March 2008 The Newsletter of

The Newsletter of
Middle East Studies Center, American University in Cairo
March
2008
MARCH, 2008
Page 3
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
4
FROM THE DIRECTOR
JOEL BEININ
HUNTING PALESTINIANS IN GAZA
6
JACK BROWN
8
ARCHITECTURAL INVERSIONS
JACK BROWN
THE WORLD BANK’S EDUCATION REPORT ON THE MIDDLE EAST
10
MARIAM ALI MAHMOUD
AUC FORUM: THE US ELECTIONS AND THE MIDDLE EAST
12
DEENA DOUARA
BOOK REVIEW: MEMORIES OF STATE
14
MELISSA BROWN
LABOR STRUGGLES AND GENDER IN MODERN EGYPT
16
FRANCESCA RICCIARDONE
MES STUDENT PROFILE:
KARIM EL KORANY
17
CATHERINE BAYLIN
18
MESC CALENDAR
Cover Photo: Door, Algiers Casbah, 2006. See P. 8
The views expressed here are those
of their authors and not necessarily
those of MESC, the editor, or the
Middle East studies program.
Faculty Advisors: J. Beinin, H. Sayed
Editor
Jack Brown
Asst. Editor
Rory A. McNamara
Asst. Editor
Catherine Baylin
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
Page 4
FROM THE DIRECTOR
JOEL BEININ
One of the main attractions of
studying the Middle East at
AUC is that it is happening
right outside our libraries and
classrooms.
If you were looking around
Egypt and the region this
month you would have noticed
that during the twelve days
from January 23 to February 4
the prison walls surrounding
the Gaza Strip since the early
1990s were breached. Palestinians living there streamed
into Egypt to buy basic commodities that were in short
supply due to the Israeli siege
in effect since June 2006 and
tightened since then. A very
complex interaction among
the Egyptian regime, the Palestinian parties of Hamas and
Fatah and Israel unfolded,
with the Palestinians of Gaza
caught in the middle in a still
unresolved situation whose
ultimate cause is, of course,
Israel’s brutal occupation.
Perhaps the most positive
news in quite a while was
Egypt’s second straight victory
in the African Nations Cup in
football. On the way to the
victory midfielder Muhammad
Abu Trika earned a yellow card
for displaying a tee-shirt emblazoned with the words
“Sympathize with Gaza” in
English and Arabic after he
scored a goal in Egypt’s 3-0
victory over Sudan. Revealing
under-shirts with images or
messages has been banned
by FIFA since 2002.
Less prominent in the news,
but ultimately very serious,
was the arrest and detention
of twelve men suspected of
being infected with HIV in recent weeks. Four have already
been given prison sentences.
Criminalizing a public health
problem almost surely means
that it will become more severe as people needing treatment will fear to seek it, to say
nothing of the violation of hu-
man rights involved with
forcibly subjecting people to
HIV testing and physical mistreatment by the police.
Speaking of physical abuse
by the police, torture is still
commonplace in Egyptian
police stations, although
public interest in the issue
seems to have receded
somewhat since the summer
and fall. The latest known
victim, Ahmed Saber, died on
November 6 after spending
forty-eight hours in a Giza
police station. In January the
Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture
held a press conference to
release a report documenting
hundreds of cases of torture
in Egypt between 2003 and
2006 and naming 272 police
officers involved in the practice. An American speaking
of torture should not neglect
to mention that my own government has admitted to the
practice of “water-boarding”
detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison. However, the Bush administration
declines to acknowledge that
this practice constitutes torture despite the fact that the
U.S. executed Japanese military officers who committed
the same crime against
American soldiers at the end
of World War II.
In advance of the municipal
elections now scheduled for
April, Muslim Brothers continue to be subjected to a
wave of arrests that began in
December 2006. The elections were delayed for two
years so that the Brothers
would not have an opportunity to repeat their success in
the 2005 parliamentary elections. Arresting candidates
and their campaign workers
should have the desired effect.
The prices of basic foods and
fuel have increased dramati-
cally in the last year, while
the government has moved
to reduce or eliminate subsidies on essential consumer
items. This is one of the
main factors driving the wave
of strikes and labor militancy
which has engulfed the country since the second half of
2004. Some 10,000 workers
and supporters demonstrated in the central Delta
textile city of al-Mahalla alKubra on February 17
against rising prices. A similar demonstration scheduled
in front of the Ministry of
State for Economic Development in Madinat Nasr the
next day, as the Higher Council for Wages was to meet to
consider raising the minimum
wage, was blocked by security forces on the pretext that
it was “too close” to the
home of President Mubarak,
who lives in Heliopolis. The
current monthly minimum
basic wage is £E 105; social
benefits can increase this to
nearly £E 200 (if workers
receive them). Government
bodies and the Egyptian
Trade Union Federation have
proposed a consolidated
minimum wage (including
social benefits) in the range
of £E 400-600. The Coordinating Committee for Trade
Union and Workers Rights
and Liberties has demanded
a monthly minimum wage of
£E 1200. This would be almost the equivalent of
$2.00/day for a family of four
– the standard defined as the
poverty line by the World
Bank. Currently it is estimated that as many as 40
percent of all Egyptians live
below the poverty line.
Any one of these topics would
be an interesting subject for
a research paper or an M.A.
thesis. All of these topics are
characterized by not being
salient in the American perception of and agenda for
Egypt, which focuses on the
global “war on terror,” Egypt’s
role in the non-existent Palestinian-Israeli “peace process,” promotion of free market neo-liberalism, and praising Egypt’s progress towards
democracy.
AUC is wellsituated to bring the results
of empirical social research
to bear on the discussion of
Egypt. There is no guarantee
that this will help the American people or the American
government understand
Egypt better; but it is the
thing that we, as a scholarly
community, can do best.
Joel
Joel Beinin
Director of
Middle East Studies
MARCH, 2008
Page 5
HUNTING PALESTINIANS IN SINAI
BY JACK BROWN
Official Egypt likes to brag
that it has ‘fought four wars
for the Palestinians,’ referring
to its 20th century battles
with Israel—which of course
were fought for reasons both
related and unrelated to the
Palestinian cause. Egypt’s
‘wars for the Palestinians’
ended definitively with the
1978 Camp David accords
and Egypt’s move toward
strategic subordination to the
US-Israeli position, as the
past month’s events on the
border between Gaza and
Egypt once again underlined.
Since early January, Gaza has
been enduring a particularly
heavy phase of the more-orless eternal Israeli blockade;
Israel is preventing food and
fuel shipments on top of the
normal privations and air
strikes. A few weeks ago
Hamas found a solution by
blowing a hole in the wall
along the border with Egypt.
This released a tidal wave of
Gaza’s hungry and poor who
began streaming into Egypt’s
border towns in search of
food, fuel, cigarettes, and,
Israel warned, weapons.
Rafah Crossing: 20 km
Egypt’s responsibility to its
two patrons was clear in this
case: the ‘sardine can that is
Gaza’ as a Syrian poet once
called it, must be re-sealed.
Typically for a regime which is
simultaneously brutal and
incompetent, Cairo has, in
trying to please Israel and the
United States, succeeded
mainly in further alienating
its own people and its supposed friends the Palestinians. The state’s priority
seemed to be to end the
influx of Palestinians as
quickly as possible, while
preventing opposition groups
from profiting too much from
the incident. To that end, it is
making the northern Sinai as
inhospitable as possible for
Palestinians by preventing
Egyptians from doing business with them. Cairo has
halted food and medical shipments from Egyptian NGOs
destined for Gaza, shut down
businesses on the Egyptian
side of the border to prevent
Palestinians from buying
anything, banned Palestinians from hotels and even
coffee shops, and rounded
up and deported thousands
of Palestinians. Driving
through the Northern Sinai
early in February, one could
watch platoons of Egyptian
soldiers armed with sticks
and clubs, encircling dusty
farm fields and olive orchards, hunting Palestinians.
Driving through the
Northern Sinai in
Meanwhile, an unsubtle campaign in the state press has
attempted to reduce sympathy for the Palestinians,
whose cause is supported by
virtually all Egyptians. Even
leftist and opposition newspapers have not been immune to slanted and jingoistic reporting. Press accounts
routinely cite absurd figures
indicating that half the population of the Gaza Strip had
decamped for Egypt, that the
Palestinians had emptied
Sinai’s stores of goods
(visibly false), suggest that
good-hearted Egyptian merchants are being cheated by
Palestinians with counterfeit
dollars, and that Palestinian
terrorists are infiltrating into
Egypt by way of the perforated border fence. Despite
all this, activist networks in
Cairo and other cities report
an overwhelming outpouring
of support and donations for
the Gazans.
To stem the influx, Cairo has
beefed up its military presence along the border,
plugged new holes which
have appeared in the border
fence, and instituted a series
of checkpoints along the
nearby roads, with the double
aim of thwarting Palestinians
heading to Cairo and preventing supplies and journalists
heading toward the border.
The official press has several
times announced the suc-
early February, one
could watch platoons
of Egyptian soldiers
armed with sticks
and clubs, encircling
dusty farm fields and
olive orchards,
hunting Palestinians.
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
cessful closure of the border,
but a recent trip to the area
confirmed that Palestinians
continued to cross the border
with relative ease, seeking
food, work, or reunions with
family members. The checkpoints are almost entirely
manned by agents and soldiers from the distant Nile
Valley, and the outsiders
aren’t particularly effective at
stopping the flow; locals from
both sides of the border
fence regarded the road
checkpoints and patrols as
more of an inconvenience
than a threat to their new
freedom of movement.
seen by opposition parliamentary deputy Sabir sat
parked beside the bridge,
shunted aside for unexplained reasons. Sabir was
confident that his idled convoy would eventually pass; it
ultimately did, but was again
stopped near the border, the
drivers and loaders arrested
and shipped off to Qantara
Prison. The supplies now wait
in al-Arish, the large city near
the border with Gaza. At the
bridge, State Security agents
told journalists that they
lacked a nonexistent form
from the Ministry of Information, and thus would not be
Forcibly Closed Shops and Palestinian Graffiti in Shaykh Zwayd
At the Mubarak Peace
Bridge, which crosses the
Suez Canal north of Ismailia,
a combined force of soldiers,
Interior Ministry troops, and
State Security agents were
enforcing the Egyptian state’s
blockade earlier this month.
in addition to checking for
Palestinians heading toward
Cairo, soldiers barred food,
medicine and journalists
destined for Gaza and the
Egyptian border from entering the Sinai Peninsula. A
three-truck convoy bearing
80 tons of food and medicine
gathered by the opposition
Muslim Brothers, and over-
permitted to enter Sinai; the
state apparently wants to
minimize press coverage of
its activities in the area.
There are other ways into
Sinai, however. In al-Arish
later that night, unaccustomed rain was falling on the
gray cinderblock buildings
and rutted streets; most
shops were closed or halfclosed in anticipation of another round of harassment by
the state, and Palestinians
went from hotel to hotel
seeking rooms for the night.
But State Security had been
there before them, and
warned hotel owners of se-
Page 6
vere consequences if they
were caught with Palestinians in their rooms. At a hotel
on the town’s main street,
one of the owners reported
that his brother had been
arrested the night before
merely for having two Palestinians seated in the hotel’s
waiting room. So at hotels
like this one, as well as restaurants and coffee shops,
people from Gaza were being
turned away with a curt
“Palestinians prohibited.”
“I’ve got all of this money
with me and they don’t
want to take it,” said
Dalal, 27, showing a
handful
of
largedenomination Egyptian
bills after being rebuffed. A cleaning
woman at a government
office in Gaza who had
crossed at the Rafah
breach earlier in the
day, she said she was
unconcerned at being
chased out of al-Arish’s
hotels. “I’m not going to
sleep on the street, I’ll
always find somewhere
to stay, maybe with a
family.” Two brothers
had already been to alArish and back earlier in
the week, but, Dalal
said, “I had some personal
things I wanted to buy myself,
and diesel fuel.”
The diesel might have proven
to be a problem, however. At
the gas station up the street,
a line of riot police surrounded the pumps until late
in the night. A pharmacist
across the street, expressing
his disgust at the state’s
treatment of the Gazans, said
they were there to keep the
Palestinians from buying gas
or diesel for their generators
back home. Other residents
said it was to prevent the
Palestinians from buying up
all the fuel in town. The police themselves weren’t say-
At hotels, as
well as
restaurants
and coffee
shops, people
from Gaza were
being turned
away with a
curt
“Palestinians
prohibited.”
MARCH, 2008
ing.
Al-Arish is a Bedouin town of
some 100,000 close to Gaza;
a third of its residents are of
Palestinian ancestry. It and
other nearby towns share
closer historical links to Palestine than to the distant Nile
Valley; locals refer to new
arrivals from there as
‘Egyptians.’ The sense of
alienation from Cairo can
only have deepened in the
past three years; after a massive truck-bombing at the
Taba resort in 2004, the
state rounded up some
3,000 people in al-Arish, and
according to local and international rights organizations
submitted hundreds of them
to savage torture in an effort
to root out what the state
believed was a radical terrorist organization based there.
The series of bombings
across the Sinai which followed were considered by
some to be revenge against
the state for this campaign of
torture and intimidation.
The attitude of local Egyptians to the state’s campaign
against the Palestinians was
thus of grudging and superficial cooperation. In Shaykh
Zwayd, a small town a few
kilometers from the border,
merchants warily kept their
shops half-open one afternoon earlier this month: the
state had decreed that they
should be closed in order to
keep Palestinians from buying in them, but commerce
clearly trumped law here.
When a truckload of State
Security agents and what
looked like plainclothesmen
or thugs armed with sticks
careened down the main
street, shopkeepers hastily
pulled down steel shutters;
the thugs descended from
the truck and began beating
the unwary with sticks, to
occasional admonitions from
Page 7
State Security agents (‘not in
front of the journalists’). The
truck moved on to the next
town and soon the shutters
came back up. A few hours
later, a group of young Palestinian men settled in at a
coffee shop up the street,
reporting that they had
crossed the supposedly
closed border in the morning.
Where were they headed?
Oh, they were just having a
look around in Egypt was all.
Maybe they would stop in at
al-Arish later in the day. It
seemed more likely that they
were on their way to Cairo in
hopes of finding work. The
tightened border security and
the police and the checkpoints were not to be taken
too seriously, they said, offering to help a journalist cross
into Palestine.
A few weeks on now it appears that the Egyptians--with
Israeli and American encouragement--have succeeded in
resealing the border, but not
without significant political
cost. A couple of weeks ago,
the Egyptian foreign minister,
Ahmad Abu al-Ghait, was
widely quoted in the local
press telling Gazans that if
they crossed the border, their
legs would be broken: an
apparently conscious echo of
Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Rabin's admonition to
troops fighting the unarmed
demonstrators of the first
Palestinian Intifada to 'break
their bones.' The Muslim
Brothers, meanwhile, have
come out looking better despite the best efforts of the
state; they have responded to
the crisis in Gaza and Northern Sinai with their usual
impeccable timing and methodical efficiency; even
secular activists in Cairo
channeled much of their donation drive through the
Brothers despite the yawning
difference in political programs. A good number of
Brothers took the opportunity
in the past weeks to cross
over into Gaza and reestablish old contacts (Hamas is a
Brotherhood offshoot and
many of its leaders studied at
Egyptian universities with
today’s Egyptian Brotherhood
leaders).
Hosam al-Shurbagi, local
representative of the Brotherhood-affiliated Egyptian Syndicate of Doctors, and head
of the syndicate’s Relief Committee, was proud of his organization’s efforts in an
interview in al-Arish earlier
this month. “In the first two
days after the border was
opened, we brought 4,500
tons of food into Gaza, along
with 12 million guineas [$2
million]worth of medicine
plus 51 electric generators.
But [the Egyptian State]
stopped everything on the
third day. Now they say the
trucks won’t pass unless the
shipments have Red Crescent stickers. Well, we’ll put
Red Crescent stickers on
them then.” The Egyptian
Red Crescent is run by president Hosni Mubarak’s wife;
however it seems likely that
beneficiaries will hear about
the aid’s real provenance, as
will most interested Egyptians.
The main result of these
events, then, will be that
Palestinians have yet another
reason to resent the Egyptian
state, despite those four
wars, and the residents of alArish and the Northern Sinai
can add another entry to
their long catalogue of grievances. The Brothers, as
usual, end up looking like the
well-organized underground
opposition that they are.
Ahmad Abu al-Ghait
was widely quoted in
the local press telling
Gazans that if they
crossed the border,
their legs would be
broken: an apparently
conscious echo of
Israeli defense
minister Yitzhak
Rabin's admonition to
troops fighting the
unarmed
demonstrators of the
first Palestinian
Intifada to 'break
their bones.'
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
Page 8
ARCHITECTURAL INVERSIONS
BY JACK BROWN
In the rundown though
once beautiful building I
stayed in over the winter
on Algiers' central avenue,
I shared a balcony on the
top floor with another family. Perhaps 'shared' gives
the wrong impression;
against the original iron
grating which separated
my half of the balcony
from his, my neighbor had
erected a wall, a farrago of
chickenwire, cheap red
brick and a hasty slathering of mortar which leaned
hectically against the iron
grate. This construction
reached a couple of meters in height, and over
the top of that he had
draped a rotting canvas
tarp. The result was perfect visual security for his
wife and three daughters,
should they ever choose
to venture onto the bal-
cony.
T h e y
never did
in
my
experie n c e ,
though I
suppose
that was
as much
due
to
the winter cold
as to the Downtown Algiers, once a middle-and-upper-class European quarter
unpleasant space created by my enclosures. By no means places, open to the air and to
all were like this, but I casual conversation with
neighbor.
imagined that the few cov- neighbors but above the
ered balconies were the crowded streets.
Variations
on
m y only ones that ever got
neighbor's measures were any use: the uncovered
visible up and down the spaces, now or in the sum- Algiers has another architecstreet, ranging from casu- mer's heat, were so much tural tradition preserved in its
ally draped carpets to useless colonial residue Casbah (Qasba), the alluvial
careful glass-and-brick for most of Algiers' current fan of ancient houses which
residents. Fifty years spills down the northeastern
ago, when these build- side of the mountain toward
ings were still occupied the sea. Pontecorvo's The Batby the Pied Noirs-- tle of Algiers aptly captures
Frenchmen, Italians and the cryptic and menacing air
Spaniards, at ease that this neighborhood held
lounging cheek-by-jowl for the European colonists
with their neighbors in and their armed defenders;
the promiscuous lower- streets and alleys flow sinua n d - m i d d l e - c l a s s ously down the hill, ending in
neighborhoods of down- abrupt dead-ends when they
town Algiers, they were fail to meet an open avenue;
Balconies in Bab el Oued, former European working class quarter
comfortable semi-public
MARCH, 2008
Algiers has another
architectural
tradition preserved
in its Casbah, the
alluvial fan of
ancient houses
which spills down
the northeastern
side of the
mountain toward
the sea.
Page 9
the buildings themselves
lean together over the
narrow alleys, seeking to
close off the sky altogether it seems, in their
eagerness to claim as
much space as they can in
this narrow universe.
Blank walls loom upward,
grimed with centuries of
dirt and mortar, the doors
low and uninviting, the
whole quarter seemingly
built without logic or reason, a reified rejection of
Enlightenment order.
sky, or more often
now, a vast skylight
at the top of the
building. This of
course is the kind
of space sought by
those who wall off
their balconies in
the old European
quarters: an opening which gives one
a place to breathe
the outside air, but
away from the prying eyes of the
neighbors.
One of the wider avenues in the Casbah
A cultural logic is at work
here, though, an inversion
which demonstrates the
logic of the walled-in balconies of the old European
quarter. A Casbah house
is a European building
turned inside out:
to passersby on
the street, it presents impassive
walls with tiny,
uninviting
windows. The building's rooms, its
balconies,
the
open space every
urban
dweller
seeks, all are
turned
inward,
wrapping around
a central courtyard which opens
to
the
Interior of restored museum-house in the Casbah
Casbah House Interior, 19th Century
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
Page 10
THE ROAD MUCH TRAVELLED: THE ASSUMPTIONS OF
AN EXPERT REPORT ON EDUCATION IN THE MENA
BY MARIAM ALI MAHMOUD
On February 4th, 2008, the
World Bank released a development report entitled The
Road Not Travelled: Education Reform in the Middle
East and Africa. Asserting the
importance of education as a
regional “strategic priority”
for the World Bank, the report
assesses the state of all levels of education in a sample
of fourteen countries in the
region, in comparison with
each other and with a number of East Asian and Latin
American countries. It concludes that while Middle East
and North African (MENA, in
World Bank-speak) countries
have made significant progress in education reform,
especially with regards to
accessibility and reducing
gender disparity, they remain
behind other countries “at
similar levels of economic
development,” both in these
areas and in overall quality of
education.
The report is comprehensive
in its area of (geographic)
coverage, but its focus and
methodology reveal certain
assumptions regarding the
nature of the Middle East,
the role of education (in general, but in the MENA region
in particular), and the incontrovertibility of the direction it
should take in future.
From the outset it is made
clear that the report focuses
on the economic aspects of
education, specifically economic returns on investment
in education, rather than
social, cultural or (though this
last is left unmentioned) political factors. The report is
divided into three parts, each
covering one main aspect of
the assessment approach.
Part One looks at past investments in education and their
affect on economic growth
and development to date. It
also pinpoints ‘challenge’
areas for future improvements, namely globalization,
the role of ‘the knowledge
economy’ in the development
process, and the region’s
‘youth bulge.’ Part Two outlines the approach, which is
based around three factors
identified as central to successful education reform:
structural or ‘engineering’
changes, and, more pressingly, incentives and public
accountability. It assesses
the application of these factors in the sample countries
and analyses possible reasons for variations in outcomes. Finally, Part Three
looks at labour market characteristics and how they affect the returns from investment in education. After concluding that these markets
“are not conducive to maximizing the economic returns
from education,” Part Three
also provides suggestions for
improving the linkage between ‘supply’ and ‘demand’
and consequently between
education and economic
growth.
Many of the assumptions
underlying the assessment in
each section are not unique
to this report, but are characteristic of expert reports on
the region, especially those
conducted by the international financial institutions.
The comparability of MENA
countries to each other and
to the non-MENA countries
chosen in the sample is a
case in point. The report
states: “typically, comparator
countries are selected on the
basis of a criterion such as
per capita income. However,
this criterion is not appropriate for MENA countries because they diverge widely in
their per capita income.” This
indicates that these countries
are not comparable economically (so much so, in fact,
that figures from the Gulf
countries have to be excluded from many of the data
tables), but since economic
factors are the only ones that
come into play in the report,
the basis for their grouping—
other than geographical—is
unclear. The report goes on
to explain that a stratified
sample of East Asian and
Latin American countries
were thus chosen as comparators because they “seem
to share some socioeconomic characteristics with
the region, and have made
some progress on reforming
their education systems”.
These criteria are strikingly
vague, and it is unlikely that
the comparison would hold
up under closer inspection.
The report’s exclusive focus
on economic factors is also
problematic. By de-linking the
politics (not to mention social
and cultural factors) of the
region from its economics, it
precludes a complete and
realistic picture of how, once
areas of improvement have
been identified, reform measures will be implemented;
how likely they are to succeed; and what other areas
need to be considered before
such measures can be taken.
It also means that the economic data used are taken
out of the political and social
context that helps shape
them, and that the report’s
discussion of public accountability is almost entirely divorced from the realities ‘on
the ground’ in each of the
sample countries.
Interestingly, the report asserts that one of the main
positive outcomes of education is its contribution to a
“more cohesive national
identity.” Given the report’s
avoidance of discussing the
political climate in the region
generally or in the specific
countries assessed, the report’s implication that this
should thus be a key goal of
education reform is curious.
The report’s focus
and methodology
reveal certain assumptions regarding the nature of
the Middle East,
the role of education, and the incontrovertibility of the
direction it should
take in future.
Especially when it is considered that the process of defining a ‘national identity’—at
least in the form taught in
schools—is a political endeavour in which the state often,
if not always, has a large
stake, and which has broad
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
implications for the political
future of a country.
Another assumption the report makes is the inevitability
of globalisation and the necessity of aligning education
reform with its needs, regardless of whether globalisation
as a phenomenon is ‘fully
embraced’ or avoided by the
The assumption
that “scientists
and engineers are
likely to contribute
more to economic
growth than are
social scientists
and students of
humanity” only
holds true if one
conceives of only
one specific path
to, or definition of,
development.
state in question. In fact, the
success of an educational
system in catering to the
imperatives of globalisation
is considered a key measurement of its overall quality.
This ties in with the report’s
general assumptions about
the definition of quality in
education, and its indication
that the central criterion is
education’s role in pushing
economic growth. In other
words, profitability is placed
ahead of all other possible
criteria (most of which are
not even mentioned).
According to the report, one
of the indicators of the quality of human capital in higher
education is enrolment in the
sciences and engineering, as
opposed to the humanities
and social sciences. Human
capital in MENA is thus
deemed lacking because
“about two-thirds” of the
region’s students major in
the latter fields. This trend,
however, is not unique to the
region: a 2004 report shows
that in 2001, enrolment in
humanities, education and
social sciences was significantly higher than enrolment
in sciences and engineering
in the G8 countries, around
or over two-thirds for four of
them, including the US, and
over 50 percent for the rest.
In addition, the assumption
that “scientists and engineers are likely to contribute
more to economic growth
than are social scientists and
students of humanity” only
holds true if one conceives of
only one specific path to, or
definition of, development. It
also has little to do with the
quality of education, or of
Page 11
one of its rare mentions of
politics, the report suggests
“that the impact of education
on growth and technological
development is strongly related to the country’s degree
of openness,” both politically
and economically. The implications of this statement for
a country like Egypt, for example, are that the increased
openness from the 1980s
onwards would have had a
positive impact on economic
growth and educational productivity—but, as the report
points out, exactly the reverse is true. The less
‘open’ (as defined by the
report) 1960s and 1970s
show higher productivity and
growth despite similar levels
of investment in education.
The key factor here, however,
is that despite taking such
issues into account, the report makes no mention of the
effect of the regionally imposed structural adjustment
programs which would cer-
World Bank Director Robert Zoellick with Sudanese VP Taha
human capital, unless quality
is defined, again, primarily in
terms of profitability—as it
seems to be here.
Finally, there is also the crucial question of the role of
the World Bank itself, and
other financial institutions, in
shaping the economic factors
affecting education and its
reform in the Middle East. In
tainly have had a part to play
in the abovementioned outcomes. Nor does it discuss
the nature, extent and outcomes of the World Bank’s
own funding and support of
specific education reform
projects in the region, beyond
a cursory mention in the foreword that Tunisia received
“the first World Bank loan for
any education project” in the
1960s.
In conclusion to this brief
critique, while the report
makes valid suggestions for
improving incentives and
public accountability in education, the bases for its assessment overall are far from
clear, as are the reasons for
overlooking factors equally if
not more important than
economic. The utility and
applicability of such an incomplete report is therefore
highly questionable, though it
has been, and will no doubt
continue to be well received.
MARCH, 2008
Page 12
US ELECTIONS AND THE MIDDLE EAST
AN AUC FORUM
BY DEENA DOUARA
An interesting amount of the
debate in the US presidential
race this year is centering on
foreign policy in the Middle
East. Sure, everyone wants
the economy to recover from
what administration supporters euphemistically call a
“slump.” Better healthcare
would be nice too. But making the headlines repeatedly
is how the candidates would
and have dealt with Iraq,
Iran, and even, to a lesser
extent, the Arab-IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
their own views on the elections and the Middle East
earlier this month at a panel
discussion. All panelists had
been presidents of the Middle East Studies Association
in the US.
In line with panelist William
Quandt’s tongue-in-cheek
prediction of who would win
the election in November, “it
will be one of the following
three …”
While many of us living in the
Middle East, both locals and
foreigners, actually care
about what happens to people in the region, many Americans have a greater stake in
what happens on their own
soil and to their own soldiers,
oil, economy, and reputation.
What seems fairly clear is
that Democrats would likely
be “better” for the Middle
East than Republicans--but
what would each candidate’s
win really mean? The fair
answer is that nobody really
knows. When Bush Jr. was
elected, he had been presented as a moderate candidate who purported not to be
interested in “nationbuilding”; 9/11 clearly
changed many things, making Bush at least an
“unbuilder” if not a “nation
builder.”
Still, making reasonable predictions based on past performance and rhetoric is a
better game than not making
any. And so, respectable
papers and informal blogs
across the US, the Arab
world, and Israel, continue to
analyze the candidates beyond their superficial campaign rhetoric.
At AUC too, experts discussed
be seen with late Palestinian
intellectual Edward Said.
In a recent rating of Israelfriendliness by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Obama
placed last of six rated candidates with a score of 5.12
(out of 10). The paper explains the ratings by saying
that “Israel is one country for
whom the positions and policies of the American president are crucial … the person
who inhabits the White
House will influence their
future more that any other
world leader -- perhaps, even
more than their own leaders."
While Obama told Haaretz
that the US is obliged to support Israel in defending itself
against "enemies sworn to its
destruction," in a response to
a similar question in the US
he responded that any friend
of Israel should be concerned
with helping it find peace with
its neighbors.
OBAMA
Barack Obama has consistently emphasized “elevated
diplomacy” and the need to
speak to one’s enemies – a
far cry from Bush’s policy of
not engaging Hamas, Iran, or
Syria. It is common knowledge that he voted against
the Iraqi invasion in 2002,
having predicted the present
destruction. He is also likely
the only candidate to have
spoken about limiting the
suffering of the Iraqi people.
The Illinois senator has even
made the “unpatriotic” move
of questioning the US’s responsibility for world reactions to it in his Feb. 12 victory speech: “we need to do
more than end a war – we
need to end the mindset that
got us into war.” Quandt
joked that Obama had not
even been embarrassed to
Obama, though, will still have
to play the game to win a
nomination and final election
and he too has stepped up
pro-Israeli rhetoric. He defended Israel’s invasion of
Lebanon in 2006, saying that
he supported Israel’s response: “I don't think there is
any nation that would not
have reacted the way Israel
did after two soldiers had
been snatched.”
Panelist Farhad Kazemi rightfully noted that Obama has
been somewhat circumspect
when it came to specific
views or actions he would
take to deal with conflict in
the region – although he has
publicly prioritized pulling US
soldiers out of Iraq.
Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton’s
f o r me r neg o t i a to r, is
Obama’s key advisor on the
region. While Ross had at
one point been considered
more liberal, he has since been
associated with the Right after
becoming Fox News’ Middle
East analyst and counselor for
the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy
founded by Israel lobby AIPAC.
In a commentary, Haaretz correspondent Shmuel Rosner
explained that Jewish donors
were vital to the Democratic
Party: "Obama will soon make
the case that he'll be as strong
on Israel as anyone," he predicted. Indeed, all the candidates’ ratings have gone up
since last month with the exception of Hillary Clinton. And
there is a running theory that
Obama would have “something
to prove” given his background
and soft reputation.
On more local turf, Obama has
called on Bush to challenge
"so-called allies in the Middle
East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their
own people, and suppressing
Barack Obama has
consistently
emphasized
“elevated
diplomacy” and the
need to speak to
one’s enemies – a
far cry from Bush’s
policy of not
engaging Hamas,
Iran, or Syria.
MARCH, 2008
dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and
mismanaging their economies."
Page 13
Clinton is against the “surge
strategy” in Iraq though she
was in favor of the war. She
has been aggressive in her
rhetoric toward Iran but says
she opposes military action
without congressional approval.
Regarding the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, McCain
has said “There can be no
comprehensive peace accord
between Israel and the Palestinians until the Palestinians
recognize Israel, forswear
forever the use of violence,
recognize their previous
agreements, and reform their
internal institutions."
CLINTON
In stark contrast to Obama,
Hillary Rodham Clinton was
rated a true friend to Israel,
scoring a current 7.5 in
Haaretz’s project. Last
month, she was second of
twelve candidates (only Rudy
Giuliani scored higher). This,
despite her husband’s inexplicable popularity amongst
Arabs and the fact that Arafat
“practically lived at the White
House,” according to Quandt.
He also thinks it conceivable
that Clinton too could talk to
Syria and Iran.
But, high marks were probably given for her demand that
the US embassy be shifted
from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (a
major boon to the Israelis
and a slap to the Palestinians) and for her showing
strong support for Israel’s
“security barrier,” “tak[ing] to
task” the International Court
of Justice for questioning
Israel’s right to build the wall.
She has also stated that "the
security and freedom of Israel must be decisive and
remain at the core of any
American approach to the
Middle East."
after the Arizona senator
responded infamously to a
question in 2007 about how
the US should deal with Iran,
by singing “Bomb bomb
bomb …” to the tunes of the
Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.
When asked if it had been
insensitive he responded,
“Insensitive to what? The
Iranians?”
MCCAIN
John McCain is clearly the
most hawkish of the three
candidates, though he was
the most “moderate” of the
three main Republican candidates, who were all “outtoughing” each other, as
Kazemi put it.
For McCain, the problem, and
thus the solution, is simple
enough. “All of the conflicts in
the Middle East are connected, they are all part of
the rise of Islamic extremism.”
Following Bhutto's assassination in Pakistan, McCain suggested that "forces of moderation are arrayed in a fierce
battle against those who
embrace violent Islamic extremism". Such comments
can be no surprise however,
Such comments earned
McCain a 7.75 on Haaretz’s
ratings. Or, perhaps, it is the
fact that he has suggested
that America provide Israel
with “whatever military equipment and technology she
requires to defend herself,
above and beyond what we
supply today if necessary."
THE REST
What have the other candidates’ positions been on the
Middle East? Mitt Romney
called Iran a “suicidal nation,” refused to provide Massachusetts state troopers to
protect moderate ex-Iranian
president Mohammad
Khatami during his US visit to
establish dialogue, and more
recently called for "good
schools" in the Arab world
that are not "Wahhabi
schools." He has emphasized
the war against Iraq as representing a broader conflict
with “radical Islam” and
“jihadists.”
John McCain is
clearly the most
hawkish of the three
candidates, though
he was the most
“moderate” of the
three main
Republican
candidates, who were
all “out-toughing”
each other.
Mike Huckabee, whom panelist
Kazemi calls “totally clueless”
in foreign affairs scored a 6.25
in Haaretz (despite 9 visits to
Israel), but Quandt joked that
the score was probably “made
up,” with little information to go
on about the candidate’s foreign policy stances.
The least interventionist candidates—Libertarian Republican
Ron Paul and Democrat Dennis
Kucinich--were never really
serious contenders but then
ultra-hawk Rudy Giuliani was
ousted early on as well.
With any of the remaining three
serious contenders—Obama,
Clinton, and McCain—the panelists at AUC’s discussion all
seemed to agree that things
could only get better. It is likely
that Republicans, Democrats
and independents are united in
hoping for at least that.
MARCH, 2008
Page 14
BOOK REVIEW:
MEMORIES OF STATE: POLITICS, HISTORY, AND COLLECTIVE
IDENTITY IN MODERN IRAQ , ERIC DAVIS
BY MELISSA M. BROWN
tackles it skillfully and leads
the
reader
through
his
findings. The
methods
by
which an administration
creates culture
and history are
presented here
in more depth
and detail than
elsewhere
before,
and
Davis’s contribution
will
likely be essential to the study
of history in the
Middle East.
The problem of national identity in Iraq is not a simple
question, nor does it lend
itself to a single answer. One
might point to the country’s
ancient Mesopotamian heritage or its Abbasid roots following the advent of Islam in
the 7th century. In Memories
of State, Eric Davis offers a
fresh approach to the difficulties of state building in Iraq
by arguing that stateengineered historical memory
has exacerbated sectarian
conflicts there. Memories of
State is not a thrill seeker’s
guide to the atrocities committed by the Ba’ath regime,
but rather a chronological
study of how state administration grooms and shapes
public opinion through policy.
The creation of historical
memory is an exceptionally
abstract study, but Davis
State-engineered culture
extends beyond monuments,
museums and holidays. Folklore and poetry were and still
are manipulated because of
their intimate ties to popular
culture. Archeology has been,
appropriately, the main thrust
used by Iraqi nationalists to
tie national identity to ancient Mesopotamia. Davis
maintains that finger pointing
(blaming the external enemy)
is an especially popular
method, because uniting the
masses in hatred against
imperialism, Zionism, or allegedly threatening minorities, shifted scrutiny from
Ba’ath abuses of power. Lest
he leave anything out, Davis
makes a special point of his
periodization. Nationalist
academics often bracket the
dates their studies carefully,
intentionally leaving out important events such as the
founding of the Iraqi Communist Party, for example, committing a historical lie of
omission to suit their particular narrative.
Counter-narratives and their
effects on Iraqi historical
memory are also a recurrent
theme in the book. This includes the activities of Iraq’s
expatriate community, internet communications within
Iraq, and the role of coffeehouses as meeting places for
safe political discussion.
Instead of simply characterizing the populace as a helpless victim to one overriding
narrative, Davis highlights
signs of resistance and evidence that many Iraqis have
been active in attempts to
counter the administration’s
manipulation of history. This
ability to bring to life all main
actors in Iraqi politics supports Davis’s dedication to
historical objectivity.
Initially, this reviewer was
disenchanted that it took
Davis over 100 pages to begin an in-depth analysis of
Saddam Hussayn and his
regime. However, the text
dedicated to the Hashimite
monarchy and the Sidqi and
Qasim regimes situate the
development of cultural
memory in a broader historical context. Davis makes the
bold claim that Saddam Hussayn and the Ba’ath Party did
not create the fearful methods of rule that distinguished
their regime, but were only
“heirs to that tradition who
State-engineered culture extends beyond
monuments, museums and holidays.
Folklore and poetry
were and still are manipulated because of
their intimate ties to
popular culture.
MARCH, 2008
refined it to new heights of
paranoia and xenophobia.”
Following Saddam Hussayn’s
recent press coverage preceding his execution, it is not
difficult to villainize him as
the father of all that is evil in
Iraq. But, while Husayn was
in fact found guilty of crimes
against humanity, the Qasim
regime that preceded his rule
was an important precursor
and precondition, responsible
for political assassinations,
an increase in the use of
secret police, and stripping
citizenship from people the
regime preferred not to recognize as Iraqis. Thus, Davis
exposes a gradual trend of
Page 15
government. Though the Sunnis themselves were a minority, they managed to hold
sway over Iraqi politics. Davis
depicts Iraqi nationalists as
the more inclusive group
linking national identity to
ancient Mesopotamia, and
Pan-Arabists as more exclusive and identifying with the
post-Jahiliya (Islamic) period.
Davis’s scholarly approach
and lofty verbiage suggest
that this book would likely be
most appropriate for readers
with a serious academic interest in the region. On the
other hand, it does not as-
The American occupation: The end of Iraqi nation-building?
government brutality and
corruption leading up to the
Ba’ath regime.
In another venture likely to
upset Iraqi nationalists, Davis
acknowledges the ways in
which Pan-Arabism marginalized and oppressed certain
religious and ethnic communities in Iraq. In the scramble
to solidify a strong national
identity after the fall of the
Ottoman Empire, groups such
as Kurds, Jews, and even the
majority Shi’is did not enjoy
equitable representation in
sume that the reader has a
substantial historical background. As the book proceeds from the collapse of
Ottoman rule to the AngloIraqi War, the Iran-Iraq War,
the invasion of Kuwait, the
Intifada, and even up to the
collapse of the Ba’ath regime, Davis provides the
reader with ample information on each. There is also a
glossary in the back to help
readers with the Arabic
names incorporated in the
text.
A sound grasp of the Arabic
language and evidence of
traveling the region lends
great credibility to Davis’s
research; especially since his
use of Arabic newspapers
and texts are as numerous as
those in Western languages.
He includes primary sources
such as issues of the newspapers mentioned in his book
and interviews with key employees of the papers. Davis
mentions his travel in the
region to support arguments
within the book, but this did
not always seem appropriate
as he never presents the
methodology of any field
studies. The inclusion of a
chapter on his experiences traveling the
region and the methodology of his research would have
enriched the text with
(and shed light on)
the difficulties of
scholarship on troubled states and war
zones.
Perhaps the most
salient aspect of
Memories of State is
its implications for the
events that have occurred since its 2005
publication. One wonders how the execution of Saddam Hussayn, the
American occupation, and
the international community’s nudges toward democracy are shaping Iraqi national identity and feeding
into the historical memory of
future generations at this
very moment.
While Saddam
Husayn was in fact
found guilty of
crimes against humanity, the Qasim
regime that preceded his rule was
an important precursor and precondition, responsible for
political assassinations, an increase in
the use of secret
police, and stripping
citizenship from
people the regime
preferred not to recognize as Iraqis.
MARCH, 2008
Page 16
STUDENT RESEARCH IN THE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES PROGRAM
LABOR STRUGGLES AND GENDER IN MODERN EGYPT
BY FRANCESCA RICCIARDONE
As the Egyptian economy
struggles along a rocky privatization path, workers adapt
and defend their interests by
engaging in different forms of
contestation. Investigating
this contestation illuminates
the interests of the workers
within a framework that is at
once social, economic, and
political. This thesis undertakes a gendered analysis of
labor contestation, focusing
on contemporary events in
the textile industry. The intent is to extend the existing
literature on labor in Egypt
and Egyptian women in development by arguing that
there is a connection between the effects of a disjointed,
unregulated
“liberalizing” economy,
marked by a privatization
push since the late 1990s,
and the rise of worker contestation. Anchoring the female
worker at the center of a
discussion of the labor movement facilitates a fuller understanding of both the economic context of the movement and the formulation of
the movement’s responses.
A fundamental concept of
this thesis is the belief that
macroeconomic patterns, as
well as their microeconomic
effects, are gendered (Corner
1995). That is, female and
male subjects, and the sociopolitical relationships between them, are affected by
Egypt’s process of economic
reform. High levels of female
participation in Egypt’s textile
industry and labor strikes
support Moghadam’s argument that globalization’s
uneven effects have indeed
“created a new constituency
– working women and organizing women – who may
herald a potent anti-systemic
movement” (1999, 367).
Other key concepts informing
my argument include the
benefit of dissolving the
monolithic category of “the
worker” by acknowledging
the organization of power
along a gender axis as well
as its organization on the
class axis (Scott 1986). In
other words, I argue the usefulness of a gender approach
to the study of labor movements. I work towards the
application of such an approach in an examination of
recent strike activity at two
Egyptian textile factories; the
Mahalla al-Kubra Misr Spinning and Weaving Company
and the Mansoura-Espana
Garment company.
From December 7-11, 2006,
over 20,000 workers staged
a sit-in at the Misr Spinning
and Weaving Company textile
factory in Mahalla al-Kubra.
The successful strike marked
the intensification of the murmuring of the labor movement since fall of 2004, and
the beginning of a stage of
heightened labor activity
across cities and industries.
In the spring of 2007, the
284 workers of the privately
owned Mansura-España textile company rejected the
management’s move to sell
the company through a sit-in
that lasted three months.
The following September, the
workers of Mahalla went on
strike again in pursuance of
the demands that had been
agreed to nine months previously, but not fulfilled. Committed journalistic coverage
at each of these events documented the struggles between the strikers, their union representatives, company
owners, and the government
of Egypt.
The coverage also featured,
and often stressed, the presence and involvement of
women in the sit-ins. A significant number of the Mahalla employees are women,
and about 75% of the employees of Mansura-España.
Some reports credit the
women of Mahalla with starting the strike activity and
accounts from Mansura acknowledge the efforts of the
female workers in opting to
strike rather than to pursue
negotiations.
vatization patterns with narratives
of workers that speak to changes
in their perceptions of job stability. I hope to illuminate the push
towards, and resistance to,
Egypt’s strategic adoption of the
neoliberal economic model. My
choice of research questions
reflects the prioritization of the
social subject within a politicaleconomic framework.
This
thesis
addresses the
following research questions: Why did
women workers
participate in these
strikes, and at
what
cost?
How
did
women participate in the
organization
Textile workers demonstrating at Mahalla, 2007
and
implementation of
these strikes?
How do
women, in and outside the
factories, view the success of
these strikes?
How do
When 20,000 workers
women view the trade union
staged a sit-in at the
structure, and the contemporary movement for its reMisr Spinning and
form? Finally, what are some
of the alternative, less promiWeaving Company
nent formulations of contestation enacted daily by
textile factory in
women to defend their labor
rights?
Mahalla al-Kubra, the
successful strike
I argue that there is a correlation between the gendered
effects of textile industry
privatization and the workers’
strikes. I will investigate this
correlation by comparing a
sketch of Egypt’s recent pri-
marked a further
intensification of the
labor movement
since 2004.
MARCH, 2008
Page 17
MES STUDENT PROFILE
KARIM EL KORANY
BY CATHERINE BAYLIN
24 years old,
New Jersey, USA
3rd Semester at AUC
MES: Where are you from?
Karim: That is a complicated
question. In the United
States, I am American. In
Egypt, I am Egyptian. My dad
is from Egypt and mom is
from Spain. I grew up speaking Spanish and English.
MES: What did you study as
an undergraduate?
Karim: English literature,
specifically Shakespeare.
MES: What career did you
plan to pursue with your degree?
Karim: I had already applied
to law schools when I
changed my mind and decided to study Arabic and
Middle East Studies. I am still
considering returning to law
after graduating from AUC.
MES: Why did you first come
to the Middle East?
Karim: I visited Egypt for the
first time with my family when
I was 12. I spoke no Arabic at
all. I came back as a studyabroad student in 2005 and
then moved here after I
graduated in 2006.
MES: What have you been
doing in Egypt besides the
MES program?
Karim: I was a full-time English teacher before beginning
an internship with Amideast,
where I still work. I am a Program Assistant for a scholarship that enables Iraqi civil
servants to study public administration and related
fields. The project involves
thousands of trainees, but I
focus on the section that
places recipients in Egyptian
universities, including AUC.
MES: What prompted you to
study the region?
Karim: Until I came to Cairo
to learn Arabic, I was completely disconnected from my
Arab identity. I could see the
twin towers on fire from my
hometown and feel the xenophobia afterwards. The
United States was going to
war in Iraq. I was ArabAmerican and didn’t have a
firm grasp of any of the major
issues. Most peoples’ impressions of the Middle East
are based on anti-Arab sentiment and terrorism nonsense, and I wanted to learn
about the situation for myself.
MES: Your MA thesis will
explore the proliferation of
private schools in Egypt. Why
did you choose this topic?
Karim: This topic provides a
window into larger questions
about the relationship between the state and the private sector as well as the
effects of neo-liberalism on
the educational sector. My
hypothesis is that the proliferation of these schools and
the companies that manage
them is directly related to the
government’s neo-liberal
reallocation of subsidies and
its fervent support for private
business. Why is the government supporting these
schools now when it once
discouraged them? This
question will be even more
provocative if my hypothesis
that the increase in the number of private schools has
been accompanied by a decrease in quality proves to be
correct. I also hope to explore
how these schools are marketing to parents and why the
parents choose them for their
children.
MARCH
2008
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
13
14
15
MESC Conference:
Islamists and
Democrats
MESC Conference:
Islamists and
Democrats
20
21
22
28
29
Desert Develop.
Center Seminar:
Community
Water Management: Blue
Room:4-6pm
9
10
16
MESC Conference: Islamists
and Democrats
17
11
18
19
Social Research
Center Seminar:
Poverty In Egypt
Blue Room
4-6pm
Public Session
Blue Room
6.30—8 PM
23
12
24
25
26
27
Public Lecture
Zachary Lockman
The US & the
Middle East
MESC Seminar:
NeoLiberalism
and NeoAuthoritarianism
In Egypt
Blue Room
4-6pm
Public Lecture
Zachary Lockman
Race, Violence
and Settler Colonialism in Palestine
Coming up
Mapping Gender in the Global South
Center for Gender and Women’s Studies
April 2, 2008, Blue Room
MIDDLE EAST STUDIES
OFFICE
5 Youssef El Guindi St. Apt. #4
Phone: (+20-2) 797-5994
E-mail:[email protected]