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.

YEMEN: Raging insurgency exacerbates tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran

After years of teetering on the edge of stability, Yemen appears to be losing control of a minority rebellion on its northern border, raising concerns that the fighting could ignite regional tensions and possibly become a battleground for a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In Yemen, extreme poverty, water shortages and a history of civil strife have helped foster extremism and weaken the central government, which increasingly relies on its oil-rich neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia, for aid and military support. Many members of Yemen's Zaidi sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam whose followers make up about a third of the country (including the president) and a majority in the north, claim that Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative interpretation of Wahhabi Islam has influenced the government to marginalize Shiites.

In August, the Yemeni government launched Operation Scorched Earth against Zaidi Shiite rebels in the north, known as Houthis. Although the government has denied the crackdown is religiously motivated, the struggle has broken down along sectarian lines, with the Houthis accusing Saudi Arabia of providing military support to the government and the government accusing Iran of supporting the rebels.

MIDDLE EAST: Women's status up in Saudi Arabia, down in Syria, says study

The subject of women's rights in the Middle East is contentious. Sensational media coverage of honor killings and child brides equates religious conservatism with gender inequality, incensing Western feminists on the one hand and provoking regional backlashes on the other.

The reality is far more nuanced, according to the the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report released in late October by the World Economic Forum, which ranks countries based on women's economic participation, educational attainment, health and political empowerment.

In Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar -- socially conservative Persian Gulf countries that all rely on some form of Sharia Islamic law -- more women than men enroll in higher education, although they have yet to be fully incorporated into the workforce. 

Syria, on the other hand, which is ruled by a nominally secular regime, has slid in the rankings for the last three years. 

Iran scores low in the fields of economic, educational and health equality, but performs relatively well on political empowerment. 

Saudi Arabia and Egypt still hover near the bottom of the list, but have improved steadily since 2006. 

Yemen remained the lowest-ranked country in the world for the fourth year in a row.

YEMEN: A cease-fire offer

Yemen called for a cease-fire Saturday with Shiite rebels in the northwest mountains, where tens of thousands of refugees have fled in recent weeks and international humanitarian organizations have condemned government airstrikes.

There were conflicting reports over whether the rebels would stop fighting. The insurgents, who belong to the Shiite Zaidi sect, said they were considering the offer. But a military website connected with the government reported that hostilities continued after the conditional cease-fire was announced to allow food and aid to reach the region.

The rebels rejected a similar government proposal several weeks ago. International alarm over the fighting – the latest spasm in a five-year insurgency – deepened Thursday when Yemeni airstrikes near the town of Harf Sufyan killed 87 people, many of them women, children and the elderly.

YEMEN: Outrage over death of 12-year-old child bride aimed at government [Updated]

Mounting outrage following the death of 12-year-old Fawziya Abdullah Youssef, who died giving birth to her stillborn child, is renewing pressure on Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to ratify a law passed in parliament that would make 17 the minimum marriage age.

Youssef died on arrival at a rural hospital in Yemen's Al Hodeida province after several days of difficult labor, according to the Yemeni child rights association Seyaj.

Youssef, the oldest of four children, was just 11 when her ailing father pulled her out of school and married her to a man twice her age, 25-year-old Youssef Ghrad, Seyaj director Ahmed Qorashi told The Times.

Qorashi said early marriages are not uncommon in poor families such as the Youssefs, who probably did not think they were doing anything wrong. The family's poverty may also explain why the girl was not taken sooner to the hospital, which was 10 miles from where she lived.

[Updated, 12:30 p.m., The Yemeni embassy in Washington sent an email lamenting Fawiziya's death.

"We were profoundly saddened to hear the news of the death of the young Yemeni girl, Fawziya Abdullah Yousef (age 12)," said the email by Mohammed Albasha, spokesman for the Embassy. 

He said President Ali Abdullah Saleh tried to amend the marriage law to raise the minimum age to 17 but was thwarted by conservative lawmakers.  But he vowed that the government would soon pass legislation to raise the marriage age. 

"It is deemed an important priority of the government," he wrote.] 

IRAQ: Baghdad warns neighbors, airs militants' confessions on TV

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has turned the heat up on his Arab neighbors after last month’s double bombings at the foreign and finance ministries, which killed about 100 people. Maliki and his government have repeatedly accused Syria of providing shelter to those behind the blasts. Syria has denied the charge, and some Iraqi politicians have raised serious questions about whether Syria or the Baath Party was involved.

Today, Maliki once more slammed his neighbors. “We will continue looking [for a way] to close all the gaps and the doors from which the killers can breathe again. We censure the others from our brothers, friends and the neighborly countries,” Maliki said on a visit to the southern city of Karbala. “They used to say that they are with us and they did stand with us in certain situations, but how can we describe the practice of embracing the killers. To where will they be exported [next] time, to Iraq again or to a different country? Can the evil be contained to one specific country?” 

Maliki has asked the U.N. Security Council to establish a formal investigation into the bombings. He has also accused Syrian intelligence agents of sitting in on a meeting in July of Baath Party officials and Islamic militants. The government sees it as the latest episode in which Syria has allegedly been complicit in the activities of anti-Iraq militants. Iraqi security officials confirmed today that they had sent additional security forces to reinforce the vast Syria-Iraq border. 

Since the bombings, the government has revived the practice of showing taped confessions from alleged militants. Two confessions have been shown on state television and a third was aired at a news conference. The first confession was of an Iraqi arrested for the Aug. 19 attack, who blamed Baath Party leaders in Syria for planning the attack. The other confessions have shown foreign fighters recounting their alleged travels through Syria. There is no way to verify whether the taped remarks were genuine or staged.  But they mark a concerted effort to blame Syria in part for recent security breaches.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the state channel broadcast the purported confessions of an alleged fighter from Yemen named Mohammed Oud.

The following are excerpts from the broadcast:

YEMEN: Government troops battle Shiite rebels

Yemen kept up its military offensive today  against Shiite rebels in the northwest as troops, artillery and aircraft attacked a militant stronghold near the border with Saudi Arabia.

The mountainous Saada province shook with gunfire and explosions for a second day. The Sunni-led government, which claims the rebels have killed more than 330 people over the last year, said that militants had taken over schools and seized teachers. The Associated Press quoted a health official as saying that 12 people had been killed in the fighting.

The assault against the rebels comes as this poor nation has grown unstable with dangers on other fronts: a separatist insurgency in the south and an infusion of Al Qaeda fighters planning attacks across the Middle East. Such a scenario is an increasing concern for neighboring Saudi Arabia and its oilfields. 

MIDDLE EAST: Daily headlines from Gaza, Israel, Iran in your mailbox

The Los Angeles Times issues a free daily e-mail newsletter with the latest headlines from the Middle East and the Muslim world.

It includes stories from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as links to articles about the frictions and encounters between Islam and the West in the United States and Europe.

The newsletter also includes links to the latest Times editorials and opinion pieces about the Middle East, Islam and national security.

You can subscribe by logging in or registering at the website here, clicking on the box for "L.A. Times updates," and then clicking on the "World: Mideast" box.

— Los Angeles Times staff

EGYPT: Stop the pirates

Worried that piracy could scare ships away from the Suez Canal, Egypt today held emergency talks with nations bordering the Red Sea on how stop brazen Somali gunmen from hijacking oil tankers and other vessels.

The Cairo meeting was called amid concerns that pirates were disrupting sea lanes and creating panic that might force shipping companies to avoid sailing the Red Sea region. Such a scenario would hurt the Egyptian economy, which relies heavily on fees vessels pay to pass through the Suez Canal.

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki was quoted by the state news agency as saying: “All options are open.” He added that the country’s national security agencies will decide “whether a diplomatic and political solution would be preferred.”

Egyptian officials met with their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan and Jordan. The nations faced the prospect of how end a standoff with pirates who on Saturday captured a 1,000 foot tanker carrying $100-million worth of Saudi crude. The bandits anchored the ship off the Somali coast and are holding the ship’s crew hostage.

YEMEN: Child divorcee Nujood Ali takes Manhattan

Sharing the bright lights with such luminaries as Sen. Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and movie star Nicole Kidman, 10-year-old child divorcee Nujood Ali and her attorney Shada Nasser were in the big city of New York this week as winners of Glamour magazine's 2008 Women of the Year award.

The trip completes Nujood's journey from a poor daughter of an unemployed laborer in the slums of a teeming city on the southern edge of Arabia to an international celebrity and women's rights symbol.

Nujood was married off earlier this year to a man three times her age. He sexually assaulted and physically abused her. But unlike other child brides in Yemen, she didn't suffer silently.

Spunky and precociously self-assured, she went to court and eventually found Nasser, who helped her get a divorce in what is widely considered the first such incident of its kind.

Nujood's ordeal, triumph and her eventual return to some semblance of normalcy as a schoolgirl were chronicled in the Los Angeles Times.