person:anwar al-sadat

Egypt’s Presidential Election: Meet the Contenders
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/5604/egypts-presidential-election_meet-the-contenders

Egypt’s first presidential election after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak is scheduled to take place on 23 and 24 May 2012, with a possible run-off race on 16 and 17 June 2012. The following guide to the presidential candidates is based on a series of articles published by Egypt Independent. For more information on prominent presidential candidates, click on any of the names below.
– Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh
– Khaled Ali
– Selim al-Awa
– Hesham al-Bastawisi
– Abul Ezz al-Hariry
– Mohamed Morsy
– Amr Moussa
– Hamdeen Sabbahi
– Ahmed Shafiq

The Army and the Economy in Egypt (Jadaliyya)
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3732/the-army-and-the-economy-in-egypt

Should the production of pasta, mineral water, butane gas cylinders, and gas station services qualify as classified military secrets? And does discussing these enterprises in public pass as a crime of high treason? The leaders of the Egyptian Armed Forces believe the answer is “yes.” Source: Jadaliyya

Is the Arab League capable of saving Syria?
http://english.dohainstitute.org/Home/Details/5ea4b31b-155d-4a9f-8f4d-a5b428135cd5/f003f844-d1cc-41b1-be50-75f151f557db

However, the collapse of a regime does not automatically mean the rise of a democratic alternative. This scenario is also attended by various risks and hurdles, chief among them the inability of the Syrian opposition thus far to produce a unified political vision that overcomes its differences, or to rise above the logic of excommunication and exclusion, in order to send reassuring messages to the large segments of Syrian society that remain hesitant. We must remember that a section of this opposition has rejected the Arab Initiative, relying instead on international intervention and only abandoning this option once it was informed by the Western powers that this option was not forthcoming. There are sections in Syrian society that see the possibility of a civil war and the threat of the Iraqi model, fearing the receptiveness of a portion of the opposition to the notion of foreign military intervention, which is rejected by a silent majority among Syrian society that witnessed its effects in neighboring Iraq. To these hurdles should be added the threat of the division and fragmentation of the Syrian Army, and its inability to play a future role as a guarantor preventing civil war from taking place, if change happens in a non-peaceful manner. Therefore, and for this scenario to come to pass, the Syrian opposition must abandon the rhetoric that continually accuses opponents of treason, and which it has been employing in the recent phase; the opposition also must refrain from trying to clone experiments that do not correspond to the nature of Syrian society, which is ethnically and religiously diverse.

Puis le scénario de la guerre civile:

Even though this scenario is currently unlikely - since the Arab Initiative came as a preemptive move by the Arab League to avoid the internationalization of the crisis and its descent into the course of military intervention along the Iraqi and Libyan models it remains a latent possibility. There are indications auguring for this scenario in the medium and long term, and it is currently known in Syria as the “devil” scenario. The most important of these indications is the regime’s continual rejection of the Arab solution, halting violence, and entering into a transitional process of change, which takes place in tandem with the increasing penchant of domestic and foreign parties to push the revolution toward militarization, the carrying of arms and demands for border “buffer zones” along the lines of the Libyan scenario - especially with the regime’s insistence on adopting the “Samson” option. Consequently, we would find ourselves faced with a situation similar to Iraq in 2003, with the appearance of an opposition that calls for and instigates foreign military intervention, or the militarization of the revolution and the creation of “liberated” zones from which armed groups would be ready to wage their attacks against the regime.

This scenario is widely viewed as the most dangerous for Syria and the Arab world as it would represent a regression of the Arab Spring, whose first fruits are being harvested in Tunisia following the election of the Constituent Assembly. This scenario would imply a dangerous dimension of sectarian and ethnic division in Syrian society, causing Syria to becoming an engine for the destruction of the mosaic that is the Arab Mashreq, instead of being a democratic state that contributes to confronting sectarianism. This scenario also would lead to the shrinking of Syria’s importance and its inability to influence major issues, especially those regarding the conflict with Israel. Syria would become an arena for the struggle of regional international powers according to their interests, and the ramifications of such a process would reflect on Lebanon and other Arab states, leading to a complex Arab situation that represents a hurdle to the process of democratic transformation in other countries.

As such, a great responsibility falls upon the Arab League and pan-Arab action to create mechanisms that prevent the occurrence of this scenario, and instead produce solutions within the Arab circle, outside the agendas and interests of regional and international actors. The Syrian opposition, with all its factions, carries the greatest burden of responsibility because of its current negative role and its inability to produce the political vision that would encourage the majority of the people to engage in the movement, and to feel, in a tangible manner, the benefits of democratic change.

SpyTalk: The CIA’s complicated relationship with Egypt
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2011/01/the_cias_complicated_relations.html?goback=.gde_1784957_membe

The CIA’s man to see in Cairo was Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence boss whom Hosni Mubarak nudged from the shadows Saturday to be his vice president.

“Omar Suleiman negotiated directly with top [CIA] officials” on the renditions, Jane Mayer wrote in “Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.”

Edward S. Walker, the American ambassador in Cairo at the time, described Suleiman as “very bright, very realistic,” according to the account of Mayer and others. The envoy said that Suleiman was aware of the flap potential of “some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on.”

Walker added that Suleiman “was not squeamish, by the way.”

At the same time, diplomats in the American Embassy were critical of CIA-funded Egyptian security projects, Walker told the British journalist Stephen Grey, including a "program to train Egyptian special operations forces in counterterrorism arrests.”

The trouble, though, was that "too many people died while fleeing...It got to be a little too obvious, and the agency got very nervous about this,’” Walker told Grey.

#Suleiman #extraordinary_rendition #Égypte #torture