|
|
 Up the corniche, along the Saudi Arabian coast where boats carrying pilgrims bound for Mecca sailed for centuries, a thicket of cranes rises over whitewashed mosques along the Red Sea.
Steel flashes and blowtorches glow as 20,000 workers build a $10-billion university ordered up by a king who hopes Western ingenuity will revive the economy of this ultraconservative Muslim nation. When finished next year, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology will offer coed classes, Western professors, a curriculum in English and other touches loathed as dangerous liberalism by Islamic fundamentalists.
The West may be dependent on Saudi crude, now as high as $145 a barrel, but this campus outside the ancient fishing village of Thuwal is a recognition that the country that is home to Islam’s holiest shrines needs the likes of USC, Oxford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to survive globalization.
Read more about the university in the Los Angeles Times.
-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
Photo: King Abdullah. Credit: AFP
 Just a day after the end of Iranian missile tests meant to scare away any potential Israeli or American attack on its nuclear facilities, a powerful Iranian cleric was all nicey-nice at Friday prayers about the continuing diplomatic negotiations over the country's atomic research and production program.
"Now it is high time for negotiation," Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, a member of the influential Expediency Council, told worshipers gathered for prayers in downtown Tehran. "Iran is ready for negotiation. Europe is ready for negotiation."
He said the recent missile tests were meant to show Iranian strength, not hostility toward the West.
"The reality is that you, the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, ought to recognize the power of Iran," he told the faithful.
"In the past 30 years we have never been a threat to any country," he said. "On the contrary, you invaded Afghanistan, Iraq under the pretext of fighting terrorism.... We have no intention to wage war. We have no plan for nuclear weapons."
He had pointed words for the U.S. and Israel: When you say "Iran is a threat," where is the threat? Your brain is mixed up. Your sentences are confused. We clearly have announced that we are brother to the all Islamic world. We have no war with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy. But Israel is different. It is a usurper regime. If Israel attacks, we counterattack.
And he all but cursed the Bush administration: Thank God all of you are at the end of your careers. You U.S. officials are running a smear campaign. You are liars, spreading lies. You must know that if you dare to transgress us, if you attack us, we will give you a lesson which you will not forget.
— Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran
Photo: Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani. Credit: Al-Shia.com
If the Iranians doctored the photo of their supposed missile tests this week, it might not be the first time that they've altered images for propaganda value.
U.S. Navy commanders in the Persian Gulf say the Iranians have changed and recycled images to suggest they've got more speedboats, more guns and more mines ready to blockade the gulf than they actually have.
-- Tony Perry, in San Diego
Photo: An Iranian speedboat that allegedly harassed U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf in January zips along. Credit: U.S. Navy
"The Ministry of Information," the taxi driver pleads into the radio to his bosses and colleagues. "Does anyone know where the Ministry of Information is located?"
The dispatcher and other drivers ignore him. "Car 520? Where are you, car 520?" the dispatcher blares out, seemingly to someone else.
We are driving around in circles through streets reeking of raw sewage in Sana, the capital of Yemen, a troubled land of 23 million mostly poor people and daunting political problems, as described in a story published in the Los Angeles Times today.
But it's also a surreal postmodern place where the ancient and the modern jostle uneasily.
In Yemen, donkey-drawn carts share cramped roadways with late-model Mercedes. Vendors sell cheap Chinese plastic trinkets from stalls in stone marketplaces hundreds of years old. Women dressed in ink-black, all-covering niqabs curiously eye risque undergarments on display in shop windows.
Read on »
Iranians on Wednesday marked the 20th anniversary a U.S. missile attack on an Iranian civilian passenger plane that killed 290 people over the Persian Gulf toward end of the Iran-Iraq war.
 The guided-missile cruiser Vincennes shot down Iran Air 665 shortly after it took off from the airport in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas en route to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
U.S. officials later described the shooting as a mistake but refused to apologize.
The incident took place on July 3, 1988, but its 20-year anniversary falls on July 2, 2008, in the Iranian calendar.
Iranians released pigeons into the sky and threw flowers into the Persian Gulf to commemorate the tragedy, according to the Associated Press.
Mourners chanted “Death to America.”
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at a Cabinet meeting, called the attack a "crime" rooted in an "ideology which allows them to commit any crime in order to attain their goals."
Iran said it received $130 million in compensation for the crash in a settlement eight years later but remains bitter because the ship’s commander, retired Capt. William C. Rogers III of San Diego, was never prosecuted.
— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut
Photos:
Top, Iranians release pigeons to commemorate the shoot-down of Iran Air flight 665 in a U.S. missile attack 20 years ago. All 290 passengers and crew died. Credit: Abdolhossein Rezvani / Fars News Agency.
Bottom, an Iranian stamp commemorating the tragedy. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Read on »
 Pressure from the U.S. and fears that soaring energy prices are hurting the global economy are forcing Saudi Arabia to consider significantly boosting oil production.
The Saudis are contemplating a “sizable additional increase” in oil production, according to The Middle East Economic Survey. An announcement on possible measures to bring down prices that have reached nearly $140 a barrel is expected later this month when King Abdullah meets with oil producers and consumers in the Red Sea city of Jidda.
In May, the king rejected a request by President Bush to make more oil available, saying that markets should dictate production levels. But costs have since dramatically climbed. Saudi concerns of a global economic slowdown and fears that escalating prices would compel countries to develop alternative sources, which ultimately would hurt the kingdom, have led to a shift in Saudi thinking.
Finance ministers for the Group of Eight nations -– the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, Canada, Japan, Italy and Russia –- urged oil-producing nations on Saturday to increase production.
Rising prices have shaken the world: Gas in the U.S. has reached as high as $4.43 a gallon and India, Indonesia and other Asian nations have cut fuel subsidies, creating anger and panic among drivers.
Read on »
 By Borzou Daragahi in Sana, Yemen
The scuttlebutt among the reporters in the Yemeni capital was that nobody walks out of 10-year-old Nujood Ali’s house without giving her a donation.
And I would find out that was correct.
But I had assumed that she and her family were trying to capitalize on her fame as Yemen’s first preadolescent divorcee — a story told Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times — by trying to charge journalists money for interviews.
And I was very wrong about that.
When we arrived near her house, Nujood herself greeted us on the main avenue, hopped into our car and helped us navigate her sewage-infested shantytown until we reached the $75-a-month house her family rented.
We were all shocked by how steady and self-possessed she appeared. After all, just months earlier she had been forced into a marriage with a man three times her age and beaten until she submitted to his sexual advances until the day she worked up the courage to walk into a courthouse by herself and demand a divorce.
Read on »
 More than 30 human rights groups across the Middle East have condemned Saudi Arabia for imprisoning a leading political activist who has reportedly been on a hunger strike since mid-May. The organizations have appealed to King Abdullah for the release of Matrouk Faleh, a university professor who has pushed for democratic reform in the ultraconservative Islamic state.
Faleh was arrested on May 19 after posting complaints on a website about living conditions in the Breidah Prison, where two other leading dissidents, Abdullah Hamid and his brother, Issa, are serving sentences.
The Saudi government “decided to punish Dr. Matrouk for his public criticism of the conditions of detention and to subject him to even more arbitrary measures by confiscating his personal laptop and mobile phone upon his arrest, and, moreover, by inflicting further pressures and psychological torment,” according to a statement signed by human rights groups in Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan and other countries.
The statement continued that Faleh’s wife reported that “prison officials deliberately woke him after midnight claiming that he would be subject to interrogation, tied his hands and feet and tried to force him to eat after he had announced a food strike in protest against . . .his being detained without any notification of the charges against him.”
A political science professor at King Saud University in Riyadh, Faleh, a diabetic, has spent much time in Saudi courts and jails. He was granted a royal pardon in 2005 after being sentenced for up to nine years for demanding constitutional reforms and political freedoms. The Saudi government has not commented on his most recent case.
— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
Photo: Matrouk Faleh. Credit: faculty.ksu.edu.sa
 They wear hard hats and rags over their faces; they hammer in the dust and, at night, they are silhouettes in the blowtorch light. They are the migrant workers turning Abu Dhabi and Dubai into metropolises of skyscrapers that uncoil from the desert sands like exotic plants of steel and glass.
These futuristic cities along the Persian Gulf in the United Arab Emirates have been criticized by human rights groups and threatened with labor strikes over the low pay and poor living conditions faced by Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and other workers from across Asia.
Responding to this pressure, the Abu Dhabi government announced this week that dormitories and apartments would be built for as many as 800,000 “limited-income workers,” including laborers, cleaners, technicians and housekeepers. An act of compassion? Partly. But the move is aimed at ensuring that nothing disrupts the frenetic pace of construction or spoils the image of a region that markets itself as a hip crossroads of globalization.
An official spokesman said the new dormitories will become cities unto themselves: “All utilities will be provided, there will be air conditioning and everything needed for decent living conditions will be available.”
Human Rights Watch and other groups have blamed the United Arab Emirates for allowing a system in which migrant workers are paid as little as $175 a month, are forced to pay high fees to recruitment agencies, have their passports confiscated and live in crowded rooms, many of them with no air conditioning, on the outskirts of cities. The sons of rich sheiks driving Bentleys and Mercedeses are as telling here as the faces of migrant workers peering from bus windows on their journeys to their living quarters far from the glamour they are building.
Jeffrey Fleishman in Abu Dhabi
Top: living quarters for Dubai's migrant workers. Credit: marketplace.publicradio.com
Bottom: An architect's sketch for a new high-rise in Abu Dhabi. Credit: bestwaytoinvest.com
 It’s a profanity uttered countless times a day around the globe, but a barber in Saudi Arabia faces beheading for the crime of using God’s name in vain. Sabri Bogday, a Turk who cuts hair in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, is awaiting appeal on his sentence.
Press reports say Bogday cursed during an argument with a neighbor, who later complained to police. This nation is ruled by a strict Wahabbi brand of Islamic justice that doles out lashings and public beheadings for crimes including murder, rape and heresy.
Bogday has been in jail for 13 months. Turkish President Abdullah Gul has asked Saudi King Abdullah to spare the barber. But the Arab News reported there could be complications hinging on arcane interpretations of religious law by fundamentalist judges.
The newspaper quoted a lawyer as saying: “Some judges consider it heresy and infidelity, and say that the accused cannot repent and so faces the death penalty. Others consider the statement to be disbelief, thus allow the accused to retract what he has said and repent and then set him free. ... Sentences in these cases are limited and considered rare, because the judgment is not based on something that is written.”
—Jeffrey Fleishman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Photo: A beheading in Saudi Arabia. Source: kvinnonet.org
In the conspiracy-minded Middle East, nothing is how it appears, especially when enemies suddenly put aside their differences and make a deal.
After six months without a president and more than a year-and-a-half without a properly functioning government, Lebanon today finally swore in a new head of state, President Michel Suleiman, and began the process of healing a rift which has cost scores of lives in sectarian and political violence over the last few weeks.
On the surface, the U.S.-backed government and the Iranian-backed opposition put aside their differences during talks in the Qatari capital of Doha and made a last-minute deal for the good of their nation.
But nobody really believes that.
On the streets of Beirut, a common view is that Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani stepped in as talks were about to collapse and whipped open his checkbook.
Most believe his intervention salvaged not only Lebanon but his tiny Persian Gulf state's fledgling attempt at high-stakes conflict resolution and international diplomacy.
Read on »
An advisor to the Saudi Arabian leadership told the Los Angeles Times that his government had warned its Lebanese allies against trying to build an armed force to combat Hezbollah, but to no avail. For months, Lebanon's Sunni-led Future Movement sought to build an armed force under the guise of a security firm, called Secure Plus, in part to counter the Shiite militia Hezbollah's growing strength, according to Lebanese officials, security experts and Sunni fighters themselves cited in a Times report last week.
But at least some in the Saudi leadership — the primary international patron of Lebanon's Sunnis — thought it was a bad idea from the inception.
"The whole concept of these militias was wrong from the start and we never took the idea seriously," said the advisor, who asked that his name not be published because of the sensitivity of the topic.
"We had never directly got involved in the arming of this so-called militia, which was doomed to failure from the beginning due to how it was created and who was leading it up," said the Saudi advisor.
Read on »
Pity Amr Moussa.
 For months the dour Arab League secretary-general shuttled between his Cairo home and the Lebanese capital in a futile attempt to get Lebanese factions to talk, only to walk away in abject failure.
Then along came a smiling Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, foreign minister and prime minister of Qatar.
In a space of hours, he appears to have done what neither Moussa nor French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (who also spent many fruitless weeks trying to solve the Lebanese mess) have been able to do: get these guys locked in a room together to hammer out some kind of agreement.
During the news conference announcing a new deal between fighting Lebanese factions, Sheik Hamad spoke gently but firmly to the whole country, as if they were adults who must take charge of their own country: The Lebanese people will have to help us. As Lebanese, you have to accept that this is your wound. You will have to heal it. … All the Arabs are with you, but you have to exert your own efforts. You as Lebanese have to decide to end this crisis.
Sheik Hamad also said: “Everyone knows that there is no winner in this.”
Except for maybe the sheik himself, who emerged as a diplomatic rock star.
Read on »
If the medium is the message, as the Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan put it, the Iranians couldn't possibly mistake the recent communications by the United States.
On Tuesday, President Bush told reporters that the Israeli bombing of an alleged North Korean-designed nuclear facility in Syria was not just directed against Pyongyang and Damascus, but was also a not-so-subtle telegram to Tehran.
Answering a question about the sudden resurfacing of the Sept. 16 attack on the Syrian facility, Bush strongly suggested that the United States and Israel had Iran in mind when Syria was bombed:
Read on »
The barometer of tensions between Iran and the United States went up a notch or even two today as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael G. Mullen accused Iran of stepping up weapons and training to its surrogates in Iraq despite promises to stop doing so.
 Los Angeles Times Pentagon correspondent Julian E. Barnes is following the story from Washington:
...Mullen said there was not a massive infusion of weapons but said over time there had been "a consistent increase" in arms shipments. Speaking at a morning news conference, Mullen said weapons had been intercepted in Iraq that showed evidence of relatively recent manufacture in Iran...
Also today came word of another possible confrontation between U.S. forces and Iranians in the Persian Gulf. According to the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, an American contractor fired approaching speedboats that identified themselves as Iranian vessels. Iranians said no such incident took place.
Insiders say Mullen is no warmonger. They say Mullen is not eager to get America's overstretched military embroiled in a war with a country three times bigger than Iraq.
Read on »
 After years of clamping down on gays, Bahraini officials believe they have found a sure-fire cure for the "dangerous" practice of homosexuality.
Instead of relying only on sporadically imprisoning gay adults, a number of lawmakers are pressing for draconian measures to uproot homosexuality altogether, starting with children.
They have urged the government to spy on kids at schools and "punish" any pupils "who veer towards homosexuality."
Read on »
Try as it might, the U.S. has apparently failed again to convince its Arab allies in the Persian Gulf to promise to step in with their cash and credibility in support of the fledgling, Shiite-led Iraqi government.
In a visit to Bahrain on Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to convince oil-rich Persian Gulf nations to relieve Iraq of billions of dollars of debt, open embassies in the war-torn country and help counter Iran's growing influence.
She walked away empty-handed. Instead, Rice's latest visit to the region has prompted a fresh storm of criticism against U.S. policy in Iraq, which is the subject of a big conference in Kuwait today.
Read on »
Human Rights Watch today released a 54-page report criticizing the lack of women's rights in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of America's key allies in the Middle East.
It is a lengthy indictment of a a legal system that deprives women of basic rights considered ordinary almost everywhere else in the world.
According to the report, the law treats Saudi women like children, maybe worse.
If you're a Saudi woman, you can't board an airplane, get a job, go to school or get married without the permission of a male "guardian," whether a husband, father or, if they're both out of the picture, your son.
You're not even allowed to make decisions on behalf of your own children without the approval of your husband or father.
Sometimes you're even barred from undergoing a medical exam or leaving a hospital without the permission of a male relative.
Read on »
Yemen's conservatives are still in control.
After a heated debate in parliament this month, Yemeni women's rights advocates lost their battle to ban female circumcision, according to a report in the Yemen Times.
The parliament in recent days voted against a bill that would have outlawed female genital mutilation, a practice that is believed to affect almost 25% of Yemeni women.
Opponents claimed that the issue remains too sensitive among Yemeni and that no legal measure could be taken as long as there was no consensus among religious scholars against the practice.
Female circumcision is a widespread practice in the Middle East and Africa. Many Muslims believe that removing a girl's clitoris to tame her libido is a religious obligation.
Top Muslim clerics, including the Grand Sheik of al-Azhar Mosque, the world's oldest Sunni Muslim religious institution, have repeatedly decried the practice as purely traditional and without basis in Islamic scriptures.
Yet the scholars’ declarations have not been able to end to the centuries-old practice.
Egyptian lawmakers have been embroiled in a similar debate. A draft bill calling for the criminalization of the practice has been dismissed by Islamic lawmakers in Cairo as a Western ploy to demonize Islamic traditions.
— Noha El-Hennawy in Beirut
Photo: Yemeni women attended ceremonies in the city of Aden marking the anniversary of the British withdrawal from their country. Credit: EPA/YAHYA ARHAB
A series of conflicts with insurgent groups along Iran's borders may be impelling Tehran to back its own allies in Iraq in what it regards as a proxy war with the U.S., according to security experts and officials in the U.S., Iran and Iraq.
Dozens of Iranian officials, members of the security forces and insurgents belonging to Kurdish, Arab Iranian and Baluch groups have died in the fighting in recent years. It now appears to be heating up once again after an unusually cold and snowy winter.
Click here to read the rest of the story.
—Borzou Daragahi in Beirut
Photo: A Kurdish rebel from Pejak inspects a crater left behind by an alleged Iranian artillery attack near a mountain encampment in Qandil in northern Iraq on April 13. The group threatened to launch bomb attacks inside Iran. Credit: SHWAN MOHAMMED / AFP
Turkey's president and prime minister have stepped in to save the life of a Turkish man sentenced to die in Saudi Arabia.
The prisoner's capital offense: using God's name in vain during an argument with a neighbor, according to Turkish newspapers.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul has penned a letter to Saudi King Abdullah requesting a pardon for Sabri Bogday, a barber who moved to Jeddah from southeastern Turkey more than a decade ago. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also reached out to Saudi officials on the barber's behalf.
Apparently, Bogday had an argument with an Egyptian neighbor in Jeddah. The neighbor told authorities that Bogday had "cursed the name of God."
Bogday was arrested, tried and sentenced to death, even though his accuser has apparently disappeared.
The father of a 3-month-old son has been locked up for 13 months. His family back in Turkey is worried sick that he'll be put to death for blasphemy. An appeal is underway.
We'll give the final word to the astute Fred Stopsky, at the Impudent Observer, who spotted the story: Saudi Arabia stands with the United States in the fight against terrorism. Unfortunately, that fight against terrorism does not include the nation of Saudi Arabia.
-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut
A stunning report carried by pro-government Iranian media accuses Saudi Arabia of complicity in the February assassination of the militant Imad Mughniyah, the shadowy Lebanese commander with ties to Syria and Iran.
The report cites unnamed sources close to the investigation and could not be confirmed. At the very least it hints at ongoing tension between Damascus and Tehran over the course of the probe into the legendary Hezbollah commander's fiery death.
 The report was first published Tuesday by the Persian-language section of the Fars News Agency and then carried today on the front page of the conservative newspaper Kayhan, which is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iran's top authority on all matters.
On the off chance you read Farsi, the links are here and here. The report has been translated by the Italian AKI news agency, as well.
Mughniyah was a high-ranking Hezbollah commander said to be in charge of the group's international operations. He was killed in a Feb. 12 car bombing attack in a highly secure section of Damascus.
The source quoted in the report told Fars that the Syrians had discovered a network connected to Israeli intelligence and Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan as well as a Saudi intelligence official in Damascus as partly behind the death. The source alleged that the Syrians had already arrested a Saudi official and were about to release their long-delayed report about the killing implicating the Saudis but were swayed by Kuwait to hold off.
Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait urged their citizens to leave Lebanon after Mughniyah's slaying.
Here are other allegations in the report:
- Israeli intelligence officials monitored Mughniyah's comings and goings for a year before the assassination.
- Conspirators included Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians who, along with their families, had rented or bought housing near Mughniyah's residence in the Kafar Sosa district of Damascus.
- The Saudi official overseeing the operation fled home after the assassination but was lured back by a woman with whom he was having an affair.
Take 'em all with a grain of salt.
Publication of the report by pro-government outlets suggests an ongoing rift between Syria and Iran over Mughniyah's death. It could also stir up sectarian troubles in Lebanon, where Shiite Hezbollah is at odds with the Saudi-backed Sunni-led government.
— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut
Photo: The front page of today's Kayhan in Tehran featured a photograph of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan conferring with President Bush above an article alleging Saudi complicity in the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah.
With the world mostly focused on the ongoing violence in Iraq and the threat of confrontation between Iran and the United States, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda — which sparked the confrontation between the West and the Islamic world — have almost slipped into the background.
But several stories in this week's Los Angeles Times zeroed in on Al Qaeda's operations, funding and history. What emerges is a picture of an organization, hiding in the hinterlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, struggling mightily to stay relevant and robust.
Read on »
Arab leaders at last weekend's summit in Damascus voiced claims over three disputed Persian Gulf Islands that both Iran and the United Arab Emirates consider part of their property. Iran was predictably outraged by the claim.
 Though it was a minor footnote to an Arab League Summit marred by nearly a dozen no-shows and a murky outcome, it remains a sore spot for Iranians, who took the matter up with the United Nations.
The decades-old islands dispute also became fodder for the main Friday prayer sermon in Tehran today.
"The final declaration of the Arab Summit showed they have been entrapped by the U.S.," prayer leader Ahmad Khatami told worshippers. "Three islands in the Persian Gulf forever belong to Iran and the Persian Gulf remains Persian for good, and nobody can deny it."
Khatami is a conservative not to be confused with the reformist former president Mohammad Khatami.
Read on »
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.
Read on »
The Arab League Summit ended over the weekend in the Syrian capital of Damascus with no breakthroughs, as expected, on the various political crises of the region.
The main news that came out of this annual meeting of Arab leaders was the absence of several heads of state. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, among other countries, sent low-ranking officials to the conference because, in their eyes, Damascus was blocking the selection of a president in Lebanon, which sent no one to the conference.
Read on »
The Egyptians are sending a low-ranking official. The Saudis, too, are sending a nobody, while the Lebanese are actually sending nobody.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki of Iraq may have to struggle to wrest himself from his troubles, while the archipelago nation of Comoros, undergoing a coup d'etat, is probably in no position to send anyone to the Arab League Summit, where Arab heads of state or their delegates are scheduled to meet this weekend to talk about...well, that's a good question.
Cynics will cackle that the Arab League summits rarely accomplish anything. Previous summits have focused on the situation in Iraq or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
But so far about only thing this year's summit in Damascus has been mostly about is who is attending and who is blowing it off.
(Let's not forget the biggest issue: who's actually going to pick up the tab.)
Today, as foreign ministers of the Arab states met, the hundreds of journallists who've descended upon Damascus from around the world were left to interview each other at the international press center.
I have already fielded two requests for interviews. While waiting for news to break, I called up a source in Damascus for an interview.
With my cellphone cradled between my chin and shoulder, I began taking notes. Suddenly three photojournalists descended on me and began clicking away.
Apparently, I was the only journalist at the press center actually working.
— Borzou Daragahi in Damascus
Photo: Arab League Secretary General Amr Mousa speaks to a journalist after the meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Damascus on March 27. Credit: LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images
Certainly high oil prices, the state of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arab-Israeli conflict were high on the agenda of Vice President Dick Cheney's recent tour of the Middle East. But the subject of Iran was never far from the surface of the trip, which is now wrapping up.
 Cheney alleged in an interview Monday that Iran was trying to develop weapons-grade uranium, even though international inspectors have never found such evidence.
According to a White House transcript of an interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz, Cheney said: Obviously, they're also heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons grade levels.
Iran is currently enriching uranium at its plant in Natanz in central Iran. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched or concentrated at 80% or 90%. According to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report, Iran currently enriches uranium at concentrations of less than 3.8%, which is the amount necessary for creating fuel for a reactor. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful energy production, but the U.S. and other Western countries have cast suspicion.
Read on »
 While President Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq tooth and nail, media in the Arab world lambasted the U.S. war for unleashing disasters, divisions and terror.
Bush was addressing defense officials at the Pentagon on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq.
A fiery editorial in today's edition of the English-language Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star rebuked Bush for blaming the destruction of Iraq on the Iraqi people: The Bush administration and its apologists like to blame Al-Qaeda for all the chaos that has plagued Iraqis since 2003, but it was Bush and his advisers who brought terrorism to Iraq.... They have helped keep it there, as well, by consistently failing to provide many of the benefits they promised as mitigating factors for the nightmare they unleashed: Millions of people have been displaced, millions more are unemployed.
Read on »
Rarely does a Saudi citizen publicly criticize the country's religious fundamentalists. The kingdom is steeped in traditional Islam and restricts freedom of speech.
So when Sheik Abdul Mohsen al-Obaikan, an adviser to the Saudi Ministry of Justice and a member of the Kingdom's Council of senior Islamic scholars, launched an attack, it raised eyebrows.
Read on »
The runway featured low-cut silky gowns and red chiffons, but also a flurry of glittery embroidered fabrics, so typical of the Middle East.
And in the audience, of course, were men in traditional white dishdashas, typical of the Persian Gulf venue.
At the Abu Dhabi International Fashion Week, taking place from March 15 to 18, Arab and Western designers blended trendy tendencies in cuts and colors with Arabian influences in the choice of styles and accessories.
Read on »
So Navy Capt. David Adler, skipper of the cruiser Port Royal, was explaining to me that a captain has to be ready to order some members of the crew to risk their lives to protect the ship.
"As Spock said, 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.'"
Benjamin Spock, the baby doctor?
No, Mr. Spock in "The Wrath of Khan" (1982).
Tony Perry, on the Port Royal in the Persian Gulf
Photo: Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, half-Vulcan, half-human, executive officer of The Starship Enterprise. Credit: Paramount Pictures Corp.
Is Syria just playing games or is it really trying to repair its acrid relations with the Lebanese government?
That was question this week after Damascus dispatched an official for an express visit to Beirut. His mission: deliver an official invitation to Lebanon's government for this year's controversial Arab Summit, scheduled for Damascus at the end of March.
Read on »
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.
Read on »
When five Iranian speedboats began acting provocatively toward three U.S. warships steaming through the Strait of Hormuz on Jan. 6, one of the U.S. captains had a sense of deja vu.
To Capt. David Adler, skipper of the guided-missile cruiser Port Royal, the Iranians' behavior reminded him of the exercise the Navy staged off San Clemente Island on how to react to such an incident. For openers, he ordered his crew to battle stations.
Although every captain retains the inherent right to defend his ship and crew, U.S. Navy rules require that a captain be sure that an approaching boat has true hostile intent. A checklist has been developed of verbal commands and evasive maneuvers to determine whether such intent exists.
Although the Iranians buzzed the Port Royal, the Hopper and the Ingraham for nearly an hour, the three U.S. captains determined that their behavior, while bizarre, did not rise to hostile intent.
The Navy in recent years has expended a lot of effort to prepare its captains and crews to sail in the always-dangerous Persian Gulf.
In 1987, an Iraqi missile attack on the frigate Stark killed 37 U.S. sailors. In 1988 the captain of the cruiser Vincennes shot down what turned out to be an Iranian airliner, killing 290.
Both captains were criticized by the brass and saw their careers ruined: the Stark captain for not doing enough to defend his ship, the Vincennes captain for overreacting on allegedly scant information. The incidents were two decades ago but remain fresh in the minds of U.S. captains sailing into the gulf.
"Nobody wants to be the next Stark captain, or the next Vincennes captain," Adler said.
— Tony Perry on the Port Royal
Photo: Iranian speedboat near three U.S. warships in international waters Jan. 6. Credit: U.S. Navy.
The military is trying to discourage its troops from getting showy tattoos.
But who could object to a quote from the Bible, right?
So Navy corpsman Kyle Armstrong, assigned to the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, decided to devote his forearms to a quote from Isaiah 22:13 (there's also a version in 1 Corinthians 15:29).
On Armstrong's left forearm: "Eat & Drink Today, fore." And on his right: "We Die Tomorrow."
Although some might dispute his literal reading of the quotation, he said his family liked his tattoos.
Armstrong, now aboard the amphibious assault ship Tarawa in the Persian Gulf, notes that he is still within military regulations. Both parts of the quote end before the wrist, as required.
— Tony Perry on the Tarawa
Photo: Kyle Armstrong and his biblical quotation. Credit: Tony Perry / Los Angeles Times
For its program to teach Marines how to fight hand to hand, the Marine Corps studied all the classic martial arts disciplines and some new ones, like Israeli army tactics. It picked only the best and most lethal ways to dispatch an enemy when combat is to kill or be killed.
And for the best techniques in knife fighting, it chose the methods used by prisoners. A consultant had hundreds of hours of security tapes showing knife attacks in prison: stealthy, quick and deadly.
Now the Marines are teaching the same tactics in their McMap (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program), which starts in boot camp and continues throughout a Marine's career.
Knife fighting starts with a rush toward an enemy and a hand to his face or chest, then quick swipes with the knife to either side of the neck. Be aggressive and unapologetic. In the joint, it's called the "prison-yard rush"; in the Marine Corps, it's called "bull-dogging."
"It's a personal thing, if you're using a knife," said Sgt. Andrew Mulder, 23, of Sioux Falls, S.D., one of the Marines learning knife fighting and other skills while aboard the amphibious assault ship Tarawa in the Persian Gulf.
— Tony Perry on the Tarawa
Photo: An instructor shows a Marine how to kill with a knife. Credit: Tony Perry / Los Angeles Times
Muslims in the Middle East have been criticized for insisting on religious freedom in the West while refusing to grant it in their own countries. But a reform-minded leader of the kingdom of Qatar is trying to change that perception.
Thanks to a 2005 decision by Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Catholics recently completed construction of a church in Doha, Qatar’s capital. It's the first church in the Persian Gulf state since the 7th century arrival of Islam.
This is controversial. The majority of Qatar’s citizens belong to the puritanical Wahhabi school of Islam that inspires Osama bin Laden and is prevalent in Saudi Arabia as well.
Read on »
Just days after a controversial article in Esquire magazine described Adm. William J. Fallon as the man standing in the way of a Bush administration war against Iran, he resigned his post, most likely under White House pressure, leaving as commander of Florida-based U.S. Central Command, or Centcom, and all U.S. military operations in the Middle East, Central Asia and Northeast Africa more than a year early.
 Iran wasn’t the only point of contention between Fallon (right) and the rest of the Bush administration. As Los Angeles Times Pentagon reporters Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel point out in Wednesday’s paper, Fallon seemed to oppose the U.S. strategy in Iraq, as well:
Supporters of the administration's troop buildup have criticized Fallon for pushing for an accelerated reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq. By doing so, they argued, Fallon undermined the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus. "He fought Petraeus every step of the way, creating unrealistic demands and extra work," said a former senior Pentagon official who has worked directly with both men. "And in so doing, he was not only undermining Petraeus, he was failing to support the president's policy."
Read on »
The United Arab Emirates suffered its worst car crash ever Tuesday, according to press accounts.
The massive multi-car accident killed four people and injured at least 250, according to media reports.
More than 150 vehicles, including 12 big buses, were involved in the chain-reaction collision that happened on the highway between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Authorities blamed the crash on reckless driving as well as "heavy fog."
— Raed Rafei in Beirut
Photo: The burning wreckage of several cars litter the Abu Dhabi to Dubai highway, following a multi-vehicle crash near Ghantoot, U.A.E., in which at least four people were killed on Tuesday. Credit: Associated Press
During the Jan. 6 confrontation between armed Iranian navy speedboats and three U.S. warships moving through the Strait of Hormuz, sailors aboard two of the speedboats appeared to throw something overboard in the path of the ships.
The U.S. believes that the Iranians may have been pretending to throw a mine into the water. Iran has a history of making bellicose statements about its ability to close the strait by the use of mines.
In 1988, the U.S. attacked two Iranian warships and three speedboats after the U.S. guided missile frigate Samuel B. Roberts hit a mine and suffered a 20-foot gash in its hull. The U.S. keeps anti-mine warfare ships permanently based in the Persian Gulf, backed by similar ships from coalition partners.
The U.S. Navy, British Royal Navy, and Kuwaiti forces just completed a 10-day exercise in mine-hunting. Kuwaiti divers were part of the exercise. The British ship the Blyth, one of its top mine-hunters, was assigned to the gulf for the exercise.
Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, notes that it is not altogether easy to place a mine. Still, he said that some nations might be tempted to use them as an equalizer against a larger force.
"Mines are cheap, relatively speaking, and you can buy a lot of them," he said.
— Tony Perry in Bahrain
Photo: Royal Navy and Kuwaiti divers during mine-hunting exercise in Persian Gulf. Credit: U.S. Navy.
Read on »
She came all the way from Eastern Europe to treat her daughter's asthma. Instead, once in Dubai, the 27-year-old Moldavian woman found out that she was lured into the city to literally be sold as a sex slave.
Her Ukrainian friend had actually planned to offer her to a local for nearly $8,000.
A few days ago, this case was brought to a court in Dubai, where the 36-year-old Ukrainian broker was charged with sexual exploitation, according to media reports.
But this is likely only the tip of the iceberg of human trafficking to the Persian Gulf.
Read on »
 A satirical painting of Islam's holiest shrine, the Kaaba, in an art exhibition in Germany, has angered Muslims around the world. Threats of violence forced Galerie Nord in central Berlin last week to temporarily close down the show of works by Danish artists.
In February, the reprinting of Danish cartoons depicting derisively Islam's prophet Muhammad sparked protests in Denmark and other countries, a reminder of the massive deadly demonstrations of angry bearded men protesting the same caricatures across the Muslim world in 2006.
This time protesters objected to a poster showing Muslim devotees walking around the Muslim holy shrine with speech bubbles saying, "Zionist occupied government."
The poster, one out of 22, is titled "Stupid Stone."
Read on »
Six Flags on Tuesday announced a plan to develop an amusement park in the glittery Persian Gulf city-kingdom of Dubai, which is the flashiest of seven kingdoms in the United Arab Emirates.
Reports Kimi Yoshino of The Times' business desk: The Six Flags park is the latest addition to Dubailand, a 3-billion-square-foot project that will include restaurants, hotels, Universal Studios Dubailand and DreamWorks Animation Park. Groundbreaking on the Six Flags portion is expected to begin in 2009.
A press release distributed by Tatweer, the Emirati partner in the deal, described it as "the first Six Flags project to be developed outside of North America."
That may well be. But will it encourage North American and European travelers to take their families on vacations to the oil-rich Persian Gulf?
— A Times Staff Writer
Photo: Dubai's Sheik Zayed Road. Credit: Charles Crowell / Bloomberg News
While U.S. news outlets might be scaling back the on-air minutes, column inches and front-page headlines devoted to Iraq these days, the same doesn't go for Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language satellite news channel that was born just as the Iraq war began five years ago.
Despite its many setbacks, including the deaths of four journalists in the line of duty, it will continue to report and even expand its Iraq coverage for the Arab world.
The Dubai-based station has quickly reached the top of the Arab media world. It now rivals or beats its more well-known rival, Al Jazeera, across the Arab world. It's the hands-down winner for audiences in Iraq, where Al Jazeera has been barred from operating. Just as CNN fame grew out of its coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraq conflict has become part and parcel of Arabiya's identity.
 Its journalists have always been more adventurous than their Western colleagues, and they've paid for it. On the wall
| |
