The Saudi-Egyptian Causweay 17, July 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt, Saudi Arabia.Tags: Egypt Saudi bridge, Egypt Saudi causeway
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So plans are vaguely afoot for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, or rather Saudi Arabia, to build a causeway linking the two countries together. What a wonderful joint venture undertaken in the spirit of good, fraternal and long-term friendship.
What, do we think, are the odds of this actually coming to pass; of it actually being built? Snowball’s chance in hell? Accrington Stanley winning the Champion’s League? Me ever finishing my sodding PhD? Sumfin’ like that, methinks.
Egyptian fears realised? 12, July 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt.Tags: Arab Spring, Egyptian Revolution, Egyptian youth revolution, Revolution fail
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Back when all this started, like a crotchety old git, I bemoaned the perils of Egypt’s transition. Of course it is a good thing that Mubarak is gone, I said to anyone who would listen, but I have a great and profound fear that people automatically expected things to get better…immediately. Sure, Mubarak retarded Egypt’s growth, say, or certainly he and his crony-elite creamed off billions which ought to have trickled down, but simply removing him will change sweet FA in the near term.
The fact that it was a largely youth-led revolution, combined with my crotchetyness, made me even more concerned. I tritely mashed together notions of the MTV generation’s legendary attention span (measured in seconds) and general youth attributes of impatience and impetuousness, to conclude that when everything didn’t suddenly end up smelling like roses immediately, there would be another flare up of indignant anger. Indeed, this chronic youthful naivety was profoundly in evidence at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha earlier in the year, with at least one of the ‘Egyptian youf’ noting that it was only a matter of time before Pan-Arabism was revived off the back of the Egyptian revolution. Bless.
Well, perhaps my melancholic fear is coming true. While I’m well aware of Fisk’s penchant for exaggeration these days, he perhaps might have a point here.
Egypt’s Stasi moment 6, March 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt.Tags: Egpyt files, Egypt, Egypt secret police, Stasi
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After the fall of the Berlin Wall the East German secret police headquarters was ransacked, much like is happening now in Egypt. Back then people were staggered at the levels of spying that the secret police had conducted. Something like 1 in 20 Communist Party members was an informant and I even remember people’s ‘odour’ being bottled as some kind of way to track people or for some such silly reason.
The picture below, if it is what it purports to be, carries similar overtones. Who knows what’s next? Apparently there are salacious videos of Kuwaiti Princesses in hotel rooms in Alexandria…mish kways, as they say.
On Egypt’s cancer 24, February 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt.Tags: Egypt, Egypt's cancer, Femals harassment Egypt, Women in Egypt
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I suppose that everyone has a few topics on which they find it difficult to be balanced and polite. For me, I simply can’t help referring to Libya’s delinquent despot as the idiot Gaddafi. I also find it challenging to be civil about Italy’s joke of a leader. Yet one topic which angers me more than anything is undoubtedly the treatment of women in Egypt.
An odd topic you may think. Clearly I have never personally been affected by the legions of gropers and harassers that throng Cairo. Do I exaggerate? Well, ask any – and when I say any, I really do mean more or less any – woman who has, say, studied Arabic in Cairo for any length of time and you will get a litany of tales; most minor, some serious.
Within 6 hours of arriving in Cairo, one woman in my group of Arabic students had been harassed and groped on the street. She was walking by herself, well covered up, incidentally. Harassment of one form or other is a practically daily hourly occurrence. Actual physical assaults are, of course, rarer but will come eventually.
My wife, to take another example*, went the national museum in Cairo by herself. Having lived in Kuwait for a few years and travelled extensively thought the region, she was covered up in a basically shapeless outfit with her hair somewhat covered by a scarf. At the museum she was followed continuously by the security guards who worked there. They ignored the American tourists bussed in from Sharm in hot pants and skimpy tops, and, instead, decided to pursue her throughout the museum. How this cannot be seen as a predatory trait – going after the woman on her own not skimpliy clad women in groups – I just do not know. She was also physically assaulted on the way back from the museum by a random man in the street.
It is also important to point out that it is most certainly not just foreign women that suffer in this way. Egyptian women suffer day in day out, as I have noted before.
I write this now having just read another report of the attack on CBS’s correspondent last week. I did not write at the time fearing that it would just descend into a rant that looks essentially exactly like this… It turns out that as well as being stripped naked, punched, kicked and nearly raped, she was beaten with flag-poles.
This attack is, of course, of a different order to the attacks that I was referring to earlier. Its motivations are largely from a different place but still there is an underlying evil pathology of epic misogyny at play in Egypt that I have not come close to seeing anywhere else on earth. Were I to have a daughter one day, Egypt is – quite literally – the only place on earth where I would not want her to grow up. I’d take Kim Jong Ill and the lecherous Berlusconi’s rule before subjecting her to living in Cairo.
*For what it’s worth, I had a healthy ire for this topic well before this incident.
Egypt’s Revolution on Twitter 22, February 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt.Tags: Egypt Twitter, Egypt's Revolution on Twitter, Egyptian Revolution, Twitter revolution
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Where were you on the day when… 29, January 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in American ME Relations, Egypt.Tags: al jazeera Egypt coverage, Egypt, Egypt revolution, Middle East revolution, Mubarak, Mubarak revolution, Twitter revolution
8 comments
At the tender age of 28 years old, I can only really claim to remember two events in the ‘where were you when?’ category. On 11th September 2001 I was about to go to work in the Rusacks Hotel in St. Andrews to confront tens of bewildered and worried Americans and (trivially, by comparison) when Diana died I had just returned from a holiday in Turkey. Somewhat shamefully when the Berlin Wall came down, despite my mum’s protestations that ‘you’ll want to remember this moment’ I was just nagging her to go out as planned.
Perhaps the last week of January 2010 will become one of these synonymous events that reverberates for decades. It is certainly looking that way.
I am not an Egypt expert and do not claim to be so, hence my lack of posting on the topic (though this leaves me in the minority). I will just make a few notes:
- The notion of dominoes falling is ahistorical. We seem to have this inbuilt notion that an event in one country usually cascades around a region. This is simply not the historical record, especially so without any kind of supra-national involvement. However, it seems that the domino effect is actually coming to pass in Egypt. This will be an issue that intrigues Middle Eastern scholars for generations.
- Thus far, so far as I have seen, there has been essentially no Islamist involvement in this proto-Revolution. However, clearly the Muslim Brotherhood have a commanding organization network which will advantage them in the future.
- Al Jazeera’s role in this is interesting. At first they desperately avoided televising the burgeoning revolution. Clearly they were under some kind of orders not to exacerbate tensions by broadcasting events in Cairo and elsewhere. Indeed, there was some kind of accommodation reached by Al Jazeera/Qatar and Mubarak in recent months where many believe it was agreed that Al Jazeera’s coverage of Egypt would be toned down. Only when the elephant in the room reached epic proportions did they then cover it and since they have covered it extremely well.
- To follow events you must follow: @SultanAlQassemi @nolanjazeera @arabist @shadihamid @bencnn @themoornextdoor
- So where’s next? I’d not be sitting pretty if I were in Jordan and Yemen, that’s for sure. Saudi Arabia? I doubt very much that there are enough angry and unhappy Saudis willing to put in the necessary graft to instigate some kind of reform. Bahrain would be the only other of the GCC countries that I could at all see having issues but there too I’d be surprised if much came of it.
- One of my great fears about these revolutions is that people seemingly automatically expect things to get better. Don’t misunderstand me, I think it is a good thing that Tunisia and Egypt are in the process of seemingly throwing off their dictatorial yoke, but how exactly people think things will ipso facto get better I just don’t understand. Essentially, you can’t eat or pay the rent with democracy.
- Sky news: it’s not Tahir Square, it’s Tahrir Square
The nadir of Egyptian conspiracy theories 9, December 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt.Tags: Conspiracy theories middle east, Egypt Mossad conspiracy theories, Egypt Shark helicopter picture, Egypy shark attacks, Mossad consipiracy
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As many of you will know, the Middle East is riddled with conspiracy theories. Perhaps the general untrustworthiness of the press in the region and the lack of government transparency fosters such a ripe climate for such theories.
The latest one to be doing the rounds states that the recent spate of shark attacks in Egypt is actually some kind of diabolical Mossad plan to destroy Egypt’s tourist industry. This theory was recently given credence by the governor of South Sinai.
Yes. I agree. Words fail.
Egypt & Qatar: a quick background 3, December 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt, Qatar.Tags: Al Jazeera Egypt, Al Jazeeras, Al-Jazeera, Egypt Qatar relations, Egypt Qatar relations background, Nasser
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One of thegulfblog’s esteemed readers and frequent commentors asked for a quick background on Qatar and Egypt. So voilà. If anyone else wants any brief background pieces, in case I gloss over things too quickly, please just drop me a line: if I know enough, I’ll give it a go! Thanks:
…
Nasser in the 50s and 60s made Egypt the most important and leading nation in the Arab world. However, it has been downhill since they were wholly mullered by Israel in 1967 (yanni: beaten very badly). Though nominal pride was restored in 1973, Sadat’s visit to the Knesset in 1977 wholly finished off Egypt as a regional power.
Mubarak and indeed ‘all’ Egyptians long for the time of Nasser; when it mattered what Egypt said and did, when it was the leader. While in recent times they – by virtue of their history and their population size – still try to throw their weight around as if they were preeminent, they are not and what is worse is that they know they are not (and they know that others know that they know that they are not – if you see what I mean);)
So, when little – if not microscopic – Qatar comes along in the late 1990s and hosts a TV channel that repeatedly slams Egypt, they are less than amused. At a profound level, Qatar’s power (growing ever since; at its apogee now) really annoys Egypt as they are in many ways more powerful than ‘mighty’ Egypt. (Why did Al Jazeera repeatedly slam Egypt? Cause it was easy, fun and, most importantly, great, salacious TV).
Egypt’s anger has erupted frequently over Al Jazeera. One of the worst breaks happened in Jan/Feb 2009 when Qatar held parallel peace conferences after Israel’s Cast Lead operation. This was seen by Egypt and other ‘traditional powers’ (Saudi) as this little cheeky state once more trying to usurp the natural order: they didn’t get to call conferences!
(Incidentally, Egypt views Al Jazeera as little more than the publicity department of the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs: which is essentially wrong.)
A couple of interesting snippets emerged from the Wikileaks cables. The Emir or HBJ (I can’t remember) said that he believes that Egypt is purposefully not seeking as fast a solution to the Palestinian question as they want to prolong their time ‘in the spotlight’. He also said that he would close Al Jazeera down for a year if Egypt facilitated peace in Palestine!
Egyptian elections ‘not free and fair’ 22, November 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt.Tags: Egyprian elections, Pope catholic, WEE wrestling fixed
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The Guardian has an article on Egypt’s elections with the strap line stating that they are not ‘free and fair’. Amazing insight.
In other news just in, the Pope is Catholic, bears do go to the bathroom in the woods and WWE wrestling is fixed.
