Another post at the Media Shack

In which I earn a T-shirt (and post on AQIM in Algeria).  If I get stopped at airports for wearing my green Arabic Media Shack T-shirt I will definitely post on that as well.  Also I just noticed they have a Middle East Media Guide, a guide to some of the more prominent newspapers in the Middle East.  Worth checking out if you (like me) don't read the newspapers regularly enough to get a feel for them but still cite them occasionally.

War on Terror in the Sahara

I have a long piece on the War on Terror in the Sahara desert up at Rob's Arabic Media Shack. I wrote it before the recent attack by AQIM in Mauritania, but oh well.

Also thanks to the Western Sahara Info blog that gave me a couple links. An apparent communique from AQIM that is translated there seems to confirm what I wrote tentatively about in my piece at the Arabic Media Shack - that Mokhtar Belmokhtar is no longer the head of AQIM-South (perhaps he's relaxing on the beach in Benin) and has been replaced by Yahia Djouadi.  I believe he was previously head of AQIM's military committee, so he's likely to be on board with Droukdel's pro-bin-Ladin-ism.  That will make it interesting to see whether there are a lot of defections from Belmokhtar's former gang, as Belmokhtar reportedly was not big on martyring himself for the greater glory of the Caliphate.

Also through Western Sahara Info's blogroll I found a few more good blogs: Parmenides' Fallacy, The Moor Next Door, and Nick Brook's Sand & Dust.

Egyptian traffic

There was a big traffic accident in Egypt today that made the international news wires. A bus smashed into a truck on a highway. So far the death toll is twenty-three. At the end of the article there's a short bit on how Egypt has tons of traffic accidents. I thought I'd share an anecdotes about traffic in Cairo from when I was in Egypt in the early nineties.


Photo from GHAWAYESH

I accompanied my parents to Egypt when I was in 6th grade (November-December 1991 1995) as my dad was going there for a business trip. The first day we arrived in Cairo, after we checked into the hotel, I got a Pepsi and went out to the balcony which looked out on the Nile and a bridge across it. I sat down on one of the chairs and watched as a public transportation bus went the wrong way over a bridge and crashed into a dark blue station wagon. The bus ended up skidding and rotating so that it blocked off the entire bridge. Everybody piled out of the station wagon (like five people) and the bus (more like twenty) and then dispersed through the traffic jam that had piled up behind the bus.

I was fascinated by this and sat and watched while my parents were inside unpacking everything. After all the people who were in the bus or station wagon had left, the cars behind the bus just sat there unable to move. After maybe twenty minutes a policeman on a bicycle finally showed up. According to my Egyptian friends, after an accident everybody claims to have not seen anything when questioned by the police - if they tell details, they might spend the night at jail to make sure the police don't lose their witness. I never did see an ambulance arrive but I couldn't see that anyone was actually injured. By the time I had to go, there was still a bus sitting sideways across a major bridge on the Nile, spilling oil across the pavement with a destroyed station wagon in front of it and traffic backed up as far as I could see.

That was my introduction to Egypt.

Women's soccer spreads to an unlikely place

Congratulations to Saudi Arabia! The Saudis have held their first women's soccer game! Ria Novosti:

The first soccer match between female teams has taken place in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, the Al-Watan newspaper said.
The Prince Mohammad bin Fahd University team defeated their guests, the Al Yamamah College, from the capital, Riyadh, in a penalty shoot out after the game had ended 2-2 on Thursday. The newspaper singled out Al Yamamah College's goalkeeper as woman of the match.

Baby steps:

No men were allowed in the stadium, and the referee and her linesman, as well as the fans, were also female.

Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province is a predominantly Shiite area - I'd presume that means the Wahabbist influence (very anti-woman) is weaker than in other areas of Saudi Arabia.

The Tenet Plan

From Kent's Imperative:

If true, this story illustrates why the machinery of intelligence and covert action should always be kept separate from the other instruments of policy and national power.

It is also one of those times when one looks back at the decision to involve DCI George Tenent directly in negotiations in the Middle East (in his titular capacity, no less) as the height of folly.

Another issue - how in the world is Tenet as head of the CIA, or anyone working for him, going to give objective reports on the situation there if Tenet is stamping his name on diplomatic initiatives like the"Tenet Plan"?

Historians generally don't analyze events until they have historical perspective, because the distance allows them to see a broader picture. Most of the journalists doing the best work today are the ones outside of the Washington cliques (Murray Waas, Charles Savage, Knight Ridder/McClatchy), because they are able to be most objective. Similarly, good intelligence is aided by distance that allows objectivity, something you can't get when you are reporting on plans that you wrote yourself.

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