August 30, 2007 6:43
Why Bush's Mideast Arms Deals are "Dangerous"
On the U.S.-Iran showdown, Mohammed ElBaradei has some strong comments on the dangers of the Bush administration's approach. As I reported in the blog last month, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency wants Washington to find ways of engaging rather than threatening Iran. In a blunt interview with the Austrian newsmagazine Profil this week, ElBaradei criticizes the new U.S. arms package for Israel and Arab states--totalling at least $43 billion, and that's just for Israel and Egypt, it is a message to Tehran--and warns about any U.S. plans for regime change in Iran. ElBaradei sensibly insists on the need to ensure that Iran does not get the bomb while appreciating the complex domestic political situation in Iran. (Today, by the way, ElBaradei circulated his latest confidential report on Iran, covering developments since May 23, for the upcoming meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors on Sept. 10.)
Excerpts:
Profil: Haven’t the western nuclear States forfeited their legitimacy to tell Iran what it is and isn’t allowed to do?
ElBaradei: Of course the West has the right to say that Iran has to disclose its nuclear intentions. But a solution to the problem can only be achieved if you don’t stop at trying to treat the symptoms. Otherwise there is a risk that the situation in the Middle East will just deteriorate even further. The chaos there is already unbelievable anyway.
Profil: The USA has recently made an about-turn in its Middle East strategy. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and other friendly States are now receiving huge financial support for their armament efforts. Is this helpful in improving the security situation in the Middle East?
ElBaradei: Investing more money in arming this region is not helping at all. On the contrary: it could lead to a new cold war. This will bring neither stability nor security. This is a very dangerous development.
Profil: And what would an alternative strategy look like?
ElBaradei: The money should be invested in the region’s development, in projects which improve the human rights situation, combat poverty and improve the poor education system. The major problem in the Middle East is the lack of good governments. There are still many authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Security can only be ensured through development in the region. If a population is being oppressed by its own government and has no future prospects, a feeling of despair results and consequently militarism spreads and people become suicide bombers. It is now up to the West to promote the necessary development in the Middle East so that people can finally understand that peaceful coexistence is possible.
Profil: The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who share responsibility for the nuclear programme in Tehran, have now been put on the list of terrorist organizations by Washington. What do you think about that?
ElBaradei: A crucial choice must be made: If you opt for confrontation to bring about a regime change, then you can forget discussion and should not be surprised when the other side becomes intent on revenge. The other option is to say: Even if I do not like the regime, I still have to talk to its representatives. The alternatives are dialogue or isolation. In such situations I am always in favour of dialogue, in order to find a long-term solution.
Profil: So far, it does not appear that the talks with Tehran have achieved much.
ElBaradei: We need to ensure that Iran discloses its nuclear intentions. There is some progress there. The Iranians are cooperating with us for the first time and drawing up a work plan with us: We are now to learn all about the genesis of their nuclear programme. This is the first step forward in a few years. I now have to wait and see whether this cooperation is meant in earnest. We also want a limitation of their nuclear ambitions, however. This has to go hand in hand with a comprehensive security dialogue between Iran and its neighbours, but also with Israel and the USA. A security dialogue of this type is currently under way in North Korea. The six-party talks are not only about the North Korean nuclear programme, but also about stabilizing the security situation. This is precisely what is lacking in the Middle East. There is a European offer which was made to Iran jointly with the USA and Russia, but unfortunately we have no negotiations yet. The two parties are not negotiating yet.
Profil: From the outside it looks as if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is leading the United Nations up the garden path.
ElBaradei: Ahmadinejad is not the only player in Iran. There are a number of people who contribute to the decision processes. Iran is a complicated and heterogeneous society. We must support those who want dialogue. They have to be strengthened. The more you isolate a country, the stronger you make the hardliners. The United Nations Security Council put pressure on Iran because it refused to cease uranium enrichment. But in my opinion you have to enter into direct negotiations in parallel to such measures. Just sanctions without negotiations — that won’t lead to any solution to the problem.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
August 29, 2007 9:08
A Soldier in Paradise
Ok, we’ve all heard about the 72 virgins awaiting the Jihadi martyrs in Paradise. Or, as the comedians quip, there’s a mis-translation and they’ll discover that it is just one eager, 72-year old virgin.
But on a more theological note, it’s interesting to contrast what Hizballah clerics and one Jewish rabbi had to say about the combatants killed in last summer’s Lebanon war.
For Hizballah, those who died fighting the Israelis were martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the highest possible cause, a holy war, and Allah thereby awarded them with the choicest real estate in Paradise.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef had a different interpretation of God’s will. Described in Israeli papers as the spiritual mentor of the powerful Shas ultra-orthodox party, Yosef delivered a sermon suggesting that 119 Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon were all singled out by the Almighty because they weren’t religious enough.
“It is no wonder that irreligious soldiers die in war,” Yosef thundered. “Should it come as a surprise if, God forbid, soldiers are killed in war… when they do not adhere to the laws of Shabbat, they do not keep the Torah, and they do not pray every day…?”
Ok, let’s see… With one hand, God lavishes virgins on a Muslim soldier who dies in combat, while with the other, He smites -–good Old Testament word, that—the Jewish soldier down because he let his religious observance slide a tiny bit?
C’mon, is that fair?
Shouldn’t the Almighty cut the Jewish soldiers a little slack here?
As you can imagine, the parents of Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon were livid over the rabbi’s sermon. The rabbi’s words were especially “inappropriate” to the mother of Maj. Ro’i Klein whom she describes as “quietly and modestly righteous.” Klein was a war hero; he saved the lives of his men when a Hizballah grenade landed next to them and Klein hurled himself on top of the grenade to absorb the blast.
After the uproar, the rabbi backpedaled, claiming that he was referring not to Israel’s current force but to the Jewish armies of Biblical times.
One Israeli scholar, Rabbi Moshe Hagar, summed it up best. Quoted in the Jerusalem Post, he said: “No one can know why an individual soldier dies in battle. We do not claim to know the will of God.” Indeed.
--by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
August 29, 2007 8:46
Exclusive: Sweaty Palms
As Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was announcing his resignation the other day, I happened to be in Saudi Arabia meeting with some of the people affected by his War On Terrorism legal policies: a group of Saudis released recently after many years of incarceration at Guantanamo Bay.
A Saudi rehabilitation specialist speaking with former Guantanamo detainees this week
More on these Saudi detainees in an upcoming story, but I will reveal one thing now: I was stuck--all the former Gitmo detainees were willing to shake hands with an American reporter--by how each one of them had very sweaty palms. This condition can be heriditary, but it is also generally understood to be caused by stress and nervousness.
The story of Gitmo--and Gonzalez's role in shaping questionable legal decisions during the War on Terror--will be studied for months and years to come.
--By Scott MacLeod/Riyadh
August 29, 2007 7:49
The Necropolis Next Door
About a month ago, archeologists discovered a Roman-era cemetery on a building site a block away from my apartment in Beirut. Apparently these kinds of discoveries happen all the time in Lebanon, which has seen more than its fair share of human history. Lebanon's Department of Antiquities estimates that less than 40 percent of the country's significant archeological sites have been discovered and recorded. The physical remains of the past are layered so thickly in some places -- such as in Byblos, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world -- that you're not allowed to dig an outhouse without an archeological assessment.
Though real estate developers almost never alert the government when they accidentally dig up evidence from the ancient world, finding a 2,000 year-old graveyard on your land is not necessarily a business disaster. Only in rare cases of spectacular remains does the government expropriate real estate. More often, experts will preserve the find "in record" by excavating, studying, then removing the finds from the site. Other options include redesigning the development to include the find, or reassembling the ruins on a different spot on the same plot. In most cases, the cost to the developers -- who must help pay for the excavation -- adds no more than 1.5 percent to the cost of the total project.
In this case, the Roman-era resting place will soon give way to one of the many luxury condo towers that are taking over this part of town. During Roman times, my neighborhood, which is on a hill overlooking what was once the old city, was a necropolis, a city of the dead. Nowadays it's slightly livelier, the epicenter of Beirut's Frenchified bourgeoisie. But the poor buggers buried here back then would have been of your average sort. None of the 34 graves discovered so far are grand tombs worth stopping what now passes for progress.
Nevertheless, there is still much to learn from such a discovery. For one thing, archaeologists will be looking for confirmation of an emerging new theory about the area's burial sites. Apparently even in the ancient world, the people who lived in what is now Lebanon were also very trendy. At the beginning of the Roman era, in 64 BC, funereal artifacts -- such as jewelry and housewares laid to rest with the deceased -- were varied in style and tended to be made according to local traditions. But with time, local products took on a standardized quality similar to what existed throughout the global empire.
While giving me a tour of the neighborhood necropolis, Assad Seif, the manager of excavations at the Department of Antiquities, said that many people are often surprised that his department is so concerned about the past at a time when the country is in the midst of political and economic crises, having just survived one war and teetering on the brink of another. The reality, said Seif, is that Lebanon's cultural heritage is always in a state of crisis: war destroys the architecture that you know about, and development destroys that which is yet to be discovered. "Archeology is not the first priority in a crisis," he said. "But I have a job to do and I will do it. If everyone else behaved that way we would all live happily ever after."
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
August 28, 2007 4:02
What is Killing the Saudi Camels?
The camels sweat, vomit, pass out and die: two weeks after the beloved dromedaries started dropping by the dozen, Saudi officials still haven't been able to come up with a full explanation for their deaths, officially put at 1,982 as of Sunday.
The mystery is the talk of Riyadh. The first reports came from Wadi Dawasir south of the Saudi capital, where more than 1,000 camels in total are reported to have succumbed to the mystery illness. This week, the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed that camels have been dying throughout the Kingdom--more than 450 in Mecca, the holy city in western Saudi Arabia, and another 500 or so in the southern provinces of Asir, Najran and Jizan.
A Saudi "CSI" is in full swing. Agriculture Minister Fahd Balghonaim told reporters this week that foul play was among the possibilities under investigation. Experts have largely dismissed any outbreak of disease, focusing instead on tainted feed. Balghonaim believes that the feed was poisoned--perhaps deliberately--after it left a feed production factory and before it reached the camel farmers. Lab tests are being conducted on the feed to determine the type of toxin and where it came from.
Camels, it goes without saying, are a big deal in the desert kingdom. The current camel population is estimated at 850,000. For centuries, they were the primary means of transportation and a symbol of Bedouin tradition. They continue to be raised in large numbers for racing and shows. Saudis also love camel milk and meat. "Haven't you ever eaten camel?" my friend Ali asked me tonight. "I'll take you to a restaurant that serves camel meat. It's delicious, and low in cholesterol."
Anxious that the Bedouin not become upset by the tragedy, King Abdullah has promised compensation to the owners of the dead camels. But the mystery continues.
--By Scott MacLeod/Riyadh
August 27, 2007 7:22
Children of God
Most off of Lebanon's private charities and social serivices -- from hospitals, to schools, to soup kitchens -- have some kind of sectarian affiliation, whether Christian, Sunni, Shia or Druze. The few exceptions are often local chapters of international organizations. But even these global NGO's have to pay attention to local sectarian sensibilities.
On Friday, I visited an SOS Children's Village in the Bekka valley. SOS Children's Villages International is a wonderful organization, founded in Austria after World War Two, that gives endangered and orphaned children in impoverished and war-torn areas new communal families and permanent homes in their residential "villages."
Such is the delicate balance of Lebanon's sectarian-based political system, that the country's religious authorities do what they can to make sure that no one switches the religious identities of children. For example, orphans can only be adopted by families who belong to the same sect.
Even though SOS children aren't put up for adoption, and even through the organization isn't involved with religious instruction, the four SOS Villages in Lebanon avoid any friction with local authorities and families by only housing children of the same religion under the same roof.
But sometimes sectarian issues are impossible to avoid. What happens when a child with no known family or religious history appears abandoned at the doorstep? In Lebanon you hardly exist without a religious identity, which determines many of your political and civil rights.
A little over a year ago, a newborn boy less that 48 hours-old was dropped off at the SOS village in the Bekka. Because the town were the boy was found is majority Sunni, Salman El Dirani, the village director, decided that the boy should be Sunni. Still, Dirani, who is also Sunni but married to a Christian woman, said that choosing the orphan's religion was less important than choosing his name. Because the boy appeared on the very day that a cease-fire ended the war between Israel and Lebanon, Dirani named him "Salam" which in Arabic means peace.
Peace be with you
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
August 26, 2007 2:10
RE: The Plight of Asian Maids
Further on the issue of human rights abuses against Asian maids working in the Middle East:
Across six columns of today's Arab News in Jeddah, my friend Rasheed Abou-Alsamh has the story of a Filipina house maid who says that she ran away from her Saudi employer after spending 18 years herding his goats in the mountains. The story says that Leonora Somera, 65, freed herself with the help of the Philippines consulate in 2005, but has had to remain in Saudi Arabia in an effort to win a court settlement for unpaid wages. Now she's willing to go home without the money, but bureaucracy continues to hold up her departure.
--By Scott MacLeod/Riyadh
August 24, 2007 12:33
Requiem for a Jewish Settler
Whenever I’m tempted to make snap judgments about Israel, I remind myself of Dubak, “The Bear”. Try to imagine Mad Max as a middle aged Jewish settler. Dubak was built square. He reminded me of a rusty old washing-machine, with a mass of contradictions spinning inside him.
Dubak, whose real name was Dov Vineshtok, was that rare species of Israeli: one who had actual contact with Arabs. When an Israeli hiker got lost in the desert, Dubak would hop onto his dune buggy, round up some Bedouin scouts and find the hiker before the vultures got to him.
On our last ride with him, to the cliffs above the Dead Sea, we passed an olive grove. Along the road, a row of the ancient trees was cut to stumps, amputated. “I did that,” said Dubak. “The Arabs were throwing rocks at the settler’s cars. And after I cut down the first row, I told the Arabs that if one of our cars was hit by another rock, I would cut down a second row. And you know what? The rock-throwing stopped.”
I didn’t think this eye-for-eye stuff was fair: one smashed windshield was equal to part of a Palestinian family’s livelihood? “The Arabs respect strength,” he retorted. During the Intifadah uprising, some Arabs in a car shot and killed Dubak’s teenaged son, waiting at a bus stop. The Israeli authorities kept an eye on Dubak; they thought he would go on an Arab killing spree, but he didn’t. He believed in justice, even if his interpretation ran to the harsh side. It wasn’t in his nature to take revenge on innocents.
The man who carved the tombstone for Dubak’s son was an Arab, and he refused to take any payment. “I heard about how your son died,” the Arab mason replied. “And I’m very sorry.”
Unwilling to accept charity from an enemy, Dubak pushed his wad of shekels across the counter.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” asked the stonecarver.
Dubak shook his head.
“Many years ago, I was breaking stones on the road. You came out and offered me water. A pitcher of iced water.”
After his son’s murder, Dubak spent less time inside the walls of Gush Etzion settlement, on a hill near Jerusalem. He would roam the desert, often taking along troubled teenagers. They were entranced by his gruff humor, his wildness. He taught these youths to respect Arabs, particularly the Bedouin. And many of them went on to elite combat units. Dubak also taught them that they must be prepared to defend Israel with their blood.
Dubak cleared out a cave and would spend time there, sometimes with the teenagers but most often alone, like a hermit, not far from his son’s grave beside a spring.
On our drive to the cliffs, Dubak stopped to water a eucalyptus tree in the desert. I saw a Bedouin boy on a donkey come riding over the hills towards us. “Dubak! Dubak!” The boy called. He galloped over, swung off the donkey and came forward to solemnly shake Dubak’s hand. That was all that the boy wanted.
Once I asked him how this would all end, between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Would there be peace? No, he replied. “How can there be? We want the same land. And in the end, I’m afraid that the Arabs will win.”
Why? I asked.
“Because the Arabs love this land more than we Jews do.”
On Thursday, Dubak’s heart gave out. He was only 60, but he was ready to go. He loved the land, but his long and anguished fight for it had worn him out. Dubak told friends that he looked forward to dying, for he would be joining his son.
---by Tim McGirk/Gush Etzion
August 23, 2007 8:03
Israel & The Armenian Genocide
Israel has always tiptoed around the whole idea of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1918, in which 1.5 million Armenians perished cruelly at the hands of Ottoman Turks. Youâd think that if anybody could understand, and sympathize, about genocide, it should be the Jews, since they suffered their own genocide during the Nazi holocaust, right?
Not exactly.
Israel needs to maintain good relations with Turkey â-for its stuffed grape leaves, beach resorts and to have at least one wary Muslim âfriendâ-- and it doesnât want to do anything, or say anything, that might put the large community of Turkish Jews there in danger. When asked about the Armenian genocide, Israeli diplomats tend to glance away sheepishly and mutter âatrocitiesâ and âmassacreâ instead of the G-word.
But last week, a prominent Jewish organization broke ranks. The Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based watchdog group which pounces on anything that might be anti-Semitic, was under pressure to back Armenian-Americans who are trying to get U.S. Congress to pass a resolution at last recognizing what a majority of historians say was the 20th centuryâs first act of genocide.
First, a regional ADL executive was fired when he told longtime ADL Director Abe Foxman that the organizationâs eyes-averted stance was âmorally reprehensibleâ. But then, apparently nagged by doubts and the outcry over the sacking among American Jews, Foxman consulted with his âmentorâ Israeli Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel who convinced him to reconsider, publicly, which Foxman did.
Itâs doubtful that the Israeli government will revise its policy towards the Armenian genocide any time soon. To do so would anger the Turks terribly. And so, once again realpolitik trumps morality.
By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
August 22, 2007 8:54
Egypt: Are Islamists Heading to Power?
The struggle for Egypt's future is heating up again, with Sunday's arrests of Essam Erian, political coordinator for the Muslim Brotherhood, and several other top Brotherhood operatives. Erian, though an MP in the '80s, has been in and out of prison for years on charges of engaging in banned political activities. This time, however, it may not have been a case of merely rounding up the usual suspects. The Brotherhood is making a major bid for respectability, and that worries President Hosni Mubarak's regime.
Last night in Cairo's sweltering heat, I dropped in on Hazem Mansour, an MP representing Shubra, one of the city's densest districts. He's one of 88 Brotherhood members who won seats as independents and make up the largest opposition bloc. (This arrangement is a long-standing feature of Egypt's Tom-and-Jerry political routine; the regime bans the Brotherood and thus gives itself the prerogative of rounding up its leaders whenever it sees the need, but as a way of softening the confrontation and perhaps avoiding an Algeria-style civil war, it often looks the other way when Brotherhood members run for office.)
You might think that Hazem would be furious, but instead he was scratching his head and marveling at what he regarded as the regime's inability to chart a course to lift Egypt out of its deepening stagnation. As a matter of fact, he told me, Erian and the others were arrested at a Brotherhood meeting that was reviewing the group's plans to launch itself as a legal political party. Despite the arrests of key strategists, he said, the group still intends to wrap up the internal approval process after Ramadan and perhaps present it to the nation as early as October or November. "Yes, they were attending an illegal meeting," Hazem said. "But let us have our own legal political party then!" Hazem believes the regime is worried about the Brotherhood's moves towards moderation and accomodation and that this concern motivated the latest crackdown. "They need to neutralize us now," he said.
Valid questions remain about the Brotherhood's policies and intentions--see for example, Professor Marc Lynch's expert views on the subject on his Abu Aaardvark blog. Yet it is certainly another headache for Mubarak that not only is the Brotherhood sounding more moderate and pragmatic these days, but the West has begun to take some tentative steps toward dealing with the group. The U.S. embassy recently broke a taboo, for example, when it invited another Brotherhood MP to a U.S. embassy function featuring visiting congressmen.
Mubarak's regime has spent the last few years busy at what increasingly appears to be a sophisticated maneuver to make his son Gamal his successor. In 2005, the regime changed the constitution to allow multi-party contests for president. So, if Gamal is to become president, an ambition he steadfastly denies, by the way, it will be through an election that is democratic at least in form if not in substance. This year, the regime changed the constitution again in a way that critics say undermines judicial supervision of elections and enshrines emergency police powers. Another amendment significantly tightens up the ban on the Muslim Brotherhood from forming a legal political party.
According to the views of many observers in Egypt, all this sets up an arrangement whereby the ruling National Democratic Party will put forth Gamal as its candidate and he will come out on top--OK, perhaps with some monkeying with the ballot boxes-among the field of a dozen or so rivals from weak political parties. In this scenario, the Brotherhood will have been barred from putting up its own candidate.
Keeping a Brotherhood candidate out of the presidential race may not be a big deal; after the Algeria disaster when Islamists came to power too suddenly, the MB has its own qualms about being too successful before the country is ready for it to govern. But the constitutional ban on religious organizations participating in politics could be used to keep the Brotherhood from throwing its weight behind a non-Islamist challenger for the sake of preventing the creation of a Mubarak dynasty.
The countdown has begun: Mubarak's term is up in four years, yet given his age--in office for 26 years, he turned 79 in May--many Egyptians expect that the transition of power could come even sooner than that.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
August 22, 2007 2:02
Why the British Academic Boycott is Bollocks
With summer slowly fading, it's only a matter time before British academics return to their ivory towers where some of them will carry on with the task of making the world a dumber place. In particular, the growing movement by delegates of Britain's university teachers' union to launch an academic boycott of Israel represents a step backwards in the spread of enlightened thinking.
Proponents of the boycott -- which among other things would encourage UK universities to ban visits by Israeli academics to Britain and visits by British academics to Israeli universities -- see it as a way of forcing Israel to end its 40-year occupation of Palestinian territories. Their hope is that the academic boycott leads to a wider campaign of divestment and and sanctions much like that international campaign against South Africa in the 1980's. Opponents, say that Israel in no way resembles South Africa's apartheid regime, and that the campaign against smacks of anti-semitism.
But another reason not to boycott Israel is that it's counterproductive. Higher education and business are easy targets for boycotts because they are among the most globalized parts of our culture that depend on free movement and free markets. But that's precisely why these two fields have the most potential to bring rogue actors back into the fold of international norms. Israeli academics are disproportionately among the constituencies in Israel most eager to make peace, just as Israeli business leaders are among the most eager for their government to confront the settler movement and Israel's hard-liners.
Some critics of the British academic boycott are proposing equally counterproductive tactics. Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz has organized a petition signed by some 10,000 American academics who have volunteered to boycott British universities if the British union goes through with the boycott proposal. But if British academics are behaving badly, then isn't it the role of American academics -- as educators -- to engage and enlighten them? Both groups are displaying how little faith they have in their own professions.
But the real irony of the movement to boycott Israel is how it resembles the attempt by American hard-liners to isolate certain countries in the Middle East such as Iran and Syria. In these counties, sanctions and international opprobrium have often ended up weakening moderates while die hard regime supporters consolidate power under siege.
Not that Syria and Iran and Israel and the Palestinians and their ongoing disputes and violent actions don't pose real threats to their neighbors. But it's very difficult to change the behavior of other nations, just as it's difficult to change the behavior of other people. These are the lessons of America's failed social welfare policies of our liberal era, and of our failed regime-change policies now. Building a more prosperous and humane world is a long slow process of building trust and mutually beneficial partnerships. Something universities and businesses are very good at doing.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
August 22, 2007 1:17
Haleh Update: Free on Bail
It's good news, as far as it goes. Reporters received this press release from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars today:
Iran Releases Dr. Haleh Esfandiari from Evin Prison
WASHINGTON—An Iranian official this morning announced that Dr. Haleh Esfandiari has been released on bail from Evin prison. Esfandiari, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, was incarcerated in Tehran on May 8, 2007, on allegations of endangering Iranian national security.
"We rejoice at the news of Haleh’s release," said Lee H. Hamilton, president and director of the Wilson Center. "This has been a long and trying ordeal for her and for her family. Her physical and mental well-being is now the urgent priority. We want to see her well, we want her to be permitted to return to the United States, and we want to see her reunited with her family."
"Haleh has lost close to seven months of her life. She was subjected to untold hours of interrogation and an isolation that we cannot imagine. She was denied time with her husband, her daughter, her son-in-law, her two granddaughters, and literally hundreds of other family members, friends, and colleagues who care deeply about her."
"We thank all who offered their prayers and their efforts on behalf of Haleh’s release. An extraordinary amount of people from around the world rallied to Haleh’s side. We have had many interlocutors—official and non-official—on Haleh’s behalf. We have had many staff members at the Wilson Center who worked tirelessly in the hope that this day would come. This outpouring only reinforces Haleh’s life’s work on behalf of dialogue, understanding, and bringing people together."
"We look forward to the day when Haleh is fully recovered from this ordeal, and she can return to her colleagues and her important work. We continue to hope and pray for the safe and quick return of Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali Shakeri, who have also been unjustly detained in Iran."
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
August 20, 2007 9:45
Storm Over "The Israel Lobby"
Free discussion may be one of the pillars of democracy, but as we've learned to our misfortune in the case of America's intervention in Iraq, sometimes there's too little of it, or debate is uninformed, or distorted, muffled or even suppressed by the powers that be. Two American professors now seem determined to stir up a fruitful discussion about the United States government's other important relationship in the Middle East, the long-standing one with Israel.
You're going to be hearing a lot more about John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Their new book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is already attracting controversy, weeks ahead of its Sept. 4 publication date by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
A main reason for the advance interest is that Mearsheimer and Walt already created a storm when they published the core of their thesis in an article in the London Review of Books last year. Basically, they contend that pro-Israel groups have exercised disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign policy, and that this has not always served U.S. interests, or, for that matter, Israel's. Although some praised their work as valuable and courageous, others, notably pro-Israel groups, accused the authors of anti-semitism.
For a quick preview, here's the London Review piece, and Michael Massing's assessment of the article and the controversy in the New York Review of Books.
Already, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, showing considerably less courage than Mearsheimer and Walt, have cancelled an invitation for the duo to speak on the subject apparently after receiving pressure over the new book. As Walt told the New York Times this week, one of the points in the book is precisely that the question of the Israel lobby is something of a taboo topic in the United States.
Citizens are still free to purchase a copy. In fact, would-be readers have already made it a best-seller. With advance orders pouring in, The Israel Lobby is already No. 135 on Amazon's list of top sellers. (It went up four places just as I was writing this blog tonight Cairo time.) Scrolling through Amazon's list, I reckon that The Israel Lobby has become the best-selling book on the Middle East right now, even though nobody actually owns their copy yet. Mearsheimer and Walt may disagree with their critics, but they have to thank them for fueling the controversy, helping them sell more copies and widen the debate over the Israel lobby.
By no coincidence, one of Mearsheimer and Walt's vocal critics, Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, is publishing his own book with Palgrave Macmillan, also on Sept. 4, entitled, The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. At last count, it's Amazon.com sales rank was No. 14,808.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
August 19, 2007 12:24
The Plight of Asian Maids
In Bad Dreams, a report issued three years ago, Human Rights Watch leveled a moral indictment against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for alleged abuses against migrant workers, including household maids. It cataloged alleged mistreatment from the beginning to the end of their employment, including ungodly hours, unpaid salaries, lack of medical care, summary dismissal and physical abuse including rape.
The lives of these ladies is already hard enough, even when their employers respect their contracts and human dignity. About 2 million of them come from Indonesia, the Philippines and other developing Asian countries to work six days a week or more, in 8-12 hour days, unable to return to their home countries for years at a time, for the sake of a few hundred dollars a month. Much of the money they make is immediately sent home to support parents, siblings or even their own children. Many are Muslim, but if they are not, they are legally forbidden from practicing their faiths. Saudi Arabia owes them a considerable debt. Nearly every single family in the Kingdom employs an Asian maid to do the dirty, often back-breaking jobs around the house. Many maids are partly raising the children.
"In 1962, then-King Faisal abolished slavery in Saudi Arabia by royal decree," HRW's report said. "Over forty years later, migrant workers in the purportedly modern society that the kingdom has become continue to suffer extreme forms of labor exploitation that sometimes rise to slavery-like conditions. Their lives are further complicated by deeply rooted gender, religious, and racial discrimination. This provides the foundation for prejudicial public policy and government regulations, shameful practices of private employers, and unfair legal proceedings that yield judicial sentences of the death penalty."
It's a shameful record that HRW's 2004 report seems to have done little to change, either in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the Arab world where mistreatment of foreign domestic workers appears widespread. In 2005, an Indonesian maid named Nour Miyati suffered the amputation of four of her fingers at the Riyadh hospital after reportedly developing gangrene in her hands and feet while being tied up for a month in a bathroom by her employer. She was subsequently charged with making false accusatons against her employer and sentenced to a whipping.
Now comes the stories of Siti Tarwiyah Slamet and Susmiyati Abdul Fulan, Indonesian domestic servants that HRW says were beaten to death by members of a Saudi family a few weeks ago. The two were killed and two other Indonesians critically injured after the family allegedly accused them of practicing black magic on a teenaged boy.
Such murder may be rare. Most Arabs treat their domestic servants well, some generously. But abuse of household help, along with the silence that greets the abuse, has been out of control for too long. It's a problem that Arab societies must urgently address. Saudi Arabia has a particular duty, given its role as the custodian of the holiest places in Islam, a religion that places a high priority on achieving justice.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
August 18, 2007 2:20
Arafat's Uniform For Sale: No Takers
The legacy of the late Yasser Arafat has taken a beating this week. First, came news that Arafat’s uniform, looted from his mansion during the takeover of Gaza by Islamic militants Hamas, was now on sale –for a mere $20. And still there were no takers. So very low has the Palestinian chief’s reputation tumbled in his hometown of Gaza, largely because of the thuggish behavior of Arafat’s cronies.
I wonder what price TV's ‘Antique Road Show’ would slap on Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize medal, also stolen by looters in Gaza?
Not much, unless some irate Palestinian, and there are many disilllusioned with the late Chairman's accord with Israel, would want to use the Peace Medal for target practice.
But there was worse news for Arafat’s legacy, involving his widow Suha. On 14th Aug. she was stripped of her Tunisian citizenship. Born in Jerusalem to a wealthy Christian family, Suha became a naturalized Tunisian. She served as Arafat’s personal secretary and then secretly married him in 1990. Suha has a daughter, Zahwa, now 12.
The Tunisians gave no explanation why Arafat’s widow lost her citizenship, but rumors were rife in the Arab press: one London-based daily claimed that Suha, 44, was booted out after the Tunisian president discovered she was having an affair with his brother-in-law. Other reports claimed that Arafat’s wealthy widow was forced to leave Tunisia after a business deal went awry. From her new home in Malta, Suha told reporters that she had simply decided to leave Tunisia of her own accord, for “commercial purposes”.
The widow is unlikely to turn homewards. She is no friend of the current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who supposedly resented the influence she held over Arafat, 34 years older than his brassy, dyed-blonde bride. Insiders say that during the height of the peace negotiations between Arafat, the Israelis and the Clinton Administration, Abbas refused to fly to Washington with the Palestinian delegation unless Suha was removed from the plane. Arafat complied, but insiders say the rift between Suha and Arafat’s successor was never mended after that.
Nor did it help Suha’s standing among Palestinians that while they suffered from poverty in fetid refugee camps under Israeli army occupation, she was often photographed waltzing around ritzy Parisian fashion houses.
In the coffee shops of Ramallah and Gaza, over a puff on the nargila hubble-bubble, Palestinians like to indulge in idle talk about the two great mysteries surrounding their late leader: was he indeed poisoned, as his personal physician claims? And what has happened to his missing millions? His widow Suha may hold the key to both secrets. For now, she isn't talking.
--by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
August 16, 2007 4:24
Cheney on Iraq: "It's a Quagmire!" (Not)
Considering Vice President Cheney's current campaign to use military force against Iran if necessary (to stop Tehran's nuclear program), a topic of some of my recent blogs, I for one would love to hear him explain in more detail why he pushed the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.
In spite of being a principal architect of the Bush administration's "pre-emption" foreign policy, he's said remarkably little--whether in speeches or press interviews--about his strategic thinking in the Middle East. But this is an especially intriguing question now, considering the 1994 Cheney interview that has resurfaced on YouTube in which he opposed toppling Saddam Hussein on the grounds that it would result in a military quagmire.
In speaking about why the first Bush administration did not overthrow Saddam after ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the first Gulf War in 1991, Cheney perfectly articulated the concerns that critics of Gulf War II have long been making:
"If we had gone to Baghdad, we would have been all alone. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq."
"Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place?"
"That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off."
"It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq."
"The other thing was casualties. The question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right."
Did Cheney change his mind because of 9/11? Did he believe that Saddam was connected to Bin Laden's attacks? Had Cheney come to the conclusion that the only way to spread democracy in the Arab world was to take down its worst dictator? Might Cheney's position as former head of Halliburton have influenced his perspectives? Was it plain incompetence?
In voicing concerns about toppling Saddam, Cheney was not alone back in 1994. Former President Bush, his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, military commender Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and Secretary of State James Baker each addressed the question in their memoirs and none was in any doubt that going after Saddam and re-inventing Iraq was at best a fool's errand and at worst a military and diplomatic disaster.
In their joint memoir, Bush-Scowcroft tell of their disappointment that Saddam did not collapse "as we had come to expect." They say that "for very practical reasons" the U.S. did not support the Kurd and Shiite uprisings: the danger of Iraq's breakup into sectarian zones, and a dangerous change in the balance of power in the strategically vital, oil-rich Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, they wrote, "would have incurred incalculable human and political costs." Furthermore, Bush Sr. and his national security advisor say: "APPREHENDING HIM WAS PROBABLY IMPOSSIBLE...WE WOULD HAVE BEEN FORCED TO OCCUPY BAGHDAD AND, IN EFFECT, RULE IRAQ."
They added: "Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome." Finally, Bush-Scowcroft worried about the lack of an international mandate and having the Europe-Arab coalition disintegrate. "Unilaterally exceeding the U.N. mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish."
In his book, Baker headlined his comment on the issue: The Marching to Baghdad Canard. Referring to the post-war controversy on the subject, Baker writes, "this idea is as nonsensical now as it was then, and NOT MERELY for the narrow legalistic reason that the UN resolutions did not authorize [it]." Among the reasons the administration felt marching on Baghdad was a "ridiculous" idea, Baker says, is that it would have made a nationalist hero out of Saddam. "Even if Saddam were captured and his regime toppled, American forces would still be confronted with the spectre of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government in power. The ensuing urban warfare would surely result in more casualties to American GIs than the war itself, thus creating a political firestorm at home, criticism from many of our allies and dissolution of the coalition." Baker echoes the concern, too, that the breakup of Iraq would leave a dangerous and unpredictable Iran as the undisputed regional power in the Gulf.
Schwarzkopf, too, ridiculed the idea of pushing further to bring down Saddam. "I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit--we would still be there, and we, not the UN, would be bearing the costs of that occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on."
Did the "Wise Men" change their minds, as Cheney did? Scowcroft, for one, wrote a powerful editorial in the Wall Street Journal opposing Bush-Cheney's plans to invade Iraq. Published Aug. 15, 2002 just as the Iraq debate heated up in the U.S., it was entitled unequivocally, "Don't Attack Saddam." Some of Scowcroft's concerns turned out to be overdone--a possible Iraq-Israel WMD volley--but his warning nonetheless holds up. He worried that the invasion would increase Muslim rage against the U.S., swell the ranks of terrorist groups, threaten regional stability, damage America's international alliances, hurt the U.S. and global economies and increase Middle East bloodshed.
"If we are to achieve our strategic objectives in Iraq, a military campaign very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation," he wrote. "If we reject a comprehensive perspective, we put at risk our campaign against terrorism as well as stability and security in a vital region of the world."
--By Scott MacLeod
August 15, 2007 4:42
The Hizballah War Museum
My what big rockets you have!
Ever wonder what it's like inside a Hizballah bunker but not so eager to get kidnapped just to find out? Well, for a short time and a short time only, anyone in Lebanon can do the next best thing and visit the new Hizballah museum in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where there is no admission charged and no blindfold required.
Imagine Britain's Imperial War museum with an Islamist militia makeover, and you've got the strangely-named ''Spider Web" museum, built to commemorate Hizballah's "Divine Victory" over Israel after their 34-day war last summer, which ended a year ago yesterday. Though just a temporary installation built on the rubble of a building destroyed during the war, the museum showcases the guerrilla organization's trademark attention to detail and its fearsomeness.
Designed like a sandbag fortress rising over a garden of inert land mines, armored vehicles and the occasional palm tree, the museum contains a display of Hizballah weapons and tactics, including the scale recreation of a front line bunker, complete with computer workstation, prayer rug and dish rack. Throw in a lava lamp and it could be a college dorm room.
Besides diagrams of the latest in Iranian and Russian anti-tank rocketry, and an ultra-violent Hizballah special forces video game, the display that I found most impressive was a plaque listing every single Israeli warplane that bombed Lebanon along with their squadron ID and home bases. Not only did Hizballah survive the bombardment, but its observers still had the presence of mind to keep score. Not bad for 3,000 regular fighters up against a regional superpower.
The Israelis portrayed in the museum are either dead (in mannequin form) war-crazed (photos of Israeli school children writing hate messages on artillery shells) or incompetent ("We will eradicate Hizballah within three days," trumpets former Israeli General Dan Halutz while next to him, former Defense Minister Amir Peretz looks through a pair of binoculars with the lens caps still on.)
But the "Death to Israel" stuff is of a piece with normal Hizballah propaganda. What's different about the museum as a whole is the bragging tone. Hizballah was once famous for being one of the few Arab organizations that let its actions speak louder than words. The new swagger shown since last summer is both a sign of newfound confidence, and of weakness. For though Hizballah may have won the war against Israel, it has not yet won the peace.
After the war, Hizballah launched a campaign to topple the current American-supported Lebanese government. Hizballah accuses the Lebanese government of collaborating in spirit with the so-called Zionist Entity by hoping that Israel would destroy Hizballah as a state-within the Lebanese state. But the Hizballah-led opposition campaign has been stalled for at least 8 months, in part because many Lebanese resent the fact that Hizballah unilaterally sparked a war that ended with almost 2,000 dead and billions of dollars in damage.
Plus, the cease-fire that took effect one year ago yesterday left Hizballah vulnerable. There are now some 13,000 United Nations soldiers enforcing the peace in southern Lebanon, making it difficult for the group to re-arm on its favorite turf. Moreover, a UN investigation into a series of political assassinations in Lebanon is closing in on Hizballah's patron-state, Syria, and there's talk of deploying UN troops along the border with Syria to prevent arms smuggling to Hizballah. To top it off, Israeli hawks say it's just a matter of time before their army returns to Lebanon to finish the job for good.
But the only thing more dangerous than a victorious Hizballah is a weakened Hizballah. If the UN soldiers in Lebanon ever started to seriously cramp Hizballah's style, the peacekeeping force would be toast. Lebanese history is littered with examples of foreign armies meeting their fate in this fractious hill country. Hizballah itself was born from the carnage of the disastrous 1982 Israeli invasion. A massive new invasion would only bring a phyrric victory at best. If Israel leveled half of Lebanon, some new danger would emerge from the rubble. And there will be no museums built after the next war, just lots of graves.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
August 13, 2007 7:24
Boys and Girls of Summer
Another hallmark of summer in Lebanon is the return of Lebanese expatriates on vacation from their work and new lives abroad. Many more Lebanese and their descendants live overseas -- I've seen estimates as high as 17 million -- than live here in the old country, where the population is about 4 million.
Overseas Lebanese are crucial to the survival of the actual Lebanon. Last year, they sent home $5.6 billion in remittances, just over one quarter of the country's GDP. About half of all real estate sales are purchases by Lebanese expatriates. Which in part is why, after last year's war, another summer without expatriates would have been devastating, and which is one reason why it's comforting that they've started trickling back.
Now that there's a bombing hiatus in Beirut, I've started noticing lots of Lebanese students home on vacation from universities in Europe and the States; weekend wedding-guests by the stretch limo-load; and young Lebanese men and women who are back home and back on the market. I for one can usually tell Lebanese-American women apart from their non-hyphenated peers in Beirut bars. All curly hair and beach-burnished skin being equal, the giveaway is the eyes. Lebanese-American women keep their eyes wide open, not bothering to shade their gaze and appear mysterious and inaccessible, which is the local pose par excellence.
But for all the good-time Fadi's throwing their new Gulf money around at bars, and for all the sorority sisters doing shots, it's the local Lebanese girls and boys of summer who are giving this season its special frisson, its doomed Dionysian feeling, making merry while the sun shines. When autumn comes the cousins from America or France or Australia will be gone, leaving the rest of the family to its domestic discontents. There may or may not be a presidential election in September, there may or may not be two rival governments this fall, there may or may not be another war before the year is out. Gather ye rosebuds is the theme of the day.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
August 9, 2007 8:31
Israeli cash ends up with Hamas
Oops! It is amazing what can be done with a few accidental taps on the computer keys. In Gaza, members of Hamas security forces, who haven’t been paid a salary for months, found to their great joy that a cascade of money had tumbled into their empty bank accounts.
What made this bonanza all the sweeter was that it was mistakenly sent to Hamas fighters by their enemy, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. After Hamas fighters kicked out the president’s milita from Gaza, Abbas broke off a unity government with the Islamic militants, and turned off the money tap to Hamas members who were on the government payroll in Gaza, everyone from doctors to street fighters.
But then Abbas took delivery of $100 million that Israel owed the Palestinians in tax revenues. It was part of that money that was wired to Hamas’ bank accounts.
Abbas was not pleased about the goof (some reports hinted at an undercover Hamas sympathizer diverting the funds,) and neither, by all accounts, were the Israelis.
“This flies in the face of what was agreed upon," an unidentified Israeli government official was quoted as telling Reuters. After all, in Olmert’s last meeting with Abbas, the Israeli premier had played the tough book-keeper, demanding that Abbas give itemized details of where the $100 million was going.
The Israelis certainly didn’t want it ending up in Hamas’ pockets.
---by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
August 8, 2007 7:47
The PKK Ain't Going Away
A view of the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq from inside a PKK jeep, summer 2004
By now, you would think that world leaders would stop holding press conferences with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Despite the many appearances with President George Bush and American cabinet secretaries, the Maliki government has yet to make good on almost all of its promises to Washington: to stop sectarian violence, to pass an oil revenue sharing law, to make political peace with Iraq's Sunni parties, etc. By now, word should have gotten out that Maliki doesn't deliver.
But that didn't stop Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan from trotting out alongside Maliki yesterday to declare that the Iraqi government had agreed to drive a Kurdish militant group -- the Kurdish Workers Party or PKK -- out of the mountains of northern Iraq, where PKK fighters and activists maintain training camps.
Turkey has been threatening to invade Iraq unless someone does something about the PKK, which has long been at war with the Turkish state over the rights of Turkey's Kurdish minority. In recent months, fighting between the Turkish army and the PKK has intensified inside Turkey, and the Turks accuse the PKK of a terrorist bombing campaign against Turkish cities. In response, the Turkish army has massed tanks and thousands of soldiers at the border with Iraq.
Unfortunately for Erdogan, there's nothing Maliki can do about the PKK. His government's armed forces can't even keep Baghdad safe, let alone mount an expedition in northern Iraq, which, by the way, isn't even part of Maliki's military jurisdiction. There are no federal Iraqi soldiers there -- just Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga units controlled by the largely autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).
And Iraq's Kurdish leaders aren't about to send their soldiers off on a treacherous struggle with hardened guerilla fighters in difficult terrain. Iraq's Kurds fought the PKK once before in the 1990's, and they're not looking forward to repeating the ugly experience. Plus, the Iraqi Kurds say their pesh merga are already stretched thin. Besides keeping Arab terrorists out of the KRG, pesh merga are also helping the Iraqi army in Mosul and Baghdad.
Nor for that matter, is there anything the Turkish army can do about the PKK in Iraq. The PKK's bases aren't even near the Turkish border; they are in the remote Qandil valley near Iran, far from the reach of Turkey's ground forces. The Turkish army would have to penetrate deep into Iraq and travel through several Iraqi cities before reaching the Qandil valley, by which time the PKK's mobile guerilla units would have long since snuck away to fight another day. And even if the Turkish air force got US permission to cross into Iraq, air strikes have a limited effect on a guerilla insurgency.
The fact is that there isn't a military solution to the PKK. Turkey has fought with them since the 1980's to no avail. The Turkish threat to invade Iraq is only turning a Turkish civil war into a regional crisis. Hopefully, Erdogan realizes this and his "agreement" with Maliki is a stalling tactic aimed at pacifying Turkey's restive generals. Unfortunately, the PKK problem isn't going away. If fighting continues inside Turkey, it will only be a matter of time before Turkish sabers start rattling again.
A PKK fighter in northern Iraq, summer 2004
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
August 7, 2007 7:30
Another Hot Summer in Lebanon
Somehow it wouldn't quite feel like summer in Lebanon if there weren't electricity cuts. Right now there are six-hour rotating blackouts every day all over the country except for Beirut (where outages are less frequent.) The problem this year isn't so much the hot weather, which quadruples power use, or Israeli attacks on power stations, the cause of last summer's blackouts. The culprit this year is Fatah al Islam, the militant group that is STILL holding out against the Lebanese army in a pitched battle up north that has lasted over 10 weeks.
The cuts began when ships carrying fuel oil balked at making deliveries to the Beddawi power station, one of the country's largest, which is located close to Nahr al Bared, the Palestinian refugee camp where the fighting rages. So close, in fact, that Katyusha rockets fired by Fatah Al Islam hit the power station earlier this month, and repair crews haven't been able to reach the the site.
The fact that the militant group is still capable of such disruption, limited though it may be, is pretty stunning considering the Lebanese army deployed every available resource against what started as a couple hundred jihadis. (There a far fewer now.) Every couple of days, the army announces that it is "tightening the noose" around the group, or preparing for the final assault, only for the conflict to drag out longer. As one friend put the situation in perspective, the Normandy invasion didn't last this long.
Fatah al Islam is heading for the Jihadi Hall of Fame in part because they were better prepared and better equipped than the army, with night vision goggles, surveillance equipment, tunnels, booby traps, anti-aircraft guns, and a apparently a whole lot of food, water and ammunition. It also helps that they are fanatical murderers.
Except for the power cuts, and the dent in tourism, the country by now has accommodated itself rather well to the ongoing crisis. After all, Lebanon has seen much worse. With no more bombs going off in the capital (for now) all the extra security has become part of the scenery, and inevitably, a marketing opportunity.
A Beirut shopping mall launched a billboard campaign titled "Detect the Lowest Prices" featuring sexy babes deploying security equipment in non-standard ways: a blonde with a metal detecting wand giving a pat down to a man's inner leg, a bikini bombshell with a bomb sniffing device, and kinkiest of all, a long pair of legs in a miniskirt uses a car bomb detecting mirror to peek up a mannequin's skirt. Fatah al Islam would disapprove.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut