The Muslim Brotherhood has its own army of the young that will not easily be defeated. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Emad Mekay
BERKELEY, California, Sep 29 2013 (IPS)

Gory social media images that fueled the global Jihadist influx into Syria 18 months ago are back. But this time the outpouring is coming from Egypt.

Pictures on Facebook and Twitter show dozens of bodies wrapped in white burial sheets lying in rows in morgues, hospitals and even mosque hallways. Others show charred bodies with the victims’ brains visible from sniper shots to the head. Most of the posts urge one thing: justice."There's a valid fear that some of them may turn to violence after they have despaired that democracy could ever be a means towards meaningful change.” -- Sami Al-Dalaal

“Our self-control now is not out of fear. It’s out of respect for human blood and for the safety of our country,” said one post on an Islamist Facebook page. “If we are pushed too hard and our back is to the wall, we’ll defend ourselves.”

Three months after a Jul. 3 military coup that removed Egypt’s first elected government, hundreds of anti-coup activists have been killed, thousands injured and many more, mostly Islamists, thrown behind bars without charge or trial. The achievements of the country’s brief two-and-a-half years of freedom have been all but erased.

Amnesty International estimates that at least 1,089 people were killed in just four days – the period between Aug. 14 and 18 during the military operation to disperse anti-coup protestors at Rabaa square and Al-Nahda square in Cairo.

Human Rights Watch called the carnage the largest mass killing in Egypt’s modern history.

Weeks later, the military crackdown is still raging, with casualty numbers reportedly rising almost by the day, prompting calls for self-defence among the country’s targeted Islamists.

Al-Qaeda’s ideology of violence as the only path to change, which was discredited by the mostly peaceful changes of the Arab Spring in Egypt, has now received a new lease on life as a possible and viable option after all, according to several observers of Islamic political movements.

“We followed Western democracy prescriptions to the letter, but the minute a Muslim man comes to office, the world looks away. Nobody really respects democracy,” said one Islamist’s Facebook page.

The urge to resist the bloody crackdown has been most pronounced among young people. In private discussions, many of them, especially from the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest Islamist organisation, express frustration with their leaders for preaching gradual rather than “revolutionary” change.

Some activists described the top policy-making body of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Group’s Shura Council, as “dervishes”, an Arabic word connoting being detached from reality.

“The Iranian revolution model might not be so bad after all,” said one activist who asked not to be identified.

The current military crackdown is so ruthless, sweeping and indiscriminate that it has become a personal daily story for many young people, especially the Islamists. There’s hardly anyone who hasn’t had a brother, father or sister killed, arrested or tortured since the coup, the activist said.

If the young decide to take up arms, it will be on a massive scale. Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Salah Sultan, before his arrest earlier this week, estimated the group’s active membership to be between 800,000 and a million, not including their families and sympathisers.

Pressure on Islamists towards self-defence comes from unlikely outside corners as well.

The militant Somali Shabab group, which was at the receiving end of preaching from the Muslim Brotherhood that violence was counter-productive, got a chance for payback.

In August, the Somali militant group issued a statement taunting the Brotherhood and urging them to condemn democracy. The call was spurred by the scenes of carnage against defenceless anti-coup protestors in Cairo.

“You are leading Muslims to extermination by your insistence on democracy,” the Shabab said.

The pressure on the Brotherhood’s aging leadership has been so intense since the coup that Essam Erian, parliamentary majority leader before the coup, had to issue several audio messages urging a continuation of “peaceful protests”.

On Sep. 25, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement insisting on “peaceful resistance”.

“We all should resist the coup and resist oppression peacefully and without any violence and in a civilised manner,” the group said. “The coup leaders and the oppressors want to create waves of violence that they can use as a cover for their murderous police practices that they excel at.”

Elder Islamists justify their pacifist position on the grounds that there are religious admonitions against bloodletting. From a political standpoint, taking on the U.S.-backed and armed military and their pro-government militias will drag both sides into a civil war that would only strengthen U.S. and Israeli hegemony, they argue. Impoverished and violence-torn Somalia is hardly a model, they say.

“Democracy is still the main option for most Islamists now,” Sami Al-Dalaal, an expert on Islamic movements in the Middle East, told IPS. “Yet there’s a valid fear that some of them may turn to violence after they have despaired that democracy could ever be a means towards meaningful change.”

Dalaal said excluding political groups by force often leads to violence.

“There’s a precedent to that. When the military thwarted democracy in Algeria after Islamist democratic wins, they found no option but to start an armed revolution,” he said.

Dalaal was referring to a bloody civil war two decades ago in Algeria that started after army generals launched a coup and denied the Islamists the chance to take power in elections. Some 100,000 people died in the violence that ensued. The Syrian pro-democracy protests also started peacefully until Bashar al-Assad reacted violently and bloody pictures went viral on social media, starting another civil war.

In Egypt, with the military showing no sign of letting up on use of excessive force, it might be only a matter of time before at least some young Egyptians decide to do what their elders have refused to do: defend themselves.

Before an ultimatum to attack an anti-coup sit-in earlier this week, Egypt’s new strongman and coup leader Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi received one of his warmest endorsements ever – something that might have been torn right out of the steamy pages of the “Arabian Nights”.

Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi. Credit: U.S. State Department/public domain

A female secular columnist for the liberal, privately-owned daily Al-Masry Al-Youm wrote in support of his planned action, literally offering herself as “a sex slave”.

If this sounds like a typical example of how depraved Arab tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Hafez Al-Assad strengthened their iron grip on their countries on the shoulders of compliant media and elites, it is because it is.

After all, this is the Middle East where more than two years after the Arab Spring, the elite, military and local media remain the world’s most skilled inventors of ruthless autocracies, from mad despots such as the deceased Muammer Gaddafi of Libya to brutal tribal monarchs such as the Al Saud royal family in Saudi Arabia and Al Nahian tribe in the United Arab Emirates.

It is through armies of similar cheerleaders who are willing to enslave and humiliate themselves that those rulers rise in tyranny and establish their unrivaled bloody hold on power. In Egypt, this is how pharaohs are made.

Hours after columnist Ghada Sherif offered her passionate physical backing, Sissi’s troops launched an overnight assault on his opponents. By daybreak, at least 82 people had been killed and dozens more injured, with many receiving sniper bullets in the head and neck.

The “sex slave” episode also shows the great lengths Sissi’s well- greased propaganda machine, backed by the treasures of the sprawling Egyptian military business complex and the riches of the country’s elite, will go to to catapult the 58-year old Sissi, or Super-Sissi as his fans call him, as Egypt’s saviour and next leader.

Sissi is backed by Egypt’s self-styled liberals, secularists and leaders of the Christian Orthodox minority who were routed and humiliated six consecutive times in fair and democratic elections at the hands of campaign-savvy Islamists during the country’s two-and-half year brush with democracy.

For them, tanks, assault rifles and military brass have become the only burrow they could ever dig to get close to office. To that end, they are showing utter disregard of law, human rights and respect for democracy.

As Sissi’s forces were slaughtering dozens of people and injuring many more in their overnight attack outside the Rabaa Mosque in Cairo Saturday morning, Pope Tawadros, leader of the country’s five million Christian Coptic minority, who detests Islamist parties, jubilantly tweeted: “Thank you to Egypt’s great military and its wonderful police force, for opening the doors of hope.”

Tawadros repeated “thank you” six times in his post.

And despite the bloodshed at the hands of Sissi’s military and police, the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper made splashing headlines of a report that one Egyptian man in the Red Sea city of Suez named his newborn child “Sissi”.

So thirsty for legitimacy and public acceptance of their coup outside of their supporters, the top commander of Egypt’s Third Army, who is supposedly busy fighting terrorism in Sinai, took time off to pay the parents a visit and hand them a reward for naming the new baby after the coup’s leader’s highly uncommon name. As expected, cameras were there to take pictures.

The Facebook page of the Egyptian military’s propaganda arm, the Morale Affairs, and other sympathetic Facebook pages widely believed to be run by intelligence officers entrusted with peddling Sissi to the public are lavishing pictures of tough, muscular and mustached officers in camouflaged uniforms, stamping a drooling kiss on portraits of Sissi.

The image-building gets even more ridiculous with attempts to create unsubstantiated heroic tales for Sissi.

A military Facebook page popular with Sissi’s fans and other obedient newspapers claimed that the U.S. Fifth Fleet was sent to Egypt’s shores last week to intervene in the turmoil only to be sternly told off by “Sissi the brave”.

The Americans tucked their tails between their legs and left the Mediterranean after Sissi’s thunderous warning, so the fable goes.

“Sissi threatened to annihilate the U.S. Fleet,” declared Al-Nahar newspaper of the story.

The signs are unmistakable. Such folk tales were a hallmark of Gaddafi’s 40-year rule, with his media inventing gallant military adventures for the consumption of gullible Libyans in a bid to legitimise his reign.

Over the past month, Sissi had displayed other megalomaniac traits a la Gaddafi, the touchstone of despotic tyranny in the region, who had a penchant for full military uniforms, sunglasses and extravagant medals. Sissi gave his last speech in identical dark eye shades, a full ornamental cap and a chest full of colorful medals.

But more ominous are the signs of how Sissi is concentrating power for his rule.

Egyptian prisons are filling up fast. Media outlets critical of the military are shuttered. Coup opponents face threats of confiscating their property and hurriedly cooked up criminal charges.

Ousted president Mohammed Morsi himself was held incommunicado for nearly a month before far-fetched accusations of espionage for the Palestinian group, Hamas, were conjured up.

Editors from the privately-owned pro-coup Shorouk newspapers banned articles by two writers, Wael Kandil and Ahmed Mansour, for questioning the coup leader’s ability to bring stability to Egypt. One of them, Kandil, later quipped that the incident made Hosni Mubarak sound like an angel as none of his harsh columns were censored before.

Worse, Gen. Sissi disbanded the elected Shura Council, revoked the constitution agreed upon by a whopping 64 percent vote in fair elections, and re-instated officers of the country’s repressive secret police, the country’s most hated and feared institution, who were fired after the Jan. 25, 2011 uprising against Mubarak for human rights abuses.

The secret police have powers to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs, arrest opponents and hunt down dissidents with complete impunity.

Sissi’s reach hasn’t spared ordinary Egyptians either. Makeshift checkpoints manned by heavily-armed joint police and military units pepper Egypt’s streets, a scene not witnessed since the bloody era of Sissi’s role model, former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bearded men and women who choose the Islamic covering are stopped, arrested or abused based on their visible religious orientation. Those who are not visibly religious complain about the maltreatment at checkpoints and the return of non-optional bribes to traffic officers.

The rhetoric from the private media, owned by the country’s wealthy elite classes and members of the minority Christian Coptic church who both support Sissi, routinely encourage crackdowns against opponents. Examples include urging Sissi to cut off water and electricity from opposition sit-ins, flooding the sit-ins with sewage, and calls to shoot at “just their legs”, while all along showing fanatical devotion for their new Pharaoh, Sissi the Savior.

But nobody has yet matched Sherif’s offer. “Sissi, all you have to do is just wink,” the liberal writer titled her column.

“He is a man that Egyptians are infatuated with. If he wants to take four wives, then we are at his bidding. If he wants just a sex slave, by God, we’ll not be hard to get either.”

Emad Mekay is a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He worked for The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Inter Press Service in the Middle East. He is the founder of America In Arabic News Agency. He covered most of the initial protests of the Arab Spring for The International Herald Tribune and for Inter Press Service.

Smoke rises from districts in Aleppo, Syria, in December 2012. Credit: Freedom House/CC by 2.0

By Emad Mekay
LOS ALTOS, California, Jun 16 2013 (IPS)

Saudi Arabian religious scholars are leading an increasingly vocal chorus of Islamic preachers who are urging Muslims and Arabs to support Syrian rebels against what they say are atrocities at the hands of Iran-backed Shiite forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On Friday, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Saudi Al-Shoreym, issued a rare appeal to Muslims to provide help “by all means” to Syrian rebels and civilians trapped in the Syria conflict.

Popular Saudi Sheikh Mohammed Al-Erify used his guest sermon in a central mosque in Cairo, Egypt to appeal to thousands of worshippers to back groups fighting the Assad regime and urged his audience to enlist in jihad.

On Thursday, dozens of Islamic religious scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to study plans to call for an international appeal for jihad in Syria.

On Jun. 4, Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-financed television channel that is usually liberal, hosted conservative leader Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, who is based in Doha, Qatar, to urge support for jihad against Hezbollah forces who are fighting alongside Assad’s forces in Syria.

The spike in religious appeals come weeks after the Iran-backed Shiite militias of Hezbollah buffed up its intervention in Syria and forced rebel forces out of the strategically important city of Al-Qusair.

Rebels had held Al-Qusair for months. The city’s fall marked a shift in the balance of power since rebels took up arms in December 2011 and expelled government troops from several cities.

Syrian government-controlled media are reporting that Assad’s forces are advancing towards the rebel stronghold of Homs, while the Iranian news agency Fars said last week that the Syrian army is gaining the upper hand in different parts of Syria.

An internationalised conflict

Calls for jihad by Sunni scholars against Assad, who as an Alawite is a member of a minority branch of Shiite Islam, come as the United States signalled its willingness on Thursday to send arms to rebels in Syria, saying crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons against his own people.

During the 10-year Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that started in 1979, the United States and Saudi Arabia held similar roles, where Washington supplied weapons to Afghan mujahideen fighters and Saudi Arabia helped with funding and by offering similar religious justifications for fighting the Soviet invaders.

Over the past several weeks, Arab media have been dominated by eyewitness testimonies on the ground of an influx of Iran-inspired Shiite fighters form Iraq, Lebanon and Iran into Syria to buttress the Assad regime, reports that highlight the increasing sectarian tension underlying the conflict.

Sunni Muslim scholars blame Iran and Hezbollah for turning the conflict between the Assad dictatorship and his people into a sectarian war.

The rebellion initially started as peaceful pro-democracy protests in the city of Dera’a, in the early months of the Arab Spring that saw the fall of several other dictators. The protests quickly deteriorated into a war that has cost the lives of close to 93,000 people, according to the United Nations.

Shoreym’s Friday sermon was broadcast live on several pan-Arab television channels. The Saudi preacher is widely respected in many Sunni Muslim countries and his sermons and Quran recitals often heard in public places as well as in households.

In his emotional sermon, Shoreym broke into tears as he recalled the plight of civilians, women and children in Syria.

“Women lost their husbands, the children made [into] refugees and their homes turned into rubble by the forces of aggression and tyranny,” he said. “This makes all of us obligated to lend a hand to help.”

In the past Shoreym has rarely commented on politics, in keeping with the Saudi government’s line to keep Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Madina away from politics as much as possible.

His sermon marked a notable departure from that policy, indicating the seriousness of the situation in Syria.

In Cairo, Al-Erify’s one-hour sermon focused on the need to join jihad. “Modern history has never seen such massacres as those that have been committed by that regime over the past 40 years,” he said.

Al-Erify, a religious preacher with best-selling books and popular TV shows, warned that if the Iran-led Shiite alliance succeeds in Syria they will go after “Muslim children in other countries” and “slaughter them like they did in Syria”.

Erify, Shoreym and Qaradawi’s appeals are the latest in a string of religious edicts, or fatwas, urging people to resist Assad forces in Syria.

On Thursday, dozens of Sunni Islamic scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to declare an “urgent appeal for jihad” in Syria and to rally public support for fighters there.

“That conference will have an impact on the ground for sure,” said Gamal Sultan, editor of Al-Mesryoon newspaper in Cairo. “The world imagined that they can sell the Syrian people cheaply to the tyranny of Assad. Religious leaders are out to prove that notion wrong.”

Documenting atrocities

The conference attendees, including Ahmed Al Tayeb, grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, the bastion of Sunni Islam and the seat of its most prestigious religious studies mosque in Egypt, watched a documentary showing Hezbollah and Syrian forces committing atrocities against civilians in conflict areas.

A statement on the website of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, the pan-Islamic non-governmental organisation that ran the conference, said the meeting was designed to “show the real face of Iran, Assad regime and Hezbollah”.

Some of the attendees of the conference later on Friday met with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to try to garner his support for the jihad drive. The following day before thousands of supporters and religious leaders in a Cairo stadium, Morsi announced a number of steps against the Syrian regime, including cutting all relations with Damascus.

Social media that were instrumental in launching the Arab Spring are now being used as a vibrant platform both to showcase the Syrian regime’s abuses and to call for jihad against Assad.

Earlier this week, a crude video on Youtube showed young people trying to rescue a young Syrian woman lying in the middle of the road, half-naked and injured after reportedly being raped by pro-Assad forces. One by one, the youths are shot by Assad’s forces as they try to help, and the woman is not believed to have survived.

Facebook pages share gory scenes of children, their throats slit, and masses of bodies, including children, lying under rubble. “While you are sitting flipping through your Facebook, children are dying in Syria,” said one post.

So here I am, an Arab journalist in Silicon Valley, where four out of every four people I meet believe Facebook invented the Arab Spring. Three more weeks here and I may start to hallucinate that Mark Zuckerberg was a Cairo-slums native named Hassouna El-Fatatri, who rotted in a Mubarak prison for advocating personal privacy rights.

In Syria and Yemen (pictured here) with a much lower Internet penetration and exposure to Western influence, protests are raging like wildfire. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien/IPS

I understand that some Western institutions that feign Middle East expertise were brutally debunked when they miserably failed to predict the wave of changes in the region from early December of last year. Western intelligence, think-tanks, diplomats, TV pundits and certainly some journalists were at a loss for words.

To compensate for that, some Western connection had to be conjured up. The inaccurate role of different Western establishments in the Arab Spring, this time social media, was conjured up.

The smart marketing gimmick was so powerful that some 10 months later, Western circles now give little or no credit to the indigenous Arab social change mechanisms that have so far kept Arab revolutions raging for a year now.

The tools Arabs used were not mainly Google, Facebook or Twitter. They were simply their own I-Revolt apps.

One of the most potent native tools in organising mass protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and, occasionally, in other Arab countries was not Facebook or Twitter but “Friday-book dot come rally now”.

If that doesn’t ring a bell, just Google “Friday of Rage,” “Friday of Liberation” or the “Friday of Departure” among many other Fridays.

Friday noon prayers where hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people customarily gather every week, have been the most shared feature of the Arab Spring uprisings. The weekly congregations were in fact the main hub for bringing protesters out to the streets – not because of their spiritual value but because of their ability to gather people with no or little extra effort.

Facebook, Gmail, Twitter and the internet in general may have helped with some of the initial rallying calls in the 85 million people nation of Egypt for the Jan. 25 protest. But it was Friday Jan. 28 that saw the birth of the real revolution in Egypt and the subsequent domino effect in other countries.

Fridays were not a reason. They were just an I-revolt app – a good handy one.

A second ergonomic, user-friendly Arab-gadget was the good old A-4 white-paper flyer, handwritten or on rare occasions typed, designating places to assemble and protest. That one was a favourite for leaders of the labour movement in Mahala Al-Kobra, home of Egypt’s important textiles industry, and for disgruntled maritime workers in the Suez Canal.

Threats of labour strikes were instrumental in bringing the military – which was fearful of a complete national shutdown – to eventually side with the people in Egypt.

Another tool I saw used to keep the fervour going was the simple word of mouth over landline telephones from mostly panicky family members reporting to their loved ones how unfit Mubarak’s brutal ways had become.

You add to that mix the role played by the 24-hour pan-Arab TV news, especially from the Mubarak-bashing Aljazeera, BBC Arabic, Al-arabiya and even the U.S.-funded Al-Hurra, in spreading the word and you’ll get a realistic sense of what a limited role social media outlets had on the ground.

In fact, the entire internet was made useless when Mubarak cracked down and cut off all communications – without that denting people’s ability to plan and organise one bit.

The Facebook claims also do not explain why, for example, there is no sign of revolt or even political activism in the United Arab Emirates, which, according to the Dubai School of Government, in December 2010 had the highest Facebook penetration rate in the Arab region, with more than 45 percent of the population having Facebook accounts. On the eve of the revolution, Egypt had a rate of only five percent.

Now, in Syria and Yemen – which have much lower Internet penetration and exposure to Western influence – protests are raging like wildfire. And it is not Facebook that’s gathering them. It’s the local naturally automated software such as Friday congregations, word-of-mouth, flyers, telephone landlines, family relations and TV.

The videos on YouTube and the many pictures posted on other networking sites were, and still are, important indeed, but only for documenting what was happening and letting the outside world get the word. And did that help during the early days of the Arab Spring? Well, no.

Western capitals had originally slumbered through the Tunisian revolution until ousted president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali was almost at the door. And when Western powers finally noticed, in a way thanks to social media, their initial knee-jerk reaction was to try to keep Stooge 0.1 Ben Ali and Stooge 0.2 Mubarak from crashing.

So for now, to get accurate analysis and, subsequently helpful policy recommendations towards the Arab Spring, Western institutions need to take a deep breath, read about courage in admitting failures, stop trying to take credit for something they didn’t do, and look hard and deep into what really happened in the Arab region.

Maybe for a change they will be able to see things in the Middle East for what they really were. In that case, it was for sure their Friday-book, not Facebook.

*Emad Mekay is a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He worked for The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Inter Press Service in the Middle East. He is the founder of America In Arabic News Agency. He covered most of the initial protests of the Arab Spring for The International Herald Tribune and for Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Oct 8 2011 (IPS)

Egypt, routinely the cradle for new Arab and Islamic ideologies, is now witnessing the birth of yet another line of thought – Islamic Liberalism. The term is touted now as a panacea for the eight-month impasse that has locked Islamists and their secularist rivals in bitter bickering over how this Arab nation should be governed after the fall of former dictator Hosni Mubarak earlier this year.

The new ideology involves Islamists toning down their designs of a puritanical Islamic state into a more subdued version of religious ideology laced with pragmatic liberal political positions, such as freedom of expression and belief, along with modern day governing practices such as Western-styled elections and institutions.

In return secularists will ease their attacks on Islam, show greater respect for the faith and recognise its history and potential of justice, social equality and spiritual elevation.

The first turnabout to end dueling between Islamists and secularists came from some of the most radical quarters. Nageh Ibrahim, the main ideologue of The Islamic Group, which in the past took up arms against Mubarak in the 1980s and 1990s, has ostentatiously used the term ‘Islamic liberalism’ to woo secularists opposed to Islamic principles into a rapprochement.

“Liberalism has so many good sides that do not run afoul of the universal principles of the Islamic Sharia,” he said in a July gathering with members of the liberal Wafd Party. “At this juncture of time, we have to search for a form of Islamic liberalism compatible with the norms of the Egyptian society while not alienating other forces.”

Nageh’s message started a slew of other reconciliatory calls from other Islamists based on the new ‘Islamic Liberalism’ mantra.

Cleric Mohammed Al-Zoghbi, one of the fiercest critics of secularists, has called the country’s secularist activists “brothers with kind, good and patriotic hearts that just need to know the Islamists better.” A few weeks earlier, he had described secular Tahrir Square protestors rallying for more profound changes after the ouster of Mubarak as “a homeless bunch forced into Tahrir Square after they were beaten up by their wives back home.”

Zoghbi’s reconciliatory statement was broadcast via Al-Nas TV, a religious channel popular with the country’s ultra-conservative Salafi movement.

Less conservative Islamic players jumped into the fray as well.

Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the bastion of Sunni Islam scholarship, issued a document that pointedly seeks to marry secular points of view with conservative theories.

The Al-Azhar Charter underscores that a civil, as opposed to theological, state governed by law, not religious scriptures, doesn’t not contradict Islam. It also states that individual liberties should be guaranteed in the country’s future constitution and laws.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most organised political group, which is expected to win the coming parliamentary elections, went a step further and pledged not to monopolise the drafting of the constitution, saying that all political orientations, including the country’s six million Christians, should take part. Secularists had warned that the Islamists plan to impose their ideology on the new constitution.

Reciprocation from secularists hasn’t been forceful but not completely dismissive either. Amr Hamzawy, one of the country’s rising secular stars, praised the overtures from the Islamists.

“There’s a substantial amount of similarities between Islamists and liberals,” Hamzawi tells IPS. “At a minimum both sides are looking for a country where the rule of law and real citizenship prevail while peaceful change of power is guaranteed. Unfortunately all political sides were pushed to escalate the confrontation, perhaps unintentionally, to the point where everyone lost sight of what they have in common.”

But the flirtations haven’t dissuaded some hard-core detractors of the Islamists who continue to see their new platform as mere political posturing.

Refaat Saeed, a staunch opponent of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, said the true colours of the Islamists show they really want a theological puritanical state and not a democratic one.

“You can tell for example from their rallies and the banners they carry they actually want a religious and not a democratic state as they claim,” Saeed tells IPS, referring to recent protests in downtown Cairo that drew Islamic activists. The main chant there was “Islamic Egypt, Islamic Egypt.”

Embracing ‘Islamic Liberalism’ is indeed a bit of backpedalling for Islamists who have long been critical of secularists – often blaming them for pushing Egypt into a subservient position on the global scene and for going against the country’s traditions and Islamic identity in favour of more Western character.

Analysts of the political debate in Egypt say time will be needed for a true pragmatic Islamic trend to take root.

“This will take some more creativity,” Hossam Maklad, an Egyptian researcher of Islamic movements tells IPS. “The incentives for the Islamists to move to the centre are there.”

“What we call Islamic Liberalism needs to improvise a form of governing that rests on Islamic heritage and civilisation as a great foundation while at the same time enjoying all the good benefits of Western liberal structure,” Maklad said. “If we can combine both then we’ll save ourselves all those fights and quarrels which may never end.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Aug 25 2011 (IPS)

Egypt’s most organised political group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is tapping crowds as a new financing method for its nascent TV station and media outlets to be able to compete with well-oiled challengers in corporate and government- run media.

All television stations in Egypt are either owned by rich businessmen who made their wealth through close links to the former Hosni Mubarak regime, or by the government. The new financing model adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood could start a wave of public channels that resemble National Public Radio in the U.S. where the public, rather than the government or the rich, funds news content.

The group, that was once outlawed, has soft-launched its Misr 25, a round-the-clock general interest TV channel.

Named after the first day of the uprising that toppled Mubarak, it has been broadcasting non-stop footage of Tahrir Square flag-waving protests that unseated Mubarak after 30 years in office, all with patriotic songs eulogising the achievements of the Egyptian people.

Hazem Ghurab, a veteran journalist who is running the channel, says Misr 25 differs profoundly from its business-funded competitors. “Our funding is crowd-sourced,” he said in an interview. “Our model is the BBC and (Japan’s) NHK.”

Misr 25 owners hail from the Brotherhood’s vast pool of members across the country who each invest a small amount or make a donation.

“This way we are far more professional and far more independent than those owned by businessmen who can be easily manipulated, intimidated or bought by regimes,” said Ghurab, who last worked for Al Jazeera channel in Doha, Qatar.

On top of the public funding plan, Ghurab still sees major advertising market potential. People are waiting “impatiently”, he says, to watch the Muslim Brotherhood channel. He believes they also constitute a sizable untapped advertising market made of the pious, who were mostly ignored by the country’s business elite and the former regime.

Television critic Mohammed Said of Shashaty weekly says the new funding model adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood sets it apart from the wave of new channels that have launched or are being prepared for launch after the fall of Mubarak.

“Most of the new entrants in the market so far are business people who were in bed with the previous regime,” said Mohammed Said. “Their TV channels and the jobs they offer to reporters and top newspapers’ editors is their way of constructing a buffer zone between themselves and public oversight of their practices under Mubarak.”

After the success of the revolution and under public and media pressure, several corruption investigations were opened into the practices of the country’s business elite under Mubarak. Some are now in jail or face further probes. Some of the possessions obtained fraudulently under Mubarak were ordered by courts to be returned to the state.

Fearing further public scrutiny and more damage to their investments, many businessmen who were closely associated with the corrupt Mubarak regime and who had no experience in media ownership have rushed to set up their own channels and media outlets.

One of Egypt’s richest people, Naguib Sawiris, whose family made billions in telecommunications and construction under Mubarak, is sponsoring two new TV channels. The channels will join his media holdings such as the news and public affairs channel OTV. The family have shares in various local newspapers.

Mohammed Al-Amin Ragab, business partner of one of Mubarak’s business symbols, real estate tycoon Mansour Amer, who was a member of the now disbanded National Democratic Party that ruled Egypt for 30 years, has launched a suite of channels under the name Capital Broadcasting Center, CBC.

Businessmen such as Al-Amin and Sawiris join a family of other money barons who discovered the power of media holdings since the time of Mubarak.

Among them is Sayed Al-Badawi, a pharmaceutical tycoon turned media investor. He owns Al-Hayat channels line-up that initially rallied against the anti-Mubarak revolution.

Cement mogul Hassan Rateb, who owns Al-Mehwar television, devoted airtime to discredit democracy activists during the first days of the revolution as foreign agents paid by Jews, Israel and the United States.

The country’s state-owned media-services company, Media Production City, now reports unprecedented boom in business. All of its studios have been rented out. The company, which owns sprawling cinematic sets on the outskirts of Cairo, will now build even more studios to cater or the rising demand.

“It is old money at it again. Businessmen are just buying clout. It is a classic case of conflict-of- interest,” Mohammed Said of Shashaty said.

“This is why the crowd-sourced model of the Muslim Brotherhood promises to offer less biased news coverage than those channels owned by people who benefited under Mubarak. We are waiting to see what that will look like.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Aug 9 2011 (IPS)

The World Bank, which has often pressed borrowing nations to adopt more robust financial transparency regulations, has refused to disclose the financial records of one of its senior officials despite allegations of corruption, abuse of authority and mismanagement of public funds while he served as a minister under the now toppled Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt.

In correspondence seen by IPS between the World Bank and a Washington-based non-governmental organisation that advocates for accountability in international institutions, the lender has refused to produce the records of Managing Director Mahmoud Mohieldin, who was a close aide to Mubarak and his son Gamal in Egypt – citing concern over personal privacy.

The bank’s legal counsel, Anne-Marie Leroy, told the Government Accountability Project (GAP) that the bank had to strike “a careful balance between disclosure of financial interests and personal privacy and security concerns,” and therefore decided against disclosing Mohieldin’s financial statements.

The 46-year-old Mohieldin, who served as Egypt’s investment minister from 2004 until his appointment as a World Bank managing director in October 2010, became a controversial figure in Egypt after the popular revolt that ousted Mubarak on Feb. 11.

Mohieldin was one of a three-member team that led the country’s deeply unpopular economic polices that included an aggressive privatisation programme and drastic cuts to government expenditures on subsidies and the social sector.

The team included Foreign Trade and Industry Minister Rashid Muhammad Rashid and Economy Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali. Both are now on the run outside of Egypt after Egyptian courts found them guilty of corruption, misuse of public funds and profiteering.

Numerous allegations of business misconduct have been filed with the Egyptian General Prosecution Office against Mohieldin. He has also been the subject of dozens of local articles that question his role in ‘sweetheart deals’ involving the sale of public assets at below market rates. Seven other ministers who worked with Mohieldin are now serving prison terms for corruption while others are facing similar investigations.

Mohieldin, who travelled to Egypt several times from the start of his World Bank tenure until the revolution began on Jan. 25, hasn’t set foot in Egypt since the country started a series of probes into widespread corruption under Mubarak.

GAP said it was seeking Mohieldin’s financial disclosure records from the World Bank after it became clear that he is the subject of controversy in Egypt and at the international level.

GAP maintains that the bank’s response of publishing abbreviated forms of the documents will “not suffice to clarify the questions that now surround the alleged business conduct of Mr. Mohieldin as Egypt’s former Investment Minister.”

One of accusations filed with prosecutors in Egypt is that Mohieldin pressured the valuation committee to undervalue the Omar Effandi retail chain – therefore illegally benefiting the buyer. An Egyptian court ordered the sale to the Saudi company Anwal annulled on the grounds that corruption was involved and the valuation was inaccurate after the revolution.

According to court documents, the 82 stores making up the Omar Effandi chain – that include historical buildings dating back to the 19th century – were sold for only 590 million Egyptian pounds (100 million dollars) when the land value alone that the stores sit on could fetch 4 billion pounds (671 million dollars).

As the World Bank resisted transparency over its managing director, workers in Egypt were protesting against Mohieldin. In late July, hundreds of workers from Omar Effandi distributed fliers requesting that the country’s interim military rulers arrest Mohieldin and bring him back to Cairo from Washington be investigated in Egypt.

Another case before investigators alleges that Mohieldin sold a chemicals producer – Egypt for Chemical Industries – to Belgian investors at well below market prices.

“Mr. Mohieldin is apparently under investigation for corruption in Egypt, yet the bank appears to be shielding his finances from public scrutiny in the United States,” said GAP international programme officer Beatrice Edwards.

A source close to bank management, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mohieldin “maybe enjoying the personal protection” of World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick, because of Zoellick’s admiration of Mohieldin’s work that led to massive economic changes in Egypt and his role in World Bank plans to roll out more loans to the Arab region.

Zoellick has publicly praised Mohieldin as “a tireless reformer”, and has said that Mohieldin has an “outstanding track-record of results in reform, modernisation, and knowledge-generation.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Jul 25 2011 (IPS)

Egypt’s transitional military rulers reiterated Monday their pledge to hand over power to a civilian elected government and denied they are seeking to carve out a patriarchal role in the country’s future political life.

General Mohammed Al-Assar, an influential member of Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), said their role will not be decided by the military themselves, as critics say, but “by the Egyptian constitution”, to be drafted after the election of a new parliament later this year.

“We have no business about the content of the constitution,” Al- Assar, assistant to the country’s defence minister, told an audience at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. “The new constitution of Egypt will specify the role of the armed forces.”

Al-Assar said the military’s duties, as part of the constitution, will be put to a public referendum after parliamentary elections, expected to be the first fair and free elections in decades.

“They will either give the military some [political] responsibility, which will be welcome, or they will not be willing to do that and that will be welcome,” he said.

Al-Assar said the military was in fact “eager to expedite” the transitional period and end its current rule of the nation of 85 million people.

Al-Assar’s comments came during a visit to Washington, where concern is rising over SCAF’s rejection of foreign monitors for the parliamentary elections and its objection to foreign funding for Egyptian NGOs.

“We are worried about foreign funding coming from outside Egypt whether from the Europeans or from the Americans or from other Arab states,” he said. “The Egyptian people are nationalistic and are against foreign interference in our political life.”

Such positions have caused speculation that the military may be working to exclude other powers and guarantee itself a decisive political role in the country’s political life, something that Al- Assar denied. Al-Assar said its position was solely motivated by a desire to protect “national sovereignty”.

But concern is rising in Egypt that the military may be reneging on its pledge to support the country’s march towards full-fledged democracy.

Over the past two weeks, the military has faced unprecedented protests in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in the country that focused on the military’s reluctance to hold former regime leaders and members of the police force accountable for the shooting and killing of some 800 democracy protesters during the 18-day uprising.

SCAF also raised questions in Egypt after it announced it will form a committee to write a set of principles “governing and guiding the drafting of the constitution”.

Most of the country’s political organisations and parties viewed the decision as a sign that the military wants to shield the armed forces and its budget from future parliamentary and public scrutiny.

Another issue that further fuelled suspicion of the military’s intentions is a regulation issued by SCAF, under its presidential powers, organising the coming parliamentary elections.

The measure was widely criticised by political parties and groups because of districting issues that could allow former members of ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party, who come from powerful families in rural areas, to maintain seats in the new parliament.

Political groups including the Muslim Brotherhood and liberal-leaning Al-Wafd party, along with democracy activist Ayman Nour, also rejected the law allowing the next president to appoint 10 members to parliament, a provision that Mubarak had used to bolster the list of his supporters in parliament.

But on Monday, Al-Assar said that after the revolution that started on Jan. 25 and ended Feb. 11 with the Western-backed Mubarak’s resignation, the military pledged to adopt principles that Egypt is a “country of law” and that the military will respect that.

He said most of the issues objected to are better off left to the new elected parliament to deal with rather than the military.

“There is major change in Egypt and never, never will it return back to the past,” he said. “We are not dictators. The Egyptian Armed Forces are owned by the Egyptian people…We’d like to be ready to play only a role the people of Egypt ask us to.”

Al-Assar’s comments, while measured and optimistic, may betray a split among SCAF’s members with Al-Assar leading the faction calling for profound and true changes and others led by the SCAF’s head, Defence Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and General Hassan Al-Rewiny, head of the Central District Command, which includes Cairo.

Both Tantawi and Al-Rewiny appear to want a more subdued transformation, with the military’s privileges accrued under Mubarak maintained.

Al-Rewiny recently accused some protestors who have rallied for a faster pace of change of being foreign agents, and claimed that they were working against the national interest of the country. He specifically mentioned the April 6 Group, which is made up of die- hard protesters who occasionally use anarchistic tactics, and said they were receiving foreign funding and training outside the country.

Tantawi, although he opposed corruption by businessmen and companies associated with Mubarak and criticised the country’s fast privatisation programme even when serving under Mubarak, is widely seen as a man opposed to drastic changes in the country.

But both factions are dealing with rising impatience among Egyptians. Many ordinary Egyptians say they haven’t yet felt the benefits of the revolution and that the military was moving too slowly towards democracy for a revolution of this size.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Jun 29 2011 (IPS)

Egypt has cancelled plans to borrow 3 billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund because of conditions that violated the country’s national sovereignty and a public outcry that warned against terms that were blamed for impoverishing many Egyptians.

According to several Egyptian newspapers, General Sameh Sadeq, member of the country’s ruling military council, said the country turned down the loans, and those under discussion with the World Bank, because there were “five conditions that totally went against the principles of national sovereignty.” Gen. Sadeq didn’t detail what these conditions were.

The IMF loan would have made Egypt the first recipient of funding in the Middle East since the so-called Arab Spring movement against Western-backed dictatorships began late last year.

At a Group of Eight summit last month in Deauville, France, the IMF announced that it could make available as much as 35 billion dollars in loans to the countries of the Middle East over the next few years.

World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick in May announced 6 billion dollars in funding over the next two years for Egypt and Tunisia, the two countries where the Arab uprisings started, to help the two post-revolutionary nations modernise their economies. Egypt’s share would have been 4.5 billion dollars.

General Sadeq’s statements on Tuesday contradict statements by the government of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his Finance Minister Samir Radwan, who both served under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, that the new loans came with no conditions. Both officials have advocated publicly for more loans to ward off the specter of a budget deficit, a staple argument in many countries for IMF and World Bank loans.

The decision was taken first on Friday by the country’s military rulers, who took over after a popular revolution ousted the Western-backed Mubarak on Feb. 11. The military have said that some conditions by the IMF and the World Bank on previous loans, that included privatisation of banks and massive food and energy subsidies cuts, fomented public anger at the Mubarak regime.

The Finance Ministry has so far reluctantly backed down from its loans decision and said in a statement on its website that the measure to reject the loans came in response to “public debate and to consultations with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.”

The ministry said it now revised its budget deficit to only 134.3 billion Egyptian pounds (22.4 billion dollars) from 170 billion Egyptian pounds forecast before agreeing on loans with the IMF.

The military’s council, which is acting as a president until a new parliament is elected in September, said there was enough financing locally and from regional countries that made borrowing from the two Washington-based institutions unnecessary.

“That deficit can now be covered from the local market and from some grants and assistance that Egypt will obtain from friendly nations and other international institutions,” the Finance Ministry statement said. In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States and others have promised large amounts of assistance to the country.

Moustapha Abdelsalam, a banking sector expert with Al-Alam Alyoum business daily, said that local banks can easily cover the budget deficit. The government can finance the budget deficit mainly by borrowing 120 billion Egyptian pounds (20 billion dollars) domestically.

The military’s decision comes after a public outcry, and many anti-debt activists warned that the new loans could subject Egypt to a new set of Bank and Fund conditions and outside pressure, something many here say they hoped the revolution would end.

The Council for Revolutionary Trustees (CRT), a non-governmental organisation formed after Mubarak’s ouster of Internet and democracy activists who faced up to the powerful security forces of Mubarak over 18 days of revolution, issued statements saying “outside borrowing contradicts the principles of the Egyptian Revolution that called for freedom from all sorts of local and foreign pressure.”

“The Egyptian people who are about to begin a new era do not want to start their new life with a new set of loans,” the CRT said. “We prefer to live in hunger than to extend a begging hand to those institutions.”

The move to borrow by the Sharaf government was surprising because it has been appointed as caretaker for less than six months and is widely believed to lack enough delegation from the Egyptian people. A host of columnists rebuked the government for taking such major decision without representation from the Egyptian people.

Earlier in June, the IMF announced that Egypt has reached agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a draft 12-month 3 billion dollar financing package to support the country’s programme of economic changes.

The IMF, World Bank and other multilateral development banks announced the “Deauville Partnership for the Middle East” to offer loans to other countries in the region at the Group of Eight summit in late May.

The World Bank has pledged 4.5 billion dollars in loans to Egypt over the next two years to address budget and reserve shortfalls and to finance economic changes that strengthen its credit and investment prospects.

It is not yet clear now if Egypt’s decision might influence plans by other countries in the region to borrow.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Jun 1 2011 (IPS)

Egyptian officials are warning that the country, just emerging from a popular uprising that ousted the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, could be facing a major economic crisis with lagging international aid and foreign investment.

General Mahmoud Nassr, a member of the Supreme Military Council, which is running the country’s interim government, told an economic conference in Cairo last week that foreign direct investment (FDI) has come to a standstill while Western rating agencies race to downgrade the country’s sovereign credit rating. The poverty rate has also worsened to 70 percent, Nassr added.

The General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI), whose job is to attract foreign businesses, says FDI in Egypt fell by 500 million dollars in the first quarter of 2011 – down to 1.2 billion dollars from 1.7 billion the previous year.

The country’s Finance Ministry also forecast at least a 9.4 percent budget deficit this year, while growth was seen slowing to less than 2 percent – down from a 5.8 percent growth forecast before the revolution.

Egypt’s spending on food and energy subsidies will increase by 40 percent this year from last year, further straining the budget, the government says.

Other ominous indicators include the withdrawal of 8 billion dollars from the country’s foreign currency reserves during the past three months alone. The reserves now stand at 28 billion dollars, down from 36 billion in December – enough only for a few months’ supply of imported staples such as sugar, wheat and vegetable oil. The country’s 86 million people are heavily dependent on imported food.

Since the start of the year, the Egyptian pound dropped 2.5 percent in value.

The country is also witnessing revenue declines especially from tourism, and expatriate remittances. Before the start of violence in neighbouring Libya, the 1.5 million Egyptians who were working in Libya were sending millions of dollars home to Egypt every year. Because of slow industrial activity, the country is exporting much less and consequently earning less.

Egypt’s once booming tourism industry is losing one billion dollars per month as a result of tourists staying away from the country in the wake of the Jan. 25 revolution.

“The effects have been drastic,” said Omayma El-Husseini, spokeswoman of the Egyptian Tourism Ministry, told IPS. Egypt was forecasting 16 million tourists for 2011 before the Jan. 25 uprising, she said. But in just a few days, a million tourists packed-up and fled the country, vacating the usually bustling hotels and restaurants in Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and the Red Sea resorts of Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh.

Egypt received 14.5 million tourists in 2010 – making tourism the second largest revenue source after expatriate remittances, government figures show.

“It is obvious we are in a bad economic shape,” said Rashad Abdou, Professor of Economics at Cairo University. “The political turmoil led to blows coming nearly from every direction.”

To lure back foreign investors spooked by sweeping corruption investigations, the government has said that it will make it easier for foreign companies to set shop in the country.

Ahmed Al-Saman, spokesman of the Egyptian Cabinet, also announced that the Justice Ministry is preparing a bill that would penalise former government officials involved in corruption, while absolving foreign investors who were coerced into corrupt deals.

The law will be controversial but if passed would allow foreign investors to keep their projects, properties or lands they obtained in illegal transactions as long as they “adjust their situation with the new government” perhaps through paying modest fines, he said.

Mamdouh Al-Wali, managing editor of the business section of the Al-Ahram newspaper, the country’s largest daily, said the new incentives were not enough and that the main fault of the current government was its neglect of the security situation and of the political atmosphere.

“Foreign investors look first for political stability, safety and the rule of law,” Al-Wali told IPS. “These haven’t yet been fully established after the revolution.”

Egypt has been affected by a wave of crimes and street violence after heads of the police force under Mubarak let loose thousands of convicts from prisons to penalise the public for their support of the revolution. Thousands of criminals remain loose intimidating the people here.

“This is now a country run by the military and it is without a president and parliament,” said Al-Wali. “When the country improves politically, we can talk about the next wave of incentives and of reviving the economy.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, May 17 2011 (IPS)

Abeer Fakhry, a young Christian woman, had only wanted to live with a man who would love and respect her, and not with her abusive husband. But within months of trying to escape her marriage, and her faith, Abeer finds herself chased by her family, by the Orthodox Christian Church, by the fundamentalist Islamic Salafi Group and, lately, by Egypt’s top army generals.

Abeer Fakhry. Credit:

Abeer’s story has come to underscore the conditions of Orthodox Christian women who are subjected to domestic violence and who seek protection elsewhere, but find that the teachings of their church keeps them in permanent, and often intolerable, wedlock.

While the Church itself complains of discrimination by the country’s Muslim majority, this case also highlights denial of freedom practised by the Church itself against its own members.

In several television and press interviews from secret locations, Abeer described how her marriage to a fellow Christian man in the village Kafr Shehata in Assiut province, in the south of the country, quickly turned into a nightmare.

Her husband verbally abused her and beat her up routinely, she said. Abeer, who suffers a kind of anemia that requires blood transfusion every three months, begged for divorce but the powerful Orthodox church led by Pope Shenouda III, who has been running the deeply conservative church since 1971, refused her request.

“I was told I can get rid of this marriage only if I changed my religion,” she told a talk show on Egypt’s Christian-owned OTV. “I then thought about becoming a Muslim.”

So when a Muslim passenger bus assistant named Yassen came her way during her daily commutes to an Arabic calligraphy school, and treated her with respect, she quickly fell in love with him.

On Sep. 23 last year Abeer thought her life would turn for the better when she walked into Al-Azhar mosque, one of Egypt’s oldest, to convert to Islam and to marry Yassen. Both had decided to leave their village behind for good.

Her happiness was short-lived. She was forced to change her location several times because her family was chasing her around the country.

Many Orthodox Christians worry that the number of the church followers is on the decline, and that many of their children are becoming Muslim at a pace they can’t tolerate. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in the U.S says Egyptian Christians were once the majority, but now count only 4.5 percent of the country’s 86 million people. And that includes all Christian denominations such as Catholics and Protestants.

The regime of former president Hosni Mubarak looked the other way as the church chased converts to Islam in a bid to bring them back to Orthodox Christianity.

Influenced by Pope Shenouda’s ultra-conservative views, many Christian families, who often leaned left and formed liberal school of thoughts, have recently accepted the notion that conversion is apostasy and a capital crime despite the fact that such views have often caused frictions with the country’s Muslim majority.

Days before Abeer’s story broke, Salwa, another young Christian mother of three who had converted to Islam seven years ago, was killed by members of her Christian family. One of her children was also killed. Her Muslim husband was injured.

Fearing a similar fate, Abeer found a hiding place near Benha, 40 kilometres north of Cairo. But a Muslim neighbour soon alerted her family.

In March, her family seized her and kept transferring her to different churches. She ended up in a church in the low-income Cairo neighbourhood Imbaba, where fanaticism and poverty mix, leading to frequent violent flare-ups.

Abeer eventually managed to find a cell phone to call her husband.

Feeling helpless and alone, Yassen turned to a new rising power in Egypt for help – the Muslim fundamentalist group called the Salafis who, after the fall of Mubarak’s draconian secret police, have shed years of fear and became publicly active.

Dozens of the Salafis quickly congregated outside the Mar Mina church in Imbaba. Clashes erupted between Muslims and Christians at the church that left eight Muslims and four Christians dead. Some 210 were injured, and two churches were burned down.

The clashes have been the worst Egypt has seen in years. Many fear that the Jan. 25 revolt that toppled Mubarak is being undermined by religious tensions.

Thousands of Christians, carrying crosses and pictures of their saints, rallied in Cairo the next day, with many chanting for Mubarak’s return and asking for protection for their churches from the Salafis.

Mubarak had kept Muslim groups such as the Salafis in check through police brutality. He also gave Pope Shenouda a free hand in controlling the Orthodox Christian minority in return for backing presidency later for Mubarak’s son, Gamal.

Pope Shenouda barred Christians from taking part in the uprising that started Jan. 25 and ousted Mubarak in February.

Egyptian media, still run by executives from the Mubarak era, immediately sought a scapegoat for the bloodshed in Imbaba. They blamed Abeer. Newspapers began calling her “the cause of all troubles” and many columnists asked whether she is a worthy enough person.

She escape from the church during the clashes, but the country’s army generals tracked her down, arrested her and have accused her of stoking religious strife.

Now Abeer is behind bars in the infamous Qanater women’s prison, and blamed by almost all – including human rights organisations that have often adopted the cases of converts to Christianity from Islam but have been hesitant to come to her defence.

In her last phone interview to a local TV station last week, Abeer’s voice sounded broken when she spoke of a future she had hoped would be better.

“I do not know what my fate will be now. I do not know what will happen to me. All I really wanted was to have a normal life – just like everybody else.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, May 13 2011 (IPS)

Egypt is stepping up its wheat production in a bid to stem the country’s rising dependence on foreign imports that escalated during the 30-year rule of former President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in February.

Bakeries struggle to produce bread in the face of wheat shortage. Credit: Emad Mekay/IPS.

“We could easily end dependence on foreign imports of wheat that make the ‘baladi’ bread,” said Abdelsalam Gomaa, an advisor to the government. “The problem will remain the extra wheat flour needed for other products such as pasta and sweets. We’ll continue to import 6 to 7 million tonnes if we do not grow more land with wheat.”

Egypt – whose population grows at an average of 1.3 million people per year – needs to grow 5 million acres to reach full wheat self-sufficiency, Gomaa told IPS.

Mubarak, who maintained power by force and rigged elections, had often offered access to the Egyptian market of 85 million consumers in return for political backing from Western countries – many of which are food and agricultural products exporters.

Egypt has now become the world’s largest wheat importer, and U.S. wheat’s biggest market. France is the second biggest exporter to Egypt.

The country’s move to grow what it needs locally could ease pressure on the domestic budget, create a surplus in the international market, and reduce food prices for other more impoverished global consumers, agriculture experts here say.

The new strategy is centred on offering prices competitive with international rates to lure Egyptian farmers to shift back to growing more wheat, which is essential for making bread, a staple for most people here.

The government said it is buying wheat for 350 Egyptian pounds (59 dollars) per erdab (150 kilogrammes), up from only 270 pounds (47 dollars) last year under Mubarak – a rate so low that farmers had complained that they could not afford new seeds or spend on technologies to compete in the market. Wheat acreage dropped by 5 percent.

According to the ministry of agriculture, under the new pricing system wheat acreage will jump to 3.6 million acres from 2.9 million last year.

Egypt also plans to offer growers disease-resistant, high-yield seed varieties, more regular farming counselling, along with government subsidies for scientific research.

The government promised to remove red tape that discouraged the creation of new agricultural companies that grow grains, especially wheat.

Immediately after that announcement, a group of Egyptian expatriates in the Gulf, Europe and the U.S. announced that they would start a new company that would offer shares directly to the public to raise 3 billion Egyptian pounds. The money will be used to grow 500,000 acres of wheat next year.

Egypt has turned to the neighbouring African nation of Sudan for extra arable land, and Sudan has offered one million acres for wheat growing by Egyptian farmers and companies.

For the first time, Egyptian farmers said Tuesday that they have organised to create their own unions, a step they say will help them communicate better with the local authorities rather than leaving the government susceptible to foreign pressures.

The head of the new union Abderhaman Mohamed Shokry told reporters here that his union has plans to help the country reach wheat self-sufficiency by lobbying to change policies of the previous regime that benefited international companies at the expense of local farmers.

But despite the new atmosphere and the road to greater wheat production is likely filled with many obstacles, experts say.

Bakery owners complain that even if Egypt reaches self-sufficiency in wheat production, there will be other problems with delivery, market mechanisms, and lack of government oversight.

Haj Mahmoud, owner of a bakery in 6 October city, 35 kilometres southwest of Cairo, said that subsidised wheat flour ends up being sold on the black market for profit.

A 50-kilogramme sack of subsidised flour bought for 10 pounds is re-sold to confectionery bakeries in upscale areas for 140 pounds. Confectionery and sweets shops sell to the middle classes and the rich, Mahmoud told IPS.

“Many bread bakeries are unscrupulous. They want huge and fast profit so they sell their portions of flour to those who pay instead of making it bread for the poor as the government requires them to,” Mahmoud said. Mahmoud’s bakery goes through 40 sacks of flour each day to make bread.

“Government officials who monitor the distribution of bread flour are poorly paid and can easily be convinced to look the other way,” Mahmoud said, rubbing his thumb and pointer finger together to indicate the possibility of bribes.

Foreign exporters who fear they may lose one of their biggest and most profitable markets will present other obstacles to Egypt’s march toward wheat independence.

Egypt grew more dependent on wheat imports under agricultural programmes encouraged by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and industry lobbies of U.S. exporters.

U.S. Wheat Associates, a U.S. lobbying group, often holds marketing conferences in luxury sea resorts frequented by rich Western tourists. Poorly paid officials from the Government Authority for Supply of Commodity here – the official wheat buyer in Egypt – are almost permanent fixtures of these events.

USAID has often submitted research that promotes the idea of freeing up wheat land for cash crops. Washington also deploys important promotional tools such as export credit guarantees that facilitate U.S. wheat sales to Egypt. The result has been that Egypt imports at least 10 million tonnes of wheat every year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that Egypt imported 3.7 million tonnes from the U.S. alone in 2010/2011. That figure is expected to rise in the short-term even with Egypt’s attempts to free itself from foreign wheat.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Apr 8 2011 (IPS)

Anger at Egypt’s privatisation programme, involving the transfer of billions of dollars worth of public assets to private hands, aided the Egyptian revolution that elbowed the Western-backed Hosni Mubarak out of office in February, a top army general said.

Major General Mohammed al-Assar, a leading member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, a group of top military generals who are running the country until a civilian leadership is elected, said the military brass were deeply opposed to the privatisation programme. That in turn eased their decision to side with the Egyptian public against the 30-year autocratic rule of Mubarak.

Al-Assar told state television on Wednesday that the army has been against the “plans to sell Egypt” and viewed them as a threat to social peace.

He said that Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, the council’s president and minister of defence, had repeatedly raised objections to the privatisation programme, as shown in the minutes of several cabinet meetings he attended.

His opinion was often over-ruled by Mubarak and other top officials who had favoured following economic prescriptions from Western countries. Many of those officials stood to gain from the sale of public enterprises.

Prodded by the Washington-based trio – the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) – Egypt under Mubarak adopted an aggressive programme to sell public companies to both local and foreign investors since the early 1990s.

The programme peaked between 1996 and 1999 with the sale of at least some 30 profitable public companies a year.

Mubarak and his backers in Washington marketed the programme as necessary to free the government of the burden of supporting these companies, bolster competitiveness, enhance private investment and create jobs.

But the public had grown suspicious as it witnessed the sale of companies cheaply, without sufficient oversight, to foreign investors and firms.

Egyptians were further irked as they saw how a large number of workers were made redundant in the process and accusations flew of corruption and kickbacks.

The programme ran into its strongest resistance when Mubarak started to eye the country’s four public banks for privatisation despite widespread public opposition. Mubarak went ahead and sold the Bank of Alexandria, the smallest of the four.

Tantawi, even though he was appointed by Mubarak to lead the ministry of defence, was particularly opposed to the sale of Bank Misr, the country’s second largest bank, according to al-Assar, amid public questions over the nationality of foreigners bidding to buy national banks.

The sensitive financial sector was being restructured in a programme funded by the World Bank, USAID and the African Development Bank (AfDB) at a cost of some 8.7 billion U.S. dollars.

In the wake of the 18-day revolution that toppled Mubarak after 30 years in power, officials who promoted the sale of such public assets under his regime have come under both media and legal scrutiny.

On Wednesday, the country’s general prosecutor Abdel Megeed Mahmoud froze all assets of three champions of the privatisation programme under Mubarak. All three had cooperated closely with the USAID, the World Bank and the IMF.

The general prosecutor said former Prime Minister Atef Ebeid, former Public Sector Minister Mokhtar Khattab, whose job was to supervise the sale programme, and Mohammed el-Danaf, board chairman of the holding company for Metallurgical Industries, stand accused of “wasting public money” and gaining personal profits during the sale of the Assiut Cement Company.

The company, the largest cement producer in Egypt, was sold to Mexico’s Cemex in 1999 for only 373 million dollars. Former board members provided documents that show the real value was at least four times that figure. Now, the contract is being investigated.

This week, Egypt’s general prosecutor said his office is examining several other privatisation contracts and was seeking technical opinions on the sale, valuation, legality and procedure of such transactions.

These investigations could open a Pandora’s box for the programme and its supporters in the Western-dominated financial institutions.

For example, several criminal investigations have now been opened against former Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali, who oversaw the design and implementation of Egypt’s economic reform programmes. Ghali was the head of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the IMF whose role was to advise the Fund’s governors on international monetary policy.

Investigations have also been opened involving former Investment Minister Mahmoud Mohieldin’s role in the sale of a hotel and a retail chain. Mohieldin is now the World Bank Managing Director. Both are out of the country.

Next week, a Cairo court will look into a case brought by independent whistle blowers to cancel the sale of Egypt’s famous retailer, Omar Effendi, to the Saudi company Anwal on the grounds that corruption was involved and the valuation was inaccurate.

According to the court documents, the 82 stores of the Omar Effendi chain, that include historical buildings dating back to the 19th century, were sold for only 590 million Egyptian pounds (99 million dollars), when in fact the land value alone of the stores is as much as four billion pounds (670 million dollars).

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Mar 30 2011 (IPS)

Egyptian authorities have opened dozens of criminal investigations into hundreds of millions of dollars worth of public land contracts that were awarded illegally to real estate developers associated with former President Hosni Mubarak without proper procedures at below market rates.

Developments on state land sold in 6th October City, South of Cairo. Credit: Emad Mekay/IPS

“The (Mubarak) authoritarian regime supported a class of land speculators and marketed them as if they were real developers and entrepreneurs with real projects,” said Mamdouh Hamza, civil engineering professor at Suez Canal University and a frequent public speaker on land corruption issues.

“In fact the closest thing they had to business was their relations and contacts with the regime which they used to obtain land cheaply, wait on it a bit, inflate their prices and then sell at huge profits without giving the public a penny in return.”

The investigations, backed by the country’s current rulers in the military, who came to office after Mubarak was ousted on Jan. 25, are designed to placate angry Egyptians who feel they have been ripped off by the previous regime.

The official Central Auditing Organisation, a government watchdog that was marginalised under Mubarak but continued to amass reports on official corruption, estimates that the country could recoup some 75 billion Egyptian pounds (12.7 billion U.S. dollars) from land sold as cheap farmland but later vended as residential mansions and luxury units, especially around the 220- kiometer Desert Road between Cairo and the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

At least a dozen of close associates of the ex-president, who ruled Egypt for 30 years, and his son, Gamal, are now standing trial or investigations related to corrupt land contracts.

Almost all of the officials were members of Mubarak’s once-ruling National Democratic Party. Several have been ordered not to leave the country while others had their financial assets frozen by the general prosecutors pending investigation over how they cheaply obtained public land with little or no government oversight.

Although such cases are being uncovered almost on daily basis, many who had warned of wrongful practices in state land sales in the past, say this is only the tip of the iceberg.

“The end of state land corruption has just started,” said former Dean of the Faculty of Urban Planning at Cairo University Sameh El-Alaily, who had written extensively about state land abuse.

Earlier this month an Egyptian legal panel recommended that a contract to sell 230 acres of public land north east of Cairo to the country’s second largest listed company, Palm Hills Developments, be annulled.

The panel found the deal was given “by direct order” rather than through competitive bidding at drastically below market rates. As a result, the country lost millions of dollars in real value of the land.

The former Housing Minister Ahmed Al-Maghrabi now in prison, stands accused of awarding Palm Hills Developments, in which he is a shareholder, hundreds of acres of land at such rates “using only his signature”.

The Egyptian General Prosecutor Abdel Megeed Mahmoud this week ordered freezing all assets of Al-Maghrabi and his partner, Palm Hills Developments Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Yasseen Mansour, whose family’s business empire includes dealerships for General Motors, Opel, Philip Morris, McDonalds, Red Bull, and Mantrac.

Palm Hills says on its website it is a business partner with The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company and Jumeirah Group, the Dubai-based luxury hospitality firm and member of Dubai Holding.

Palm Hills also has an agreement with India’s Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces to manage three Palm Hills hotels, one each on the North Coast in Ain Sokhna and in Aswan.

Al-Maghrabi faces several other charges including selling land at 300 Egyptian pounds (50 dollars) per meter when the real price was 5,000 (850 dollars) to a Saudi real estate mogul in Cairo.

The same panel also recommended cancelling another deal with Saudi billionaire Prince Waleed bin Talal to sell 100,000 acres in the southern part of the country at a rate of 50 Egyptian pounds (8.40 dollars) per acre when the government was selling similar land to Egyptian university graduates for 22,000 Egyptian pounds (3,700 dollars), the panel said.

Mubarak’s regime said the plan to sell so cheaply was for Prince Bin Talal’s company, Kingdom Agricultural Development Company, to reclaim and cultivate the desert land to produce food for Egypt.

The legal panel said “the government has so far offered no evidence that the land has been cultivated despite the fact that the contract was signed 13 years ago.”

The country’s largest listed developer Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG) is under similar scrutiny as it faces renewed accusations that it has been awarded an 8,000 acres in its three billion dollar flagship project, Madinaty (my city), at token prices without proper auction procedure.

A previous court ruling, before Mubarak’s abdication, found that the now infamous Madinaty contract was fraudulent. Yet the Mubarak regime stomped all over the courts and re-issued the land late last year at the same price to the same company.

Further corruption cases involving public land are being disclosed at a dizzying pace, a development that has clearly kept corrupt officials who are still at large on their toes.

“But those who stole public land must be dying in their skin right now,” Hamza said. “Prison is waiting for them. They deserve it.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Mar 27 2011 (IPS)

The revolution contagion sweeping across the Arab countries has spread to Syria leading to rare protests challenging the grip of the ruling Baath Party on the country. The regime was quick to describe the turmoil as a foreign-inspired plot aimed at punishing the country for its support of groups opposed to U.S. and Israeli policies in the region.

Dozens have died and many more were injured after security forces used live ammunition against protests that started in the town of the southern town Deraa. The protests spread to several cities including Sanamain, Hama, the port city of Latakia and the capital city Damascus.

Protesters, who have been ruled by draconian emergency law since the Alawite-controlled Baath Party came to power in 1963, have called for greater freedoms, democracy and an immediate end to corruption.

The regime responded with promises of political and economic changes.

President Bashar Al-Assad’s political advisor, Bouthaina Shaaban, said in a press conference the government will start a programme to fight corruption immediately, ease party formation regulations and give more freedoms to the media as well as lift the emergency law. She also said the government will increase salaries.

The official Syrian news agency SANA ran several stories on its Arabic website on Saturday detailing the salary raise and said there will be more economic measures that will improve conditions for Syrians soon.

But after Shaaban’s press conference, the government resorted to even more force in face of protests in Sanamain, south of Damascus, killing 15 protesters on Friday, according to several news reports on Arabic news channels.

The Syrian official Tishrin newspaper said on its website on Saturday that those killed were members of “armed gangs” that sought to terrorise the public and attack the army.

The Syrian Communist party issued a statement calling for an immediate investigation into the killings.

“Investigating the shootings and bringing those responsible to justice will open the way for a political course rather than the usual security and military answer to the protests,” the party said in a statement on its website.

The regime’s media blamed the recent wave of demonstrations on outside forces keen on undermining Syria’s assertive foreign policy and ending its role in opposing U.S. and Israeli hegemony in the region.

The state-controlled media said that the protests could serve the interests of Israel and the West by destabilising the country in general and creating a state of chaos.

Syria, a close ally of Iran, has been host to several resistance groups, especially Palestinian groups opposed to the Israeli occupation of Arab land. In 2008, the U.S. extended its sanctions against Damascus after it accused Syria of arming the anti-Israel Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

The regime used another tactic to discredit the protests saying that more demonstrations could lead the country to fall into the hands of conservative Islamists, who would then limit freedoms. Syria’s 22.5 million people are mostly Sunni Muslims but are ruled by the minority Alawites, who follow a branch of Shiite Islam.

The regime’s arguments were not convincing for the opposition.

“Trying to scare us by invoking chaos or civil war, using the threat of the Islamists taking over and arguing that our people are not yet qualified to practice democracy, are all futile and hopeless arguments,” said Riad Al-Turk, a long time opposition leader in Syria who had been jailed several times before. “The Syrian people have come of age and the authorities should realise this fact before it is too late.”

The protesters have dubbed their demonstrations “rallies for dignity and freedom” refuting the regime’s argument that they are motivated by foreign powers who want to end Syria’s backing of resistance groups.

If anything, Syria has many of the conditions that caused the revolutions in Tunisia and in Egypt — two other Arab countries that saw long-serving leaders unseated by popular revolt. In both countries, foreign policies played almost no role in fueling the uprisings. Mass protests were moved by anger at corruption, poor economic and social conditions and the regime’s brutality.

“Our people can no longer bear living under dictatorship, corruption, repression, injustice, discrimination and poverty. The era of submission is over and it is your turn to go now, Doctor,” said Free Syrian, a Syrian blogger writing for the website of Aljazeera news channel referring to President Assad who is an ophthalmologist by profession.

The ruling Baath Party has often used lethal force to clamp down on opposition, mostly in the name of unifying the country against Israel and the United States.

President Bashar Al-Assad’s father, Hafez, used heavy military equipment to stamp out an uprising in the city of Hama in 1982. Thousands were killed.

This week, some of the protesters have chanted against the head of the much feared Republican Guard Maher Al-Assad, the president’s brother, for his harsh tactics and widespread human rights violations.

“In Syria today, the spirit of freedom is flying over the country,” Al-Turk said in his column on FreeSyria.org. “The wind of changes that blew across the Arab World over the past three months had to eventually come to knock at the doors of the big prison called Syria.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Mar 6 2011 (IPS)

The much-feared secret police and intelligence service that protected the regime of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak by arresting, torturing, and even killing opponents has started a wave of burning documents and evidence that could incriminate them, as calls escalate for abolishing the force altogether and bringing its officers to justice.

A demonstrator shows a document that the secret police tried to burn. Credit: Emad Mekay

Protesters were shouting “Justice, Justice for they fired bullets on us”. Army tanks and armoured vehicles were cordoning off the offices to protect the besieged secret police officers.

Heaps of documents and files were on fire. Dozens of protesters used wooden ladders to take a peek from above a three-metre high fence. Some managed to salvage lightly burned files. The documents could provide insights on how the secret police operated with complete impunity under Mubarak for 30 years.

Similar protests broke out in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and in Sharkia, a province northeast of Cairo. Protesters asked for disbanding the force after word spread on Friday night that officers were shredding documents and setting fire to “top secret’ documents.

Eyewitnesses in Alexandria told local TV stations that officers cornered inside the building opened fire on the protesters, injuring at least three.

Disbanding the force would be the next most important landmark in the process of the Egyptian revolution, after it succeeded in ousting the Western- backed Mubarak on Feb. 11, and the dissolution of parliament a few days later.

Amn Al-Dawla resembles the Iranian Savak force under the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. That force was later eliminated by the Islamic revolution.

The draconian force had instilled fear among most Egyptians and was often the main friction point between the public and the Mubarak regime. Thousands have been kidnapped and tortured by Amn Al-Dawla officers.

The force, whose exact number and budget remain a secret, controlled almost all aspects of life in the nation of 85 million. Its reports are said to have shaped the future of most professionals in the country.

No government appointments were made without approval of the secret police. Political activists risked at the least a ban on travel overseas. Young army officers were put under surveillance to ensure loyalty to Mubarak. Spies were planted everywhere, including in shopping malls and sports clubs to monitor public sentiment.

“They banned all of us men over 60 years old from gathering inside mosques after prayers to read the Quran,” says Haj Mohammed Ali. “They banned any gathering. They wanted to control the people with an iron fist.”

Others tell more dramatic stories. Sayed Al-Gazzar, a secondary school teacher, recounted how his brother Khaled was detained by Amn Dawla in Sharkia for three days for not carrying an ID card.

“He came out a sick person with lots of mental problems because of the heavy torture he endured,” Al-Gazzar told IPS. “We spent a year going from one doctor to the other to find a cure for him. But he died a year later leaving behind three children and a wife without any income. They killed him.”

It is such heart-wrenching stories that started off a campaign in Egypt to disband and investigate the force after the toppling of Mubarak.

Calls are mounting on Facebook and Twitter to surround more offices of the secret police force to save the important documents.

“The coalition of the Jan. 25 revolution” (Jan. 25 is when the first big protest was held), a loosely formed grouping of young leaders of the uprising, threatened to launch sit-ins around the country if the army doesn’t order the end of the Amn Dawla, or moves to preserve evidence of its human rights abuses.

“Our unequivocal request is the elimination of that police force,” the group said in a statement sent to IPS. “We will continue to escalate pressure within hours…including issuing calls for masses of Egyptians to demonstrate until that police force is abolished.”

But the spread of protests to other offices of Amn Dawla could lead to renewed violence as the force is well armed, and its members didn’t hesitate in the past to shoot at demonstrations.

New Prime Minister Essam Sharaf is more responsive to disbanding the force, probing abuses by the force and holding its officers accountable. Sharaf has made statements against the force before.

Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy, an old guard figure, has resisted calls to dissolve the powerful force, preferring instead to “restructure” it.

Human rights groups and revolution activists have vowed to press ahead with their demands to remove all symbols of the former regime.

On Thursday, the Cairo-based Arab Network for Human Rights Information published a series of leaked documents that detail the “crimes” of the secret police. In a statement, the group entitled the release: ‘Countdown to End Amn Dawla’.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 22 2011 (IPS)

The brutal response by Libyan leader Muammar Al-Gaddafi against pro- democracy protestors in the country indicates his determination not to leave office without a bloody battle, but his moves follow the path that eventually led to ouster of two neighbouring dictators.

In a televised address Tuesday from his residential compound that was bombed by U.S. planes in 1986, a highly animated and yelling Gaddafi repeatedly called the protestors “rats” and warned them that they will be crushed and sentenced to the “capital punishment” for going against his rule.

But it was that realisation that they face death and heavy reprisals that actually made demonstrators two weeks ago in Cairo’s Tahrir Square more entrenched in their positions.

And like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Tunisia’s Zine Al-Abidin Ben Ali, Gaddafi too cut off all communications in the country and used force against protestors.

In Tunisia and Egypt, that violent reaction in itself turned otherwise passive residents – who weren’t taking part in the protests initially – against the governments in the two countries.

Violent reaction by the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt against the protestors in fact strengthened their calls from simple reform to complete change.

Instead of using thugs and hired muscle on horseback and camels, like Mubarak did against the Tahrir Square pro-democracy activists, Gaddafi employed foreign mercenaries and heavily armed militiamen, according to eyewitnesses.

The shots on Tahrir protestors by snipers from rooftops was also echoed by Gaddafi who allowed his supporters to shoot at demonstrators from building rooftops, helicopters, and, according to some reports, warplanes.

By using overwhelming force, Gaddafi is in fact renouncing any remains of legitimate claims to power.

Employing foreign mercenaries to quell the uprising by his own people shows that he doesn’t have enough public support among his own people, and possibly even among his own military.

Just like the final days of Mubarak, Gaddafi now stands nearly isolated as international condemnations pour in against his regime and his brutal attempts to suppress uprising.

“Those who are still with him in the military will soon realise they cannot go on using such heavy weapons and sheer brutal force against their fellow Libyans and will turn against him,” said Khaled Mahmoud, a Cairo-based independent expert on Libyan affairs.

Mahmoud pointed to defections in Gaddafi’s diplomatic corps and by some ministers as a prelude to possible major military defections. At least twelve Libyan diplomats have announced their resignation – amongst them Libya’s envoys to France, the United States and UNESCO

“The most telling sign that Gaddafi will fall is that wave of defections from his close diplomatic supporters and some military officers,” said Mahmoud. “He is used to firing people not being deserted like that.”

“Gaddafi’s use of hired guns also means he is really shaken and scared. Those are not signs of someone confident of public backing,” Mahmoud added.

Mahmoud who writes for the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alwasat said that Gaddafi’s threat to use even more force in his speech Tuesday means he has no political course to take.

Other analysts say that Gaddafi – who came to power in a 1969 coup – didn’t learn any lessons from his two neighbours, Egypt and Tunisia.

“Just like the Egyptian regime who thought Egypt was not Tunisia, Gaddafi thought Libya was neither Tunisia nor Egypt,” wrote Sohail Ghanoushi in a column for aljazeera.net Tuesday.

“He didn’t understand the lesson even though it is a simple and obvious lesson… a ruler’s job is to protect the country and his citizens not to start a holocaust against them.”

On the ground, there were signs Gaddafi maybe indeed losing his iron-fist grip on the country, just like the two former dictators did in their final days.

Egyptian expatriates returning from Libya told the local press that Gaddafi’s troops have abandoned many positions and deserted hundreds of miles of land – especially in the Eastern part of the country where two major cities, Benghazi and Bayda, are no longer under Gaddafi’s control.

The London-based Libya Al-Youm newspaper reported that members of three large tribes including the large Warfla tribe, have threatened to take “heavy weapons” against the regime if mass murder of their “sons” doesn’t stop – an indication that the tribal system could be working against Gaddafi.

Politically, the two speeches that Gaddafi and his son, Saifulisalm, gave were awkward, rambling and threatening in tone – just like Ben Ali’s and Mubarak’s.

Mubarak’s last speech, that came when hundreds of thousands gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square waiting for his resignation, shocked Egyptians because of Mubarak’s intransigence and insistence not to leave office. The speech is widely thought now to have galvanised the protestors.

“For Gaddafi, the last straw came during the past few days with Saifulislam’s threatening, arrogant and insulting speech to the Libyan people,” said Abdelmonem Al-Houniy, Gaddafi’s former ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo who quit two days ago in protest against the use of violence against the protestors.

“That speech meant the regime is writing its own death certificate by insisting to go against its own people,” he told IPS.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 20 2011 (IPS)

Libyan leader Muammar Al-Gaddafi has unleashed the bloodiest crackdown so far against pro-democracy protestors seeking his ouster, killing dozens of people in only four days of protests.

On Sunday the unrest spread to capital Tripoli from the eastern port city Benghazi.

Libyan Internet activists have denounced the international community’s failure to act over the “massacres” in Libya.

The Cairo-based Arab Organization for Human Rights has decried the use of violence against the protestors in Libya and called for an international investigation. The Vienna-based Friends of Humanity said the Libyan regime’s onslaught was tantamount to “war crimes”.

There are conflicting reports on the death toll but it is generally believed to be in the hundreds now.

Human Rights Watch reports that 173 people have died. The London-based private newspaper Libya Al-Youm quoted a local doctor as saying that 285 people died in the eastern city of Benghazi alone.

According to an eyewitness who spoke to Al-Jazeera by telephone, some 300 people have been killed in Benghazi, the country’s second largest city.

The crackdown by Gaddafi, who has ruled Libya since 1969, threatens to make the revolt the most costly in terms of human lives and bloodshed in the wave of demonstrations sweeping across the region for greater freedoms.

Gaddafi, trying to stave off the fate of the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt who were removed from power after facing similar protests, has resorted to much harsher military tactics than those used in uprisings in neighbouring Egypt or Tunisia.

His tactics include cutting off food, fuel and medical supplies as well as electricity to revolting cities. The regime also cut off most communications to try to make sure the unrest does not spread to other cities. But the move failed to prevent protests erupting in capital Tripoli on Sunday.

Pan-Arab news outlets report that Gaddafi’s troops have used live ammunition and heavy military equipment such as anti-tank missiles in Benghazi. Late on Sunday fierce clashes were being reported in Tripoli.

Libya Al Youm reported on its website on Sunday that the regime was using “heavy weapons” and shooting at random.

The newspaper also carried a call for urgent supplies for Benghazi hospitals including blood.

“Muammar Gaddafi’s security forces are firing on Libyan citizens and killing scores simply because they’re demanding change and accountability,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

On top of its military response, the Gaddafi regime is trying to paint the revolt as a foreign plot to destabilize the country – a tool used by many other Arab regimes. After a long history of colonization by Western powers and by Israel in the Palestinian Territories, Arab people are deeply mistrustful of foreign interference.

The official Libyan News Agency (JANA) reported Sunday that the government was fighting an Israeli-inspired scheme to create anarchy in the country. It said that there were no genuine popular grievances behind the protests.

Israel is financing “separation” forces in the Arab region, JANA added.

Al-Shams newspaper, which is controlled by an arm of the information ministry in Tripoli, reported online that the government has exposed “foreign network elements” in several Libyan cities.

But online posts by Libyans and anti-Gaddafi demonstrators show that the protestors want regime change and democracy.

Most of the uprising has so far centred around Eastern cities, especially the Mediterranean city of Benghazi. Protests were also reported in Baida, Ajdabiya, Zawiya and Derna before spreading to Tripoli.

The protests started Feb. 17 after Internet activists called for a “Day of Rage” against political and economic conditions for Libyans under Gaddafi.

On Sunday, the website, LibyaFeb17.com carried tweets and posts condemning the global indifference over the harsh tactics by Gaddafi’s troops.

“It is precisely this silence that is a very serious issue in this terrifying situation,” said one post.

The post came after Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Saturday he will not “bother” Gaddafi over the violent incidents.

In 2009, the Libyan government invested in Eni, an Italian oil company that has been operating in Libya since 1959. Eni is Libya’s largest foreign oil producer.

Britain had said on Friday it was revoking arms export licences for Libya and Bahrain, another Arab country whose government is fighting popular protests. The ban will limit tear gas and ammunition sales that could be used to suppress protests.

Gaddafi had tried earlier to appear unruffled over the removal of two of his erstwhile allies, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia.

The state-sponsored Al-Jamahiriya TV, beamed via satellite to Arab countries, aired live interviews with officials and pundits calling for calm and “opening a dialogue.”

The officials explained that the government was spending “hundreds of millions” of dollars on making Libyans’ life better through investing in infrastructure, roads, schools and universities.

Libya’s Al-Jamahiriya 2 was airing songs praising Gaddafi and eulogizing his achievements. But the violent reaction is seen as an indication of the threat Gaddafi perceives.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 20 2011 (IPS)

Egypt could soon be looking for a new economic model – one that will be different from the traditional system that has been promoted for years by international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), under the reign of ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

“Lots of Egyptians after the revolution realized the level of injustice against them, and that they were being ripped off for many years,” Abulezz Al-Hariri, a former opposition member of parliament, told IPS.

“They started asking for their rights,” he added. “This cabinet is just trying to cater to that immediate realization.”

Since the mid 1980’s, the World Bank, the IMF, and USAID have sought to encourage policies that limit the role of government in the economy, cut budget deficits, and give more influence to the private sector and corporations.

Under pressure from the public following the success of the January revolution, the government of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq – originally appointed by Mubarak but kept by the military to run the everyday affairs until new elections are held – quickly rolled back some of the controversial policies.

Many of the moves announced over the past few days are designed to be a quick fix to the economic situation faced by millions of Egyptians who are eager to enjoy concrete benefits of the 18-day revolution in which 365 protesters died.

The new government has announced that all citizens are eligible to apply for monthly portions of sugar, cooking oil, and rice. The previous cabinet, which was comprised of businessmen and former corporate executives, had frozen the rations.

This decision overturned the previous policy of providing monthly rations only to those who prove they are poor through a lengthy process of paperwork and red tape.

Last week, new finance minister Samir Radwan said that the country will not change its current subsidies system, which offers reduced food prices for some 65 million Egyptians.

Furthermore, the new government promised to offset any extra cost in food prices that might accompany rising prices internationally. Radwan put the initial cost at 2.8 billion Egyptian pounds (about 425 million dollars).

Under the new policies, the health ministry will offer free health care 24 hours a day at public hospitals. Days before the Jan. 25 revolution, the Mubarak regime had limited free health care hours from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm.

Temporary workers who have spent at least three years working for the government will now be given permanent contracts that carry higher salaries, and benefits such as pension plans, and health and social insurance.

Many municipalities also saw long lines of applicants after the interim government said that it will offer subsidized housing for young people on an expedited basis.

And on Wednesday, the Central Bank of Egypt said it will be a “guarantor” to achieve the demands of banking sector employees, which include curbing top management compensation packages and salaries as well as offering greater benefits for employees.

But while the new measures remain limited, their implementation has raised questions about whether Egypt may be heading back to its strong socialist past, which flourished under the rule of former president Gamal Abdelnasser, who ran the country in 1950’s and 1960’s.

Some officials say that the new programmes constitute an initial reaction from a team known for its pro-capitalist background and are only temporary.

“We are not moving back to a socialist past,” Amina Ghanem, deputy finance minister, told IPS. “We are just trying to extinguish fires.”

“We are not going to lose our reforms,” said Ghanem, who was also deputy to outgoing finance minister Youssef Botrous Ghali. “We want people to work and not take charity from the government.”

For measures already announced, the interim government will find funding by re-allocating spending to more high-priority areas, rather than re-making the Egyptian economy, she said.

“Instead of spending now on, say, for example, landscaping, we’ll re-channel that money to more urgent needs,” she explained.

Al-Hariri, a member of the left-of-centre Tagammu Party, agreed that the current interim government is not taking a U-turn away from capitalist policies inspired by Western financial institutions.

“Their measures are just like tranquilizers; something to kill the pain but not cure anything,” he said.

Al-Hariri added that past policies under Mubarak were not effective and that any future government should find an alternative. He recommended long- term plans to create more jobs, and what he called “real industries” and “real investments”.

Confiscating wealth looted by cronies of the former regime, more egalitarian distribution of wealth, gradual taxation, better government oversight, and placing “a reasonable ceiling” on profitability of goods and services sold to the public are among the measures that should restore an economic balance to society, he said.

Mamdouh Al-Wali, a business writer with the Al-Ahram Daily newspaper, said Egypt’s path towards a new economic direction will be fraught with dangers from deeply-rooted interests, such as businesses, former regime symbols, and international financial institutions.

“A future new government, even though elected, may not be able to resist all that counter-pressure,” he told IPS. “The change will be hard.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 18 2011 (IPS)

The movement for change sweeping across the Middle East has now rocked Libya. Thousands of people have taken to the streets across many cities to demand an end to the 41-year autocratic rule of maverick leader Muammar Al- Gaddafi.

International human rights organizations say at least 24 people have died since the protests erupted Thursday. The regime, encountering its first ever major challenge, launched a violent crackdown.

As with the revolutions that swept two dictators out of office in Tunisia and Egypt, social media remains the most robust source for information on the public revolt in Libya.

The unrest started when Internet activists opposed to the decades-long dictatorial rule of Gaddafi called for a “day of rage” on Feb. 17 to demand his ouster. Activists set up a website to compile web-posts and information on the unrest (http://www.libyafeb17.com/).

Videos filmed with mobile phones show demonstrators in the eastern province of Benghazi attacking the offices of Gaddafi’s so-called people’s committees, which are really government offices.

Young protesters also destroyed official statues of The Green Book, authored by Gaddafi as the country’s de facto constitution in which he spells out his ideology.

“The people want regime change,” protesters chanted in online videos, picking up slogans from the Egyptian revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

“Down, Down with the Dictator,” Libyan protesters shouted in recordings of demonstrations.

Most of the complaints of Libyans are similar to those that prompted people in Egypt and Tunisia to rebel. Many called for an end to corruption, bringing in democracy, and better use of oil revenues.

The protests in Libya drew a bloody response straightaway. Some tweets alleged that the personal security troops affiliated with Gaddafi’s sons were involved, and had fired upon demonstrators.

International rights organizations confirm that the regime was using live ammunition against the demonstrators.

According to local sources, the regime used mercenaries from African countries to disperse the protesters. Gaddafi, known for his eccentric ways, had in recent years assumed the title of “king of kings of Africa”.

Online posts by Libyan citizens say that the city of Derna in the east is “now free”, meaning it had no pro-Gaddafi troops by the end of Friday. Other posts in Arabic claimed that Derna citizens were heading to Benghazi to help the locals against the mercenaries.

On Thursday, Amnesty International urged the Libyan authorities “to stop using excessive force to suppress anti-government protests.”

The protests come even though the Libyan regime had taken measures to pre-empt the kind of protests that erupted in Egypt and Tunisia. Scores of activists were arrested, and citizens warned against joining protests. Security forces stepped up presence in the streets.

The government banned all press coverage of events, and arrested several reporters in the Mediterranean city Benghazi, which is witnessing some of the most violent clashes.

On Friday, Gaddafi’s government banned all access to the Al-Jazeera website.

“The Libyan authorities tried to smother this protest before it even got off the ground but that, clearly, did not work,” Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa said in a statement. “Now they are resorting to brutal means to punish and deter the protesters.”

The group urged the Libyan authorities to order an immediate investigation into the deadly attacks against the demonstrators.

Local reports suggest protesters took control of Al-Sehaba Square in Derna city, much as Cairo protesters took over Tahrir Square. They then took control of the whole city, the reports claim.

The government countered with pro-Gaddafi demonstrations. The official Libyan Jamahirya News Agency (JANA) (http://www.jananews.ly/Index.aspx? Language=1) reported that thousands of Libyans marched in support of Gaddafi on Thursday and Friday. The agency published more than 40 reports suggesting that Gaddafi enjoys the backing of people around the country.

Gaddafi, who overthrew the monarchy in 1969 in a military coup when he was only 27, is the region’s longest-serving leader. He has ruled this nation of 6.5 million with an iron fist. Opponents have been executed, and others sent to life-terms in prison, human rights groups say.

Gaddafi forces study of his Green Book on school students, and has changed the names of calendar months to titles of his own making.

Libya, a mostly desert country, is oil rich. Oil and gas sales accounted for more than 95 percent of export earnings and an estimated 80 percent of fiscal revenues in 2008, according to the IMF.

The unrest may disrupt exports to European countries or push oil prices higher. Libya exports oil to Italy, Germany, France, and Spain. After lifting sanctions against Libya in 2004, the United States has also increased imports of Libyan oil.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 15 2011 (IPS)

Before his ouster on Friday, toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had made one of the biggest mistakes of his reign; not learning from the lessons of hundreds of small labour and professional strikes that littered the country since 2005. These were the actual precursors to the Jan. 25 Revolution that end his 30-year autocratic rule.

“We were lucky that the regime failed in its arrogance and aloofness to draw lessons from the many strikes and protests over the past five years,” said Mohammed Fathy, 46, a labour activist in El-Mahala, whose bid for office in the government-sponsored General Labour Union was stifled because of his anti-regime views.

“We were even luckier that they didn’t understand that there were genuine economic, professional and labour grievances; especially here in Al-Mahala on April 6, 2008.”

It was on April 6, 2008 that Egypt saw the first example, in decades, of labour action spilling over into a popular uprising – a mini revolution on the streets of this industrial city that attracted men, women and children.

It was here that labour activists organized two days of massive protests that saw local residents leaving their homes, and pulling down Mubarak’s pictures and posters for the first time since he came to office in 1981.

That signaled the birth of the anti-Mubarak Internet activists group, the April 6 Movement which took its name from that historic day.

Two years later, the group helped organise the events of Jan. 25, 2011. This time, they succeeded in pulling down not only Mubarak’s pictures but Mubarak himself.

Had Mubarak taken note of the labour protests, he may have learned some ways to pre-empt or foil the Jan. 25 Revolution, labour leaders here say.

“The reaction of the Mubarak supporters was that we are just a bunch of kids who can be easily crushed by the police. Their only response was more and more security – nothing political and nothing economic. They didn’t realize how upset the country’s labour force is,” Fathy said.

The country’s labour force is upset indeed – even today, days after Mubarak’s ouster. Years of police harassment, anti-worker policies and poor economic conditions have left a deep scar on the country’s workers who until today feel left out of a rightful place.

Little wonder then that labour protests continue here unabated, prompting the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces, that is running the country, to issue its fifth communiqué specifically calling on labour leaders to tone down their protests.

The interim government of Ahmed Shafiq had complained to the Supreme Council that continuing strikes are not helping bring life back to normal in this nation of 85 million.

Almost every sector of the economy; from chemicals production to schools and telecommunications is being affected.

The Central Bank of Egypt had to give the banking sector an unplanned holiday on Monday, to go with a religious holiday on Tuesday, in a bid to foil growing strikes among bank workers demanding investigation into high payment for top executives.

Even the police are blaming poor pay for corruption within the force, and are protesting for better job benefits.

This wave of post-Mubarak strikes is highlighting a split among labour leaders; between those who want immediate benefits for workers in the heat of the moment and those who want to give the new caretaker government some time to catch its breath, and time to meet labour demands.

“We should give the new rule some time, but fight for rights still,” said Mohamed Mourad, a railway worker and labour activist in El-Mahala.

Mourad said Mubarak’s fall is meanwhile good news for the country’s disgruntled workforce as it means an end to some of the anti-workers policies.

“With Mubarak gone, his policies that impoverished workers and pulverized independent labour unions will be gone too,” said Mourad as he sipped black tea in his railway office surrounded by several co-workers nodding in support.

Mourad specifically mentioned policies of privatizing state-run companies, tampering with labour union elections, and police interference as impediments that will sink with Mubarak.

While this may be true, it still doesn’t offer immediate relief for impatient workers, suppressed and suffering for years.

Here in El-Mahala the average base salary for textile workers at Egypt for Weaving and Spinning, the largest textile factory in the Middle East with 25,000 workers, is only 600 Egyptian pounds (102 dollars). Most workers end up working one or more extra jobs.

For that to be corrected, they suggest that the new government work to confiscate billions in dollars in wealth of corrupt members of the former regime and invest that for the benefits of workers.

Mubarak spent heavily on security and that could be trimmed too to re- channel funds for the impoverished workers, according to Hamdi Hussein, a leading labour activist.

Labour leaders say that most strikes and labour protests have three goal; ending corruption at the top management at some companies, increasing the minimum base wage to at least 1,500 Egyptian pounds (255 dollars), and holding free elections for labour unions.

“If those three demands are not meet soon,” said Hussein, who works for the Coordinating Committee for Labour Freedoms and Rights, “workers will continue to act until the revolution means real change for them.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 11 2011 (IPS)

Asmaa Mahfouz, a 26-year-old Egyptian woman who two weeks ago had only one name, now boasts at least three. These include “A woman worth 100 men”, “The girl who crushed Mubarak” and “The leader of the Egyptian revolution”.

Women in the forefront of protests in Tahrir Square. Credit: Mohammed Omer

Mahfouz is a member of a new lot of Arab women activists who are shedding their typical conservative image to lead or inspire a wave of pro-democracy protests that are reshaping the political future of several countries in the Arab world.

Mahfouz created a YouTube.com video in mid-January (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk) in which she urged “all young men and women” to leave their computer screens and converge on the streets of Egypt to protest the brutal and corrupt rule of the 82-year old Mubarak.

“I am a woman and I am going out on Jan. 25 and am not afraid of the police,” she said a few days before the unrest broke out. “For the men who brag of their toughness, why exactly are you not joining us to go out and demonstrate?”

Her message reverberated she says, “beyond the wildest of dreams”.

The 4 minute 30 second video was shared widely by Internet activists and was posted on many blogs and websites. Young people forwarded it on mobile phones – a communications tool that some 65 million Egyptians use. Soon after, the government blocked all mobile phone networks.

“I had hoped Jan. 25 would gather 10,000 people at best, but I later realised after the police force withdrew and collapsed, that our day of protests turned into a popular revolution,” she said on a Facebook.com page created for her by her supporters.

“My family was so worried about me and they told me women are not harsh enough for that kind of confrontation,” Mahfouz said. “They now tell me they are so proud of me. I knew that if I get scared and everybody gets scared, then this country will be lost for good.”

Mahfouz’s words resonated not only in Egypt, but across the region.

“Asmaa’s words were sincere and came out of the heart,” wrote Reem Khalifa, a columnist for the Bahrain newspaper Alwasat. “Her words turned into a tsunami wrecking havoc with despotism, tyranny and injustice.”

Asmaa Mahfouz is among millions of women taking the lead during protests in Egypt and elsewhere in Arab countries.

In Cairo, women with sticks and iron bars in hand were patrolling some of the streets with their male relatives during the days of looting and vandalism that swept the city after the collapse of the Egyptian police force.

Mothers of several people who died in the initial days of the protests have refused to receive condolences or hold funeral ceremonies until the revolution achieves its main goal of ousting the regime of Mubarak.

The mother of Khaled Said, an Internet activist who was beaten to death by police officers in Alexandria last year, joined the protesters in Tahrir and repeatedly urged them not to go home before Mubarak leaves office.

Women have visibly been in the forefront in demonstrations at Tahrir Square and other places – in a society where women traditionally have taken a back seat. Many volunteered to do body searches of other women taking part in the protests – it had become clear that the regime could sneak in weapons to be used against the protesters.

Across the Arab world, women have stepped into the forefront of dangerous anti-regime protests.

In Tunisia, human rights leader and blogger Lina Ben Mehenni was among the first to get word out about the Tunisian protests early in December through her tweets and blogs – despite police threats.

The poor mother of Mohammed Bouazizi, the young street hawker who set himself ablaze starting the Tunisian revolution in mid-December, was also doing her share, calling for change. Her sincere tears and wishes for justice galvanised hundreds of thousands of impatient Tunisians to eventually remove the country’s long time dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. The video of her tears went viral in the Arab world.

In Yemen, another country that has seen major anti-government protests, young woman activist Tawakul Abdel-Salam Karman was leading the charge.

It was 30-year-old Karman’s arrest by President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime that set off days of major street demonstrations that threatened his hold on power. Karman, who is now free, remains one of the country’s most outspoken critics of the regime.

“The Arab world is in revolt against dictatorships,” Magda Adly, of the El Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence in Cairo, told IPS. “That’s why we see women, Islamist or not Islamist, veiled or not veiled, coming together and leading what’s happening on the ground. This is real equality and we’ll never go back to square one.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 6 2011 (IPS)

Imam Mohammed Al-Saba of the Eisa mosque here in the centre of the rural town Kirdasa takes the pulpit to tell his congregation he can smell “the air of freedom for the first time in 30 years.”

“A week ago, I couldn’t have said what I said today,” he says to the hundreds of town residents gathered at the mosque, 23 kilometres south of Tahrir Square where tens of thousands have been calling for the immediate departure of President Hosni Mubarak.

“Last week and for many years I had to report what I was going to say in the mosque to the secret police beforehand. Today I didn’t have to thanks to the young people of Egypt who expressed themselves.”

The imam reminds worshipers how mosques have been kept under control, with everyone who visits brought under surveillance. “Injustice ends eventually and oppressors are not the owners of the universe. God is.”

Across the street from the central mosque stands the building of the city’s police station – charred and burned down.

Next to the police station is the building of the Amn el-Dawla, the secret police offices. This too was set on fire during two days of protests last week. Kids are now playing outside the iron doors.

“Those kids would have probably been beaten, insulted or even had their parents arrested for daring to play next to the doors of Amn el-Dalwa,” says a man who identifies himself only as Abdelfatah. He owns a store a few blocks from the office.

This sense of security is the first achievement of the uprising that started Jan. 25 to try to remove Mubarak as president of this nation of 85 million.

Now, the city functions without the police. And, it feels a much safer place.

“We do not have the same police abuses as before. They used to beat people and use force against all who opposed them,” says Moustapha Radwan, a shop owner selling handmade scarves.

Five people died and hundreds were injured in protests in this town. After last Friday prayers, hundreds lined the street for a religious service in homage to the “martyrs”.

A few metres from the mosque in the city centre, minibus drivers express happiness at the disappearance of the police force.

“Officers forced us to take them wherever they wanted for free,” says one driver who refuses to give his name. “They would force passengers out so that they could have the car all for themselves. It used to happen even when we haven’t made any money. If we objected, they’d grab us by the collar and drag us into the police station where they would threaten to frame us in some criminal case. Thank God it isn’t happening any more.”

People in this town say they were inspired by mass protests on Tuesday, Jan. 25 in Tahrir Square.

“We looked at them protesting against the regime and I felt they were representing us…We acted because of their revolt, because of high prices, unemployment, police abuse and the rigged (November) parliament elections,” Radwan says.

Abdelfatah clutches his throat, opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out as if he was choking. “We were suffocating,” he says.

The new relief comes with new dangers. On way to Kirdasa, this reporter was stopped by pro-Mubarak vigilantes searching cars for food. This reporter was detained for an hour. A uniformed police officer was called. He made several phone calls before ordering release.

The mob swore at anti-Mubarak protestors, with some saying “America betrayed us” and “Nobody is better than Mubarak”.

The nervousness and cruelty of Mubarak’s hired muscle have become a trademark over the past several days as they lose ground to a growing pro- democracy movement. Their tactics of intimidation have alienated more and more people from Mubarak.

They are asking the public to choose between security and stability under Mubarak, and chaos, insecurity and food shortages without him.

The people of Kirdasa are indeed suffering. At night they patrol the streets to prevent prisoners, reportedly released by the police force itself, from attacking their homes. Many haven’t sold a single item to a tourist for almost two weeks now. Yet many say this is a low price to pay for freedom.

“For 13 days we didn’t have a single tourist to come to buy from us. This is not easy on our business or on our kids,” Abdelfattah says. “But we do not want to set back the clock just for money. With patience and time, Mubarak will go and calm will be restored. Tourism will be ten times better when we elect whoever we want and when we are free.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Feb 3 2011 (IPS)

The regime of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has unleashed a media campaign to discredit pro-democracy protestors. That comes on the back of a violent crackdown by his supporters.

State-run television stations are airing reports that the young people who started the protests on Jan. 25 demanding his ouster have been handpicked by Israel, and given training in the U.S. and Qatar on destabilising Egypt.

Mubarak’s regime has launched the campaign as the embattled president himself appeared in an interview on ABC television to declare he is “fed up” with ruling, and that he wants only to save Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood and chaos.

The pro-government Mehwar TV aired an interview (http://100fm6.com/vb/showthread.php?t=248138) with a woman who identified herself as Shaimaa. The woman was shown to claim that she was given classes by Jewish and Israeli instructors in using the Internet against the government.

The woman’s voice and image were scrambled to hide her identify. The interview was re-broadcast on several pro-Mubarak TV stations, some of them owned by Egyptian businessmen allied with him.

The Mubarak regime has used similar tactics in the past to discredit his main opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. He has often said that the Sunni group was being funded by Shia Iran, allegations the group denies.

The smear campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood seems to be working with large numbers. Many Egyptians, whose only source of information is the state media, are convinced the Muslim Brotherhood, which espouses a religious ideology different from the Shia Islamic brand, is an agent for Iran.

The woman described as Shaimaa was seen on state television as saying also that she was trained to act against Egypt by Freedom House, a Washington- based organization. She said she was paid 50 dollars a day to attend classes on tactics to overturn the ruling government in Egypt.

The woman presented on television made allegations that leaders of some political groups were paid 50,000 dollars each. She said those given training included members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Internet activists, and members of the groups April 6 and Kefya, all opponents of the regime.

The attempt to portray young Internet activists as agents of the Israeli Mossad appear to be working too, to an extent at least.

Several people told IPS they believed the young woman’s story, and said they believed the pro-democracy protesters did indeed work for Israel, Qatar and the U.S.

“Those nations do not want any good for us,” said Mohammed, owner of a barber shop in Minya el-Kamah, a small town northeast of Cairo. “Look at all the chaos in the country since they started demonstrating. It’s the foreigners who are doing all this.”

Ahmed, 18, there for a haircut, agreed. “All those who work for foreigners deserve all that happens to them. Instead of going to work and making money, they are wasting time sitting in squares against the government.”

One youth who spoke to IPS challenged such views. “Do you really believe those lies? Mubarak made us suffer for so long, and he is lying again. We should use our minds and not believe everything we hear. He wants to confuse the people.”

If confusion is what the current regime wants, it appears to be succeeding. The people that IPS spoke to who believed state television far outnumbered those who did not.

The same TV channel, Al Mehwar, broadcast an interview Thursday with Mohammed Hassan, an independent religious scholar from the Salafi movement. Unlike the political Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafi movement believes that Muslims must not challenge a Muslim leader or try to take charge from him.

The propaganda campaign has presented many interviews with businessmen allied with Mubarak. They all warn that without Mubarak Egypt will collapse. “Without Mubarak, all the economic benefits and achievements for this country will be lost,” one businessman told state-run television.

The government is now sending text messages in Arabic through local mobile phone companies, warning people against sabotaging the country.

One message reads: “O, you young people of Egypt, listen to the voice of reason and be warned of rumours. Egypt is above all”. Mubarak has always portrayed himself as the “voice of reason”.

Even movie channels now display the slogan ‘Protect Your Country’ alongside their logos on screen.

The state-run daily newspapers are portraying the onslaught on pro- democracy activists in Tahrir Square – by paid thugs, plainclothes police and common criminals – as a moment when “the real Egyptian people broke their silence.” Al Ahram Al-Massai newspaper ran the headline ‘Egyptians Break Their Silence’ to describe the arrival of pro-Mubarak groups.

Leading figures in the protest have been called “American agents”. Prime among those so described is former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei. Al-Massai newspaper said Elbaradei had sent Iraq into “a dark tunnel that he wants Egypt to go into too.”

The Al-Awkaf ministry, which oversees more than 50,000 mosques in Egypt, has joined the campaign. The ministry has directed imams, who will lead the Friday prayers, to stress the need for “unity” and to implore the faithful not to engage in violence or protests.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO/NEW YORK , Jan 28 2011 (IPS)

After a day in which thousands of protesters called for his ouster and clashed with security forces, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced on state television after midnight Friday that he was dismantling the current government immediately and will announce a replacement cabinet on Saturday.

Protesters were met with U.S.-made tear gas by Egypt's security forces. Credit: monasosh/creative commons license

Mubarak made no mention of his own fate or any impending elections. Indeed, while he mentioned Egyptians’ “lawful aspirations” represented by the protests, he said that some “demonstrations turned to riots”.

“There is a fine line separating freedom from chaos,” he said, pledging to “defend Egypt’s security and stability”.

“We should be cautious and aware of the many examples around us that draw people to chaos and mayhem and gain no democracy or stability,” he said.

Mubarak reportedly spoke to U.S. President Barack Obama by phone for 30 minutes after his address.

“I just spoke to him after his speech and I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words,” Obama said in a brief television address, noting Mubarak’s pledges for reform. “Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.”

Obama said the U.S. would be a “partner” with the Egyptian people in the pursuit of their goals. “Ultimately the future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people,” he said, adding that the U.S. would work with the Egyptian government.

“I want to be clear to the Egyptian authorities to refrain from using violence against protesters,” said Obama, urging demonstrators to also refrain from violence.

Earlier in the day, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured onto the streets in cities across Egypt, and many were met with U.S.-made tear gas canisters, rubber-coated bullets, and the batons of security forces.

From the morning on, the protesters’ numbers were increasing by the hour. Immediately after the morning Friday Prayers at Sixth of October City, a suburb of Cairo, 3,000 people were out on the streets. By the afternoon prayers, the numbers doubled. Among the crowd there were many women.

The crowd appeared to transcend class lines, from people wearing the garb of private security guards to the middle- class and affluent.

Some demonstrators brought their children, but when clashes with security forces heated up, many pulled the children out of the protests.

At home, people were watching satellite broadcasts like Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and even Al Hurra, the U.S. government- funded station, which all covered the protests.

There are reports on satellite television that two more protesters were killed in Mansour, a city in the northeast Nile River Delta. Al Jazeera just reported that in the main city on the Suez, 11 people died today, on top of the three others that have died in recent days.

Most forms of communicating out of Egypt are down or suppressed. There is still no Internet service, and mobile phone services are still down.

Army forces showed up occasionally, but did not directly confront or clash extensively with protesters.

The branch of the Army that came to downtown Cairo to protect the state-run TV and Radio building was from the Republican guard, which is the presidential guard.

There were reports of tanks around the U.S. and other embassies, protecting those diplomatic installations.

Cars popped up around the city in strategic areas with tinted windows. It’s illegal for civilians in Egypt to have tinted windows. Usually, these cars are some kind of military intelligence.

As day turned to night, more clashes broke out and some fires erupted in Cairo. Low-level operatives of Mubarak’s government took to state-run television to blame the illegal Islamist opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, for the “riots”.

But most of the Brotherhood’s senior leadership had been arrested before Friday’s demonstrations.

“Egyptians in Alexandria did the unimaginable on Friday, fending off a police attack for the first time in their lives. They are walking around in shock, unable to digest the significance of what they have done,” wrote Peter Bouckaet, Human Rights Watch’s global emergencies programme director, from the northeastern city in the Washington Post.

Late on Friday night in Egypt, a simmering tension was palpable in Cairo’s suburbs. Television reports said Mubarak’s speech was immediately followed by small groups of protesters sloganeering against the aged president. If the absence of an announcement to step down is any indication, the government may react more violently in the future.

*Emad Mekay reported from Egypt.

Excerpt:

Demonstrations calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt continued for the second day in several Egyptian cities with police cracking down violently, a development that many analysts here say reflects the nervousness of the regime.

Police clash with protestors in Cairo. Credit: Mohammed Omer

At least four people have died so far, 600 have been arrested and many more injured. Protests are flaring up in Cairo, 6th of October City, Suez, Mahal El- Kubra and Alexandria.

“Young people are standing in the way of heavily armed armoured vehicles and stopping them. People are genuinely frustrated,” Khaled Al-Balashy, editor-in-chief of Al-Badil newspaper told IPS.

“That was the first time I see people literally sacrificing their lives in face of police brutality,” Al-Balashy said. “They think nothing worse could happen to them. This is unprecedented. And the changes will be equally unprecedented. It is a matter of time.”

Diaa Rashwan, an analyst with the semi-official Al Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies noted that the protests are now calling for regime change, not for the usual government benefits or reduction in food prices.

“Protesters want the regime out. That in itself has confused the government,” Rashwan said. “They do not know how to respond so far. The only answer has been extra security – I think they are scared.”

The government has stepped up its security response across the country, with armoured vehicles visibly deployed around important buildings in Cairo – including the television and radio building overlooking the River Nile and several ministerial offices.

Hundreds of members of the Egyptian Press Syndicate demonstrated outside their union, where there was a heavy police presence, while hundreds of lawyers were trying to break a blockade by the police of the Bar Association building nearby.

Several women journalists were beaten by the police and were seen crying in pain. Many were seen yelling at officers who had used clubs against women reporters.

“These protests may not bring immediate or quick results,” said Qutb Al- Arabi, an activist with the Egyptian Press Syndicate. “But it is a message to the government that we are truly fed up.”

Al-Arabi said he was demonstrating with other journalists initially for greater press freedoms, but as the police cracked down with violence, the demands have now shifted to request the departure of 82-year old President Hosni Mubarak who has ruled Egypt since 1981.

Mubarak and his government have been losing popularity due in part to implementation of economic policies backed by Western institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development that have led to high prices, rampant unemployment and corruption.

The government has cut or removed subsidies for many staple goods in a country where millions survive on less than two dollars a day.

Just before the protests broke out Tuesday, the government was preparing to cut energy subsidies, a move that would have pushed prices up even further.

The health ministry was also planning to cut its public health care coverage – limiting the hours at public hospitals were patients could be seen for reduced fees.

Politically, more activists are being pushed to the sidelines – including Islamic opposition, secular and independent political leaders.

Several political activists were particularly shocked in November over what they saw as the rigged parliamentary elections, which the ruling National Democratic Party won with an overwhelming majority – leaving very little room for opposition.

“The government’s performance is very weak on many levels, be that socially, politically or economically,” said Gouda Abdel-Khalek, head of the economic affairs committee at the left-leaning opposition Al-Taggammu Party.

But some analysts say that the Egyptian regime is flexible enough to note the demands of the protestors.

“We are talking about a state that is a professional survivor,” Mohamed Abdel-Salam, editor-in-chief of the political periodical Al-Seysa Al-Dawlia told IPS. “They survived many other storms before.”

Abdel-Salam said the size of the protests yesterday and today were clearly larger than what Egypt was used to, but “it is still smaller than protests in Tunisia, Lebanon or Yemen”.

“The political elite are reading the events well and we expect to see some positive response soon because they will strengthen the hand of the reformists inside the ruling establishment. The changes will likely be political rather than economic,” said Abdel-Salam, whose publication is part of the state-run Al-Ahram Institution.

The government however has not indicated it is responding either politically or economically.

The Interior Ministry has been the dominant government voice so far. In a statement Tuesday, the ministry blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for the protests – a declaration that positions the government to ignore demands of protesters since the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed.

Opposition parties say the protests were spontaneous and not organised by the Muslim Brotherhood.

“It was a popular unrest. It wasn’t the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Abdel- Khalek of Al-Taggammu party. “I hope that the regime will get the real message and won’t believe its own untruths”.

Abdel-Khalek, who also teaches economics at Cairo University, said that the regime will fight hard for its survival because it is “a matter of life and death”.

“They are afraid that once they are toppled, there will be investigations into their corruption and their mismanagement of the country,” he told IPS.

The liberal Wafd Party called Wednesday for a “reconciliation government’ that would include members from outside Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party, and also on Mubarak to dissolve the current “rigged” parliament.

But all analysts agree on one thing; the emergence of a new generation of young Egyptians who are more combative and who are not afraid of the police – who are capable of bringing about more change than previously thought.

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Jan 26 2011 (IPS)

Egyptians have demonstrated in protests rare in size and ferocity against the three-decade rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

“Down, Down with Mubarak,” thousands chanted in downtown Cairo Tuesday. “Mubarak, it is your turn after Ben Ali,” they said referring to Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was toppled Jan. 14 in protests in neighbouring Tunisia.

The protests saw factory workers, university professors, political activists, and people from all walks of life, both men and women, braving riot police and taking to the streets across the country – not just in capital Cairo.

Many were also chanting against corruption, unemployment and the regime of the 82-year-old Western-backed President Hosni Mubarak who has ruled the country since 1981 with an iron fist.

The call for the protests came first by young Internet-savvy activists who declared Jan. 25 a ‘day of rage’ on Facebook pages and on Twitter. Interior Minister Habib El-Adly first dismissed the call as ineffective but the numbers that turned out stunned the police. As the day progressed what was initially expected to be yet another day of small protests in Cairo that the police could easily crush evolved into massive unrest in almost all major towns and cities in the Arab nation of 85 million.

At least one policeman and two protesters died. Several injuries were reported. Eyewitness Rabei Ahmed told IPS that the police used rubber bullets in Cairo.

Protests broke out at different locations in Cairo, confusing the police further. A nearby demonstration in downtown Cairo targeted the high court while another took place in the affluent district Mohandseen. A third came in the industrial neighbourhood Shobra.

Later in the day the police, clearly surprised by the growing numbers of people, started firing tear gas and using water canons. Riot police blocked all entries to downtown Cairo with armored vehicles. Cars were stopped at check-points, and some passengers were forced out of their cars by the police.

Protesters sat through the cold night in Midan Al-Tahrir, the Liberation Square, Cairo’s most central area. The Interior Ministry has issued an ultimatum for them to disperse. Local TV stations are broadcasting the warning non-stop.

The government, which controls all communications here, started blocking websites in the afternoon as events on the ground heated up and it became clear that many protesters were using the Internet for information.

Aldostor.org, the website of the privately owned newspaper which often carries articles by opponents of the regime, was blocked. Alwafd.org, a website for the opposition daily Alwafd, was also blocked after it reported the death of one protester. Twitter has been blocked for hours. Demonstrators are using mobile phones to coordinate their activities.

Industrial city Al Mahala saw some of the biggest demonstrations. A young protester there told IPS over the phone that “thousands” were taking part.

“It is like the entire city is out,” 30-year Doaa Abdulla said. “I woke up my husband and encouraged him to take part. There were so many people pushing and running around. He fell on the ground and hurt himself but he still wants to continue protesting.”

She said she only left after she heard live shots from the police. “It sounded like bullets. I think they have orders to shoot and kill,” she said over the phone from Al-Mahala.

“We heard of the protests on Facebook,” said a 15-year-old protester who identified herself as Mona.

Riots have been reported in several cities including Alexandria, Tanta, Mahala, Suez and Mansoura, and in some parts of Sinai.

The local privately-owned Al-Mehwar TV station reported that the only areas that didn’t see protests were remote cities such as Luxor, Aswan and the distant western desert city Al-Wadi Al-Gadeed.

Protestors are asking for a rise in the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, an end to martial law, release of political prisoners, and constitutional changes that would bar handing over power to any of the president’s family. Mubarak is widely believed to be grooming his son Gamal to take over the presidency.

“After today, the options before the political leadership in the country have become very limited,” Mahmoud Sultan, a columnist with the independent newspaper Almesryoon told IPS.

“The country looked today like it’s going through a historical turn that could change more than a quarter century of injustice, repression and starvation. Egypt will never be the same after Jan. 25.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Jan 21 2011 (IPS)

Middle East countries have seen the largest increase of illicit outflows of funds to richer nations, depriving the developing nations of much needed development money, a new international report shows.

Developing countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region lost 1.2 trillion dollars in the nine years of the study, an average of 130 billion dollars a year, most of which goes to banks in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland and other G8 countries, economist Karly Curcio told IPS in an interview.

MENA alone accounted for 24.3 percent of the hike in all global illicit money outflows between 2000 and 2008, according to a new report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based organization that advocates transparency in the international financial system.

Four oil-producing Arab countries appeared on the top 10 list of illicit money transfer exporters.

Saudi Arabia was the lead Arab country with outflows of 302 billion dollars over the nine years studied the report, ‘Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 2000 – 2009’.

The United Arab Emirates came next at 276 billion dollars, followed by Kuwait at 242 billion dollars and Qatar at 138 billion dollars.

Curcio said that capital flight in the region was mostly in the form of bribes, kickbacks, tax evasion, deals in contraband goods, criminal activities and other forms of corruption.

“The dramatic increase in the world price of oil this decade likely contributed to the rapid increased volume of illicit financial flows out of the resource-rich region,” added Curcio, who is co-author of the report.

Another method for illicit money transfers is when a country’s residents acquire foreign assets illicitly by over-invoicing imports and under-invoicing exports – a practice known as trade mis-pricing that is more common outside the MENA region especially in Asia and Mexico.

Globally, developing nations were losing an average of 725 billion dollars a year to illicit money transfers. China was the world’s largest exporter of illegal funds by far at a whopping 2.18 trillion dollars followed by oil exporters Russia at 427 billion dollars and Mexico at 416 billon dollars, the GFI said in its report.

Egypt was the first exporter of illicit funds after the four top Arab oil- exporting countries in the region with estimated total outflows of 57 billion dollars between 2000 and 2008, an average of 6.3 billion dollars a year.

Israel followed at 15.2 billion dollars, an annual average at 1.6 billion dollars a year, and Lebanon at 11 billion dollars for nine years, an average outflow of 1.2 billion dollars per year.

“We regard our figures as conservative, since they do not include smuggling, some forms of trade mispricing, and asset swaps,” says Raymond W. Baker, director of Global Financial Integrity. “Skyrocketing prices for oil, other minerals, and foodstuffs, generated funds which easily escaped abroad.”

The 64-page report comes at a critical time in the Middle East when people of the region are witnessing an unprecedented popular revolution against the Western-backed corrupt rule of President Zine el Abidine Ben and his family. Tunisians say they revolted in part because they saw the slow obliteration of their wealth to corruption by the Ben Ali regime.

Tunisian media online are reporting that the Ben Ali family accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth in stolen money that is now in Western banks.

The new interim government in Tunisia has requested that foreign countries, especially Switzerland, freeze all assets of the Ben Ali clan.

While the Middle East outpaced other regions in terms of the speed of growth of illicit outflows, it took second place in terms of the size of flows after Asia.

Asia accounted for 44.4 percent of total illicit flows from the developing world while MENA represented 17.9 percent, developing Europe17.8 percent, the Western hemisphere 15.4 percent, and Africa 4.5 percent.

The report says that oil-producing countries around the world, many of them in the Middle East, are fast pushing China as the world’s largest exporter of illicit funds.

China’s share of all developing world outflows fell from 46 percent in 2000 to 27 percent in 2008 while Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Nigeria – all oil exporters – are now becoming more important as sources of illicit capital.

Authors of the report say they studied World Bank and IMF data of unrecorded capital leakages through the balance of payments which helps capture illicit transfers of the proceeds of bribery, theft, kickbacks, and tax evasion.

The Washington-based GFI said it was recommending greater transparency in the global financial system to curtail further bleeding of wealth from already poor nations.

“Illicit capital flight needs somewhere to go, therefore, one of the best ways of dealing with the problem of these illicit outflows is to increase transparency in the global financial system and make it much harder to hide ill-gotten wealth,” Monique Danziger, communications director told IPS.

“This includes doing away with the kind of bank secrecy for which Switzerland is famous for but also requiring financial institutions in places like the United States to be more open and accountable.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Jan 18 2011 (IPS)

Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year old Tunisian whose act of self-immolation led to an unprecedented popular revolution in Tunisia, is quickly turning into a symbol for disgruntled Arab youths angry at their autocratic rulers and poor economic conditions – a development that Arab leaders in the region are clearly taking note of.

On Tuesday a third Egyptian who set himself ablaze in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria to protest unemployment died at hospital. This came after a man set himself alight outside the Cabinet offices in downtown Cairo, and another set himself on fire Monday to protest his inability to obtain subsidised bread.

Egypt, a country of 85 million people, has implemented an economic programme, in agreement with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), that includes lowering subsidies for staple foods and energy. The programme has deprived millions of Egyptians of inexpensive bread and pushed prices upwards for several other food items. As a result protests over salaries and lack of benefits have rocked the country over the past five years.

Other Western-backed Arab rulers – under prodding from Western economic institutions – are implementing similar programmes that support corporations and business people, who promise investments and development, at the expense of the poor.

In Algeria, the second country after Tunisia that saw popular street protests against housing shortages, corruption and unemployment, four people committed the same self-immolation act as Bouazizi. At least one person has died so far.

In Mauritania, where fifty percent of the population of 3.5 million live under the poverty line of 2 dollars a day, one man was hospitalised after setting himself on fire outside the presidential palace Sunday.

During a ministerial meeting ahead of an Arab Economic Summit in Sharm El- Sheikh later this week, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa appealed to rich Arab nations – mostly oil-producing countries – to help assist other Arab countries that are “still in need of development”.

The events in Tunisia and the region have forced several autocratic Arab rulers to take note of their peoples’ rising frustrations with their conditions.

In Jordan, King Abdullah II, a key ally of the U.S. and Israel who came to rule with Western backing after the death of his father King Hussein in 1999, ordered new measures to lower food prices and create more jobs for the country’s six million people.

The government announced an unprecedented 225 million dollars worth of cuts in fuel and staple food prices. Nonetheless, Jordanians have protested against rampant unemployment and high food prices in dozens of towns and cities. The country is suffering record deficit and a high unemployment rate.

In Syria, the state-run media reported Tuesday that the government of President Bashar Al-Assad would hand out direct financial support of about 11 dollars a month to some 415,000 families.

After the Tunisia events, the ruling Baath Party in Damascus said it would also reverse its plans to cut subsidies and that it would increase its food subsidies to combat high prices. The government also directed farmers to plant more wheat – a staple food item – the Syrian media said.

Kuwait plans to give free food rations to all Kuwaitis at a cost of 818 million dollars, as well as a one-time cash grant to every Kuwaiti of 3,561 dollars. These measures would take effect Feb. 1.

In Egypt – the largest Arab nation in terms of population, which has also witnessed dozens of labour protests and pay issues for the past five years – the government, which came to office in 2005, said the country’s subsidies were still firmly in place. Local media reported that President Hosni Mubarak, the country’s ruler since 1981, ordered ministers to scale back any talk of cutting energy or bread subsidies.

Speaking ahead of the Arab Economic Summit, Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid said that the country’s subsidy system was working and that it shielded consumers in Egypt from the 50 percent increase in world food prices.

He, however, admitted that the Tunisian crisis would act as an accelerator to economic cooperation and integration between Arab states, Al-Ahram reported Tuesday.

In Mauritania, one of the region’s least developed nations, the government announced measures to open 600 stores to sell subsidised rice, sugar, cooking oil and wheat flour. The government also said that it was taking measures to “increase employment opportunities”.

Opposition leaders belittled the measures and said they were not enough to fight “the country’s deliberate starvation, absurd high prices and corruption”, the Mauritanian News Agency reported.

In Algeria, which shares borders and history of French occupation with Tunisia, the government was reportedly studying a measure to put a cap on food prices and impose price restrictions to ease two weeks of violent protests that coincided with the Tunisian unrest.

Algerians are complaining of sugar, oil and flour prices despite a surplus in the government budget of 14.8 billion dollars compared to 4.6 billion a year before. Oil prices rose this year helping boost the country’s revenue.

All across the Arab region, government backers are quick to assert that Tunisia is an exceptional case that cannot be repeated in other Arab countries.

“We are not all angry against the regime like Tunisians were,” said Abdelmonem Saeed, chairman of Al-Ahram, a Cairo-based government- managed foundation that runs several publications.

“Egypt is 84 million people when Tunisia was only 10 million so you’ll find here parts that are for the regime and others that may be against it. Lots of people express their opinions through different channels here,” Saeed said in an interview with Dream TV. “We are not the same.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Jan 15 2011 (IPS)

“Where can I find a Tunisian flag?” The question flooded Egyptian blogs, tweeter and Facebook pages minutes after news that popular protests had forced out long-time Tunisian dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

Egypt is feeling the ripple effect from Tunisia already. Egypt’s 85 million people constitute a third of the Arab population. Until Tunisians ousted their autocratic ruler Friday evening after his 23 years in power, Egypt, a regional trendsetter, was seen as the first candidate for regime change by popular uprising in the Arab world.

John R. Bradley penned a book in June 2008 predicting a revolution in Egypt. He said the country was slowly disintegrating under the twin pressures of “a ruthless military dictatorship” at home and a flawed Middle East policy in Washington.

In his book, ‘Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution’, Bradely argued that Egypt was “the most brutal Arab state where torture and corruption are endemic” and it would therefore be “the next domino to fall” to popular anger. The book was banned in Egypt.

Today the view from Cairo is that the military-backed regime of 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak is far more formidable, and more subtle, than the brutal regime of Ben Ali that alienated its own people, and failed to handle the unrest when it first erupted Dec. 17. Mubarak’s supporters say he carries the public with him, and has a wide support base that includes the army and many businessmen.

“We should remember that he has survived at least three assassination attempts and hundreds of protests and demonstrations against food prices and other issues,” says Khaled Mahmoud, an independent analyst. “Mubarak is simply much stronger than Ben Ali, and enjoys the backing of the country’s most powerful institution; the army.”

Mahmoud argues that Ben Ali was shown up during the protests as a “weak” president. “His performance was very weak. Tunisians sensed his fragility and realised that what they were afraid of was just an illusion.”

Mubarak is credited with a “smart” grip on power – occasionally allowing freedoms that help vent anger.

“The regime channels some anger through talk shows, tolerating some street protests, critical opinion pieces in newspapers, strikes and sits-in,” Amr Elshobaki, political analyst with the semi-official Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo told IPS. “That helps release some frustration rather than leaving it to build up into a major sweeping force.”

Elshobaki points to another difference between Egypt and Tunisia. Labour unions in Tunisia had appeased the regime to a degree, but they kept their structure and some of their integrity, he says. Unions in Egypt “have become like a government entity. Their leaders are government staff.”

Moreover, the Egyptian regime has used religion cleverly to keep the young under control through proxy players. The Islamic Salafi movement, that does not believe in challenging a Muslim ruler, turns passion among the young into “passive religion”, Elshobaki says.

The Salafi trend and the Christian Coptic church are both pro-government. “I do not see much resemblance between Tunisia and Egypt,” Elshobaki says.

But this view is widely disputed especially among human rights activists, bloggers, Islamists, some university professors and independent journalists, who say that Egypt is flirting with revolt. Tunisia comes as a major boost to the idea, they say.

“Like Ben Ali, Mubarak offers nothing to his people but tyranny, emergency law and armies of security troops. They are alike in that nobody wants them and nobody likes them,” says Ibrahim Issa, editor of the online daily Al-Dostor and one of the main critics of the regime in Egypt.

“What the Tunisians showed us is that change will inevitably come to sweep away all the stooges of Washington and Tel Aviv in all Arab states.”

Others argue the similarity between ruthless police tactics in both nations, which in part led to the Tunisian unrest. “The expulsion of Ben Ali shows how his model of governing, which exists in many other Arab countries including here in Egypt, is fragile,” says Bahai El-Deen Hassan, head of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights. “Police states are not sustainable.”

Gagging trade and labour unions, containing political parties, and stifling civil society organisations do not carry a regime for long, he said.

“The rationale for revolt is the same. The people are the same. The general atmosphere is the same,” says Abdelmonem Amer, editor of the Islamist- leaning Arab News. “Tunisia’s tyrant ran away. It is Egypt’s Pharaoh’s turn. Today, it is Tunisia and tomorrow it is Egypt.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Jan 14 2011 (IPS)

These are scenes Western powers would have loved to see in Iran – thousands of young people braving live bullets and forcing an autocratic ruler out of the country. But it is in the North African nation Tunisia where an uprising forced the Western-backed autocratic President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country.

Western powers remain incredulous. France, the real power broker in the Franco North African nation, was giving Ben Ali tacit support until an hour before he fled Friday.

The French Foreign Ministry said it “backs” the measures announced by Ben Ali by way of overtures to the protestors, but asked for more freedoms. In effect France ignored the movement’s demand for Ben Ali to go, and addressed Ben Ali as the legitimate leader.

The United States was clearly far more busy with the collapse of the government in Lebanon, a country critical to the main U.S. ally in the region, Israel, after the Lebanese opposition withdrew their minister from the coalition government.

Most of the reaction from other Western powers has been that they are “concerned” about the events and that they want their citizens there pulled out, and others warned against travel to Tunisia.

To date, at least 100 people have been killed, hundreds injured and millions of dollars in losses reported.

Ben Ali ruled the country since 1987. Like many other Western-backed Arab rulers, he ruled with an iron fist, leading to massive human rights abuses, widespread corruption and lack of democracy.

When a young street hawker named Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in mid-December to protest unemployment and corruption in the central town Sidi Buzeid, Western capitals didn’t react. Ben Ali, it was assumed, was sure to crush the protests that followed in no time.

Looking his confident self, Ben Ali initially refused almost all of the demands of the protesters in the town and its neighboring cities. But the protests continued unabated across most of Tunisia.

On Thursday night, Ben Ali stood shaken as he talked to his people through TV cameras. Appealing for “understanding” from the people he ruled for more than 23 years and asking for a new page, he promised to end orders to shoot at demonstrators.

It did not stop people. Thousands marched Friday afternoon to the interior ministry, the symbol of decades-long brutality.

“We want bread, and water and no Ben Ali”, hand-written signs said, as seen in videos leaked online by activists during the protests.

The aerial views in Tunisia on Friday were reminiscent of Iran of 1979, when thousands marched to topple another Western-supported dictator, the Shah of Iran, and at a much faster pace.

Now Western powers led by the United States have invested millions of dollars in both covert and overt operations to bring the assertive, and occasionally anti-Western regime in Iran to its knees, and bring “regime change”.

Western powers would have like people power to succeed in Iran rather than Tunisia. The last strong people movement in Iran was the Green Movement against the disputed presidential elections in 2009. But the movement could not topple the regime.

People in Tunisia had no such support from the West. Internet bloggers had hoped someone would come to their aid.

Blogger Sami Ben Gharbia wrote: “Sidi Bouzid discredited The West. U want regime change in Iran and not in #Tunisa? Well, we will democratize to #tunisia 1st, by ourselves!”

Fortunately for the protesters, the West cannot take credit for the revolution that forced concessions from Ben Ali almost on an hourly basis towards the end, and then threw him out.

Last week, President Ben Ali fired three members of his cabinet. On Wednesday, he called in the army to protect the capital city and important government buildings.

On Thursday, he fired top aides including the interior minister who had ordered the shoot-to-kill policy during the protests; a policy that initially led to the death of at least 60 people.

In his last attempts to hang on to power, Ben Ali ordered a night curfew. But online videos continued to show clashes with the police on Friday and scenes of widespread protests. Mega-stores with French-sounding names were shut down.

Many streets were deserted and shopping areas visibly empty. Only police forces in riot gear and angry demonstrators, most of them young people, were to be seen.

On Friday afternoon, Ben Ali dissolved the cabinet and parliament, and ordered early elections within six months. A couple of hours later, he imposed emergency law in the country. But another two hours later, Arab TV stations reported he had fled the country.

Excerpt:

At least three Algerians have died and hundreds have been injured in four days of protests over housing shortages, rising food prices and failing economic policies that only three months ago won praise by the International Monetary Fund and other Western financial institutions.

The protests in Algeria come as similar demonstrations continue unabated in the neighbouring North African nation Tunisia, also hailed previously as an economic success story by Western banks and investors.

At least four Tunisians have died during the ongoing protests against the poor economic performance of Western-backed autocratic ruler President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

The protests in both Arab countries were initially ignored by the Western media and Western governments but as the protests escalated Washington began to take note.

A Middle East advisor to former U.S. president George W. Bush and leading neo-conservative Elliott Abrams said on his blog at the Council on Foreign Relations that Tunisia was an “unimportant” country, but expressed concern that the fallout from the demonstrations could be dangerous for other Arab nations.

The spillover from Tunisia was quick to come in neighbouring Algeria, a country that provides Europe with 20 percent of its gas needs and is the world’s sixth largest natural gas producer after Russia, the United States, Canada, Iran, and Norway.

The unrest in Algeria, saw thousands of young people hurl stones at the police, set tires on fire, storm mail offices and government banks, and demand better living conditions and a greater share of the country’s oil wealth.

The unrest was widely reported in the Arab region and was seen as a symptom of growing impatience with regimes considered in the West to be “moderate” for toeing Western policy lines but that are in fact dictatorial and brutal towards their own people.

“The protests in Tunisia are a warning message to all Arab rulers,” wrote columnist Fahmy Howeidi in several Arab newspapers, just days before the unrest spilled over to Algeria.

“The revolution of the hungry and the deprived couldn’t be ignored any more…The message from Tunisia is that tyranny can extend the life of a regime but it cannot keep it alive forever. All Arab countries suffer similar conditions to the ones that started the Tunisian protests,” Howeidi said.

Now the Algeria and Tunisia “uprisings”, as they are being called in the region, are front page stories in many independent Arab newspapers including Masrawy, a popular portal and AlMesryoon, an online daily newspaper in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populated country, as well as top pan-Arab news portals such as Aljazeera.net and Alarabiya.net. Even Yahoo’s Arabic version couldn’t ignore it for long.

Like other Arab countries, the regime of President Abdelaziz Bouteflica in Algeria is perceived as corrupt and inept despite high oil revenues. Algeria, a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), saw its oil income rise sharply in 2010 as a result of higher oil and gas prices, but the benefits didn’t trickle to the disenfranchised Algerians.

Similarly, Tunisia’s President Ben Ali has worked to develop the touristic coastline, leaving the majority of Tunisians mired in poverty and unemployment.

Both countries see conspicuous display of wealth by the rich, spread of bribery to obtain government benefits such as housing, as well as nepotism – issues that have inflamed public sentiments for years.

Many of Algeria’s 36 million people find it hard to get by on daily basis, with many complaining about the difficulties of finding housing and providing for their families.

Algeria’s state-owned energy giant Sonatrach was hit in 2010 with a major corruption scandal after several senior officials and members of their families were found to have illegally tampered with contract awards for personal gain.

More specifically, the trigger for this week’s riots in Algeria came at the beginning of the month when staple food prices such as flour, cooking oil, milk and sugar averaged a 30 percent increase in the four days prior to the break-out of the protests.

Algerians, who had admiringly watched Tunisians shrug off their decades- long image of meekness during weeks of protests, also took to the streets venting their frustration at several government offices, mail offices and some banks.

Algerian Trade Minister Mustafa Benbada was forced Saturday to act to bring down rising food prices. He announced that the government will cut food prices by 14 percent, the official Algerian News Agency said.

Several blogs from Algeria said the protesters were still upset at the corruption, the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the abuse by the Western-backed ruling autocratic regime. Protests continued in several cities in Algeria.

“All over the Arab world, we are left to be eaten by the wolves,” said one Algerian blogger named Bousaad.

“Algeria has turned into a jungle where the beastly eats the weak,” a blogger named Rabei wrote Sunday. “The gap between the rich and the poor is getting larger by the hour.”

“The Arab nation is looking to you, young people, who are carrying out the protests for change,” said another blogger, Sawan.

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Dec 31 2010 (IPS)

As Western countries were busy celebrating Christmas and dealing with air traffic holiday delays because of snow blizzards, the tranquil North African country of Tunisia was going through events that would have been thought unthinkable just three weeks ago – public unrest that saw thousands demonstrate against the regime of President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

While the media and policy makers went heads over heals in the United States and Europe during similar protests against the disputed presidential elections in Iran in 2009, the unexpected events went largely ignored in the Western media. Tunisian bloggers and twitter posts are now the main source for minute by minute development of the unrest.

Arabs across the Middle East Watched in awe as online video posts and sporadic coverage on Al-Jazeera TV station showed Tunisians, with a reputation of passivity, rise up in unprecedented street protests and sits-in against the police state of President Ben Ali.

The Ben Ali regime exemplifies the “moderate” pro-Western Arab regimes that boast strict control of their population while toeing the line of Western powers in the Middle East.

The spark of the unrest, now about to end its second week, came when a 26- year-old unemployed university graduate, Mohammed Buazizi, set himself ablaze in the central town Sidi Buzeid to protest the confiscation of his fruits and vegetables cart.

Buaziz’s suicide attempt was copied by at least two other young university graduates in protest against poor economic conditions in the Arab country.

Similar to previous unrests in many Western-backed Arab countries, the police responded with overwhelming force. There were reports of use of live ammunition, house-to-house raids to chase activists, mass arrests and torture of prisoners.

The police initially crushed the demonstrations in Sidi Buzeid after cutting all communication and roads to the town, only to be faced with more demonstrations in several neighboring towns.

Egypt had followed the same tactics against unrest by factory workers in the industrial city Al-Mahal El Kobra on April 16, 2007, and killed the unrest in just four days after the regime managed to control media reports from inside the town, and major Western media outlets either ignored the events or belittled them as ineffectual.

But unlike the unrest in Egypt, there are reports of demonstrations and clashes spreading in Tunisia to the towns Gandouba, Qabes and Genyana among others.

The Ben Ali regime blamed “radical elements”, “chaos mongers” and “a minority of mercenaries” for incitement, all typical accusations by Arab rulers in face of signs of fidgeting among their oppressed publics.

So far, according to press reports and Web posts, at least two protestors have died, with many injured in the protests.

On Thursday, human rights activist and blogger Lina Ben Mhenni reported a third death and said that police was conducting house-to-house raids to chase activists (http://twitter.com/benmhennilina). The report has not been independently verified.

The Tunisian Journalists’ Syndicate issued a statement last week decrying official attempts “to hinder media coverage and stop reporters from doing their job.”

The communications minister has banned the showing of Al-Jazeera channel in Tunisian coffee shops or any public viewing, according to another web post by an unidentified Tunisian man.

A blogger wrote: “They are clamping down on the Internet too, blocking some sites and Facebook accounts. I might not be able to post any longer. If I disappear suddenly, please pray for me.”

Comments from across the Arab countries followed in support.

“Thank Allah the peoples of the region are finally waking up and are protesting against the tyrants who spread injustice and corruption all over the face of the earth,” a post from Dubai said.

“The end of the Arab regimes looks so near,” another post from Egypt said.

Other Arabs are seeing the demonstration as an inspiration. In chat forums and social media, Arabs were applauding the protestors, often calling them “heroes”.

The Egyptian opposition leader Hamadeen Sabahi called for a demonstration on Sunday in solidarity with the “Tunisian Intifadah”.

The fear of similar spillover into Arab countries pushed at least one Arab ruler to rush to aid Ben Ali. Libya’s maverick leader Muammar Qaddaif said he was immediately dropping all restrictions on the entry of Tunisian labour into Libya. Tunisians were free to travel to his oil-rich country for work, he said.

Opposition says the unrest was prompted by high prices and unemployment but now has turned political with some demonstrators calling on President Ben Ali to step down.

Tunisia, like other non-oil producing Arab countries has implemented a Western-inspired privatization programme and gradual cut to state subsidies to staple goods without offering alternative sources of income.

Yet as the Tunisians waited impatiently, the fruits of the alleged economic reforms never came. Pictures and video on social media showed protestors holding bread loaves, a sign of hunger and poverty.

Tunisia’s protests caught the region by surprise as the Ben Ali regime, like other rulers, had often trumpeted his country as an oasis of stability.

Trying to absorb the shock, Ben Ali announced a small cabinet reshuffle but left the interior ministry intact. He vowed a clampdown on the protestors.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, Dec 4 2009 (IPS)

A few years ago, dog markets were dull places with pooch purveyors keeping an eye open for more lucrative business.

But as Egypt’s housing industry boomed, featuring luxurious villas and swank homes in its new desert cities, the puppy mills grew more active with little thought spared for canine comfort.

“Puppy mills have spread so much, particularly in the past five to 10 years,” said Tamir El Abd, owner of the MMK Cairo Kennel, in an interview.

“What really fuelled the industry was the migration to the suburbs,” said El Abd, who started his own kennel in 2006, now spread over 1,200 sq m and offering boarding and training services for the rising canine population.

Egypt, the most populated Arab country with its 82 million people, adopted an economic liberalisation programme from the mid-1990s that transferred public assets into the hands of a few local business people and concentrating wealth among their cliques.

The country also sends millions of educated Egyptians to work in the neighbouring oil rich countries. Many come back awash with cash that is invested in clusters of new single-family homes and apartments in upscale developments around the capital.

Among the new suburbs is Sixth October City, known for its nouveaux riches. The unsavoury side of the new money is that it has attracted crime and burglaries often traced to the same uneducated manual labourers who helped build the luxury homes, police here say.

The city’s downtown area now boasts five busy pet stores selling guard dogs compared to only one two years ago. Guard dog prices climbed from 200 Egyptian pounds (36. 6 US dollars) to at least seven times that figure for a puppy during the same period.

The fancier kennels that abound near the new developments in Mansoria and the Desert Road sell canines for upwards of 3,000 pounds (545 dollars).

Egypt is now gearing up for its first ever dog show this spring at the Al- Gezira Club organised by breeders. Along with the pooch pageant will be held the country’s second ever animal and dog welfare conference. The Egyptian Society for Mercy to Animals (ESMA), one of the new animal defenders’ organisations, says breeding conditions are getting worse as business gets better. The group complains of dogs forced to share cages, regardless of size, breed or gender. Many are not vaccinated and often deprived of food and water.

At the Friday market breeders can be seen parading grown German Shepherds, Rottweilers, Great Danes and Pit-bulls, encouraging them to bark and even fight as a way to lure prospective buyers looking for aggressive guard dogs.

A German Shepherd bitch tethered to an iron rod whined as one of her 45- day-old litter was taken away, the rest remaining caged, soiled and hungry.

“This is how we make a living,” was how one seller who identified himself as Sayed justified the cruelty. “Had we found a more dignified alternative we wouldn’t be here trading in dogs.”

Some of the small pet stores that sprang up in Fifth October City and other cities treat their puppies better. The dogs here are considered lucky because they are fed every now and then.

But, behind those pet stores is an army of suppliers of small time breeders with cages on the roof of their homes.

Samir, ‘the Shepherd’, so nicknamed because he deals mainly in German Shepherds, combs nearby towns and villages for people ready to part with puppies. His forays result in harvests of 10 newborn pups each fortnight on average.

“Mr. King and Golden Fish buy from me at low prices and sell very high,” said Samir referring to two popular pet stores in the city. “I too buy cheap and sell dear. We all make money this way.”

ESMA, founded late 2007 in response to the rising abuse of animals, accuses the government of tolerating animal and dog cruelty by not regulating traders like Samir, the kennels or pet stores despite calls from animal rights activists.

“All of the stores and kennels have no veterinary oversight whatsoever from the government,” said Mona Khalil, vice-president of ESMA in a phone interview in Cairo.

“It is a very bleak picture,” Khalil said. “It is almost a lost cause but we are trying hard to improve things. It is not easy.”

For Sayed, groups like ESMA are “cruel to humans”.

“Before they get the police to chase us, they should find us jobs,’’ Sayed said. “What is better? To be tough on animals or tough on us – the sons of Adam?”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Jun 26 2008 (IPS)

Anti-debt campaigners say legislation passed by a U.S. Congressional committee this week that would expand debt cancellations to an additional 25 poor nations could prove effective in fighting poverty, stopping environmental degradation and easing the traditional strict economic conditions that accompanied loans and often led to economic chaos.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which supervises U.S. funding for international financial institutions, passed the Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation on Tuesday.

The act, known both as the Jubilee Act and the Casey Bill for Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, paves the way for the approval by the full Senate.

Some 25 low-income countries that are not eligible for debt cancellation under current debt-forgiveness initiatives, such as Mongolia and Georgia, stand to benefit from the bill.

The legislation takes the unusual step of instructing U.S. officials at international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Paris Club of bilateral creditors not to seek to impose the traditional conditions that have often been blamed for economic crises in many developing nations.

Critics say that international financial institutions have typically imposed conditions that were slanted towards multinational companies and local elites. These included user fees for water, sanitation, primary education and health care, including treatment for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Those institutions, with enormous influence on borrowing governments in the most impoverished nations, have also urged the passage of laws undermining workers’ ability to organise and deterred government spending on essential healthcare or education expenditures by imposing national budget caps.

The new act takes those institutions to task on a number of other issues, including creditor transparency and responsible lending.

It warns, for example, against pushing poor nations back in the red through new loans. Instead, it says that future external financing needs should be met mainly through grants. It also warns of so-called vulture funds, which have traditionally sought to buy sovereign debt at a discount with the intent to litigate collection at a large profit.

Under the bill, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional oversight agency, will audit the debt portfolios of previous governments in certain countries, including South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there are allegations that odious loans were made to the government. The GAO report will be made public in two years.

The act was hailed as “live-saving” and “historic” by anti-debt campaigners who have long argued that debt penalised poor people and increased hunger around the world.

“We are thrilled to see such strong bipartisan support for the Jubilee Act in the Senate Foreign Relations committee,” said Neil Watkins, national coordinator of the Jubilee USA Network, a coalition of development groups that is now lobbying for passage of the act by the full Senate.

The bill does require beneficiaries to manage their economies better. Countries receiving debt relief will have to allocate at least 20 percent of their national budget towards poverty-alleviation programmes such as the provision of basic health care, education and clean water services.

The U.S. treasury secretary will certify annually as to how the savings from debt cancellation were used in poor nations.

“In other words, the debt relief cannot go towards benefits for the wealthy elites or unnecessary military expenditures in these nations,” said a statement from Senator Casey’s office.

Countries that are classified as terrorism sponsors or are engaged in weapons of mass destruction proliferation, or involved in human rights abuses are excluded from benefiting from the bill.

The international debt crisis has made headlines over the past several years with mounting evidence of its impacts on poor families across the globe.

After extensive campaigning by debt activists, the United States and other Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations reached an agreement to cancel 100 percent of the debts owed by eligible poor nations to Paris Club members, the IMF, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) reached an agreement in early 2007 to provide similar treatment.

The initiatives created the so-called Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) which has so far benefited only 27 countries. The new bill says there is widespread evidence that those initiatives had already started to make a dent in poverty in countries benefiting under the deals.

Cameroon, for example, is funding its national poverty reduction plans with an extra 29 million dollars gained from debt forgiveness, while Uganda channeled 57.9 million dollars in savings in 2006 on improving energy infrastructure, primary education and malaria control. Zambia has reinvested 23 million it gained from a debt write-off in agricultural projects, such as smallholder irrigation and livestock disease control.

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