SAUDI ARABIA: Security forces issue stern warnings ahead of hajj pilgrimage

Handling an influx of 2.5 million pilgrims is a challenge during a good year, but at a time of increased tensions with Iran and rampant fears of swine flu, Saudi authorities are on high alert for any threat that could disrupt hajj, the annual holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

On Sunday, security forces sent a clear message to would-be saboteurs by staging a huge military demonstration involving thousands of troops, armored vehicles, helicopters, and first response teams. The Saudi government has announced it will deploy more than 100,000 security and emergency personnel for hajj, which will last from Wednesday to Sunday.

Sunday's show of force comes after months of deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the Houthi rebellion in northern Yemen, with both sides accusing the other of military intervention. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad warned against Saudi restrictions on Iranian pilgrims, eliciting a sharp rebuke from Riyadh with the top Saudi cleric warning against the politicizing of hajj.

"We hope we will not be obliged to resort to force," Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz told reporters after the demonstration Sunday, referring to calls by some Iranian figures for their pilgrims to use hajj as an opportunity to protest against the United States and Israel, Agence France Press reported.

QATAR: Awash in oil and gas cash, Doha announces $25-billion rail system

Just two months after Dubai unveiled its plush metro system, Qatar announced it will build its own multibillion-dollar railway that will include a local metro in Doha, its capital, as well as freight and passenger trains to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia via the world's longest causeway.

The railway is expected to cost $25 billion and be completed by 2026, but officials are eager to have sections up and running by 2022, when Qatar hopes to host the World Cup, Reuters reported.

The deal between Qatari Diar, a real estate investment company owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and the German transport company Deutsche Bahn was announced today. 

The contract comes against a background of increased spending on rail projects by the oil-rich Arab gulf states that is expected to exceed $100 billion.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: The west bay of Doha, Qatar. Credit: wikimedia commons

IRAN: Deceased airline executive's tale shows civil aviation challenges, dangers

Contrary to reports in the Iranian news media and this paper, the son of a well-known Aria Airlines executive who perished in a crash aboard one of his company's planes last summer is alive and well, and hoping to clear up some facts about his late dad.

The executive, Mehdi Dadpay, or Dadpei, was a retired U.S.-trained air force fighter pilot. 

After the revolution, he risked his liberty to return home, distinguishing himself as a commander of an Iranian air force unit fighting in the Iran-Iraq war. He later organized humanitarian interventions in disaster areas. All this earned him the "grudging respect" of the political leadership, his son Ali Dadpay says. 

TURKEY, SYRIA: Nations sign historic accord, end visa requirements

Turkey continued its decade-old quest to expand its influence in the Middle East, announcing the end of visa restrictions for travel to Syria.  

The two nations' foreign ministers announced that Syrians could travel to Turkey without visas, and vice versa, as the countries' leaders held talks on Turkish-mediated efforts to ease tensions between Baghdad and Damascus and foster peace between Syria and Israel, according to the English-language Today's Zaman news website. 

The two countries also signed a cooperation deal similar to one Turkey penned with Iraq. For years Iranians and Turks have been able to cross their border without visas.

Though a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which hosts a major United States military base, Turkey maintains strong diplomatic and economic relations with many of the Middle East's main players, including U.S. rivals Iran and Syria.

SYRIA: Questions linger in case of American journos Chmela and Luck

In conversation after conversation, in cocktail parties and sheesha cafes from Lebanon to Syria to Jordan, one question continues to pop up over and over again:

What was up with the two Americans who illegally crossed the Lebanese border into Syria and found themselves suddenly locked up by Syrian authorities?

The two journalists, Holli Chmela, 27, and Taylor Luck, 23, were writing for the Amman-based English-language Jordan Times. They went missing Oct. 1 during a holiday in Lebanon. They showed up a week later, safe and sound, locked up in a Syrian prison. They were released to American officials in Damascus, and went back to Amman.

But the real story of what happened remains murky.

Were they plucky journalists trying to get a scoop, as the Syrians say?

Or were they a couple of hapless kids suckered into intrigue, as they contended in a lengthy article for their newspaper?

Or were they up to something more nefarious, as some have whispered?

Readers in the U.S. and abroad have been generous with their insights and queries.

EGYPT: The confusing fate of kidnapped tourists

The fate of 11 Europeans and eight Egyptians kidnapped by masked bandits is unfolding amid sharp rocks and painted caves in a Sahara desert that is at once sparsely majestic and disorientating -- much like the information released about the hostages by the Egyptian government.

In a confusing swirl of developments in recent days, the tourists were reported kidnapped, then freed, then not freed. The latest is that the German government is negotiating to release five Germans, five Italians, one Romanian and eight Egyptians who were snatched Friday near Gilf Al-Kebir in remote southwest Egypt.

“The location of the kidnappers has been pinpointed. It’s a no-man’s land between the Sudan, Libya and Egypt borders,” Boutros Sadiq, Sudan’s undersecretary of foreign affairs told journalists Tuesday. “We are not going to have an operation that harms the tourists.”

IRAQ: Honeymoon in Baghdad?

Coming soon: a romantic island getaway in the heart of Baghdad! That's the hope, at least, of Iraq's Tourism Board, which held a news conference Sunday to announce an ambitious project to lure investors to build up the capital's Jazirat Al A'ras, a slab of land surrounded by water from the Tigris River.

Before a sometimes skeptical crowd of mainly Iraqi journalists, the head of the tourism board, Hamood Yakoubi, said the resort, whose name translates to Wedding Island, would be modeled on the "One Thousand and One Nights" tales. Not that King Shahryar, Scheherezade, Sinbad or Alladin had Ferris wheels, fast-food restaurants or a water park to entertain them. But Yakoubi and Ahmed Ridha, the chairman of the government's National Investment Commission, said the point was to give visitors a feel for ancient Baghdad while providing five-star service and amenities.

Those amenities would include some things not currently seen in Baghdad, such as special villas for handicapped visitors, an 18-hole golf course and a multi-level shopping mall.

Iraq's geographical diversity makes it a natural draw for tourists, said Yakoubi, citing its deserts, mountains, rivers and marshland. These, combined with its archaelogical sites and religious shrines, have the potential to bring in millions of tourist dollars. Ahmed said that, in fact, if handled correctly, the tourism industry could overtake oil as Iraq's No. 1 money-maker.

ISRAEL: A desert drive

It's the height of summer in Israel and hot everywhere, end of story. When the choice is between hot and humid, and really hot and arid, taking to the desert really isn't as stupid as it sounds. And in spite of Eilat turning from a beatnik haven to a sometimes-tacky resort, it is still worth crossing the desert to the Israel's southernmost town.

Some are attracted to the town at the tip of the Red Sea for what it is now; others, for what it used to be.

For older Israelis, Eilat used to be a stop on the way to Sinai. Since the very last bit of it -- the 700 square meters (about 2,300 square feet) of Taba -- was returned to Egypt 20 years ago following a two-year long international arbitration, Eilat is the end of the road.

And it's a long road. More than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Jerusalem. And you either love the drive, or you hate it. 

IRAQ: For some Iraqis, it's first-class flights home

As Americans complain about rising air travel costs, cramped planes and miserably long check-in lines at airports, some Iraqis are enjoying free travel in the prime minister's jet, all part of the Iraqi government's drive to bring people back to their war-torn homeland.

The first of what the Iraqi government says will be regular flights bringing refugees back on the A300 normally used by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki arrived Monday afternoon in Baghdad. The first sign that this was no regular flight was the stairway wheeled out to the airplane door. It had a red carpet.

Returning Iraqis, many clutching bundles of belongings and small children, walked gingerly down the steps, slowed by the large Iraqi flags that they were given that flapped across their faces in the stiff wind.

Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta Mousawi, an Iraqi government and security spokesman, said Maliki had arranged for such flights to take place each week. Flights will come from Syria and Jordan in addition to Egypt. The three countries host the largest numbers of Iraqis who have fled since the U.S. invasion of 2003.

Each trip will carry about 250 people. Government officials are hoping that by offering an easy way home, more Iraqis will be willing to return and help the country recover from five years of war. So far, most have seemed resistant to the idea, not convinced that the relative calm in most of the country will hold.

International organizations say about 2.5 million Iraqis have fled the country since 2003. Only a relative handful have returned. A recent report by the International Organization for Migration said about 16% of the 16,848 families that have returned home had come from outside Iraq. The rest were internally displaced.

The United Nations, IOM and similar organizations have warned against bringing people back too soon, before communities are able to receive them. Some of the problems confronting returnees, including those coming home from having fled to other places inside Iraq, include lack of access to basic services, returning to badly damaged homes and finding other people living in their houses.

And though the government insists that most people who return home do so because they feel safe, some returnees say they come back because they have to. It's expensive to live elsewhere, and many are finding it impossible to find jobs or to put their children in school.

"If I had more money, I would have stayed and never gone back," Abu Hussein, a 32-year-old Shiite merchant, told the Associated Press while waiting to board Monday's flight at Cairo's airport. "We hear from other returnees that they had regret going back because there is still bombing, kidnapping and killing."

--Tina Susman in Baghdad

 

IRAQ: Trapped in Taqaddum -- I become a local national

By Doug Smith in western Iraq

“Welcome to Taqaddum,” the sign said.

I looked at my Iraqi colleague, Saif Rasheed. He shrugged. The name meant nothing to him except “progress” in Arabic. All we knew was that we were on a base somewhere in Iraq’s western desert.

A mechanical problem had cut short our flight to Ramadi. The crew chief told us, shouting through our earplugs in the dark noisy belly of the helicopter, that another would pick us up at 9.

It was dusk. Not too bad. We’d be back on our way to Ramadi in barely an hour. Or so we thought.

A Ugandan guard in a floppy hat who carried an assault rifle across his beige bush jacket stopped us with a humorless stare.

“Search.”

He looked suspiciously at our cellphones, laptop, tape recorder and video camera.

A sign on the wall said all were prohibited, but we were carrying credentials issued by the U.S. military’s Combined Press Information Center in the Green Zone.

“DOD badge?” he asked.

“We’re press,” I said.

Unimpressed, he ordered us into the hooch, a dim room with four handmade benches and a few cots squeezed in the back. Three Iraqi translators from our flight were already there. Two more Ugandans sat at a desk. I saw our passports tucked into an old ledger book.

“We’ll keep these,” one of the guards said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just for security,” she said.