Issues That Concern Iraqis
Amir TaheriAre the insurgents and their terrorist allies in the Sunni Triangle doing Iraq a favor without knowing it?
The question is not fanciful. The violence unleashed by the insurgency has concentrated most minds on a single issue: Security. It has brought together communities and political parties that would otherwise be fighting one another over faith, ideology, and economic interest.
In the current election campaign Communists, monarchists, and Islamists often find themselves on the same side when it comes to defeating the insurgents and ridding Iraq of terrorism.
Amir Taheri has again come through with an excellent and informative op-ed on Iraq. He clearly points out the issues the Iraqis will have to start dealing with, the day after the elections.
While some prefer nice-and-tidy, black-and-white solutions, that’s not going to happen in Iraq. Read this piece to see just how complicated it’s all going to be.
Note, too, that this complexity is being presented in Arab media, for Arab readers, too.
Leaders Urged to Include Women in Shoura Council
P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab NewsJEDDAH, 30 January 2005 — Muhammad Al-Zulfa, a senior Shoura Council member, has called upon the Saudi leadership to take a quick political decision on the appointment of women on the consultative body. He felt there was no justification for the women to kept out.
Al-Zulfa expected inclusion of women as one of the surprises of the upcoming Shoura reshuffle. He was referring to a recent disclosure by Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, about plans to increase the number of Shoura members from the present 120 to 150 and enhance its powers.
“The state and society must respond to the demands of modern world where we live. Women have achieved high standard of qualification, not less than that of men and deserve to become Shoura members,†Al-Watan quoted Al-Zulfa as saying.
In coordination with the government’s pledge to include women in the municipal councils–elections for which starts next month–a member of the Shoura (Consultative) Council is calling for women to be elected to that body as well.
The Shoura Council, which has been expanding to include ever-broader cross sections of society, will now have 150 members. It’s expected to expand beyond that.
Mohammad Al-Zulfa, Shoura Council member, is also calling for the inclusion of young Saudis. He believes they are ready to take responsibility for their own futures.
This article is worth reading.
US Consulate Reopens to Public in Jeddah
Rasheed Abou-Alsamh, Arab NewsJEDDAH, 30 January 2005 — The US Consulate General in Jeddah reopened to the public yesterday after being closed for nearly two months following a deadly terrorist attack on it last Dec. 6.
Reopening the American Consulate in Jeddah marks another defeat for the terrorist forces working within Saudi Arabia.
The attack itself seemed an act of desperation. It was poorly planned, poorly conducted, and failed to meet any of its goals. Its sole success was in getting the Consulate closed to the public for nearly two months while repairs were made and new security regimes were put into place.
During that period, the Consulate continued working, but limited the services that would bring the public within the gates–and within a potential danger zone. Anyone needing Consular services–from visas to renewing a passport–had to travel to the Embassy in Riyadh.
There’s no doubt that that was a major inconvenience, on the order of traveling from Boston to Washington. But the repairs and upgrades are done and the Consulate is again fully open for business.
6,000 Saudi Passports Lost in Five Years
JEDDAH, 30 January 2005 — More than 6,000 Saudi passports have been lost or stolen in the past five years, Okaz reported quoting statistics issued by the Passports Department.
Brig. Gen. Saad Al-Dossari, head of the Passports Department in Makkah, said citizens who lost their passports while traveling abroad would be held for questioning and subjected to legal procedures.
While it’s easy to see nefarious motivations in “losing” a passport, the fact is that the Saudis are notorious for poorly handling ID of any sort. This has been the case for at least 20 years.
I don’t know the explanation–perhaps its because until recently, simply giving your name and familial relationships served as a guarantee for performance–but in the post-9/11 world, security of identification has become critical.
It’s good to see that the Saudi authorities are now putting those who have lost passports through the wringer on their return. If nothing else, it will cut down on fraud, and potentially terrorism.
While the overwhelming victory of Hamas candidates in the Gaza local elections may have disappointed Mahmoud Abbas, it must not be taken as a vote overturning his triumph in the election for the Palestinian leadership or his efforts to find a negotiated end to the Middle East conflict. It was a vote for what Hamas has come to mean to an overwhelming majority of Palestinians: Not just resistance to occupation but also its charity work for the needy. Of all the militant Palestinian groups, Hamas has paid the most attention to the welfare of the great mass of the Gaza population who have suffered from the Israeli occupation, mass unemployment and terrible poverty. Bank accounts linked to Hamas have been targeted by the Americans on the grounds that they are used to fund terrorism, but in truth the organization has concerned itself as much, if not more, with its social agenda. The Palestinian authorities have often failed to organize the safety nets necessary to ease suffering in Gaza and Hamas leaders were quick to fill the vacuum. There has, as a result, been a local groundswell of support for the group and this has been manifested in Hamas winning 77 of the 118 council seats in the local Gaza election.
This is a very good Arab News editorial that is sure to not sit well with many American readers. Hamas, to most Americans, is purely and simply a terrorist organization.
While parts of Hamas are absolutely involved in terrorism, other parts are truly involved in social welfare, medical, and education programs.
It’s tempting to lump them all together, but it’s inaccurate to do so: most Arabs can keep the two parts separate. For lawmakers, and law enforcement officials, that’s much harder to do.
In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein (which also has respresentation in the Republic of Ireland), portrayed itself as peforming social good, and it did. Its militant wing, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), was a terrorist organization, undertaking bombings and assassinations on foreign soil as well as in their homelands.
Some people–including Irish-Americans and others of the Irish diaspora–were able to appreciate the “nuance”. For governments, that’s a much harder equation to make.
Money, after all, is fungible. If the money that goes to the good things and that to the bad things is comingled–fungible, in other words–how does one make laws to punish the bad without also harming the good?
The US government has decided that it is not capable of separating the two and therefore has labeled Hamas, in its entirety, a terrorist organization. I’ve no problem with that; it’s a rational decision. It’s not quite accurate, but it achieves the goal of keeping money out of the hands of some terrorists.
But in doing so, the US government necessarily alienates tens of thousands who do differentiate the two factions.
That’s the price of doing business, of being a government. A clearer explanation on the part of the US–and other–governments could help Arabs understand why the decision was made. It wouldn’t make it any more palatable, but not doing it leaves open the door for complaints about “anti-Muslim/anti-Arab” discrimination, which is also a false attribution. Consistent application of the pertinent laws wouldn’t hurt, either.
Kuwait Reels as Details of Grisly Murder Surface
JEDDAH, 29 January 2005 — The grisly slaying this week of a 13-year-old Kuwaiti girl by her father as her siblings watched has sent shockwaves across the emirate.
The father, a 38-year-old government employee identified as Adnan Al-Enezi, killed his daughter, Asma, because he thought she was not a virgin.
This is a story about an honor killing in Kuwait, as reported by Arab News
I’m commenting on it, not because it’s grim, but to call your attention to the way it is reported in this Saudi paper.
Note the adjectives; note the tone of condemnation. Note words like “reels”, “sent shockwaves”, “schocked,” “frightened”.
This is not how the story would be reported if it were considered the norm, or even “acceptable”. Honor killing is driving by gross misinterpetation of religion and culture–and I do point out the honor killings are not unknown both in Latin America and European countries around the Mediterranean. There’s nothing “Islamic” about this, other than that a person has taken his own views of religion and acted upon them.
Criminal prosecution is under way; the accused has been deemed mentally competent.
Chambers Move Toward Online Document Legalization
K.S. Ramkumar, Arab NewsJEDDAH, 28 January 2005 — Various chambers of commerce across Saudi Arabia have been considering introducing the online document legalization system aimed at achieving greater efficiency and ease of interaction.
“Electronic document certification will surely go a long way in simplifying our procedures, making them more accessible and user-friendly than before,†an official at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce & Industry said yesterday. The move is also intended to ensure greater security of electronic signatures of members.
While Saudi Arabia remains resitant to social change, they close to cutting edge when it comes to business technology. Saudis working at the then University of Petroleum & Minerals came up with one of the earliest Arabic language word processing programs, for instance.
Here, the story is about finding ways to handle electronic documentation, a problem that the US is still contending with. Interestingly, the new system is based on Oracle software.
Sughayer Cleared
Abdul Maqsood Mirza, Arab NewsJEDDAH, 28 January 2005 — Philippine authorities have cleared Mohammad Abdullah Sughayer, a Saudi businessman held in the southern part of the country on suspicion of financing the Abu Sayyaf militant group, the Saudi ambassador in Manila has said.
Earlier this week, I posted on a story about the Philippines government arresting a Saudi national on suspicion of terrorist financing. That story has now been clarified.
This was a case of mistaken identity, something that happens often in the case of Arabic names. Saudis, in particular, have a dearth of first names. Without a lot of additional data to distinguish between them, Saudis are easily mistaken for each other, often to the embarassement of foreign governments, including our own FBI.
100 Detained in Oman Crackdown
Agence France PresseMUSCAT, 28 January 2005 — More than 100 people, including prominent academics, are being held in Oman following a wave of arrests earlier this month, relatives of the detainees said yesterday.
This is a story with an interesting background. The Islamic group in focus here is the Ibadi sect, the dominant strain of Islam followed in Oman. This group trace their origins to the original split in Islamic unity, back in the 7th C. Neither Sunni nor Shi’a, they represent a unique strain in Islamic history. They are fundamentalist, and have many of the same concerns about modernization that other fundamentalist schools have, but are completely unconnected–except through the general flow of information–with either the Wahhabi or Deobandi schools.
Captain’s Quarters is an interesting weblog, one of my daily reads. The author generally has concise and to-the-point entries on numerous articles, mostly focused on the war against terror. Today, though, I think he makes a mistake.
In a piece entitled Saudis Funding Iraqi Media For Propaganda?, Capt. Ed comments on an article appearing in the UK daily The Guardian which ran under a similar headline. It’s the story of a libel case in the UK courts in which the plaintif is attempting to show that he was libeled by a propaganda organ, not a legitimate media outlet. I’ll let go by the wayside the lunacy of libel and slander actions in UK courts. They’re not only an entry unto themselves, but an entire book.
The article–and Capt. Ed’s piece–are poor journalism for several reasons. The first is that they seek to use unspecified fears to conjur images of malfeasance and wrong-doing. Simply put the words “Saudi”, “money”, and “secret” together in the same sentence and, shazaam!, you’ve greated a golem from which people will run shrieking.
Second, money for start-up companies is not usually publicly announced. That doesn’t make them “secret”, it just makes them “non-publicized”.
Third, Saudis are actually pretty heavy investors in media, globally. Prince Waleed bin Talal, for instance, is a significant investor. He’s a major shareholder in Euro-Disney, and the Arabic ADD (formerly ART) arts & entertainment channels. None of these are noted either for their religious or political content. He also owns more than 5% of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Fourth, Captain Ed does not report the (very little) exculpatory comments in the weak Guardian story.
Finally, since when did a conservative American blogger start taking The Guardian as an authoritative source on anything, but particularly terrorism.
Added up, this looks like bashing to me.
Who’s Who Out There?
Abeer Mishkhas, abeermishkhas@arabnews.comA report recently published in the Arabic edition of Forbes magazine analyzed trends, successes, failures, strategies and the financial side of the Arabic media.
The report contains an amazing quantity of accurate and dependable statistics — something we sorely lack in the Arab world — dealing with the number of media outlets in the Arab world, the success stories and the main players on the scene. A careful reading of the report gives a sense of what the Arabic audience wants and, most interestingly, what it lacks. It also reflects, with all the accompanying contradictions, the present cultural atmosphere in the Arab world.
Ms Mishkhas comes through with another fascinating look at the Arab media. This time, she’s working from a report published by Forbes, in Arabic.
It’s a terrific look at the dynamics driving media in the Arab world. Her noting that over 90 applications for broadcast licenses are now being processed in Dubai is certainly eye-catching.
If the Arab media is of interest, this is a great place to start.
Of Desert Truffles and Regulations
Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed, comments@d-corner.comDr. Abu Zenada of the environmental agency said last week that he wants to protect the desert truffle by issuing licenses and regulating the collection of the delicacy.
Anything that will help protect our decimated flora and fauna is welcome. In this instance, however, the good doctor does not seem to understand the desert or its products.
Dr. Al-Rasheed can usually be counted on for informative and entertaining columns. He doesn’t let us down today.
Combining a libertarian penchant with a large dose of common sense, he argues against the imposition of regulations concerning the dessert truffle (also known as faqa’a, to the delight of Arabic students.) You may also remember a US media flap some years ago, when then-Secretary of State Albright and her party were given a large box of truffles during a visit to the KSA. Much hair was torn and lawyers’ timesheets filled in trying to figure out the value of the gift. Where they like black or white truffles, they’d have been an unacceptable gift. But since they were the puny greys, they ended up being accepted. No reports on how well they were gustatorially reaceived.
This is a true truffle, but nothing like the French or Italian varieties that claim hundreds of dollars the pound. Rather, it’s a lowly thing, bland and insipid, once used to adulterate potatoes in the marketplace. Its role on the table is very similar to the potato, in fact, and now available in tins.
Rather than protecting the truffle, Al-Rasheed says, it’s far more important to protect the environment in which truffles are found. That environment also supports numerous other plants and animals in need of protection.
Very interesting article!
JEDDAH, 27 January 2005 — Prince Nawaf, director of intelligence, has been relieved of his post upon his request and has been named special adviser at the Royal Court, it was announced here yesterday.
“In appreciation of his noble services and considering our need of his services, we have appointed him as special adviser to us in the rank of a minister,†Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd said in a royal decree, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
According to this Arab News article, Prince Nawaf bin Adbulaziz, Chief of General Intelligence, with the rank of Minister, has resigned.
Nawaf replaced Prince Turki Al-Faisal in that position in early Sept., 2001. The Saudi Embassy in DC has a press release announcing his appointment, which includes some biographical information. It seems his major personal and business interests were in Australia and New Zealand. He’s reported to have funded solar research at the University of Sydney.
Nawaf’s health had been less than excellent. You may recall his emergency hospitalization in Beirut, following a collapse at at Arab League Summit there in 2002.
It’ll be most interesting to see who’s named as his replacement.