EGYPT: The trouble with Mugabe

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe flew into the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik nattily dressed and unapologetic, and left the same way, avoiding censure last night by the 53 nations attending the African Union summit.

Some of his peers chastised him for violently stealing the June 27 election that silenced opposition parties and won Mugabe his sixth term. But many African leaders remained publicly quiet, reacting to the 84-year-old former guerrilla the way one winces at a friend who shows up with trouble behind his smile.

Perhaps it was a desire to avoid comparison. Egypt and Libya, for example, have also been criticized repeatedly over the years for repression, torture and jailing political opposition figures. Washington has vilified Mugabe and is seeking broader U.N. sanctions against Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, the Bush administration gives about $2 billion in annual military and economic aid to the government of President Hosni Mubarak, a strategic ally in the region.

MIDDLE EAST: A rift within Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda increasingly faces sharp criticism from once-loyal sympathizers who openly question its ideology and tactics, including attacks that kill innocent Muslims, according to U.S. intelligence officials, counter-terrorism experts and the group's own communications.

A litany of complaints target Osama bin Laden's network and its affiliates for their actions in Iraq and North Africa, emphasis on suicide bombings instead of political action and tepid support for, or outright antagonism toward, militant groups pressing the Palestinian cause.

The criticism apparently has grown serious enough that Al Qaeda's chief strategist, Ayman Zawahiri, felt compelled to solicit online questions. He responded in an audio message released this month. For more than 90 minutes, Bin Laden's second-in-command tried to defuse the anger.

Click here to read more.

—Josh Meyer in Washington

Photo: Ayman Zawahiri, left, Al Qaeda’s chief strategist, seen here with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998, recently responded on tape to questions, many angry. Credit: Mazhar Ali Khan / Courtesy Paladin InVision/WETA

MIDDLE EAST: Danish cartoon controversy continues to ripple

The anger unleashed in the Muslim world by the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad more than two years ago is apparently far from simmering down.

In the latest of the drawings' consequences, the Danish government decided to close its embassies in Algeria and Afghanistan after threats of terrorist attacks against their premises in these two countries. According to a report in a Danish newspaper, the Danes have evacuated their staff from embassies in Kabul and Algiers to an unidentified "safe location," where they continue to work.

The newspaper said that the Danish intelligence linked the threats to the reprinting of the cartoons in February by international newspapers.

MAURITANIA: Clashes with suspected Al Qaeda militants

North Africa has become a hotbed of Islamic extremism. Deadly clashes erupted Monday evening between armed forces and a group of suspected Islamists in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott.

The Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera showed footage of Mauritanian forces shooting with assault rifles at a building where the militants were apparently holed up.

According to news agencies and Arab satellite news channels, the gun battle led to the killing of a number of policemen and Islamic militants.

One of the Islamists believed to have perished in the shoot-out was the infamous Sidi Ould Sidna, a 20-year-old Al Qaeda suspect who was accused of the assassination of four French tourists in the south of the country last December.

JORDAN: Guns galore at Middle East weapons fair

The specter of conflicts in the Middle East intensifying and widening worries many countries in the region. But some Arab nations are showing a growing interest in acquiring or selling sophisticated weapons as suggested by the wide participation in an international exhibition for military hardware, held in Jordan over the last few days.

The event, Special Operations Forces Exhibition and Conference (SOFEX) 2008 was a muscular display of tanks, armored vehicles, high-tech surveillance equipment, gunboats, machine guns, etc.

Check out the first minute or two of the promotional video for the event and you'll get the idea.

MOROCCO: World's first Facebook felon freed

Justice failed him, but the king’s word set free a man who was sentenced to three years in a Moroccan prison for a Facebook prank.

Fouad Mourtada’s crime was to create a fake Facebook account in the name of Moroccan Prince Moulay Rachid, the brother of King Mohammed VI.

It’s not normally a big deal. If you search the social networking site, you’ll find fake profiles for George Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, Osama Bin Laden and many others. The 26-year-old engineer said he believed it was just a “fun” thing to do.

But royal authorities were offended. They condemned him. Mourtada was  summoned to a Casablanca courthouse. During his trial, Mourtada insisted the creation of the profile was just a joke. In a statement to the Committee of Support for Fouad Mourtada, the detainee said that he admired the prince, and did not think his act was hurtful:

I never thought that by creating a profile of his highness prince Moulay Rachid I was harming him in any way. I, as a matter of fact, did not send any message from that account to anyone. It was just a joke, a gag.

Nevertheless the judge sentenced him to three years in the slammer.

MIDDLE EAST: No countries for old journalists

These have not been good times for journalists in the Middle East.

As Ashraf Khalil reports from Jersualem, Israeli authorities are threatening to shut down  at least tighten up on the operations of Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news channel.

SYRIA: Avoiding an Arab League fiasco

Once again, Syria is proving to be the "black sheep" of the Arab world.

After years of waiting, it's finally Damascus' turn to shine as host of the annual Arab League Summit. But now come worries that Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt and Jordan, might ruin the party.

The so-called "moderate Arab states," backed by the U.S., want to punish Syria for trying to regain control over its smaller neighbor, Lebanon. For the past three months, Saudis have blamed Syrians for repeatedly blocking the election of a Lebanese president.

MIDDLE EAST: Boycott of Paris book fair over Israel

A decision to make Israel the guest of honor at the upcoming Paris book fair has angered Muslim countries around the world. On Saturday, Iranian authorities announced that they would boycott the five-day book fair.

Iran wasn't the first country to opt out of the fair. It may not be the last.

MIDDLE EAST: No place for preaching

The Muslim Middle East tolerates religious minorities practicing their rituals to some extent. But the tolerance doesn't extend to  so-called "infidels" attempting to convert "good Muslims"  to another faith. Missionary activities are illegal in many Muslim countries, as illustrated by several recent controversies.

In Jordan, last week, authorities expelled a group of Christians accused of trying to convert  Bedouins from Islam. The eight foreign missionaries were allegedly distributing fliers that promote Christianity and were acting under the cover of charity work.

This comes amid reports by Compass Direct News, an organization that documents the persecution of Christians in the world, that Jordan has deported expatriate Christian families over the last year partly for "working with local churches or studying at a Christian seminary." The kingdom has dismissed these reports as unfounded.

In Algeria, a Catholic priest was sentenced to a year in prison a few weeks ago. He was accused of praying with a group of Cameroonian immigrants outside an institution authorized for religious worship. The sentence, which was later suspended, came under a 2-year-old law prohibiting proselytizing, which is viewed by authorities as a growing threat.

— Raed Rafei in Beirut

Photo: Palestinian Christians pray during a mass service at the Latin Holy Family Church in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Credit: AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen

ALGERIA: Another sad morning

A bomb attack in northern Algeria Tuesday killed at least two and injured 23.,according to the official Algerie Presse Service.  Other news services said four were killed in the 6:30 a.m. explosion, which damaged half a dozen buildings.

It was the latest in a string of attacks in the North African country. The target this time apparently was a mobile unit of the country's judiciary police in the town of Thenia, in an area about 30 miles east of the capital, Algiers.

On Jan. 2, a suicide bomber rammed a car into a police station in Naciria, 75 miles east of Algiers, killing four policemen and wounding 20 others.

As many as 41 people were killed on Dec. 11 when two suicide truck bombs rammed into a United Nations building and a court complex in the capital. Seventeen of those killed were U.N. employees.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for both attacks.

The United Nations has offered to help Algerian authorities investigate that attack, but the government has spurned the offer.

To combat Al Qaeda's influence, Algerian television stations have aired a program in which clerics lambaste suicide bombings and attacks on civilians, according to a summary of clippings posted on the blog of Memri, the Middle East Media and Research Institute.

The Algerian government in the past ordered army airplanes to drop leaflets on pro-Al Qaeda neighborhoods with a fatwa by a Saudi Arabian cleric denouncing the struggle against the Algerian government.

— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photo: Algerian women comfort each other after their house was seriously damaged by a suicide bomb attack on a police station in the eastern Algerian city of Thenia on Tuesday morning. Credit: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images

MAURITANIA: Racing against Al Qaida

Mauritanians were  bummed  when organizers canceled the famous Lisbon-Dakar Rally because of fears of a terrorist attack after militants killed four French tourists in December. Al Qaida of North Africa took the credit for the attack and warned that it would also target the annual off-road rally as an "infidel" event.

But organizers of another rambling desert car race went ahead this week, undaunted by the threat.

The Budapest-Bamako race, which begins in Central Europe and winds its way down into North and West Africa, today completed its Mauritania leg, apparently without a hitch.

TUNISIA: A moment in Carthage

The cathedral is not used for God anymore. It has been turned into a concert hall, where the other day a pianist played as a few souls wandered amid the ruins on a bluff overlooking the sea beyond Carthage. He was practicing for the evening's performance, toying with notes, circling back on them until they smoothly fit beneath his fingers. The music may have been Bach.

Carthage. The name conjures much: sea lanes and Romans, Phoenicians and Greeks, queens and pirates, falls and rises, Christianity and Islam, and now, disposable cameras and the slap of tourist sandals on cool stones. Pews have been removed from the St. Louis Cathedral, built by the French at a time the French ruled much of North Africa. The holy water fonts are dry, but the cupolas and the keyhole-shaped alcoves — a striking blend of eastern and western architectures — are well-preserved.

The piano player slipped into a minor key. He hunched over his hands, as if whispering to them, coaxing something that wouldn't come, until he found it, and released it into the afternoon light. His name was not given, nor asked for. He was a man in a white shirt sitting on a stool in a church along the Tunisian coast. Before him had come warriors, kings, martyrs and missionaries. He kept playing, even as the door closed, the music growing fainter as the car wound down the hill.

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Carthage

A night in Tunisia

The fish restaurant glowed in the alley. The door opened, a man slipped through hanging beads. Calamari sizzled, plates clattered. A lute player sat like a relic against the whitewashed wall, singing of love and country and God hovering somewhere beyond the coast. The waiter, a corkscrew dangling from his pocket, was sweaty and quick. A boy rushed in with a bag of what appeared to money, but turned out to be baguettes. Old men sat cross-legged. Tablecloths were dotted with cigarette burns; they looked like tiny islands on a white sea. The men whispered and laughed, they sipped rose, they breathed in the fish, the grit and the smoke, happy to be out for another evening in their worn blazers, a trickle of cash in their pockets. They clapped for the lute player.

A few streets over, above a market closed for the night, a blogger known as Mr. Yahyawi sat in the gray light of a computer, evading government censors. He typed with abandon, his hair as kinetic as the circuitry he navigated to escape the firewalls and break out into the ether with messages of torture and political repression, and all those things not discussed in fish restaurants. He hop-scotched through cyberspace, taping into proxy servers, disguising his electronic footprint. Sometimes the government, often cited by international agencies for human rights abuses, tracks him and fries his computer with a virus. He writes in French and Arabic. His motto is: We live under a kingdom, not in a democracy. About 800 people visit his site each day. That's not many, but he's too obsessed to ponder numbers. He will be posting long after the lute has fallen silent and the waiter has showered and gone to sleep.

"The gateway to progress," he said, "is when people start expressing themselves."

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Tunis

EGYPT: Star-gazing in Cairo

By Borzou Daragahi in Cairo

Cairo’s teeming, smog-choked streets cloak all in anonymity. Even blond-haired, blue-eyed foreign visitors don’t draw too much attention.

But I've never experienced anything quite like walking out of the Café Arabica in downtown Cairo with the famous actress Hind Sabri while reporting my story on the Egyptian movie industry.

All of a sudden, the calloused eyes of Cairo street vendors, police officers and passersby lit up with delight, swarming toward her. A few asked for autographs, but most just greeted her politely.

I felt like a bigshot, as if I were hangin’ with Julia Roberts.

“Madame Hind! Madame Hind!” the teenage boys called out, bowing as they approached her.