Latest in Opinion Highlight
Latest in Opinion
A failure of democracy and human rights
By Dr Cesar Chelala It is a sad day for democracy when 12 Nobel Peace Laureates write a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to close one of the darkest chapters of recent US history by acknowledging, and then rejecting, the “flagrant use of torture and other violations of international law” that had been …
Searing saw: Sinai
By Amr Khalifa “Egypt is undergoing an existential battle.” That booming sound you heard was tantamount to a declaration of war by Egypt’s president Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi. “There will be blood…there will be a price to pay,” said Al-Sisi after a day of devastating attacks in Sinai on the Egyptian army that saw at least …
Mounting Israeli-Palestinian tensions reverberate on the football pitch
By James M. Dorsey Mounting tension between Israel and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem have spilt onto Israeli Palestinian football pitches in Israel proper as Israel swings towards ultra-nationalists that make Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu look like the best card in a bad hand. Israeli human rights and legal advocacy …
The ISIS within
By Nesreen Salem The video that emerged from Hama, Syria, depicting the stoning of a woman in yet another episode in the ISIS propaganda series, is the first punishment of its kind to emerge from Hama. The video shows a married woman who has been presumably promiscuous and has therefore deserved under Sharia law to be …
Better late than never: how to rebound state fragility in Egypt?
By Abdulla M. Erfan The Fund for Peace recently published the 2014 fragile states indicators for Egypt bringing empirical realities to the heated debate on policies for addressing Egypt’s political, economic and social challenges. According to the index, Egypt has been on the brink of becoming a failed state for at least ten years. While there is …
Should Egypt be governed by majority rule or by rule of law?
By Mohammed Nosseir The term ‘majority’ could be a very pleasant one, used to refer to a segment of any given society. In reality, rulers and citizens tend to commit a number of mistakes based on a false assumption known as ‘majority rule’. This is what has been happening in our attempt to develop a …
Education: The global antidote to poverty, disease and terrorism
By Dr Cesar Chelala Despite enormous technological advances, humanity continues to grapple with three enormous burdens: poverty, disease and terrorism (both individual and state-sponsored.) Although the policies aimed at solving those problems are different, there is one approach that can help lower the negative effect of all three: education. There is a clear connection between …
Football and militant Islam intersect in incidents across the Middle East
By James M. Dorsey A successful football player near the peak of his career, 22 year-old Nidhal Selmi, died last week a foreign fighter for the Islamic State, the jihadist group that controls a swath of Syria and Iraq. His death followed that of Tunisian handball goalkeeper Ahmed Yassin and Ahmed El-Darawi, a former policeman …
The Syrian tunnel and the spring
By Fadi Elhusseini When the first spontaneous explosions of the Arab democratic revolutions erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, many were hoping that this revolt might usher in a new beginning for the whole region. When Egypt joined Tunisia a few weeks later, hopes mounted and everyone started to think that the long-awaited moment had …
Path to sanity: Political humour in Egypt
By Amr Khalifa “A girl writes she is every Egyptian young man’s dream. She thinks she is a visa to Kuwait.” via _El_haram . Welcome to Twitter political humour, a humour that lays bare an Egypt consecutive regimes have sought to paint as rosier than its reality. Conflict, bloody and otherwise, has a deep impact …
Reshaping the Middle East: UAE leads the counterrevolution
By James M. Dorsey War planes from oil-rich Gulf states play a supporting role in the US-led air campaign to counter the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Despite their massive weapons acquisitions in recent years the Gulf states’ participation may make little military difference in the war against the jihadists, but it serves everyone’s …
Signs of rebound in Egypt’s tourism sector
By Robert Tashima The government in Egypt is expecting a recovery of its tourism sector by next year after the latest data showed the tide may be turning for an industry hit hard by domestic instability over the past three years. With Egypt’s recent period of relative calm following the May election of President Abdel Fattah …
The lie behind the Gaza Reconstruction Conference
By Ricard Gonzalez A good-hearted global citizen would assume that the amount of money raised in an international conference of donors under the title “for the reconstruction of Gaza” is for that purpose. However, they would be wrong. The official declaration of the conference that took place in Cairo last Sunday, stated that the donor …
The capitalist cure for terrorism
Military might alone won’t defeat Islamic State and its ilk. The US needs to promote economic empowerment
Egypt: University students vs the state
By Reem Khorshid As I chose to major in Architectural Engineering one year after studying there, I started appreciating Cairo University’s historic campus even more. Although the School of Engineering has a separate modern campus, I used to take walks around the main campus to enjoy the majestic classic dome, famous clock tower, the Obelisk at …
The public health impact of domestic violence
By Dr Cesar Chelala Physical or sexual violence is a serious public health problem that affects more than one-third of all women globally, as was established in a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council. The findings of the report …
Women’s sporting rights put Saudi Arabia and Iran on the defensive
By James M. Dorsey The struggle for women’s rights to engage in and attend sport events has commanded increased attention with the hunger strike of a British-Iranian national incarcerated in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, the expected arrival in Saudi Arabia of Australian women fans for the Asian Champions League final, and the rare appearance of …
Better than Syria?
It was back in the late 1980s when I, a young teenager then, visited my Syrian side of the family. In the garden of a family member’s villa, a group of us, all teenagers, gathered late at night and started telling jokes. The Syrians love the Egyptian sense of humour and jokes, and so I …
Gulf proxy war: UAE seeks to further damage Qatar’s already tarnished image
By James M. Dorsey The United Arab Emirates and Qatar are locked in a propaganda war with public relations agencies and front organisations as proxies that is backfiring on both Gulf states. Disclosures of the proxy war have hit Qatar at a time that its image as the host of the 2022 World Cup is …
From New York with Love to Sisi
By Amr Khalifa Sometime last week, on the Ismailiyia-Cairo highway, there was a man hung by rope from a billboard. Painful, but precise, the image rendered an imperfect Egyptian economic/political landscape. That postcard of desperation was the furthest thing from the minds of Sisi supporters at the other end of the world at the UN. …
What would Einstein have said about Gaza?
By Dr César Chelala On 9 April 1948, 120 fighters from the Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Arab village of approximately 600 people. During the assault, around 107 villagers were killed, including women and children. In addition, several villagers were taken prisoner, and were later jeered, spat at, and …
An inconvenient war
By Ahmed El-Ashram I look around and I see an unprecedented level of despair in the eyes of many friends; an overt level of frustration of how their lives have unluckily coincided with the mishappenings of recent years. Many wish they were not there to witness the toxic politics, the economic misfortune and the precarious …
Does Sisi have a political vision?
We have explained more than once that Sisi’s rule was founded on two main forces: first, the army, and the second, strong public support. Before moving on from this point, we must make it clear that the army does not provide exclusive security or control for Sisi in particular or the regime in general, despite …
Israel mobilises to deprive Qatar of the World Cup
By James M. Dorsey One group has been conspicuously absent in the battle for greater transparency of global football governance symbolised by multiple corruption scandals and match-fixing: football fans, a key stakeholder with a vested interest in demanding a thorough cleansing of the management of the sport. That, however, may be changing as Israel appears …
Middle East Realism – How power completely overcomes values
By Mohammed Nosseir What matters in the Middle East is the reality on the ground. Having good ideas and some moral values – but no power – makes you a useless entity, while possessing power but no ethical values can sustain your presence for a lengthy period and enable you to gain more ground. This …
Egypt’s fallen Ministry of Information
By Mohamed Selim On Monday, 23 February 2004, and at a tempestuous conference held at the headquarter of Egypt’s Syndicate of Journalists in downtown Cairo, former president Hosni Mubarak’s longtime loyalist and propaganda apparatchik, Safwat El-Sherif, declared that he would be the country’s last minister of information (a post that he had held for 22-years). …
Ebola is spreading faster than efforts to contain it
By Dr Cesar Chelala As the Ebola epidemic is claiming increasing number of victims, there is widespread concern that efforts to contain it are inadequate. New and more effective measures are needed to combat one of the most dangerous epidemics of modern times. “Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is …
Egypt and its FDI prospects
By Omar El-Shenety No doubt that Egypt has witnessed very rough years since the 25 January Revolution. The economy has been brought to its knees, and now faces stagnation. Growth has stopped at 2% since the revolution, and the government budget deficit scored record levels. Tourism and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), key sources for foreign …
Despite difficult challenges, Egypt has a considerable economic upside
By Mohamed A. El-Erian Already struggling to meet citizens’ legitimate needs and aspirations, the Egyptian economy has suffered a series of additional setbacks in recent years. So much so that, for the first time in many years, the population has had to cope with power cuts, shortages of goods, and partial controls on foreign exchange. …
Promoting Transparency: Unleashing growth across the board
By Omar Khedr There appears to be no limit to the possibilities that come from combining the internet, social media, and ground-breaking innovations to achieve significant changes across the globe. It is a movement that is restructuring government institutions, revolutionising how news is delivered, and forging entire new commercial industries. Eager to capitalise on this …