The following first appeared in The National on February 24, 2011
There were, unfortunately, no shopping carts outside the entrance to the International Defence Exhibition and Conference, which is a shame really, because it was love at first sight. The IST 14.5 anti-material rifle at the Azerbaijan booth is a thing of beauty.
It was its size that first caught my eye. At 2.25 metres, it was 30 centimetres longer than I am tall. There's an appeal to owning a firearm that's bigger than you, especially one that can put a 50-calibre round through the side of an armoured car 2,000 metres away.
The staff, however, paid me no mind. The steely woman at the display, who bore a rather strong resemblance to the James Bond villain Rosa Klebb, sniffed at me when I asked about price. I half expected her to come at me with a poisoned spike in her sensible shoes. Perhaps I lacked the appropriate demeanour and import certificates to justify her attention. An elderly gentleman in a seersucker suit and a 10-gallon hat, however, earned her undivided attention.
Idex, as the exhibition is known, is the biggest of its kind in the region. Plenty of coin changes hands as governments choose to sign major contracts with manufacturers from all over the world. But the majority of the folks, myself included, were simply there to play with the displays. In this respect, Idex is the county fair of international arms shows.
Casual visitors and tourists poked, prodded and hefted a thousand different models of assault rifles, grenade launchers and even a few Gatling guns. They peered into the innards of gigantic armoured vehicles and tanks with the same naked interest they'd have shown a mastodon skeleton at a natural history museum.
The best fun, however, is to be had at the Virtsim booth. The company sells "virtual reality tactical training". You don a motion capture suit and a headset that lets you see the virtual 3D environment. Your movements are tracked by cameras and translated into the virtual world. To the outside observer, you are wandering aimlessly around an empty stage, but in your reality, you're battling against a team of terrorists.
Perhaps in an attempt to overturn cultural stereotypes, the terrorists you are fighting are not your run-of-the-mill Taliban types. They are instead Kalashnikov-wielding hipsters in ironic T-shirts. It turns out that there's an enemy out there nearly everyone can agree on.
Idex is obviously not for everyone, and those with an under-active humour gland might accuse me of making light of devices designed to kill or maim. They would be right. My only excuse is that I react with the same exuberance when presented with an iPad - gadgets are gadgets, and the gadgets at Idex are par excellence.
I was entranced by armour designed to disguise 50-tonne tanks from thermal sensors by giving the vehicle a pitted surface. Apparently, the difference in heat created by the uneven surface breaks up its heat signature, making it disappear; simple, elegant, amazing.
There is no doubt that an inordinate amount of human ingenuity is devoted to making weapons. Take, for example, Whitebox Robotics. The Korean company designs remote-controlled vehicles for patrols, which clients kept crashing. Their solution was to create a helmet that allowed you to see and hear what the robot did, and direct its camera with a turn of the head.
The obvious follow-up project was applying that technology to a machine gun turret, which the technician demonstrated to me. That its ultimate purpose is to shoot intruders does not detract from its technical brilliance.
Under the florescent lights of the convention centre, it is sometimes hard to put the items on display in the appropriate context. Cochrane International builds security barriers, but what catches your eye is not the barbed wire or fencing made out of tempered steel. You are immediately drawn to a large orange orb covered in concentric circles from which jut steel spikes. It looks sinister, like something that might drop on your head if you pressed the doorbell at the home of someone like Dr No.
It is, however, a buoy designed to stop boats from entering ports. The effects were explained by a helpful series of photos in a glossy brochure. They showed a boat hitting the barrier and mannequins flying out of the boat before landing in the water, several metres away. While it is a simple and effective strategy, I couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret that my initial assessment wasn't accurate.
Not everyone shares an objective love for gizmos. If you can't look at a smoke grenade without seeing Hosni Mubarak, don't go. The rest of you have one more day to take in the sights. You won't be disappointed.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The power behind Egypt's unrest
The following first appeared in The National's Review section on February 4, 2011
The revolution will be Twitterised, said one young Egyptian on January 25, the day that the protests in Cairo began. Her tweet was meant both to praise the social networking site and to condemn TV news channels, which at the time seemed more interested in the rioting in Lebanon than in the mass demonstrations in Cairo.
For years, pundits and social media activists have heralded the internet as the great leveller, a forum for true democracy. To the internet evangelists, sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to bring governments to account. And yet the internet is unlikely to fulfil the utopian visions of its most ardent advocates.
The power of the medium has been evident in events in Tunisia and Egypt, which were organised online. There have been other breakthroughs in the past weeks. In China, so-called "human search engines" - web users who perform research to humiliate targeted individuals - recently scored a coup when Li Qiming was sentenced on Monday to six years in prison for drunkenly driving over a young college student.
The 23-year-old Li reportedly tried to escape arrest by saying "my father is Li Gang". The phrase and the story went viral and a human search engine revealed that that Li's father was a local police chief. Both father and son were subjected to online ridicule, and attempts by the Communist party to hush up the controversy failed.
All the same, the web's limitations as a tool of rebellion are striking. This becomes clear when one considers the shadowy organisation known as Anonymous. A group of so-called "hacktivists", they are, in their own words "the hardened war veterans of the internet". The group was responsible for interrupting service on the websites of Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Amazon, punishing those companies for halting payments to Wikileaks. More recently, Anonymous sought to offer alternative means of web access to protesters in Egypt after the Egyptian government took the country offline.
In many ways, the members of Anonymous and their ilk typify the internet - Clark Kents who become Che Guevaras when they get home and log on. And as of last Thursday, dozens of them have had their cover blown.
The FBI arrested 40 purported members of Anonymous for their alleged participation in the web assault on credit card companies. One of those arrested reported in surprise that the agents had pointed "real guns" at him. Another turned out to be an 18-year-old computer science student at a university in the state of Georgia.
It is debatable whether the FBI needed to kick down doors with pistols drawn, but it is a sign of how seriously governments take online activists. In the US they arrest them. In many other countries they incarcerate them as political prisoners. The Man, it seems, also runs the internet, and in Egypt, he did something unprecedented: he shut it down.
The fact that protests continued points to another underacknowledged aspect of the web. As revolutionary a tool of communication as it is, that's all it is. The message is more important than the medium, and the audience has to be ready to hear it.
Egypt furnishes other proofs of this. In 2008, when the April 6 movement used Facebook to bring thousands on to the streets in El Mahalla El Kubra, the world was abuzz. Advocates for democracy in the region praised the site and some governments considered blocking it. Yet a similar protest called on the same day a year later attracted almost no support.
Something much older than the internet has fuelled the latest protests in Tunisia and Egypt. It is the same thing that sparked revolutions in America, France, Iran and Eastern Europe - anger at a government that people feel is out of touch, repressive and corrupt. That's something that can't be unplugged, and which retains its power even when it steps out from behind the keyboard.
The revolution will be Twitterised, said one young Egyptian on January 25, the day that the protests in Cairo began. Her tweet was meant both to praise the social networking site and to condemn TV news channels, which at the time seemed more interested in the rioting in Lebanon than in the mass demonstrations in Cairo.
For years, pundits and social media activists have heralded the internet as the great leveller, a forum for true democracy. To the internet evangelists, sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to bring governments to account. And yet the internet is unlikely to fulfil the utopian visions of its most ardent advocates.
The power of the medium has been evident in events in Tunisia and Egypt, which were organised online. There have been other breakthroughs in the past weeks. In China, so-called "human search engines" - web users who perform research to humiliate targeted individuals - recently scored a coup when Li Qiming was sentenced on Monday to six years in prison for drunkenly driving over a young college student.
The 23-year-old Li reportedly tried to escape arrest by saying "my father is Li Gang". The phrase and the story went viral and a human search engine revealed that that Li's father was a local police chief. Both father and son were subjected to online ridicule, and attempts by the Communist party to hush up the controversy failed.
All the same, the web's limitations as a tool of rebellion are striking. This becomes clear when one considers the shadowy organisation known as Anonymous. A group of so-called "hacktivists", they are, in their own words "the hardened war veterans of the internet". The group was responsible for interrupting service on the websites of Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Amazon, punishing those companies for halting payments to Wikileaks. More recently, Anonymous sought to offer alternative means of web access to protesters in Egypt after the Egyptian government took the country offline.
In many ways, the members of Anonymous and their ilk typify the internet - Clark Kents who become Che Guevaras when they get home and log on. And as of last Thursday, dozens of them have had their cover blown.
The FBI arrested 40 purported members of Anonymous for their alleged participation in the web assault on credit card companies. One of those arrested reported in surprise that the agents had pointed "real guns" at him. Another turned out to be an 18-year-old computer science student at a university in the state of Georgia.
It is debatable whether the FBI needed to kick down doors with pistols drawn, but it is a sign of how seriously governments take online activists. In the US they arrest them. In many other countries they incarcerate them as political prisoners. The Man, it seems, also runs the internet, and in Egypt, he did something unprecedented: he shut it down.
The fact that protests continued points to another underacknowledged aspect of the web. As revolutionary a tool of communication as it is, that's all it is. The message is more important than the medium, and the audience has to be ready to hear it.
Egypt furnishes other proofs of this. In 2008, when the April 6 movement used Facebook to bring thousands on to the streets in El Mahalla El Kubra, the world was abuzz. Advocates for democracy in the region praised the site and some governments considered blocking it. Yet a similar protest called on the same day a year later attracted almost no support.
Something much older than the internet has fuelled the latest protests in Tunisia and Egypt. It is the same thing that sparked revolutions in America, France, Iran and Eastern Europe - anger at a government that people feel is out of touch, repressive and corrupt. That's something that can't be unplugged, and which retains its power even when it steps out from behind the keyboard.
Jobless youth tell of their frustrations
The following first appeared in The National on January 29, 2011
A report released last week on employment trends by the UN's International Labour Organisation painted a stark picture of the Mena region. One would have to travel to a former Soviet republic to find unemployment rates anywhere nearly as high as are found in the Middle East and North Africa. Unemployment in the Mena region is the highest in the world, particularly among young people, and the work that is available is often poorly paid. Financial security? Non-existent.
About 40 per cent of the working population in the Middle East and 32 per cent in North Africa earn less than $2 a day, according to the ILO report. About a third work in conditions the ILO calls vulnerable employment, "characterised by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine workers' fundamental rights".
In 2010, one out of every four young people in the region's labour market was unemployed. The scarcity of work seems to have discouraged many from even trying to enter the workforce. Only about 35 per cent of young people in the Muslim world have a job or are actively looking for one; in the rest of the world, that figure is closer to 50 per cent.
Queen Rania of Jordan warned in 2008 of the dire situation facing Arab youth. That year, 15 million Arabs under the age of 30 were unemployed, many of them university graduates. About 30 per cent to 40 per cent of young people in the region attend university, but that does not make it any easier to find a good job.
Mena is the fastest-growing region in the world and, according to the ILO, many economies in the region have not kept pace with the booming population. That means more competition for too few jobs.
Here, four young people from across the region and from various walks of life tell us what it is like to be looking for work. They are either seeking employment or working in jobs well below their education and qualifications.
Mohammad Anwar Abdallah, aka Matouk
Age: 25
City: Cairo
Level of education: Vocational diploma
I have been selling socks in Cairo streets for nearly five years. I graduated from vocational school in 2002 with a diploma in furniture carpentry, but I couldn't get work in carpentry, or even a steady job. All I found were odd jobs.
I worked for a while in a bakery, had a stint handling luggage at the customs in Sallum, near Libya, and was for a while working on a microbus, not as a driver but as tabbaa, the man who calls out to passengers and helps them to get in and out.
I would have loved to have a steady job with social security and all. I am engaged to my cousin but cannot marry her because I cannot save enough money. I make about 500 pounds [Dh315] a month selling socks and half of that goes for rent on my room in Bashtil [an informal housing area] in Imbaba.
There is no work in my village. It is a small mountain village and nothing much goes on there. This is why I come to Cairo to work. I don't own the merchandise I sell.
A supplier provides me with the socks and I write him an IOU note for the value of the merchandise, 700 pounds. I work illegally, so the municipal police can confiscate my merchandise at any time. If this happens, the supplier would give me another batch of merchandise, but I will have to pay for both, the one that was confiscated and the new one. So instead of paying him 100 pounds every day as I do now, I will have to pay him 150 pounds or so every day.
Some of my friends work in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and others have gone back to the village in Asyût and now work in agriculture.
I don't work in agriculture because my family plot is too small, about a quarter of an acre, just enough for my father to work on.
I dream of having a microbus of my own and working on it, either here or in my village in Asyût.
I sell socks from 11am until 11pm every day except Fridays. It's a tough life, but it's what God has ordained for me.
* As told to Nabil Shawkat
Khaled Kapoun
Age: 33
City: Dweila suburb of Damascus
Level of education: University graduate
I graduated in English literature from Damascus University two years ago. I have been looking for a permanent position as an English teacher ever since, but I have only found short-term contracts for three to four months at a time. I worked briefly for a university and then for a language institute.
I want to work in the private sector because the wages are better, but it is as hard to get jobs in both areas. No company wants to take people on for the long-term, while the public sector is very competitive and you have less control over where you work.
For the past month I have been unemployed. In the first days I worked on my CV and I walked around the city handing it to language institutions. Some days I start at 10am and don't get back until 10pm. They smile and say they'll call me, but they never do. I am surviving on my savings and I live with my parents.
I left school when I was 14 and worked various jobs, including as a blacksmith, before deciding to take up my studies again at the age of 24. But having a university degree has not given me more opportunities than I had before. Now that I have studied, I do not want to try to find work in another area. I want to use my skills and teach English.
The main problem in Syria is that employment is via networks. Even if there are teaching jobs, the institutions are more likely to interview and employ someone they know. I cannot afford to take a job away from Damascus because it would mean paying rent and the salaries are rarely high enough to do that. I am looking outside the country as well.
Being unemployed is having an effect on my life. I cannot save to buy a house and I could not afford to get married even though I am in my thirties. It is also bad for our society. If many people are unoccupied and poor, it encourages behaviour such as stealing.
Everyone knows it is very hard to find a job. But it is hard not to get frustrated. I feel as though I am in the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot, which I studied during my degree. I keep hoping that tomorrow a job will come along.
* As told to Sarah Birke
Fadi Quran
Age: 22
City: Al-Bireh neighbourhood of Ramallah
Level of education: University graduate (two bachelor's degrees)
I studied at Stanford in the USA and have a BA in international relations, focusing on international law, and a BSc in physics. I got back to the West Bank in July because I want to put my skills to good use here, in my country: I want to start an alternative-energy company. The issue here is not just the lack of jobs but the lack of opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to innovate, to start up something here that would also create opportunities for others.
I live in Ramallah, the most prosperous of the West Bank cities, but the Israeli occupation is a major obstacle as it puts a lot of bureaucracy in the way of a start-up; for example, in getting materials or recruiting skilled people, because of the difficulty in travelling both within the West Bank and from outside, for Palestinians. For instance, Gaza has many great engineers, but it is impossible for them to come and intern here for me.
Most of the jobs that are available for skilled people are within the Palestinian Authority or within the NGO sector, but that also creates a problem because they take all the skilled people out of the market and don't use them to innovate or develop skills that can expand the economy. Instead, skilled Palestinians end up working as low-level clerks.
Right now, I decided to look for jobs that are less entrepreneurial and have more to do with the NGO sector. I am frustrated by the circumstances that people here are suffering. I feel like if I moved somewhere else I would easily - thankfully - get a job. And I know that if I could work on my start-up, without these obstacles, I could help to create more jobs and be innovative. I have the potential to do that, but I can't use it and be of benefit. Sometimes I think that my energy would be better spent trying to remove the structural obstacles, by non-violently challenging the occupation. I feel that would be less difficult than what I am trying to do now. But I have to be optimistic for the future: I know something must happen to change things, and soon. The Arab world is boiling right now, and a part of that is because of this lack of opportunity for skilled young people.
* As told to Rachel Shabi
Ramzi Hajji
Age: 31
City: Tunis
Level of education: Master's degree
Geometry is for me like a kind of music: I just feel it. I can't explain why, but since I was a kid I've wanted to be a teacher.
I grew up in Regueb. It's a small town near Sidi Bouzid, in the interior of Tunisia. My father works as a labourer, mainly on construction sites, and my mother is a housewife.
We were eight children originally, but one brother and one sister died around 10 years ago from anaemia. My father always had to spend money as fast as he could earn it on our food, health care and on books and clothes for our schooling.
I used to help my father during school holidays, but my favourite thing was school. I dreamt of going to university and becoming a professor and, in 1999, enrolled in the University of Tunis. As a student I was living as I am now - hand-to-mouth - but I loved the experience.
We used to eat bsissa every day - it's a paste of grains, herbs and olive oil that students in Tunisia practically live on. Each morning it was two spoonfuls of bsissa, a coffee, two cigarettes, and then studying.
I graduated in 2005 with an MA in mathematics. I spent a couple of months at home in Regueb, then came back to Tunis to look for work.
I put up lots of adverts as a private teacher, but I didn't have much success: I was earning around 200 dinars month, and I was living on sandwiches.
I ended up working in cafes and hotels. Today I have the use of a schoolroom to give private lessons, but I'm still working without a contract. And now I'm taking home about 150 dinars a month.
Ideally I want a full-time job in a private school, but I don't have the connections. And I can't even find work in a state school.
When you're a student, you feel that your education equals a job later. You visit home and they're proud of you. But when you return home unemployed, it's different. They're not angry, but it's awkward. I hesitate to return home nowadays.
But I did visit Regueb this month to join the protests there - peaceful protests with reasonable demands for work and an end to corruption. I never imagined it would end with Ben Ali leaving. The revolution is wonderful. I feel I was reborn that day, January 14. And I hope things will keep improving.
* As told to John Thorne
A report released last week on employment trends by the UN's International Labour Organisation painted a stark picture of the Mena region. One would have to travel to a former Soviet republic to find unemployment rates anywhere nearly as high as are found in the Middle East and North Africa. Unemployment in the Mena region is the highest in the world, particularly among young people, and the work that is available is often poorly paid. Financial security? Non-existent.
About 40 per cent of the working population in the Middle East and 32 per cent in North Africa earn less than $2 a day, according to the ILO report. About a third work in conditions the ILO calls vulnerable employment, "characterised by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine workers' fundamental rights".
In 2010, one out of every four young people in the region's labour market was unemployed. The scarcity of work seems to have discouraged many from even trying to enter the workforce. Only about 35 per cent of young people in the Muslim world have a job or are actively looking for one; in the rest of the world, that figure is closer to 50 per cent.
Queen Rania of Jordan warned in 2008 of the dire situation facing Arab youth. That year, 15 million Arabs under the age of 30 were unemployed, many of them university graduates. About 30 per cent to 40 per cent of young people in the region attend university, but that does not make it any easier to find a good job.
Mena is the fastest-growing region in the world and, according to the ILO, many economies in the region have not kept pace with the booming population. That means more competition for too few jobs.
Here, four young people from across the region and from various walks of life tell us what it is like to be looking for work. They are either seeking employment or working in jobs well below their education and qualifications.
Mohammad Anwar Abdallah, aka Matouk
Age: 25
City: Cairo
Level of education: Vocational diploma
I have been selling socks in Cairo streets for nearly five years. I graduated from vocational school in 2002 with a diploma in furniture carpentry, but I couldn't get work in carpentry, or even a steady job. All I found were odd jobs.
I worked for a while in a bakery, had a stint handling luggage at the customs in Sallum, near Libya, and was for a while working on a microbus, not as a driver but as tabbaa, the man who calls out to passengers and helps them to get in and out.
I would have loved to have a steady job with social security and all. I am engaged to my cousin but cannot marry her because I cannot save enough money. I make about 500 pounds [Dh315] a month selling socks and half of that goes for rent on my room in Bashtil [an informal housing area] in Imbaba.
There is no work in my village. It is a small mountain village and nothing much goes on there. This is why I come to Cairo to work. I don't own the merchandise I sell.
A supplier provides me with the socks and I write him an IOU note for the value of the merchandise, 700 pounds. I work illegally, so the municipal police can confiscate my merchandise at any time. If this happens, the supplier would give me another batch of merchandise, but I will have to pay for both, the one that was confiscated and the new one. So instead of paying him 100 pounds every day as I do now, I will have to pay him 150 pounds or so every day.
Some of my friends work in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and others have gone back to the village in Asyût and now work in agriculture.
I don't work in agriculture because my family plot is too small, about a quarter of an acre, just enough for my father to work on.
I dream of having a microbus of my own and working on it, either here or in my village in Asyût.
I sell socks from 11am until 11pm every day except Fridays. It's a tough life, but it's what God has ordained for me.
* As told to Nabil Shawkat
Khaled Kapoun
Age: 33
City: Dweila suburb of Damascus
Level of education: University graduate
I graduated in English literature from Damascus University two years ago. I have been looking for a permanent position as an English teacher ever since, but I have only found short-term contracts for three to four months at a time. I worked briefly for a university and then for a language institute.
I want to work in the private sector because the wages are better, but it is as hard to get jobs in both areas. No company wants to take people on for the long-term, while the public sector is very competitive and you have less control over where you work.
For the past month I have been unemployed. In the first days I worked on my CV and I walked around the city handing it to language institutions. Some days I start at 10am and don't get back until 10pm. They smile and say they'll call me, but they never do. I am surviving on my savings and I live with my parents.
I left school when I was 14 and worked various jobs, including as a blacksmith, before deciding to take up my studies again at the age of 24. But having a university degree has not given me more opportunities than I had before. Now that I have studied, I do not want to try to find work in another area. I want to use my skills and teach English.
The main problem in Syria is that employment is via networks. Even if there are teaching jobs, the institutions are more likely to interview and employ someone they know. I cannot afford to take a job away from Damascus because it would mean paying rent and the salaries are rarely high enough to do that. I am looking outside the country as well.
Being unemployed is having an effect on my life. I cannot save to buy a house and I could not afford to get married even though I am in my thirties. It is also bad for our society. If many people are unoccupied and poor, it encourages behaviour such as stealing.
Everyone knows it is very hard to find a job. But it is hard not to get frustrated. I feel as though I am in the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot, which I studied during my degree. I keep hoping that tomorrow a job will come along.
* As told to Sarah Birke
Fadi Quran
Age: 22
City: Al-Bireh neighbourhood of Ramallah
Level of education: University graduate (two bachelor's degrees)
I studied at Stanford in the USA and have a BA in international relations, focusing on international law, and a BSc in physics. I got back to the West Bank in July because I want to put my skills to good use here, in my country: I want to start an alternative-energy company. The issue here is not just the lack of jobs but the lack of opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to innovate, to start up something here that would also create opportunities for others.
I live in Ramallah, the most prosperous of the West Bank cities, but the Israeli occupation is a major obstacle as it puts a lot of bureaucracy in the way of a start-up; for example, in getting materials or recruiting skilled people, because of the difficulty in travelling both within the West Bank and from outside, for Palestinians. For instance, Gaza has many great engineers, but it is impossible for them to come and intern here for me.
Most of the jobs that are available for skilled people are within the Palestinian Authority or within the NGO sector, but that also creates a problem because they take all the skilled people out of the market and don't use them to innovate or develop skills that can expand the economy. Instead, skilled Palestinians end up working as low-level clerks.
Right now, I decided to look for jobs that are less entrepreneurial and have more to do with the NGO sector. I am frustrated by the circumstances that people here are suffering. I feel like if I moved somewhere else I would easily - thankfully - get a job. And I know that if I could work on my start-up, without these obstacles, I could help to create more jobs and be innovative. I have the potential to do that, but I can't use it and be of benefit. Sometimes I think that my energy would be better spent trying to remove the structural obstacles, by non-violently challenging the occupation. I feel that would be less difficult than what I am trying to do now. But I have to be optimistic for the future: I know something must happen to change things, and soon. The Arab world is boiling right now, and a part of that is because of this lack of opportunity for skilled young people.
* As told to Rachel Shabi
Ramzi Hajji
Age: 31
City: Tunis
Level of education: Master's degree
Geometry is for me like a kind of music: I just feel it. I can't explain why, but since I was a kid I've wanted to be a teacher.
I grew up in Regueb. It's a small town near Sidi Bouzid, in the interior of Tunisia. My father works as a labourer, mainly on construction sites, and my mother is a housewife.
We were eight children originally, but one brother and one sister died around 10 years ago from anaemia. My father always had to spend money as fast as he could earn it on our food, health care and on books and clothes for our schooling.
I used to help my father during school holidays, but my favourite thing was school. I dreamt of going to university and becoming a professor and, in 1999, enrolled in the University of Tunis. As a student I was living as I am now - hand-to-mouth - but I loved the experience.
We used to eat bsissa every day - it's a paste of grains, herbs and olive oil that students in Tunisia practically live on. Each morning it was two spoonfuls of bsissa, a coffee, two cigarettes, and then studying.
I graduated in 2005 with an MA in mathematics. I spent a couple of months at home in Regueb, then came back to Tunis to look for work.
I put up lots of adverts as a private teacher, but I didn't have much success: I was earning around 200 dinars month, and I was living on sandwiches.
I ended up working in cafes and hotels. Today I have the use of a schoolroom to give private lessons, but I'm still working without a contract. And now I'm taking home about 150 dinars a month.
Ideally I want a full-time job in a private school, but I don't have the connections. And I can't even find work in a state school.
When you're a student, you feel that your education equals a job later. You visit home and they're proud of you. But when you return home unemployed, it's different. They're not angry, but it's awkward. I hesitate to return home nowadays.
But I did visit Regueb this month to join the protests there - peaceful protests with reasonable demands for work and an end to corruption. I never imagined it would end with Ben Ali leaving. The revolution is wonderful. I feel I was reborn that day, January 14. And I hope things will keep improving.
* As told to John Thorne
Israel-Palestine: The implausibility of peace
The following first appeared in The National's Review section on December 31, 2010
When Barack Obama was preparing to take office in late 2008, Israel-Palestine was in shambles. Operation Cast Lead was in full swing. Israeli troops fought Hamas in the streets of Gaza, that conflict ending two days before Obama was sworn in as president.
Two years later, on the anniversary of that conflict, the situation appears just as parlous. Small militant groups in Gaza marked the anniversary of the conflict by firing mortars and rockets into southern Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes. There is little reason to believe that 2011 will improve the situation. None of the parties are in a position to negotiate for peace.
The US appears to have played its hand already. After trying and failing to force Israel to halt settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the US was forced to settle for a 10-month "freeze". Meanwhile, attempts to pressure Arab states into a goodwill gesture toward Israel to accompany the settlement freeze collapsed in the face of Israeli intransigence. When the 10 months ended, peace negotiations fell apart.
A string of diplomatic failures culminated in the US's offer of 20 next-generation fighter jets, worth $3 billion, and security guarantees for Israel in return for a three-month extension. Israel's rejection of the deal humiliated the US and all but destroyed hopes for renewed peace talks.
There was never much chance that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu would agree to an indefinite halt to settlement construction. He loses nothing by stalling for time, and every time he thumbs his nose at Obama and the Arab world, he scores points within his fractious coalition of right-wing parties. And he does need to score points. Netanyahu is under fire from almost every direction in Israel.
The left suffered huge losses in the last election, but they lose no opportunity to snipe at Netanyahu for his troubled relationship with Israel's closest ally. The slightest provocation of the right sparks revolt: settlers clash with the police and the army and municipal leaders find any loophole they can to take the brakes off construction in the Occupied Territories. The main opposition party, Kadima, sits on its hands and hopes that in-fighting will destroy the coalition and catapult them back into government.
There is a temptation to cheer on the squabblers. The labour minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer raised eyebrows on Sunday when he told the cabinet that peace talks must resume or the world might unequivocally recognise a Palestinian state. It was a nod to the Palestinians' PR campaign to build a worldwide consensus on their right to statehood.
Since the end of the settlement freeze, Palestinian diplomats have gained the support of South American nations for an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Norway elevated the status of Palestine's mission to just below that of an official embassy, and 10 other European nations are reportedly considering similar moves.
Mr Ben-Eliezer's statements are more political opportunism than a validation of the Palestinian Authority's PR blitz. The fact that the left appears increasingly uncomfortable aligning itself with a government which is both antithetical to its political beliefs and incapable of forging peace might tempt the Arab world to hope for a new government in the future. That would be a mistake.
Israeli politics has become a scramble for power, not peace. In the absence of US pressure, Israel appears content with the status quo. Meanwhile, America has ever fewer levers with which to limit Israel's expansionism. For now, the US's role in the peace process seems to be contracting, perhaps necessarily. Having spent so much political capital in futility, Obama must step back or risk losing what credibility he has left. Peace will have to wait.
While there is little risk that a new war in Gaza will erupt, the peace process is in a markedly worse state than when Obama took office. Direct talks have died prematurely, and even indirect talks seem unlikely. That does not bode well for 2011.
When Barack Obama was preparing to take office in late 2008, Israel-Palestine was in shambles. Operation Cast Lead was in full swing. Israeli troops fought Hamas in the streets of Gaza, that conflict ending two days before Obama was sworn in as president.
Two years later, on the anniversary of that conflict, the situation appears just as parlous. Small militant groups in Gaza marked the anniversary of the conflict by firing mortars and rockets into southern Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes. There is little reason to believe that 2011 will improve the situation. None of the parties are in a position to negotiate for peace.
The US appears to have played its hand already. After trying and failing to force Israel to halt settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the US was forced to settle for a 10-month "freeze". Meanwhile, attempts to pressure Arab states into a goodwill gesture toward Israel to accompany the settlement freeze collapsed in the face of Israeli intransigence. When the 10 months ended, peace negotiations fell apart.
A string of diplomatic failures culminated in the US's offer of 20 next-generation fighter jets, worth $3 billion, and security guarantees for Israel in return for a three-month extension. Israel's rejection of the deal humiliated the US and all but destroyed hopes for renewed peace talks.
There was never much chance that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu would agree to an indefinite halt to settlement construction. He loses nothing by stalling for time, and every time he thumbs his nose at Obama and the Arab world, he scores points within his fractious coalition of right-wing parties. And he does need to score points. Netanyahu is under fire from almost every direction in Israel.
The left suffered huge losses in the last election, but they lose no opportunity to snipe at Netanyahu for his troubled relationship with Israel's closest ally. The slightest provocation of the right sparks revolt: settlers clash with the police and the army and municipal leaders find any loophole they can to take the brakes off construction in the Occupied Territories. The main opposition party, Kadima, sits on its hands and hopes that in-fighting will destroy the coalition and catapult them back into government.
There is a temptation to cheer on the squabblers. The labour minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer raised eyebrows on Sunday when he told the cabinet that peace talks must resume or the world might unequivocally recognise a Palestinian state. It was a nod to the Palestinians' PR campaign to build a worldwide consensus on their right to statehood.
Since the end of the settlement freeze, Palestinian diplomats have gained the support of South American nations for an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Norway elevated the status of Palestine's mission to just below that of an official embassy, and 10 other European nations are reportedly considering similar moves.
Mr Ben-Eliezer's statements are more political opportunism than a validation of the Palestinian Authority's PR blitz. The fact that the left appears increasingly uncomfortable aligning itself with a government which is both antithetical to its political beliefs and incapable of forging peace might tempt the Arab world to hope for a new government in the future. That would be a mistake.
Israeli politics has become a scramble for power, not peace. In the absence of US pressure, Israel appears content with the status quo. Meanwhile, America has ever fewer levers with which to limit Israel's expansionism. For now, the US's role in the peace process seems to be contracting, perhaps necessarily. Having spent so much political capital in futility, Obama must step back or risk losing what credibility he has left. Peace will have to wait.
While there is little risk that a new war in Gaza will erupt, the peace process is in a markedly worse state than when Obama took office. Direct talks have died prematurely, and even indirect talks seem unlikely. That does not bode well for 2011.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Guantanamo – more a comedy of errors than a foil to terror
The following was originally published in The National on April 30, 2011
In 2010, the black comedy Four Lions premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It told the stories of four British Muslims and their attempts to become members of al Qa'eda. In one of the climactic scenes, the men agonise over what to blow up. One, Barry, wants to bomb a mosque "to radicalise the moderates". Two of the others had been kicked out of a training camp in Waziristan for being soft city boys; they also accidently killed Osama bin Laden. Like all the best comic dramas, wrapped up in the farcical antics are kernels of sorry truth.
Nine years after the first 20 prisoners were taken to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba, portions of the classified case files of all 772 persons held at the camp have been released by WikiLeaks and numerous news sites. There isn't much that is funny in these files, but there is plenty of farce.
Barry may have wanted to blow up a mosque, but Majid Khan - the only legal resident of the United States held at Guantanamo and one of 16 so-called "high value detainees" - wanted to use his experience working as a petrol pump attendant in Baltimore to stage co-ordinated attacks on fuel stations across the US. The wheeze was vetoed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.
Khan also had the bright idea of renting a number of flats, then leaving on the gas with the pilot lights lit. That plan was also placed on the back burner.
Khan was instructed to go home to his wife in Baltimore - the city where he had been brought up and where he went to school - but he was insistent that he wanted to die for the cause. So al Qa'eda told him to wear a suicide vest to a mosque where Pervez Musharraf, the then president of Pakistan, was supposed to be visiting. Khan obeyed his orders, but there was no Musharraf and the vest was a dud.
Khan's dedication to the cause was mirrored by Abd Rahim al Nashiri, one of three detainees the US authorities admitted waterboarding - an "advanced interrogation technique" that most people, including the authors of the Geneva Conventions, would consider torture. Born in Saudi Arabia, al Nashiri was alleged to have been the mastermind for the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 US sailors when it was at anchor in Aden. So single-minded was al Nashiri that he confessed he received injections to render him impotent. The al Qa'eda operative was determined, he claimed, to avoid distractions from the fairer sex "so that more time could be spent on the jihad".
Some of the seemingly inconsequential details revealed in the WikiLeaks files about al Qa'eda's training camps are almost as bizarre as the stories of the wannabe terrorists themselves. For example, graduates of al Qa'eda's bomb-making school all receive a plastic Casio digital watch instead of a formal diploma. The detention assessments of more than 50 prisoners cited possession of this watch as evidence that the men posed potential threats to the US.
Britons might be surprised to read that the relatively prosperous north London district of Finsbury Park is Europe's version of the Tora Bora mountains. Abu Hamza, the Egyptian-born imam who lost both hands and one eye in Afghanistan, is singled out as a prime recruiter for the Taliban and al Qa'eda. As a firebrand preacher at the Finsbury Park mosque he is alleged to have recruited 35 of the Guantanamo detainees to fight in Afghanistan. His extradition to the United States has been prevented by European human rights law. Meanwhile, his sojourn in the UK has been paid for by British taxpayers, causing no little resentment.
A former Libyan detainee, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, is now one of the leaders of the Libyan rebels. He fights in the town of Darnah, previously infamous for sending more suicide bombers per capita to Iraq than any other city in the world. The entirety of eastern Libya, in fact, sent more foreign fighters per capita to Iraq than any other region in the Arab world. But then, the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is often in the eye of the beholder - particularly if the beholder is an American.
Some of the cases are already well known, such as the shameful detention of Sami al Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman. According to his captors, al Hajj financed a global terrorism network while working as an executive secretary to a beverage company. He was also accused of distributing pro-jihad propaganda designed to recruit more people to the cause cleverly disguised as interviews. One of the reasons used to justify his almost seven years at Guantanamo was to extract additional information on Al Jazeera's suspicious links to Osama bin Laden.
Al Jazeera was not the only media outlet to arouse suspicion. Among the "pocket litter" found on several people sent to Guantanamo was a number linked to the BBC World Service. According to an analyst's note from a file quoted by the UK's Daily Telegraph: "Numerous extremist links to this BBC number indicates a possible propaganda media network connection." Note to all war correspondents: think twice before handing out those business cards.
What about the inevitable question: was Guantanamo worth it? When you weigh the evidence contained in the files against the many reports of inhumane treatment and the worldwide outrage that they generated, the answer is probably "no". In fact, it could be argued that in acting as a recruiting sergeant for militant groups across the globe, the detention centre did far more harm than good.
Empirically, the potential intelligence trove that was used to justify keeping so many of these men in prison failed to stop the July 7 bombings in the UK. It failed to win the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. It destroyed the moral standing of an entire country and a war initially built on righteous anger at unprovoked attacks on New York and Washington. It may have radicalised detainees further or provoked them into committing acts of terrorism once they were released, which a considerable number of them did.
In time, Guantanamo might come to be considered a joke, if one in very poor taste. Closing down the detention centre is an undeniably difficult task, one that confounds legal experts. Trying the worst of the actors has become nearly impossible because of US congressional opposition to civilian trials, tainted evidence and a litany of bad legal decisions. Any way that Barack Obama looks at this situation, the president must see a losing proposition, but close Guantanamo he must.
The White House alleges that WikiLeaks's misguided activism does more harm than good, and that might be true. But that does not make the stain on the moral fibre of the US any less indelible. The information in these files will shock and horrify readers more than it will amuse them, but it is also a stark reminder that no one has a monopoly on wrongdoing.
In 2010, the black comedy Four Lions premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It told the stories of four British Muslims and their attempts to become members of al Qa'eda. In one of the climactic scenes, the men agonise over what to blow up. One, Barry, wants to bomb a mosque "to radicalise the moderates". Two of the others had been kicked out of a training camp in Waziristan for being soft city boys; they also accidently killed Osama bin Laden. Like all the best comic dramas, wrapped up in the farcical antics are kernels of sorry truth.
Nine years after the first 20 prisoners were taken to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba, portions of the classified case files of all 772 persons held at the camp have been released by WikiLeaks and numerous news sites. There isn't much that is funny in these files, but there is plenty of farce.
Barry may have wanted to blow up a mosque, but Majid Khan - the only legal resident of the United States held at Guantanamo and one of 16 so-called "high value detainees" - wanted to use his experience working as a petrol pump attendant in Baltimore to stage co-ordinated attacks on fuel stations across the US. The wheeze was vetoed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.
Khan also had the bright idea of renting a number of flats, then leaving on the gas with the pilot lights lit. That plan was also placed on the back burner.
Khan was instructed to go home to his wife in Baltimore - the city where he had been brought up and where he went to school - but he was insistent that he wanted to die for the cause. So al Qa'eda told him to wear a suicide vest to a mosque where Pervez Musharraf, the then president of Pakistan, was supposed to be visiting. Khan obeyed his orders, but there was no Musharraf and the vest was a dud.
Khan's dedication to the cause was mirrored by Abd Rahim al Nashiri, one of three detainees the US authorities admitted waterboarding - an "advanced interrogation technique" that most people, including the authors of the Geneva Conventions, would consider torture. Born in Saudi Arabia, al Nashiri was alleged to have been the mastermind for the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 US sailors when it was at anchor in Aden. So single-minded was al Nashiri that he confessed he received injections to render him impotent. The al Qa'eda operative was determined, he claimed, to avoid distractions from the fairer sex "so that more time could be spent on the jihad".
Some of the seemingly inconsequential details revealed in the WikiLeaks files about al Qa'eda's training camps are almost as bizarre as the stories of the wannabe terrorists themselves. For example, graduates of al Qa'eda's bomb-making school all receive a plastic Casio digital watch instead of a formal diploma. The detention assessments of more than 50 prisoners cited possession of this watch as evidence that the men posed potential threats to the US.
Britons might be surprised to read that the relatively prosperous north London district of Finsbury Park is Europe's version of the Tora Bora mountains. Abu Hamza, the Egyptian-born imam who lost both hands and one eye in Afghanistan, is singled out as a prime recruiter for the Taliban and al Qa'eda. As a firebrand preacher at the Finsbury Park mosque he is alleged to have recruited 35 of the Guantanamo detainees to fight in Afghanistan. His extradition to the United States has been prevented by European human rights law. Meanwhile, his sojourn in the UK has been paid for by British taxpayers, causing no little resentment.
A former Libyan detainee, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, is now one of the leaders of the Libyan rebels. He fights in the town of Darnah, previously infamous for sending more suicide bombers per capita to Iraq than any other city in the world. The entirety of eastern Libya, in fact, sent more foreign fighters per capita to Iraq than any other region in the Arab world. But then, the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is often in the eye of the beholder - particularly if the beholder is an American.
Some of the cases are already well known, such as the shameful detention of Sami al Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman. According to his captors, al Hajj financed a global terrorism network while working as an executive secretary to a beverage company. He was also accused of distributing pro-jihad propaganda designed to recruit more people to the cause cleverly disguised as interviews. One of the reasons used to justify his almost seven years at Guantanamo was to extract additional information on Al Jazeera's suspicious links to Osama bin Laden.
Al Jazeera was not the only media outlet to arouse suspicion. Among the "pocket litter" found on several people sent to Guantanamo was a number linked to the BBC World Service. According to an analyst's note from a file quoted by the UK's Daily Telegraph: "Numerous extremist links to this BBC number indicates a possible propaganda media network connection." Note to all war correspondents: think twice before handing out those business cards.
What about the inevitable question: was Guantanamo worth it? When you weigh the evidence contained in the files against the many reports of inhumane treatment and the worldwide outrage that they generated, the answer is probably "no". In fact, it could be argued that in acting as a recruiting sergeant for militant groups across the globe, the detention centre did far more harm than good.
Empirically, the potential intelligence trove that was used to justify keeping so many of these men in prison failed to stop the July 7 bombings in the UK. It failed to win the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. It destroyed the moral standing of an entire country and a war initially built on righteous anger at unprovoked attacks on New York and Washington. It may have radicalised detainees further or provoked them into committing acts of terrorism once they were released, which a considerable number of them did.
In time, Guantanamo might come to be considered a joke, if one in very poor taste. Closing down the detention centre is an undeniably difficult task, one that confounds legal experts. Trying the worst of the actors has become nearly impossible because of US congressional opposition to civilian trials, tainted evidence and a litany of bad legal decisions. Any way that Barack Obama looks at this situation, the president must see a losing proposition, but close Guantanamo he must.
The White House alleges that WikiLeaks's misguided activism does more harm than good, and that might be true. But that does not make the stain on the moral fibre of the US any less indelible. The information in these files will shock and horrify readers more than it will amuse them, but it is also a stark reminder that no one has a monopoly on wrongdoing.
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