Another attack in Cairo

The Washington Post today reported this:
Cairo – An American has been slightly hurt after being knifed in the legendary Cairo bazaar of Khan al-Khalili, just days after a French teenager was killed there by a bomb, a security official said on Saturday.
The victim, a teacher at the American School in Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Alexandria [...]

The Akon Disaster — UPDATED

A couple weeks back I wondered why Iron Maiden wouldn’t come to  Cairo .   Probably for the same reason that the Akon Concert in Cairo was a disaster.   Unless a Western-style concert culture exists, acts like this are hard to make work in places like Egypt.  From Sandmonkey:
So, here I am, preparing for my trip back [...]

On Iraq Withdrawal: How fast is too fast?

So  it looks like US troops will be out of Iraq by_2010:
Mr. Obama agreed to give commanders 19 months to withdraw all combat brigades, 3 months longer than he promised on the campaign trail, to guard against any resurgence of violence. The bulk of the forces will remain in place until nearly next year to [...]

Why no more 9/11s: Part Two

In part two of his series on why the US hasn’t been attacked since 9/11,  Timothy Noah puts forth the Near_Enemy theory:
I place the Near-Enemy Theory one stop further on the worry spectrum from the Terrorists-Are-Dumb Theory because even if al-Qaida is right now preoccupied with opportunities in its backyard, that doesn’t necessarily keep it [...]

Blog Endorsement

Most organizations – unis, think tanks  or media — claim that they cover “the Middle East and North Africa” but it’s all a big lie.  Its not even accurate to say they cover the Middle East.  In practice, they cover Cairo, Beirut, and Iraq, and ignore the other 90% of the region.  When’s the last time [...]

New Poll on Muslim Views on Al-Qaeda

World Public Opinion has just put out an in-depth survey  of Muslim opinions  (Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey).   Basically, they reflect what  American policy makers, especially Public Diplomacy, should recognize: that Al-Qaeda’s cause (Perceived  by Arabs as resisting US hegemony in the Muslim world) is seen by huge percentages of Muslims as legitimate defensive jihad, [...]

Dr Fadl Mania? UPDATED

Can someone please explain the sudden interest in Dr Fadl  (aka Sayyid Imam)?  In just the last 4 days, The_Telegraph, Haaretz, and Middle_East_Times have all published news articles on Fadl’s latest book, which came out — in November.   Am I missing something here?   The only coverage I’ve seen on Fadl (anywhere) during the last few months was  at ForeignPolicy.com by  Marc_Lynch who, [...]

Traffic Week: On Automotive Darwinism

If you’ve lived in the West long enough, you’re sure to have participated at some point or other in conversations about who’s traveled to the scariest driving country. This usually comes up as something of a feat of strength along the lines of: “I survived a taxi ride in Cairo, I can survive any kind [...]

More on the Egypt bombings….

Al-Ahram’s Khalil Anani has a good piece at Daily News Egypt on the recent bomb attack in Cairo.   For those who aren’t intricately familiar with Egyptian intelligensia, take note of the source:  Khalil is a respected scholar of political Islam, author of a good book on the Muslim Brotherhood, and from his perch on the 11th floor of  Cairo’s [...]

Traffic Week: Rules of the Game

I cringe when I hear people complain about taxi drivers in Egypt.   99% of Cairo taxi horror stories are preventable as long as the  rules_of_the_game are understood and followed:
Rule #5  Taxi drivers are not the enemy
Almost every foreigner, and even many Egyptians, have negative taxi stories. The infamous Cairene taxi driver is probably the [...]

Hitchens not attacked?

From the Angry Arab:
According to a Lebanese police sources cited in Al-Akhbar, Hitchens was not attackedin Beirut. And the SSNP also denied the story and said that they had no posters in Beirut. If this story is made up it would not be a first: remember that Hitchens claimed to have interviewed Abu Nidal, when [...]

Traffic Week

My good friend Joseph Simmons (who, by the way, happens to  speaks Arabic at what linguists commonly refer to as the “far-out sick nasty level”)  has a good post on traffic in Egypt:
Traffic accidents in Egypt continue to be a major problem as over 30 people have been killed and over scores injured on the roads just [...]

Blast in Cairo

From Daily News Egypt:
CAIRO: Seventeen people were wounded, including 11 French tourists, three Germans and three Egyptians when a bomb went off in the tourist district of Al Hussein, near the popular Khan Al Khalili market in the heart of Cairo at around 7 pm.
A conflicting report by Reuters, however, claims that four people had [...]

Churchill bust-up

 Today Rob forwarded me a post from Foreign Policy.Com in which Will Inboden discussed reports that President Obama has returned a bust of Winston Churchill that was sitting in the Oval office. I appreciate that this is nothing to do with the Middle East, so I apologise for my forthcoming rant.  But Imboden really did pick up [...]

Assad calls for full diplomatic ties with US

Damascus has become an unlikely hotspot for Western visitors in 2009, with President – and peacemaker-in-chief – Nicolas Sarkozy and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband taking in the sights and sounds of Damascus.  Chairman of the Senate Committe on Foreign Relations John Kerry is jetting in next week, and the rumours are that he could [...]

Where have I heard this before?

Stephen Walt at ForeignPolicy.Com makes_a_point on Afghanistan I’ve been constantly repeating:
In fact, we have only one vital national interest in Afghanistan: to prevent Afghan territory from being used as a safe haven for groups plotting attacks on American soil or on Americans abroad, as al Qaeda did prior to September 11. It might be nice to [...]

Calling out Al-Arabiya?

Maybe its me but Hamas PM Ismail Hanai is calling out  Al-Arabiya  in this interview.   Go to  01:30.   He says something along the lines of ” I want to take this opportunity to express  mine and  the Palestinian people’s great esteem for the noble role Al-Jazeera carries out, in addition to the other Satellite stations that were [...]

Check this blog out…

Readers looking for good national security blogs should take a look at  The_Stupidest_Man_on_Earth which features good coverage on Afghanistan/ Pakistan by a Finnish journalist named Jari Lindholm.  Who exactly is the stupidest man? I’m not sure but this blog is worth checking out.

Back in the game, angrily

Blogging has been slow over the last five days as I’ve been on the road but now I’m back.  It was a great trip except for one thing:   the airplane killed my guitar.
I’m so angry.  I  knew taking it on the plane was risky but I thought I took all the right precautions:   I convinced [...]

The Israeli election: not fit for purpose

The Israeli electoral system is broken. The candidate who finished second won this week’s poll.  Surely that is evidence enough.  Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party squeezed past Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party by 28 seats to 27, both falling far short of the 61 needed for a majority.  But, and it is a big but, the right-wing [...]