "Allahu akbar!" and "We will die for the cross!" and beating each other with sticks.

Not that I'm intolerant of "message" films. I was raised on afterschool specials, after all. But this one had a too-tight equation of the Muslim and Christian experience in Egypt, which I think is apples and oranges in a lot of ways. Coptic Christians are facing persecution for their religion, i.e. as minorities. Muslims' complaints against the government are broader, and more political than religious, though they take an Islamist form and use Islamist rhetoric. To go from one scene of the Muslim trying to muddle through a Christian prayer to another of the Christian trying to muddle through a Muslim prayer, and so on over and over, ignores the different social and economic position of both groups, in Egypt and internationally, reducing everything to a matter of faith and fanaticism, full stop. Maybe there was more I was missing because my Arabic is so bad and it wasn't subtitled, but I don't think so.

Although, as I said, I did like it. Especially because I like Adel Imam.

Lila Abu-Lughod has some good articles on the way Egypt, through its government-controlled media (which includes the censorship of film), has controlled the portrayal of Islam and Islamists. She's worth looking up if you have access to a university library.

1.

An Egyptian scratched Aladdin's lamp and a genie emerged, offering him a wish.

"I wish for a bridge to the United States," the Egyptian said.

"Hmm," the genie said. "That's much too difficult. Can you wish for something else?"

"Okay," the Egyptian said. "Then I wish for Hosni Mubarak to be out of power."

"Hmm," the genie said. "Would you like the bridge to be one lane, or two?"

======

2.

Mubarak is sitting with [presidential chief of staff] Zakaria Azmi and asks him, "Who is a better leader, me or Gamal Abdl-Nasser?"

"Well, you," Azmi says. "Nasser feared the Russians."

"Good," Mubarak says. "Then who is a better leader, me or Anwar Sadat?"

"Well, you," Azmi says. "Sadat feared the Americans."

"Good," Mubarak says. "Then who is a better leader, me or Omar ibn al-Khattab?"

"Well, you," Azmi says. "Omar feared God."

( credit )

Another bombing in Egypt.

This time in Dahab. Dahab is (or least was?) a hippie "resort" on the Sinai Peninsula. I never went there, but I had so many friends who did, most of them Egyptians. Dahab had hotels that were basically thatched roofs on poles, with sandy floors. For two dollars management would give you a bamboo mat for your bed; bring your own water. In the mid-90s one guy I knew wrote an article for Cairo Today about whether the concept of Generation X applied to Egyptians. Fittingly, he did all his research in Dahab. Egypt's only tattoo artist also lived and worked there. After a few years he quit tattooing women, a concession to his mother on her deathbed. Wish I remembered his name.

Maybe it sounds annoying from afar, but I always saw that city as a rare example of cross-cultural melding that didn't, for once, involve the crushing ubiquity of corporate interests. I understand the politics of hippie tourism can be just as problematic as the regular kind, and maybe I'm biased because the only folks I knew who went there weren't foreigners. But the idea of it, the way my friends talked about it, embodied something I liked, a lot, about Egypt. That and Siwa are the two places I regret skipping.

Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim

During his time in Egyptian custody, Mr. Libi was among a group of what American officials have described as about 150 prisoners sent by the United States from one foreign country to another since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks for the purposes of interrogation. American officials including Ms. Rice have defended the practice, saying it draws on language and cultural expertise of American allies, particularly in the Middle East, and provides an important tool for interrogation.

"Cultural expertise" — you mean torture, right? Oh, no no:

They have said that the United States carries out the renditions only after obtaining explicit assurances from the receiving countries that the prisoners will not be tortured.

Hmm. Let's read on.

Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the United States, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he had no specific knowledge of Mr. Libi's case. Mr. Fahmy acknowledged that some prisoners had been sent to Egypt by mutual agreement between the United States and Egypt. "We do interrogations based on our understanding of the culture," Mr. Fahmy said. "We're not in the business of torturing anyone."

Now, maybe Mr. Fahmy is speaking here in the Clintonian sense. They're not in the business of torturing anyone, as in they don't hang a sign on the door that says "Pesky fingernails getting in your way? Not enough electricity in your genitalia? Torture! Available now! Year-end close-out sale on all the latest coercion techniques! Hurry while supplies last!" Maybe he means that, in Egypt, torture is one of the few things not yet privatized, though if the World Bank has its way I'm sure they'll get around to that eventually.

On the other hand, if we take a more global view, I'd say that's exactly what Egypt is in the business of doing. When the U.S. outsources interrogation, where is it going to go? Norway? There's a reason Egypt is the second-largest recipient of American aid, and it's not so much because the Americans are worried about 5-year-old Ali getting enough Vitamin B.

Nevertheless, we, as in Americans, still like to think of torture as aberrant, a shameful secret, because although we know our own government "crosses the line" sometimes (like my euphemism?), we understand that when such information comes to light it should involve hearings, investigations, and the rolling of heads. This is why names like "Abu Ghraib" and "Rodney King" are used in conjunction with the word "scandal," even by those who aren't surprised.

Contrast that with the time an Egyptian friend of mine had to stop by the local police station in Cairo to do some paperwork. The errand took longer than he expected because the cops were busy beating a man they'd picked up for having sex with another man. They left him bloody on the floor of his cell and might have continued until he was dead, but the line was backing up out front and they had other work to do. My friend got his papers signed and left. He did not report the incident, because there was no one to report such things to, and even if there had been it would only serve to implicate himself. He'd seen that kind of thing before and knew there was nothing you could do about it. Such is life in a police state.

Keep in mind these were junior cops in a random cop shop in Cairo, not members of the intelligence hand-picked by the Americans to interrogate members of Al-Qaeda. Does Condoleeza Rice seriously expect us to believe that suspected terrorists in a back room are going to get a warmer, more welcoming treatment than Random Gay Guy gets in full view of the public at large? Why are they even continuing with this charade, saying we don't export terror, no, we're only interested in the Egyptians' "cultural expertise"? If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Egyptians (and the torture victims) have no recourse to complain about the situation, and Americans don't care.

In other Egypt news, the Muslim Brotherhood made record gains in Egypt's parliamentary election last week, despite violence at the polls which left at least six dead as the government tried to prohibit Islamist sympathizers from voting. ([Pictures])

Meanwhile Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran.

I'm so glad the world is safer for democracy.

I've heard a few people say (not viciously, just honestly) that they can't or don't keep up with news of violence in the Middle East because there's always violence in the Middle East and so, quite reasonably, an event like the Sharm El-Sheikh bombing doesn't carry the same OMG-ness as the same event happening in London. And I get that.

But at the same time people are asking "why Egypt?" and it upsets me that the press isn't contextualizing this. It's being treated as yet another tragic loss of life, which of course it is, but ultimately a footnote to London: All this violence! It's just terrible! What is the world coming to!

There's no acknowledgment that Egypt's fate is wrapped up with our own, and I don't mean that in a generic "we are all brothers on this ball called Earth" kind of way. I mean it as in Egypt is considered the first place grand prize for al-Qaeda and its sympathizers. Destabilizing America and its economy via 9/11 was an attempt to make the U.S. re-think its support for this and other corrupt regimes in the Middle East (as opposed to some kind of commentary on our culture or lifestyle — if that were true, they would have bombed Las Vegas). And while it would be nice for Bin Laden et. al. if Tunisia or Qatar swung Islamist, it's Egypt and Saudi Arabia that they're really after.*

They've made no secret of this. None. That's what it's been about from the beginning. These are the two most influential countries in the Middle East, and at present both are deeply in bed with America, which might be an afterthought except that America is deeply in bed with Israel and has spent the last 15 years crushing Iraq. Al-Qaeda has no hope or interest in turning Western countries into Islamic theocracies. But this is absolutely their intention in Egypt. Fucking with us is a means to that end, not the other way around, so if anything is going to send FOX News into a fit of paranoia it should be the escalation of violence in Sinai, not the bombings in London.

But isn't "escalation" just another name for "same shit, different day"? From an ideological perspective yes, but from a tactical perspective no. Several radical groups split from the Muslim Brotherhood after the Brothers denounced violence in the 1970s; among them were Islamic Jihad, who assassinated Sadat, and al-Gamayya al-Islamiyya, who began targeting Egypt's tourism industry in 1992. Contrary to popular opinion, tourists were not targeted for their quote-unquote "immorality"**, but because tourism is a major industry in Egypt and provides the country with one of its primary sources of foreign currency, which Egypt needs to pay back its foreign debt and thus be eligible for more loans and American aid (which it in turn needs to continue propping up its otherwise incapacitated economy). Destabilize the tourist industry, in other words, and you destabilize Mubarak's regime, which is utterly dependent on it. Between 1992 and 1997 there was a string of attacks aimed at tourists and tourist targets, culminating with the Luxor massacre. Tourism did in fact drop, though probably not as much as the Islamists would have liked.

Of course Mubarak, dictator that he is, responded to these attacks in kind, by indiscriminately rounding up and torturing those believed to be associated with the Islamists. This silenced some elements of the movement and invigorated others. An uneasy truce was finally declared after the Luxor massacre and after a time al-Gamayya al-Islamiyya was presumed crushed, its followers either dead, imprisoned, or reformed. But there was a smaller, fourth contingent, too: those who slipped out of Egypt and began training in Afghanistan. They became America's problem in 2001.

Remarkably, though, there were still no major incidents in Egypt, in spite of the growing anti-Western sentiment following the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the continued parade of human rights abuses by the Egyptian government for everything from "tarnishing Egypt's image abroad" to reports of gay activity and Satanism. (Apparently the gays, the Satanists, and the image-tarnishers are not much for blowing things up.) That changed with the Taba bombing*** last October, which was the first terrorist incident in Egypt since Luxor seven years earlier. With that the country reverted back to the Bad Old Days, including the imprisonment of over 2,500 Egyptians who might have been involved, or knew someone who was, or knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who was. As the Western press was falling all over itself praising Mubarak (and by extension Bush) for introducing the possibility of democracy in Egypt (which was overstated anyway) Mubarak was overseeing the illegal detention and torture of thousands of its citizens, a fact that the Americans conveniently chose to overlook. The Sharm El-Sheikh bombing, which coincided with the first day of the Taba trial, was in part a retaliation for this sweep. This is the biggest terrorist attack in Egyptian history**** and more proof that revolutionary Islam, a movement thought crushed in 1997, is making a comeback in the largest and most politically powerful country in the Arab world. It also once again floats the fundamental question — common to Iraq and Algeria — over how a country can achieve full democracy when a slim majority or large minority advocates a form of Islamic rule that is inherently undemocratic. So far the most popular compromise seems to be "initiate human and civil rights in every corner except where they involve women," but I'm not satisfied with that answer.

What bugs me most, though? Americans have no language to talk about modern terrorism except through the lens of personal fear. So you can never ever discuss the subject, lest someone think you fell asleep in statistics class and are afraid for your own life, and that's, like, the dorkiest thing ever, worse than reading The Hardy Boys in elementary school or cross-stitching something that says "Bless This House" and hanging it in your living room. That leaves us talking about it in terms of tragedy, which of course it is, and discussing the possible civil liberties issues these events might raise, as of course we should, but as long as an attack like this gets written off as more of the same, *sigh* its real foreign policy implications will be ignored and remain unchallenged. Which is the sort of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

* Actually reclaiming Palestine is the first place grand prize, but the cooperation of Egypt is considered rucial to this process.
** Although I'm sure there was no love lost there, either. There HAVE been isolated cases of soldiers shooting at Israeli sunbathers in Sinai, but these are not generally considered part of any organized terror campaign.
*** In addition to its connection to the tourist industry, Sinai is significant because it's still controlled under the terms of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, which among other things limits the police force Egypt can maintain there. Diaaudin Dawood, chairman of the Nasserist Democratic Party, said, "It is indeed a no man's land as it falls under Israeli-termed peace agreements that emasculate Egyptian control over the region."
**** Well, recent history anyway. Egypt has a lot of history.

Egyptians beat those who don't vote in favor of "democracy."

I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to work that way.

The recent fawning in the American media over "democracy" coming to Egypt — maybe Bush was right all along! — is some of the most uncritical press I've heard in the last few months. I'm happy Mubarak is taking this step, seriously. It's always nice to be thrown a bone. But the omg it's just like the fall of the Berlin Wall!!11! comparisons are premature, at best.

Constitutional Change
By Paul Schemm and Lina Atallah

Soon after the euphoria following the announcement that Egyptians would be able to choose their presidents for the first time ever, activists and opposition politicians began to question how different the new system really is.

On 2 March, the parliament's constitutional affairs committee drew up a framework for the amendment, including conditions for presidential candidates. The results have been almost universally condemned by the opposition and independent political commentators.

"We refuse to go back to the referendum system from a back door," roared a headline in the opposition daily Al Wafd a day later.

The new conditions require candidates to have the support of a certain percentage of elected parliamentarians or members of the local councils in the governorates. The obvious problem for the opposition here is that currently 80 percent of the parliament is controlled by the ruling party, along with the vast majority of local councils. In fact the government itself, in the form of presidential chief of staff Zakariya Azmi, once described the councils as riddled with corruption. (more)

+ + +

Any Takers?
By Ursula Lindsey

Even though the constitution is being changed to allow them to field candidates for presidential elections this fall, most parties and opposition groups have serious reservations regarding whether it will be in their power, or their interest, to run.

President of liberal Al Wafd Party Noman Gomaa says he has reached no decision regarding his own possible candidature. “I have no answer currently. It’s not easy to say. It’s a decision to take in the month of May when the text [of the amendment] is published. There are voices and opinions in the party… saying we should present ourselves, take the opportunity to try, but it’s not decided yet.”

Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, a member of parliament for Al Wafd, says he will advise the party not to present a candidate. “It has never been in the minds of Egyptian politicians to be able to challenge the president,” he says, “and as a result political parties do not have the means—financial, physical, organizational—to do so.”

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Growing anger at arrests
With thousands said to be still detained without charges in the post-Taba crackdown, the situation in Sinai remains tense, reports Mustafa El-Menshawy

Although Arish, the capital of North Sinai, appears calm, tensions are palpable just beneath the surface. Police patrols and checkpoints seem far too frequent for such a sleepy beach town, and most people are unusually nervous about talking to strangers. Almost every week, dozens of people stage a sit-in after Friday prayers demanding that their relatives — detained after last October's Taba blasts — be released.

The blasts were blamed on nine suspects, all from North Sinai — two were killed in the attacks, two others died after clashes with police, and the five remaining are in custody. According to human rights groups, however, some 2,400 local residents have also been detained; local and international human rights groups have said many of them have been subjected to "brutal torture".

"My husband has been detained since October, and I [was] only [allowed to] visit him this week at the state security office in Cairo. He looked pale and ill, and complained that he had been brutally beaten by the interrogators," Sabha Turefi told Al-Ahram Weekly. "He said he had been blind-folded, with his hands tied behind his back, and stripped down to his underpants despite the cold. He complained about being electrocuted, and hung by his hands from the door for hours," the traumatised 25-year-old wife said, in tears.

She said her husband had done nothing wrong; in any case, the authorities have at no point indicated what, if any, charges these individuals were being held on. Turefi said her husband's offence was that he was "bearded. Can you imagine?"

Others who were detained and released told similar stories of interrogations accompanied by torture, including electrocution. Those who had not been tortured said they had heard screaming, or saw security forces inflicting pain on other detainees.

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Opening the window
By Amira Howeidy

The New York-based international rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), released a 43-page report on Tuesday documenting mass arrests and torture in Sinai following the 7 October bombings at the Taba Hilton and two Sinai tourist camps, which killed 34 people, and injured 159.

Two weeks after the bombings, the Interior Ministry identified the assailants as nine Sinai residents; five were in custody, two were killed in the attack, and two remained at large. The ministry said the ringleader — one of the two suspects killed during the bombings — was Iyad Said Salah, a Palestinian with a criminal record who had turned to Islamist extremism, provoked by the Israeli incursion into Rafah at the time into carrying out the attack. Although the ministry announced that the investigation now boiled down to a hunt for the two remaining suspects, subsequent events revealed a far wider security operation was actually taking place.

At least three Egyptian human rights groups documented that mass arrests continued until early December. According to these groups, 2,500 to 3,000 people were detained without charges. The impact of this revelation, made just two months ago, was short lived, limited to a few reports in the opposition press; other news — from the release of an Israeli spy to Coptic-Muslim tension in Upper Egypt — soon drove the story into the background.

Joe Stork, the Washington-based director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa division, told Al-Ahram Weekly that Egyptian human rights groups had "opened a brief window" on the case, "then it was shut again. We are trying to open the window." Stork wrote HRW's Mass Arrests and Torture in Sinai report, and carried out its research with Ahmed Seif El-Islam, director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, and Aida Seif El-Dawla, chair of the Egyptian Association Against Torture.

They visited Sinai in mid-December for two days, interviewing former detainees, and eyewitnesses to arrests in Al-Arish. In every one of the score of cases HRW investigated, the State Security Investigation (SSI) apparatus had detained individuals without informing them of the reason why. They were usually arrested in pre- dawn raids (many during the month of Ramadan), and those who were picked up were usually held for three days to one week without being charged. While some were released, most were transferred to Tora prison in Cairo and Damanhour Prison in the Nile Delta, the report said. Most of the detainees were Islamists, or thought to be. "This suggests that the official statement [issued by the Interior Ministry on the Sinai bombings] did not fully reflect the investigation into the attacks," the report said, "or that the government was using the occasion to carry out a much broader crackdown against potential opponents, particularly identified as having Islamist sympathies."

HRW said it interviewed several former detainees who provided "credible accounts of torture" at the hands of SSI investigators; others spoke of seeing other detainees who had been badly tortured. The report included horrifying testimonies from two of the detainees. 26-year- old Hamid Batrawi, whose four brothers were already in custody, was arrested on 22 November while driving from Al-Arish to southern Sinai. He was taken to a police station near Suez, and then transferred to the SSI headquarters there. Upon his arrival, the SSI officers asked why he had not mentioned that his brothers had been arrested. He was then stripped to his underpants, his hands tied behind his back, and hung by his hands from the top of an iron door, "causing excruciating pain to his shoulders". With his toes just touching the floor, which was wet, wires were attached to his toes and underpants. He was then beaten with a hose, and administered jolts of electricity every couple of minutes; the shock intensified when his toes rested on the wet floor. This continued for about four and a half hours, after which he was transferred to Suez hospital. When Seif El-Dawla visited him in hospital, she said he could not talk, see or walk.

The second detainee, Abdel-Nour Sayed (not his real name) was picked up from his home at 3am on 18 October; he was held with 200 other detainees for six days in small rooms with no toilet facilities. He told HRW that he was tortured during his first interrogation session upon the orders of a man "who did not speak" and who "was not Egyptian".

Although the report does not address the possible involvement of non-Egyptian interrogators, Sayed's words re-triggered questions about the nature of Israel's role in the investigation. Egypt allowed the Israeli army to enter the area immediately after the bombings to help with rescue operations, official statements at the time said.

Mass Arrests and Torture in Sinai was released during a well-attended press conference at the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre; significantly, around a dozen female relatives of the detainees had come to Cairo from Sinai for the event.

Iman Ahmed Himdan said that security forces stormed her house looking for her husband Ahmed Abdallah Himdan, who was at large. "When they didn't find my husband at home, they took my 16-year-old brother, and started threatening him, and calling him indecent names," Himdan, who wears a black niqab (face veil), said. "The police didn't know I was Ahmed's wife, but when I saw my little brother go through this, I was provoked, and shouted, 'I'm Ahmed's wife, leave my brother alone.' So they took both of us," she told the Weekly. The couple had only been married for three months, and Himdan was two months pregnant. "We were taken to the SSI north Sinai headquarters. My brother was blindfolded, stripped, and beaten severely. Both of us were threatened with electrocution if we didn't tell them where my husband was. We were held for a week, during which I had a nervous breakdown, and an abortion." Himdan and her brother were only released when her husband handed himself in. He's still in custody, she said.

Himdan's cousin, Samah Abu Shita, had a similar experience when police stormed her house "from the window, the balcony and door", during which they stepped on her four-month-old baby girl, and broke one of her ribs. "Our men have done nothing but live as committed, practicing Muslims; they have nothing to do with any illegal activity, and they haven't been charged with anything," she said. Her husband and four brothers have been in custody since November. According to the HRW report, only 100 detainees have been released; some 2,400 remain in detention.

Other victims of the post-Taba bombing security crackdown include the director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, Ahmed Seif El-Islam, who told reporters at Tuesday's press conference that his house was broken into, and his laptop stolen, at around the same time that the centre issued its initial report on the Sinai arrests. "Back then I thought it was just a burglary," he said. But then, on Monday 21 February, his house was broken into again — this time in broad daylight at noon. His new laptop was stolen, and all of his papers thoroughly searched. "I got the message," he said, "and this is my reply: I will not be silenced, and I will gladly give my blood for freedom."

The press conference fell into a shocked silence.

"There is this disregard, this lawlessness, on the part of the security services that even goes beyond the emergency law, that the authorities have not addressed," Stork told the Weekly. "They have not investigated these abuses, as far as we know, or prosecuted anybody. This issue of impunity is a very important one."

Since December, Stork's requests to meet with Egyptian officials have been ignored; only on the eve of the press conference, on Monday at "midnight", was he informed that he would be meeting with officials at the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor-General.

In what appears to be a coordinated government reaction to the HRW report, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday taking issue with HRW for not notifying the authorities in advance about the report, "to allow time for a studied response". That HRW issued this report based on fieldwork, the statement said, "demonstrates Egypt's openness and transparency in human rights issues". It rejected HRW's recommendation that the Egyptian government cancel the emergency law, arguing that only the "Egyptian people have the legitimate right to end the emergency law though their representatives in parliament".

It said that only five people were held in custody in connection with the Taba bombings.