The Skeptic الشكاك

70 Jill Freed

Thank God. At last, Jill Carroll has been freed. I think I mentioned here that we had dinner together a few times when she was in Cairo last summer, and that I became an instant admirer of hers. She puts every journalist who strikes a world-weary, cynical pose to shame with the strength of her convictions, her courage, and her sincere love for the Iraqi people. I don’t pray often, but I prayed for her release. And I was gratified to find that her case had become a big cause in the United States when I visited New York last week. Even my old boss was distributing these pins, with chocolates, from her desk.

The BBC says Jill is being cared for in the Green Zone. I hope the soldiers will let her go soon so she can join the parties at the journalist hotels. I hope to throw a party for her here in Cairo, but not before she goes home to see her family. I’m looking forward to giving her one of these pins.
[tags]Jill Carroll, Iraq[/tags]

69 Bye-bye, Bibi

While we’re on the subject of The Entity, I should note what strikes me as the first good news to come out of that neck of the woods in as long as I can remember: Kadima and Labor trounced Likud, Netanyahu and the rest of the Greater Israel gang in the elections.

I hate talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I hate thinking about it. I decided long ago that the less I think about it, the healthier I will be.

But I grudgingly recognize it’s important. I’ll even recognize that it’s important to understand Israeli politics. So from time to time I talk to an American Zionist, neocon reporter I know here and try to pump him for insights into Israeli politics. He portrayed the election results as the final political death of the notion of a Greater Israel. Israeli voters, he said, emphatically sent the message that they want the settlements dismantled. Yes, the disengagement would be unilateral, but the “peace process” wasn’t working, and Israeli voters said the current situation could not continue while politicians (and now Hamas politicians) tried or didn’t try to get it back on track. He further said that he expects Netanyahu’s paper tiger to be crumpled now. Previously, he represented the right-wing of the ruling Likud party, and it wasn’t clear (in Washington, anyway) if Israeli voters shared his views. Now his hand has been tipped, and he’s got nothing.

You know what? He’s right. True, the disengagement plan cannot be a final solution. True, it’s not a state. True, life will still be miserable for the Palestinians. But it’s a step in the right direction. Negotiate the next steps. How can any sane person see the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank as a bad thing? Let’s be realistic: a fair, negotiated peace deal wasn’t on the horizon. Perhaps it’s still not. But it may be closer now.

[tags]Israel, elections, Netanyahu[/tags]

68 Some Old Gossip

In the end, Seif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, the Colonel’s son and probable successor, is a lot more interesting than Gamal. If you haven’t heard, he’s been dating Israeli actress Orly Weinerman. She plans to convert to Islam and marry him. Seif al-Islam is also on record as saying Israel doesn’t represent a threat to Libya’s security.

I was going to blog this story when the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv first broke it in January, creating a minor splash (see, for example, The News of Pakistan, and Al-Hayat), but didn’t?in part because a Human Rights Watch report on a host of human-rights violations in Libya released around the same time made Seif al-Islam’s love live seem frivolous, and in part because Ma’ariv discontinued its English site and their Hebrew site’s advertising cookies crashed my Web browser.

But it’s almost April now, and I’m astonished to find that so many people still haven’t heard about this. Even those same HRW researchers who were invited to Libya by Seif al-Islam’s NGO hadn’t heard about it. So yes, if you’d been blissfully ignorant of Seif al-Islam’s love life, sorry. You can now imagine Qaddafi’s son romancing an attention-starved Israeli actress in Italy. Or imagine her saying the Shahada.

[tags]Israel, Libya, Seif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, Qaddafi, Orly Weinerman[/tags]

67 Baheyya for President

The government newspapers ran front-page items yesterday and terrestrial TV ran advertisements all day. In this desert country, the skies opened and lighting streaked across the sky just before the event began (“At least the dust will be washed away tomorrow,” I optimistically told one guy in an elevator. “There will be no tomorrow,” he replied, “this is the Last Day”). It was as dramatic a build-up as anyone could have asked for. A half-dozen foreign journalists and researchers representing some of the most prestigious news outlets and think-tanks in the world gathered in my apartment to watch TV with tape recorders and notebooks at the ready. And then they fell asleep.

Gamal Mubarak, in his first live television interview, said absolutely nothing for more than two hours. It was bathetic. As in Arabish for pathetic, and in the dictionary definition of the word.

While everyone else milled about in the kitchen or snored on the couch, only one wire reporter continued to strain dutifully to catch every word, looking for that stray sentence that might elevate the interview to a news event, his computer on in the corner in case he needed to file that night. Asked, at the end of the interview, if he would be filing the next day, he said, “I doubt it.”

A long question about a new constitution and a boldly sarcastic “Allah yekhelik” from the editor of the opposition newspaper Al-Misry al-Youm briefly raised a few eyebrows, but soon the eyebrows, and the eyelids, started drooping again. Worse, Magdi was upstaged (intentionally?) by the 11-year-old girl who called right after him to ask what Gamal liked to do in his spare time (he likes football and squash, he likes spending time with his family, they’re very close, they’re just like everyone else).

Ostez Gamal, under brutal questioning from his father’s campaign advisor Lamees al-Hadidi, denied once again that he has any desire or plans to run for president, but stopped short of saying that he absolutely would not. Asked how work was going on the anti-terrorism legislation President Hosni Mubarak promised in his campaign as a substitute for the Emergency Law, and what would happen if it hadn’t been enacted by the time Emergency Law came up for renewal, he said he “wouldn’t want to leave the country in a legal vacuum.” I suppose he can be forgiven for forgetting about the Constitution and the country’s developed legal system—superceded for so long by the Emergency Law as they have been.

Otherwise, his answer to every question was “We’ve formed a committee to look at this.” Variations included “we’ve formed a special subcommittee of a subcommittee to look into reforming the rules of procedure of this committee,” and “the subcommittee on the reform of political committees within the NDP has decided to refer the matter to a working group on the reform of subcommittees on reform of political committees within the NDP.” At his best moments, he came across as a serious, sensible, grey bureaucrat, exactly the sort of politician who does well in Canada. At his worst, he seemed to suffer from the sort of neuroses one would expect from an intelligent, sensitive man who’d grown up spoiled in the shadow of an overbearing father, a son frustrated by the fact that any accomplishment of his would be ascribed to his father’s position. He started out poised and almost dignified, but as the interview progressed, he seemed too desperate to command respect, not to be interrupted by this woman. He can’t summon the gravitas or the terror of an al-Adly, the chilling glare of a Suleiman, or the winning smile of his namesake.

It’s this frustration and apparent neurosis that worries me. Given power, the chip on his shoulder and the threats to his position might lead him to say “I’ll show you how in-control I can be.” Egypt-watchers (Egyptians and foreigners alike), have been wringing their hands about succession for years now. After Bashar took the throne in Syria and Gamal steadily rose through the NDP ranks, people naturally speculated that he was being groomed to take over. One favorite scenario has Gamal being installed as president, reluctantly of course, then quickly removed by a palace coup. Smart money is on Interior Minister Habib al-Adly or intelligence chief Omar Suleiman (who I suspect is the American choice) to wind up on top. One friend who works for a think-tank is convinced Egypt will follow Mauritania’s model. I hope not, for everyone’s sake, of course, but above all for my own selfish sake: An Al-Adly presidency would probably mean that I would have to leave Egypt, and I sincerely love this country.

Given a choice between the torturer, the spy chief, and the “gradual reformer,” I have to admit I’d choose the “gradual reformer”—even if he happens to be the current president’s son. Let’s face it, Kamal Khalil is not going to be Egypt’s next president. He reminds me of that wise-cracking kid in primary school whom you loved for saying to the teacher what you wanted to say and who delighted in getting sent to the corner as punishment but who ultimately never went anywhere because he was sitting in detention while everyone else was repeating their multiplication tables.

And so, to my surprise, I supported the idea of a Gamal presidency for about 15 minutes in the shower one day (no chuckles, please, let’s put those prurient rumors to rest). I sincerely think the man’s thinking about Egypt’s best interests. I have enough jitters about a Brotherhood government (will they ban smoking?) that given the choice between a truly reformed NDP and a Brotherhood government, I’d support the NDP reform program. There. I feel like I’ve shared a dirty little secret.

Maybe it?s too bad Gamal’s as hobbled by his family background as he is empowered by it. But add to the equation that the “gradual reformer” has no popular support, is so colorless as to seem incapable of inspiring popular support, is likely to be knocked out by a bloodless coup if he doesn’t come unhinged and start lobbing off heads, and I’m less sure. Add to the equation that the NDP has no discernable ideology except the maintenance of power and riches, and the reform program looks either quixotic or disingenuous.

So I can see how the Americans might arrive at Suleiman as a preferred “temporary strongman” to keep Egypt stable as it makes a transition to democracy and respect for human rights wha di do da… He’s shrewd, he’s canny, he’s powerful, he’s a valuable and informed ally for anyone seeking to kill or imprison terrorists, he has enough dirt on everyone to silence potential enemies.

But ugh! Where’s the guy with Abd al-Nasser‘s charisma, Sawiris’ money, Hani Shukrallah’s erudition, and Suzanne Mubarak’s connections?

I realize that’s asking too much. So here’s my (much more realistic) political fantasy: A tough mom from Sohag. Baheyya incarnate. No, not the blogger, though I’d vote for her if I could. I mean her namesake. Could anyone fix an election so—oh, I don?t know—Umm Kulthoum would lose, were she available and were elections free?

That’s what we need: the woman in the laundry detergent commercials. Umm Kulthoum before she came to Cairo and got famous. She’s rural, beautiful, virtuous, Islamic, hard-working, she has a tongue that could cut any man to shreds, she might do the laundry, but she really runs the house and she could bring the entire village out in the street to defend her honor. She’s a feminist, of course, but without the suspicious scent of the West. All the country’s men—shoot, all the Middle East’s men—would gallantly rally behind her to defend her against any sleazy political enemy or foreign power. So there’s my hope: the modern Arab world’s first female head of state, a new Joan of Arc, liberating the region on the back of a gamoosa.

[tags]Egypt, Gamal Mubarak[/tags]

65 ‘Under the Guise of Elections’

Many thanks to Petroushka for alerting me to what has to be my favorite quote of the year so far:

“We will not allow the seizure of power under the guise of presidential elections.”

—Stepan Sukhorenko, head of the KGB secret service in Belarus, as reported in The Times, March 17, 2006.

[tags]Belarus, elections[/tags]

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