Mshari Al-Zaydi writes in Asharq Alawsat about how tourists dollars are disappearing from countries riven by Arab Spring. In choosing to avoid areas of political conflict, often accompanied by violence in the streets, tourists end up depriving local economies of major sources of income. Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria – and now spilling over into Lebanon – depend heavily on tourists, not only for their direct spending, but also for the thousands of jobs they sustain. The politics of the region may be getting sorted out, but there is a very real cost being paid while the politicians argue.
The death of Arab tourism
Mshari al-ZaydiOne of the common features that can be seen in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, and perhaps also Syria to a large extent, is that tourism is viewed as a major resource for the national economy.
Another common feature of these countries is the fact that they are experiencing tremors, or rather political and security earthquakes, which means that tourists have fled and there is now a drought in the tourism market; a sector where security is considered an essential requirement rather than a complimentary condition.
Last week was a wretched one for tourists and tourism inside Lebanon, and even outside of it for some Lebanese.
After the unrest in Tripoli and Beirut, the imprisonment of an Islamic activist hailing from Tripoli, the death of a Sunni sheikh, and what was reported about a Qatari national being arrested in the midst of the security tensions there, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait all issued warnings to their citizens about the danger of the security situation in Lebanon, which constitutes a painful blow to the Lebanese tourism market as we enter the summer.
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An example of what’s keeping tourists away is provided by this article from Al-Arabiya:
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with the close cooperation of the government of Saudi Arabia, thwarted a plot to destroy an airplane in flight. Asharq Alawsat carries this Reuters story reporting that a Saudi-controlled double-agent had infiltrated the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and had been accepted as a volunteer suicide bomber. Once given the explosives, in the form or an ‘underwear bomb’, he reported to US authorities and the plot was ruined.
Saudi intelligence, CIA infiltrated al Qaeda in Yemen: reports
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bomber from the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen sent to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner last month was actually a double agent who infiltrated the group and volunteered for the suicide mission, U.S. media reported on Tuesday.
Working closely with the CIA, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency placed the operative inside al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, with the goal of convincing his handlers to give him a new type of non-metallic bomb for the mission, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Western intelligence agencies have identified AQAP as among the most dangerous and determined al Qaeda affiliates in the world, dedicated in part to attacks on the West.
The explosive device was intended to be smuggled aboard an aircraft undetected and then detonated.
The double agent arranged instead to deliver the device to U.S. and other intelligence authorities waiting outside Yemen, the LA Times reported. The agent arrived safely in an unidentified country and is being debriefed.
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Arab News reports that the government of Yemen was unaware of the plot and its thwarting.
UPDATE: Asharq Alawsat reports on the White House’s gratitude toward Saudi Arabia and its counter-intelligence apparatus:
In his column for Saudi Arabia’s pan-Arabic Asharq Alawsat, Ali Ibrahim makes an important point with direct application to those involved in ‘Arab Spring’. How winners of elections behave is important, of course, but equally important is how losers and their supporters behave. He uses the electoral defeat of French President Sarkozy as his launching pad. Sarkozy lost to François Hollande in a relatively close election: Hollande receiving 52% of the votes to Sarkozy’s 48%. That means that nearly half of the French population did not vote for Hollande. Nevertheless, they accept the defeat of their candidate and do not take to the streets or to their guns. They acknowledge that their candidate did not win the votes of a majority and they will have to do better next time around.
Surely, the defeated are not happy. They will complain. They will find fault in much that the Hollande government does. There will be editorials and screeds decrying the shift in politics and perhaps the economy. But they accept – peacefully and without violence – that they did not win.
How you lose is as important to democracy as how you win.
To the people of the Arab Spring, consider France!
Ali IbrahimThe speeches of the defeated French President and his newly elected replacement provide an eloquent lesson in the art of practicing political democracy. Following the announcement of the election results which were not in his favor, Nicolas Sarkozy – who is something of a rarity as a French president who failed to win a second presidential term – addressed his audience and supporters, in all humility, conceding defeat and saying: “I have not succeeded…I carry full responsibility for this defeat”. He added that France’s new president had come to power through popular democratic choice and that the French people must be patriotic and united behind him. He finished his speech congratulating his victorious opponent and calling on his supporters to respect the winner, pointing out that the political situation would be different now.
As for François Hollande, France’s President-elect, he did not forget in the euphoria of his victory speech to pay tribute, despite the boos of his supporters, to his defeated rival Sarkozy, who had led the country for 5 years, and as such deserves, according to Hollande, all due respect.
Between the winner and loser of the French presidential election was a difference in terms of votes of less than 4 percent; around 18 million voted in favor of Hollande and 16.9 million voted in favor of Sarkozy. Yet the 16.9 million will not oppose this election result, nor will the 2.1 million who cast blank or spoiled ballots; nobody will object to Hollande being their president for the next five years, even if they disagree with him.
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Saudi Gazette runs a story, apparently from Agence France Presse, reporting that Qatar will allow the formation of trade unions. In addition, it will end the current system of sponsorship for foreign workers.
Saudi Arabia has already mooted about ideas of ending its own sponsorship program, taking the authority and responsibility of hiring and managing foreign workers out of the hands of individuals and companies and instead putting them under the control of a few, specialized companies. Workers’ unions, though, are another matter.
Saudi history in regard to the union movement has been harsh. Unionism first raised its head in the 1950s, at the oil facilities in the Eastern Province. Unionism smacked a bit too much of communism, the ultimate enemy of God on Earth according to Saudi clerics and rulers. It did not help matters that would-be union leaders appeared to have had connections with the USSR as well as the suspect Arab Nationalists running Egypt at the time. Discredited on both political and religious grounds, unionism became a major taboo as well as a readily prosecuted crime.
This attitude has not noticeably softened over time, though there have been calls to reexamine the issue. In 2001, the government authorized the formation of ‘labor committees’ in companies employing more than 100 Saudi nationals, but did not extend membership to foreign workers. International organizations have condemned the ban considering the ability of workers to organize a basic right.
Now, Qatar, a sister member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, is authorize unions. This will put additional pressure on the Saudi government – and it will be harder to ignore because it’s a bordering country.
Qatar to allow trade union, scrap sponsorship
DOHA — Qatar is to allow the establishment of a trade union to protect labor rights and scrap the “sponsor” system for foreign workers, a top official said in local dailies Tuesday.
The union, independent from the labor ministry, “will have the right to receive the complaints of workers and protect their rights,” the ministry’s undersecretary Hussein Al-Mulla told Alarab daily.
The union “will be run by Qataris but as a foreigner you will have the right to vote but not run in the board of directors elections,” he said, adding that the project awaited the emir’s approval.
The Gulf state will also scrap the much-criticized sponsor system for foreign labor, as it aims to gradually recruit one million workers for the 2022 World Cup tournament it is to host, said Mulla. “There is an intention to cancel the sponsor system and replace it with a contract between the worker and the employer,” he told the daily.
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Saudi weekly magazine Majalla runs a story on the Salafist war against arts and culture in Egypt. Not only are actors and directors being arrested for supposed ‘crimes against Islam’, but the hard-line conservatives are also calling for bans on the books of Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz and the covering of statues of the pharaohs in wax. At least they’re not calling for them to be destroyed or the Pyramids torn down.
Egyptian artists note that these are actions and ideas proposed by Salafists, but also note that the ‘more modern, more moderate’ Muslim Brotherhood says nothing about them, only claiming to ‘support culture’. Today’s Egypt is a far cry from the expansive cultural environments of its past, even as recently as the 1960s.
Islamists on Art
Ati MetwalyWhen Asran Mansour, a Salafi lawyer, filed a case against Adel Imam, renowned Egyptian actor, for “defaming Islam” in his films, no one expected that the verdict issued on 24 April 2012, by Judge Mohamed Abdel Aty would sentence Imam to three-months hard labor and a fine. Though the case was dropped on 26 April afternoon, the news outraged Egypt’s artists and equally angered international supporters of freedom of expression and creativity.
Adel Imam’s case is one of the many indications that Islamists are implementing limits on culture and freedom of expression. Also on trial with Imam were directors Nader Galal, Sherif Arafa, and Mohamed Fadel, and writers Wahid Hamed and Lenin El-Ramly, who faced the same charges of “defaming Islam.” Their cases were also dropped on 26 April.
The arts and culture scene will not be silent regarding Imam’s sentence—just as it will not remain passive when challenged by many other limitations posed on culture. The fight against such religious-based censorship is expected to be a long and painful one for all of Egypt’s creative minds.
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The media report on the recall of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Egypt and the closing of the Saudi Embassy and consulates in Alexandria and Suez. This follows demonstrations in front of the Embassy in response to the Kingdom’s arresting a noted Egyptian civil rights lawyer on drug charges. The lawyer, who goes by the name Al-Gizawi, had made comments critical of Saudi Arabia’s human rights practices, particularly in regard to Egyptians.
Is it possible that Al-Gizawi was arrested for insulting King Abdullah? It’s possible. Is it possible that Al-Gizawi was attempting to smuggle drugs (21 Xanax tablets) into the country? That’s possible, too. His claim that he was just delivering some luggage for an unnamed friend, though, is not compelling.
In any event, Saudi-Egyptian relations are at a low point. The Kingdom has been providing emergency funding, to the tune of better than US $4 billion so far. With its economy in shambles, Egypt really cannot afford to alienate its benefactors. But it also cannot be seen as ignoring human rights. Egypt is in a tough position here, with not a lot of good options.
KSA recalls envoy to Egypt, closes diplomatic missions
Muhammad Al-Ahmadi | Okaz/Saudi GazetteJEDDAH/CAIRO — Saudi Arabia Saturday recalled its ambassador to Cairo and closed its diplomatic missions in Egypt.
An official spokesman, quoted by Saudi Press Agency (SPA), said the measures were taken in response to demonstrations outside the Kingdom’s missions in Egypt and threats following the announcement of arrest of Egyptian lawyer Ahmad Muhammad Al-Sayed, known as Al-Jizawee, in Jeddah.
The spokesman described the protests as unjustified.
“There were unjustified attempts to storm Saudi diplomatic missions threatening the security and safety of its personnel of both Saudi and Egyptian nationalities,” the spokesman said.
The Saudi Embassy in Cairo and consulates in Alexandria and Suez were closed for an unspecified period.
Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi made a telephone call to King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and expressed hope that the Kingdom will reconsider its decision of recalling its ambassador and closing its missions, reported SPA late Saturday.
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London’s The Independent reports on a Wikileaks release from 2009 in which US Secretary of State Clinton says that Saudi Arabia was still a problem when it came to terrorist financing. The Saudis, she noted, lacked sufficient control over the flow of money out of the Kingdom and that the money was ending up in terrorist demands. Both Saudi nationals and foreigners in Saudi Arabia were channeling funds toward improper ends. The fact that Saudi Arabia has difficulty in monitoring the millions of people who come in for Haj was highlighted in several cables, including one from the late Richard Holbrooke, then Special Advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This matter seems to have been the target of the recently-announced anti-money laundering program. While that program will greatly reduce slippage among financial institutions, there still remains the problem of cash. The country does have laws that require the documentation of large amounts of cash moving in or out of the country, but enforcement of those laws is difficult. They are particularly difficult when it comes to pilgrims who, indeed, bring large amounts with them to pay for their keep while in Mecca and Medina. Too, many pilgrims still look to Haj as an opportunity to sell goods in order to defray their costs, often resulting in a profit. I’m not sure how the government could address these issues beyond requiring that all expenses be pre-paid and banning pilgrims from any sort of trade. That’s more easily said than done.
Saudi Arabia is ‘biggest funder of terrorists’
Rob HastingsSaudi Arabia is the single biggest contributor to the funding of Islamic extremism and is unwilling to cut off the money supply, according to a leaked note from Hillary Clinton.
The US Secretary of State says in a secret memorandum that donors in the kingdom still “constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide” and that “it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority”.
In a separate diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks last night, the militant group which carried out the Mumbai bombings in 2008, Lashkar-e-Toiba, is reported to have secured money in Saudi Arabia via one of its charity offshoots which raises money for schools.
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Late last month, a Saudi Arabian diplomat was kidnapped near Aden, in southern Yemen. His whereabouts are unknown and the motives for his kidnap unclear. Now, Arab News reports, a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQIP) has demanded money and the release of prisoners held in Saudi jails for the diplomat’s return.
I think it unlikely that his demands will be met, but Saudi Arabia is not of the school that utterly refuses to negotiate with terrorists. I don’t think prisoners will be released – or at least not many of them – but a cash payment could happen. Whether that satisfies Al-Qaeda is another matter. They may chose to make a point by killing the diplomat.
Oddly, the Saudi diplomat, Abdullah Al-Khalidi, had had an earlier run-in with thugs. Last year, he had been stopped in his car and belongings taken from it. That may have been a simple robbery. Combined with his current troubles, it suggests that Mr Al-Khalidi does not exercise good situational awareness. It also suggests that Saudi diplomats in Yemen may need to travel with armed guards.
Al-Qaeda seeks release of prisoners in exchange for abducted envoy
RIYADH: GHAZANFAR ALI KHAN | ARAB NEWSA suspected militant wanted by the Saudi government has demanded the release of prisoners from Saudi jails and a ransom in exchange for Saudi diplomat Abdullah Al-Khalidi who was kidnapped by gunmen in Yemen on March 28.
The abduction case took a new turn after Mishaal Mohammed Rasheed Al-Shodoukhi, who was named on a list of fugitive Al-Qaeda militants by the Saudi authorities in 2009, made a phone call to the Saudi Embassy in Sanaa and demanded the release of some prisoners.
Major General Mansour Al-Turki, a spokesman of the Ministry of Interior, said in Riyadh yesterday: “The Kingdom is concerned about the safety and security of Al-Khalidi, who still remains in the hands of his kidnappers. The case is being followed by the concerned departments at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and we look forward to obtaining support from our brothers in Yemen to secure the release of the diplomat”.
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Saudi Gazette reports that Al-Qaeda is also threatening to escalate its war against Saudi Arabia.
There are conflicting reports about whether Al-Qaeda actually had any role in the kidnapping. Yemen is a notoriously lawless society, rent with tribal conflicts. Kidnapping by members of a tribe in order to leverage a deal with local government are not uncommon. Usually, those kidnappings get sorted out relatively quickly with no serious harm done to the victims. There are reports that this kidnapping was such a tribal affair, centered around some marriage issue. If that is, indeed, what it’s all about, then it’s a far different case than if Al-Qaeda is trying to grow its influence against Saudi Arabia.
The government of Saudi Arabia has a subtle way of using international agreements to push reforms that find opposition within Saudi society. Saudi accession to the World Trade Organization, for example, required changes in Saudi law that directly affected long-term business practices in the Kingdom. The government did not want to be seen to be directly taking something away from from its citizens, but under the weight of international treaties and agreements, it found it could make the necessary changes.
Arab News reports that the Kingdom is working within the Gulf Cooperation Council’s Health Ministers Council to improve the health of young people. All GCC states, excepting Saudi Arabia, have organized athletics for girls, including within state-run schools. It’s also incontrovertible that active lifestyles lead to better health. Due to social rules, fully half of Saudi society is barred from the most basic physical exercise.
Could the government be looking at another international agreement that forces its hand to make desirable changes, even if some in society don’t like the change? It looks like it to me.
Regional body to look after health of Gulf youth
RIYADH: MD RASOOLDEEN | ARAB NEWSA regional body under the umbrella of the GCC Health Ministers Council is to be formed to implement integrated health programs for adolescents and youths in the member countries.
The decision was taken at the concluding session of the first Saudi Conference of the Health of Youth and Adolescents held in Jeddah yesterday.
Speaking to Arab News yesterday, Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Khalid Al-Mirghalani said such a body would promote the health of adolescents and youth and organize community participation.
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Looking for signs of effectiveness of the Arab League? Keep looking.
Retired Saudi Navy Commodore Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, in his Arab News column, looks at the 67-year history of the Arab League and is hard pressed to find anything positive to write about. Lots of rhetoric, lots of bombast, but the League has done exactly nothing to improve the lot of the Arabs it claims to represent.
About the only positive he can find is that instead of 67 annual summits, the organization has only met 23 times. That limits the damage.
Baghdad summit and the faraway dreams
ABDULATEEF AL-MULHIMIf the Arab leaders held a summit conference annually after the establishment of the Arab League in 1945, then, the Baghdad Arab summit which was held on March 29, 2012, would have been number 67. But, the Baghdad summit, which was held last week is only the 23rd. The question is, what did the Arabs gain from these summits?
The first official Arab summit was held in Cairo on Jan. 13, 1964. Only politics were discussed at the summit. The discussions ranged from the diversion of the water flow of the Jordanian river, the establishment of the PLO, the set-up of unified military command headed by Egypt and many other issues. There were no discussions in the first Arab summit about education, health care, trade agreements or highway systems connecting different Arab countries. There was nothing for the simple Arab citizen.
After the 1964 summit, it was decided to have annual summit meetings to be attended by all Arab leaders. But, every single Arab summit was only held after an obstacle or a crisis facing the Arab world. The most notable summits were held in Khartoum in 1967, Baghdad in 1978 and again in Baghdad in 1990. The Khartoum summit was held after the 1967 war. And the 1978 Baghdad summit held after President Anwar Al-Sadat of Egypt went ahead with the peace agreement with Israel. As for the 1990 Baghdad summit, it took place just before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. All the other summits were management by crisis conferences. But, do the Arab masses take the Arab summits seriously and did these conferences accomplish any unity among the Arab countries?
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Identity, including cultural identity, is tied up with what went before, that is, history. All around the world, on all sorts of topics, groups use or seek to use history to define themselves, their cultures, morals, and worth. We see it in India, where members of the Hindutva movement seek to rewrite Indian textbooks to highlight – or perhaps amplify – to role of early Hindus in the cultural and political development of the subcontinent. We see it in the US, where traditional histories are overturned by revisionist histories, themselves subject to overturn by later scholars. Japanese history books have been the subject of battles over issues as disparate as the behavior of the Japanese Army in WWII and the cultural borrowings from China that led to Japanese civilization. We saw it in Saudi Arabia where certain members of religious groups fought (and, honestly, continue to fight) about exploration of and recognition of the Kingdom’s pre-Islamic history and culture.
The Christian Bible, as well as the Jewish Tanakh write of the life of Moses in and his flight from ancient Egypt. Those who hold to Biblical inerrancy have to decide which of several Pharaohs, for instance, ruled at the time of Moses. Biblical scholarship suggests that there were two, but there’s no certainty as to identity. The Pharaohs are never named, so it comes down to interpreting vague and often conflicting comments and inferences. The Quran, equally inerrant, doesn’t name names, either. Inferences suggest several possibilities and ‘possibilities’ implies disagreement.
The newest Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities, Mohammed Ibrahim, finds himself in the midst of the battle for history. Political groups trying to rise from the wreckage of ‘Arab Spring’ are making assertions about history and the Minister, according to this piece from Asharq Alawsat, is having to fight for the primacy of science over cultural modeling. Some in the Egyptian Salafist camp are making assertions that Ramses II was the Pharaoh of Exodus. They have some intellectual supporters (example), but that runs against what archeology finds. The question is still an open one, but it’s a question for which particular answers play particular roles in modern politics.
Egypt’s Antiquities Minister on the Pharaoh of the Exodus
Taha AliCairo, Asharq Al-Awsat- Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in Egypt, Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim, asserted that he would never allow the analysis of King Ramses II’s mummy to confirm whether or not he was the long-disputed Pharaoh of the Exodus. Ibrahim said: “What is being rumored in this context is utterly non-scientific and not founded on any sort of evidence”.
In an exclusive interview conducted with the minister in his Zamalek-based office in Cairo, Mohammed Ibrahim stated that Ramses II’s mummy had previously been flown to the French capital of Paris during the 1980s to analyze the water within it, and try to treat the artifact. “But to speak now of the mummy’s examination and analysis is a matter I can never allow because Ramses II is not the Pharaoh of the Exodus and we should not build upon wrong assumptions in the first place.”
Ibrahim cited evidence for his argument with verses from the Holy Quran and the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, especially the 14th Chapter. “The scenario and sequence of events clearly show that Ramses II could have never been the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Based on several given facts and not just one piece of information, inferences have been drawn concluding that the Pharaoh of the Exodus ruled toward the end of the 19th Dynasty. The facts confirm that Ramses II’s reign did not witness any state of unrest, contrary to what is widely known about the Pharaoh of the Exodus’s reign. Moreover, Ramses II’s rule was marked by power and construction. Hence, we can’t say that either Ramses II or his successor Merneptah was the Pharaoh of the Exodus.”
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In his column for the Saudi-owned Asharq Alawsat, Mshari Al-Zaydi takes a look at identity politics. He launches his piece with a discussion of Amin Maalouf’s 2009 Killer Identities (sold in the US under the title In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
They are both right. By focusing on only one aspect of identity, individuals and groups forget that they are part of larger identity groups, ultimately, the group known as ‘mankind’. Forgetting that the person next to you is human, has the same rights as you do – including the right to be wrong – leads only to confrontation. ‘Identity’ is important; we cannot act without having a clear idea of who we are. But we have to acknowledge that we have multiple identities at all times. One can be, simultaneously, a member of an ethnic group, a member (or non-member) of a religious group, a citizen of a particular nation, a member of a particular culture or society , male or female, a parent, a child, a brother or sister, a neighbor, a worker, a member of a party, and so on. Each facet of identity has its own obligations, its own expectations. One of these group identities may be more important in a given time and circumstance than in another, but all of them continue to work simultaneously. No element goes away while we focus on another. By forgetting this, by allowing ourselves to be identified or to self-identify by only one facet of identity, we run very serious risks of both dehumanizing others and painting ourselves into corners.
Are these “killer identities”?
Mshari Al-ZaydiWill the prediction by the famous Lebanese-French Novelist Amin Maalouf – that we are embarking upon an era of wars between “killer identities” – turn out to be true?
“Killer Identities” is the title of a well-known book by Maalouf, a writer and intellectual who focusses on the religious, historical and social intricacies of the East.
Maalouf’s life itself embodies such intricacies. In a recent interview conducted by “Middle East online” with him in Dubai, on the sidelines of the Silver Jubilee of Al Owais Cultural Foundation, Maalouf explained how the multi-layered and complex climate he lived in has had a huge impact on him. Maalouf was born in Beirut; his mother was born in the Egyptian city of Tanta while his maternal grandmother was born in Adana, Turkey. Maalouf was mainly raised in Beirut but spent some of his childhood in Egypt. His mother’s family moved from Tanta to Cairo to live in the Heliopolis district, and up until the age of three, Maalouf spend most of his time residing in Heliopolis. Then he moved to Lebanon where he lived until 1975. He studied in Lebanon and upon graduating he worked in the field of journalism, contributing to the Lebanese daily newspaper “Al-Nahar”. At the start of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, he moved to France and continued his journalistic pursuits, working for “Economia” magazine and serving as editor-in-chief of “Jeune Afrique”.
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