Hezbollah all talk?

Without a doubt Hamas and their fans throughout the region are  a little disappointed with Hezbollah, a fellow member of the Resistance.  Remember back in 2006 – the Party of God picks a fight with Israel, and what does Hamas do?  They open up a Southern front, kidnapping the IDF oldier Galad Shalit, theoretically relieving pressure [...]

Kill My TV Also

I want to second Abu Muqawama’s Kill_Your_TV post.   American tv coverage of the events in Gaza is beyond bad - its horrible.  CNN.  NBC.  All of them are garbage.   Who gives a crap about Rod Bagloyavic?   Who cares whether Sarah Palin is now a grandmother.  Maybe that’s news if there was nothing whatsoever going on.  But [...]

Al-Jazeera Interview with Khalid Mashal

Anyone who can should watch this recent Al-Jazeera interviewwith  Hamas leader Khalid Mashal.  As an Islamist he speaks perfectly vowed Arabic so its relatively easy  to understand.

Thoughts on Israel vs Hamas (the military dimension)

A couple points worth noting:
1)  Whats going on is  bad and sad.   But let’s be clear- Hamas wanted a fight with Israel and this is consistent with their fundamental approach to dealing with their enemy.  It is not through negotiations.   Long before the ceasefire expired, Hamas leaders were clearly saying they opposed any renewal, and [...]

Saturday Profile

The New York Times has a profile of Bruce Riedel, a 30 year veteran of the CIA, who is now a top Obama adviser on SouthEast Asia:
BRUCE RIEDEL was a 28-year-old Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency on Oct. 6, 1981, the day a band of gunmen assassinated President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt during [...]

Worth Checking Out…..

 For those who don’t read The National on a daily basis, I highly recommend adding it to your Favorites because there is no other English language outlet that consistently puts out quality stuff on the Middle East.   This week’s Review has contributions from Nir Rosen and Andrew Exum:
1) In  Louder_Than_Bombs:
Israel and Hizbollah beat the drums [...]

AbuTrika Stays Put

Mohamed Abu Trika, the star of Egypt Ahly Football club has decided to turn down offers to play in Europe and stay in Egypt:
CAIRO: In the wake of a board meeting on Monday, the Reds officially reaffirmed that they are not ready to sell or loan 30-year-old Mohamed Abou-Trika at any price.
The Ahly playmaker is [...]

British in Iraq: Screwup or Success?

There has been some  talk lately about how mediocre the British performance in Iraq has been, particularly from a Counter-Insurgency perspective and some would go as far as to brand their mission a failure.  There’s an interesting discussion in the comments of this Abu Muqawama post where one of the readers gives what I think is [...]

More on Fadl vs Zawahiri

Hussam Tamem, one of the top commentators on Islamist movements (he’s the editor of Islam Online) just wrote an  op-ed on Sayyid Imam’s  Revisions.  His conclusion: it is not signifigant nor influential.  He says some deep stuff however I’ll just highlight the last paragraph:
ويجوز القول إن الجيل القادم من حملة السلاح المحتملين لن يتأثر كثيراً [...]

Catering to Carter

Granted I’m a little late, but I’ve finally gotten around to writing about something that was in the news last week and which I thought was important and interesting. Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center enjoys considerable respect for its professionalism in election monitoring, visited Lebanon for four days last week. His main purpose was to [...]

Who’s really happy about the MIG-s anyway?

Surprisingly, not many people.
First off, and as expected, the Americans are scurrying trying to figure out how to react to news that Russia is “donating” these 10 MiG 29 jets to Lebanon’s army. As an aside, in a telling sign of just how significant this gift from the Kremlin has become as a piece of [...]

The decline of the Egyptian Bar Scene

An interesting article  in the International Herald Tribune writes about the decline of the Cairo bar scene:
Armed with a bottle of Egyptian brandy and a bowl of steaming chickpeas, Hatem Fouad keeps watch each night over a historic slice of Cairo that is in danger of dying: the bars that once flourished amid the sweeping [...]

Russia Arming the Lebanese? UPDATED

Blackstar has posted several times on US attempts to arm the Lebanese army.   The gist is that the  US is willing to arm the Lebanese, but not  give them the heavy stuff they really want.  But what about the Russians?   According to this story from the Times of London: 
Russia gave Lebanon ten MiG fighter jets [...]

All roads lead through ….Tehran?

The Arabist has an interesting analysis  of  President Obama’s foreign policy, or at least what we know of it to date.   He flags an article which brings up some potentially very important signs of the future of USFP:
Jerusalem has received various reports in recent weeks indicating that American foreign policy in the Middle East and in [...]

Article of Note

Al-Hayat has translated into English an investigate piece on “The Role of the European West In Producing Mujahadeen and Sending Them to Lebanon.”  Here is part one with part two coming soon.  I haven’t read it at all but post it for those who are interested in this topic.

Iran vs Egypt

Yesterday, the lead op-ed in  Al-Quds Al-Arabi’s   savaged Egyptian foreign policy, in particular the recent comments of Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu Al-Ghait. 
This is a big theme that (American)  people need to be aware of:  Egypt’s role as a regional power has seriously declined.  Why is this?  The vast majority of the analysts in the Arabic press blame [...]

Hamas-Jordan Rapprochement

Clearly, Jordan is moving closer to the Hamas camp, at least when it comes to Peace Process negotiations.  A few weeks back, I posted  on Abu Rumman’s article about rumors that Jordan was going to replace Egypt, seen as biased against Hamas, as the intermediary between the Arabs and Israel.  Such a step would be pretty [...]

An Amazing Film

If anyone happens to be flying Airfrance in the coming future be sure to check out this amazing film:  Le_premiere_jour_du_reste_ta_vie.   Its the story of a French family, following 5 key events over a 12 year period, and reminds me alot of the Cairo_Trilogy.  Read about it in English here and here.  If anyone knows where [...]

Egypt does North Korea

According to this AP  story Egypt’s Orascom Telecom has been awarded exclusive rights to develop North Korea’s mobile phone network: 
Under the terms of the deal reached in January, Orascom will invest $400 million in network infrastructure over the first three years to develop the advanced cellular phone network in the country where private cell phone ownership is [...]

Jihadists Againt Dr Fadl

According to Cairo’s Al-Badeel newspaper, 200 members of Sayyid Imam’s (and Zawahiri’s)  Egyptian Jihad group are  signing_a_Petition rejecting the Revisions of Sayyid Imam.  The 200 are calling for Sayyid Imam to face them in a debate, covered by the media, free of any intervention by the Security forces. 
This brings up some interesting points:  Supposedly, about 90% of the [...]