The Futility of Hezbollah’s New Boycott War

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Editorial

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Hezbollah’s ideological war against the US has taken a new turn, as Nasrallah recently called on his followers to boycott American made products. Many of the group’s ardent supporters were for the move, and some shops in Southern Beirut (a Hezbollah stronghold) started stacking up alternative products to make up for the void left by the boycott. But, the funny thing is that most of the alternative products were not Lebanese made, but rather Iranian made. Furthermore, the fact that many of Hezbollah’s leaders have been known to use American products was met with satire across social media. This week’s cover story by Hanin Ghaddar centers on this new boycott campaign and reasons why it will not work in Hezbollah’s favor.

The Coronavirus has been spreading like wildfire across the world.

The virus has recently made its way to the Middle East, and thus far Iran is the worst affected country in the region. Joseph Braude gives an overview of the spread of the virus in the Islamic Republic, how the regime underplayed the severity of the situation and the measures neighboring countries are taking to protect their citizens from the virus.

This week, Egypt’s longest-serving president, Hosni Mubarak, passed away at the age of 91. Having come from humble beginnings, the late president climbed his way up the military rank and became the Commander of the Egyptian Air Force. He would then play a vital role in the October 6 War as he led the surprise attack on Israeli forces. His life took a 360 turn when President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981 and he got the sudden promotion from Vice President to President.

Majalla takes a look at the late president’s life, and the various roles he took on serving his country.

As Majalla celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, Elias Harfoush, one of the publication’s veteran writers, reflects on his time writing for the magazine. As Harfoush was part of the magazine’s staff when it was first published in 1980, he had a lot of memories with Majalla. His early years with Majalla and its sister publication, Asharq Al-Awsat are especially nostalgic for him as this is when he first came to London and he admits that he felt rather homesick during those early years.

As one of the oldest civilizations in the world, Egypt has a menagerie of art styles that reflect the different cultures that took over the country during its vast history. Ancient Egypt, its sculptors, and art still captures the imagination of people both within the country and internationally.

Yasmine El-Geressi interviews Egyptian-Russian artist Dina Shalaby who uses the art style of the Ancient Egyptians as a muse for her paintings

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

Egyptian Artist Creates Work Inspired by the

46 Ancient Past, with a Story for the Future

Issue 1789- February - 28/02/2020

16 Coronavirus Adds New Layer of Iranian Isolation

28 The Strongest Military Is an Inclusive One

30 India’s Growing Surveil ance State

Spreading Quickly 40 Coronavirus Across the Globe

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34 Mean Streets

Prince Ahmad bin Salman’s Philosophy: Variety of Topics, Balance of Opinions and Drive Towards a Creative Vision In 1988, a special banquet was held in celebration of Asharq Al-Awsat’s founding. During the proceedings, British minister David Mellor gave a speech that started with the satirical line: “Welcome to the world’s largest Arab capital”.

In a sense though, he wasn’t really joking. One has to remember that at the time Beirut was ravaged in civil conflict, Cairo wasn’t appealing for everyone, and Dubai wasn’t the megacity that we know today. As a result, London had become the largest refuge point for the Arab diaspora during this period in time.

London, and Britain as a whole, also had another special aspect, the fact that it granted all its residents a cornucopia of liberties, among which was freedom of the press. It was this freedom which made the famous Fleet Street, which was home to a number of press publications, the press capital of the world. The late Prince Ahmad bin Salman bin Abdel Aziz respected the press freedom of Britain and always used to say: “We (Arabs) need to maintain the press standards of this country, as such we should not transfer our journalistic standards to London. On the contrary, we should be bringing London’s standards to the Arab world.” Despite being a successful young man in the world of business and enterprise, Prince Ahmad bin Salman sought to go into another venture: press media. It is often said that a person can seek success by “standing on the shoulders of giants”, thereby implying that “smaller individuals” need to rely on superiors to gain success. However, the late prince understood that wasn’t the case in press journalism, case in point Asharq Al-Awsat was a costly venture and maintaining its quality and expanding the scope of readership was no easy task. As such, when Asharq Al-Awsat started founding its other sister publications, it did so with the idea that all said publications were equal. The fact that Asharq Al-Awsat was the first periodical did not make it the most important one.

This sounds fantastic on paper, but Prince Ahmad bin Salman understood that it was paramount that the readers, not just the management, saw the publications in equal light. Upon taking over Majalla, the Prince insured that it had a unique political voice that gave readers distinctive perspectives on the current affairs rocking our world. The late Prince never underestimated the potential Majalla had to become one of the major Middle Eastern publications, during monthly meetings he would always say: “I want to hear everyday people say ‘I read that in Majalla’, as often as I hear them say ‘I read that in Asharq Al-Awsat’”. The success of Majalla put Asharq Al-Awsat’s philosophy of placing writers and editors-in-chief on an equal playing field into practice, and there are three major examples that demonstrate this, namely Othman El Amir, Abd El Rahman El Rashid and Adel El Tareqy’s respective transitions from Majalla writers to editors-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat.

At the time, weekly Arabic magazines were only being published by Egyptian and Lebanese institutions, and it was these magazines that were circulated all over the region. Although Prince Ahmad wanted Majalla to be the first Arab Gulf political magazine to be a household name around the region, he did not want to compete directly with the Egyptian and Lebanese counterparts which published stories that appealed mostly to their respective readers, he wanted a magazine that enticed those living both within and outside the Arabian Gulf. He did not want Majalla to feature just political pieces, he knew that there were other topics that attracted readers, as a result, Majalla had a balanced mixture of political, economic, cultural and societal articles that attracted an avid readership throughout the region.

This variety of topics, writers and guest writers gave something different to both Arab readers living in the Gulf and outside the Gulf. The latter was presented with topics that go unnoticed in their local publications, while the former was given the opportunity of discovering new writers, thinkers, and journalists that they might not have heard of before. That way Majalla became more than just a weekly magazine, it became a means of cultural exchange.

This year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Majalla’s first publication. It was during that time when a new era of Arab press had emerged, an era in which Arabic publications started to operate outside the Middle East. We now embark on another new era of press publication, and this digital era is a tough one since attracting new readers has become a much more difficult task. The emergence of digital press has pushed Majalla to make necessary changes to its operations and circulation, however, the magazine still operates under Prince Ahmad bin Salman’s three basic principles: the variety of topics, the balance of opinions and the drive towards a creative vision.

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Prince Ahmad bin Salman

This month Majalla is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The magazine was founded on February 1980 ,16, by publishers Hisham and Muhammad Ali Hafez and it quickly became one of the most important and influential printed publications by the Saudi Research and Marketing Company.

Over its long history, many respected Saudi and Arab journalists served as editors of the magazine, beginning with Abdul Karim Aboul Nasr who was succeeded by Othman Al- Omair, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, Hani Naqshbandi, Imad Al-Deen Adeeb, Abdul Azeez Al-Khodr, Abdul Wahab Al- Fayez, Adel Al-Toraifi, Salman Al-Dosari, and the current Editor-in-Chief Ghassan Charbel.

Majalla was a pivotal point in the careers of many writers who went on to become iconic Arab media figures.

Majalla

Majalla was also a pivotal point in the careers of many writers, such as Saleh Al-Qallab, Samir Atallah, Fahmi Houeidi, Abdallah Al-Mannawi, Ayman Al-Sayyad, Lateefa Al-Shaalan, Jaafar Abbas, Ali Al-Ameen, Elias Harfoush, and many others who became iconic Arab media figures.

Important authors like Nobel-prize winner Najeeb Mahfouz, Ihsan Abdul Qoddous, Baland Al-Haydari Al-Tayyeb Saleh, and Ahlam Al-Moustaghanimi regularly appeared on the pages of the magazine. The magazine also had the honour of meeting royal figures, leaders, presidents, and politicians from the Arab world and beyond.

Majalla remains loyal to its readers by publishing weekly digital editions in Arabic, English and as well as a monthly issue in Farsi. The magazine will always be devoted and loyal to its founders, its leaders, and to all those who held its name high for many decades, as well as those who still work hard to ensure its continuity for years to come.

As its founders Hisham and Mohammad Ali Hafez said while celebrating the 4th anniversary of Majalla around 36 years ago, “You, our worthy readers, are the true heroes who were behind Majalla’s success, continuity, consistency, and prosperity. The reader is always Majalla’s foremost priority‌’ And after 40 years we repeat what the founders said before: The reader is always Majalla’s foremost priority‌ Editor

The cover of the first issue of the "Al-Majalla" issued on February 1980 ,16

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Musician Dagmar Turner plays the violin during brain surgery at King’s College hospital. The medical team asked Dagmar Turner, 53, to play the instrument to ensure parts of the brain that control delicate hand movements and coordination were not damaged during the millimetre-precise surgery. Turner was diagnosed in 2013 with a brain tumour after suffering a seizure during a symphony. (Getty)

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Police officers wearing protective face masks riding horses on their way to visit residents who live in remote areas in Altay, farwest China›s Xinjiang region, to promote the awareness of the virus. (Getty)

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the virus threat and that Vice President Mike Pence would be in charge of the national response. It was one of just a handful of times that the president has appeared in the White House briefing room. Stock markets across the world have lost $3.3 trillion of value in four days of trading, as measured by the MSCI all-country index .

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak Dies Aged91

Saudi Arabia Suspends Entry for Umrah Pilgrims, Tourists Amid Coronavirus

Saudi Arabia on Thursday suspended arrivals by foreigners for the Umrah pilgrimage and tourists from two dozen countries where the new coronavirus has spread, as a growing number of cases globally deepened fears of a pandemic. The holy fasting month of Ramadan begins in late April, when visits by Muslim pilgrims accelerate for Umrah.

More than 7.5 million people performed the minor pilgrimage - as opposed to the haj - in the birthplace of Islam during 2019, according to official figures.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have not reported any coronavirus cases, but the other four Gulf Arab states have. Kuwait and Bahrain recorded more cases on Thursday, all in people who had visited Iran, bringing their totals to 43 and 33, respectively. Oman has diagnosed four cases and the United Arab Emirates,

a main air transit hub, has reported 13.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who ruled for 30 years until he was ousted in a popular uprising against corruption and autocracy, died on Tuesday at the age of 91. A partner of the West in fighting Islamists, Mubarak presided over an era of stagnation and repression at home and was an early victim of the “Arab Spring” revolutions that swept the region. He died in intensive care a few weeks after undergoing surgery. Egypt’s presidency and

Coronavirus Spreads Faster Outside China, Stoking Global Fears

The number of new coronavirus infections inside China - the source of the outbreak - was for the first time overtaken by fresh cases elsewhere on Wednesday, with Italy and Iran emerging as epicenters of the rapidly spreading illness. Asia reported hundreds of new cases, Brazil confirmed Latin America’s first infection and the new disease - COVID-19 - was also detected for the first time in Pakistan, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Romania and Algeria. U.S. health authorities, managing 59 cases so far - mostly Americans repatriated from a cruise ship in Japan - have said a global pandemic is likely. U.S. President Donald Trump, seeking to calm markets and an increasingly worried public, said in a live broadcast that the United States was “very very ready” to face

armed forces mourned him as a hero for his role in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the former air force officer will be given a military funeral. Three days of public mourning were declared and state television played clips of Mubarak with a black ribbon at the corner of the screen.

Battle Rages Over Strategic Syrian Town of Saraqeb as Humanitarian Catastrophe Unfolds

Syrian rebels backed by Turkish forces said on Thursday they had recaptured the crossroads town of Saraqeb, marking a first big push-back of a Syrian government offensive. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said developments were turning in Ankara’s favor, three weeks after the armed rebel opposition lost the northwestern town at the crossroads of two main highways to the Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Russian state television said Turkish military specialists were using using shoulder-fired missiles to try to shoot down Russian and Syrian military aircraft over Idlib province - a development

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which if confirmed would mark a serious escalation of the conflict. Syrian warplanes also launched renewed air strikes on Thursday on residential areas of Idlib city, witnesses said.

Iraq Fails to Form New Government, Prolonging Crisis

has stalled the country’s recovery from years of war. Parliament adjourned a session to approve a cabinet proposed by Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Allawi because of a lack of quorum, state TV reported, after lawmakers who opposed his nominees boycotted the session. Political infighting and alleged widespread corruption have crippled Iraq’s efforts to recover from two U.S. invasions, sanctions and the destructive war to defeat Islamic State in 2017. The country faces a mass protest movement that broke out in October and brought down former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi two months later. His cabinet has stayed on in a caretaker capacity, however. The protests, which first demanded jobs and services, quickly turned into calls for the removal of Iraq’s entire ruling elite. Protesters oppose Allawi because they view him as part of the system they want to bring down.

trophe” that would cost Democrats the White House and control of Congress. In a debate that featured candidates repeatedly shouting over one another and ignoring their time limits, Sanders’ opponents united in attacking the selfavowed democratic socialist as a risky choice to face Republican President Donald Trump in November. “Bernie will lose to Donald Trump, and Donald Trump and the House and the Senate and some of the statehouses will all go red,” billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, adding that would be “a catastrophe.” Pete Buttigieg, the moderate former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, criticized Sanders for the shifting estimates on the costs of his proposals such as government-run healthcare and warned that the front-runner would bring .about chaos

At Rowdy Debate, Democratic Rivals Warn Sanders Nomination Would be Catastrophe

Iraqi politicians failed on Thursday to agree on a new government, prolonging deadlock that has failed to resolve unprecedented mass unrest and

Democratic presidential candidates unleashed withering attacks on Bernie Sanders in a boisterous debate in South Carolina on Tuesday, assailing his ambitious economic agenda and warning his nomination would be a “catas-

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Deadly Violence to Engulfs India’s Capital New Delhi for Decades

At least 32 people have been killed in the deadliest violence to engulf India’s capital New Delhi for decades as a heavy deployment of security forces brought an uneasy calm on Thursday, a police official said. The violence began over a disputed new citizenship law on Monday but led to clashes between Muslims and Hindus in which hundreds were injured. Many suffered gunshot wounds, while arson, looting and stone-throwing has also taken place.

“The death count is now at 32,” Delhi police spokesman Anil Mittal said, adding the “entire area is peaceful now.” At the heart of the unrest is a citizenship law which makes it easier for non-Muslims from some neighboring Muslim-dominated countries to gain Indian citizenship.

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The Futility of Hezbollah’s New Boycott War Hezbollah Wants the Lebanese People to Sacrifice their Lives to Implement Iran’s Agenda and Help Save its Economy 12

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by Hanin Ghaddar In a televised speech on Sunday commemorating the death of Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, Hezbollah’s chief subtly announced a campaign to boycott American products. “Why are we not resorting to boycotting American products? This is part of the battle” Nasrallah said.

This is not the first time Hezbollah calls for boycotting US products. They have linked it in the past to conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis, and the list of products they disseminated via social media are very similar to those – in content and design – to the list that were disseminated in the past. But this time around, there’s a new angle and a clear agenda.

Hezbollah understands that boycotting American products by its constituency is futile. Even if all the people living under Iran’s umbrella decided to boycott American goods, it is highly unlikely that the US economy will shake. But Hezbollah has two objectives for this campaign.

Supporters of the Shiite Hezbollah movement watch as the movement’s leader Hasan Nasrallah delivers a speech on a screen in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on January 2020 ,12.

(Getty)

The argument of these social media discussions started with a strong boycott campaign against everything American. However, people started complaining that Hezbollah itself uses American products.

the US. In response to these comments, Hezbollah’s social media army started a new rhetoric. The new argument is that no, Hezbollah’s campaign is not about breaking the US economy, or even making causing the people challenges when they commit to this campaign. The goal is to voice a moral stance and boycott US products as much as possible. At the end of the day, they still need Twitter and Facebook, both American companies.

Another reason for this campaign is to lobby the LOBBYING THE COMMUNITY community around a cause. Hezbollah’s resistance has been put on hold for many years and the As soon as Nasrallah uttered these words, tons of Lebanese people have become very disillusioned Hezbollah’s supporters – probably those who are with Hezbollah’s resistance rhetoric. Words are organized under Hezbollah’s social media army no longer valid and it is becoming hard for the – took to Twitter and Facebook and launched ac- people to believe that Hezbollah is still a resistcounts with hashtags encouraging people to boy- ance movement. cott American products. The argument of these Hezbollah’s commanders Imad Moghnieh, his social media discussions started with a strong son Jihad, and Mustpha Badreddine were killed boycott campaign against everything American. in battle and Hezbollah did nothing to retaliate.

However, people started complaining that Hez- Then their positions in Syria and the rest of the bollah itself uses American products. region have been frequently bombed and deMany made fun of how those who are mourning stroyed by Israel and they did nothing. And now Soleimani are using American-made cars. Others their leader Qassem Soleimani was killed and pointed out how fond Soleimani and Nasrallah’s everyone expected Iran and Hezbollah to launch son – Jawad Nasrallah - are of Timberland, an a war against the US and Israel. Still, nothing American outdoors clothing brand. In one pic- happened. ture, Jawad Nasrallah is seen with two friends Therefore, a boycotting campaign seemed the while wearing a shirt with the logo of the Ameri- least that Hezbollah could do to consolidate its can company Timberland with “USA” under- resistance rhetoric, instead of launching a war neath and in another picture, Qassem Soleimani and losing whatever left of its commanders, fightis wearing a Timberland jacket. ers, and weapons. However, this is also not going These comments were embarrassing. It is clear to fly. Despite the momentum of this campaign, that Hezbollah’s – and its community – consump- it will probably fizzle as the Lebanese people – tion of American products will always challenge including the Shia – are more concerned with the its attempts to launch an ideological war against deteriorating economic crisis, and the spread of

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the Corona virus coming from Iran, than a new campaign against the US.

HELPING IRAN Fearing that this campaign is going to eventually fail and fizzle, the electronic army of the party of god decided to take advantage of the thousands of people following these social media groups, and to promote Iranian goods.

A quick look at the these groups and the discussions going on within them, it is not difficult to realize how often the group administrators are using the space to promote Iranian products – and sometimes Syrian goods – as both cheaper and an alternative to US products.

This subtle – but obvious – promotion lead to a new wave of complaints by many Lebanese who thought it was rather immoral to promote Iranian products and shops when the Lebanese farmers and factories are closing down and going bankrupt because they cannot find proper markets for their products. For example, instead of promoting Lebanese products, these groups are encouraging the Lebanese to buy Iranian cleaning products, personal care products, food, cigarettes, and even Iranian smart phones.

Going through these pages, one can clearly see how many Iranian shops, supermarkets and exhibitions have recently opened in Lebanon, mainly inside Hezbollah-controlled areas; that is in the

Instead of encouraging and promoting Lebanese products, Hezbollah wants the Lebanese to buy Iranian and Syrian ones, defy the international community, and help Iran survive sanctions.

southern suburbs of Beirut, the south of Lebanon, and the Bekaa. It is also striking that an Iranian car company – SAIPA – opened a branch in Lebanon, in addition to the fact that Iran has already flooded the Lebanese market with cheap steel and other products.

As Lebanon drowns further and further under economic and financial burdens, and as more than 40% of the Lebanese are unemployed, Iran decided to take advantage of the Lebanese people’s pains in order to move and sell its products, while the US is hitting the Iranian regime with sanctions.

Iraq has been going through the same problem for many years, and Iran has used Iraq to sell its products, until the Iraqi people decided one day that enough is enough. When the Iraqis took to the streets in October 2019, their slogans were directed against the Iranian regime as the main culprit behind the deterioration of their economy.

The Iraqi people were very clear in blaming Iran and they started a campaign to boycott Iranian products that flood the Iraqi markets, mainly

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Jawad Nasrallah (center), son of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

within Shia areas. As the Iraqi protestors started to realize that the Iraqi products should be prioritized over the Iranian ones, the anti-US rhetoric faded and the Iranian campaigns to boycott American products failed.

Now it’s Lebanon’s turn. Instead of encouraging and promoting Lebanese products, Hezbollah wants the Lebanese to buy Iranian and Syrian ones, defy the international community, and help Iran survive sanctions. All that while the Lebanese people are feeling the hunger, the desperation, and a bleak future.

Hezbollah – again – wants the Lebanese people to sacrifice their lives and futures to help implement Iran’s agenda and help save its economy, while isolating Lebanon further from the international economy.

However, despite these attempts, the Lebanese people – since they took to the streets on October 2019 – have realized that no war rhetoric or ideology, and no sectarian identity will save them from poverty and hunger. Their priorities today

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a boycotting campaign seemed the least that Hezbollah could do to consolidate its resistance rhetoric, instead of launching a war and losing whatever left of its commanders, fighters, and weapons. are very clear: save the economy, implement reforms, fight corruption, and build state institutions. Instead of the Islamic resistance, people are today calling for resisting corruption and the greed of the political elite. This scares Hezbollah, and its new campaign looks out of place.

Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Visiting Fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Why We Chose the Name Majalla There are many stories behind Majalla, which will be published on Saturday, February 1980 16, that we will share when the time is right. But today, in this article, I will tell you how we came to choose the name Majalla (Magazine), the sister publication of the Arabic international daily, Asharq Alawsat.

As always, whenever we decide to launch a new publication, everybody collaborates to come up with a list of suggested names. At the beginning of last year (1979), we chose the name Majallet Asharaq Alawsat (Middle East Magazine) through a secret ballot. And although some of us had objections over the length of the name since it is composed of three words, we were convinced that this name had several benefits. Most importantly, it is wellknown and Arab readers would recognize it wherever they are in the world.

This would increase the magazine’s popularity and help us to sell advertising space.

In July last year, when we approached our friend Mohammad Saeed Taib, CEO of Tahama, with our decision to launch a weekly political magazine named Majallet Asharaq Alawsat, he stood up and refused to sit back down until we gave him our word to change the name, adding that Tahama, which was in charge of advertisements in Asharq Alawsat newspaper, does not approve the launch of another publication with a similar name and from the same publishing house.

Abdul Kareem Abu Al Nasr, editor-in-chief of Majalla magazine, was the only person to have the list of suggested names, so he presented them while proposing a compromise which would keep us happy without causing upsetting our friend Mohammad Saeed Taib. It was a magical solution and we agreed to it without hesitation. Abdul Karim suggested that we get rid of the first and last words so the name becomes Asharq, while keeping the slogan, Arab international magazine. We then wrote an article introducing the new magazine.

Last September, Abdul Kareem and I were looking into some private matters regarding Asharq magazine when the phone rang. It was Mohammed Marouf Al-Shaibani, assistant general manager in charge of the Riyadh office, warning against naming the magazine Asharq as another weekly magazine had been published in the eastern part of the Kingdom under the same name. He explained that if we were to publish our magazine it would lead to dangerous confusion regarding distribution and subscription in Saudi Arabia and he ended the call by telling us that he had sent us a full report on the matter with a copy of the Asharq magazine attached.

I asked Abdul Kareem, “what should we do now?” He replied with amazement, “we will publish a magazine, of course, otherwise what am I doing here!” I then suggested, how about we add «Al» to «Majalla» to make «Al-Majalla».

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by Hisham Hafez

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Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Passes Away at 91 How the War Hero, Statesman and Patriot Served Egypt till His Last Breath

by Majalla-London While Gamal Abd El Nasser and Anwar El Sadat held differing ideologies and endorsed diverging foreign policies, they both had a lot in common.

Both came from modest backgrounds and persevered through the ranks of the military, both had strong charisma that captivated people in both Egypt and the Arab world and both cared deeply for their country. While late President Hosni Mubarak had a much more reserved persona than his predecessors, he too endured an impoverished life to become a high ranking officer in the military and he too had a deep love for Egypt that can never be put into question.

MODEST BEGINNINGS, HIGH AMBITIONS Mubarak was born on May 4, 1928, in the northern governorate of Monufia. Hailing from a poor background, he sought a career in the military as a means of climbing the social ladder. As a result, he enrolled in the military academy when he was a teenager, but soon his talent would see him move towards the Air Force Academy. As his early military career took place during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the young Mubarak wit-

nessed crucial events in Egypt’s history, namely the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948, the 1952 Egyptian Revolution which saw the removal of King Farouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s ascendency in 1956. Like many Egyptians who lived during this time period, a great sense of patriotism and kinship towards fellow countrymen was instilled into the young Air Force officer. He was officially commissioned by the Air Force in 1950, and his immense skill in flying fighter jets saw him become a flight instructor for the academy. It was also during the 1950s when Mubarak met the love of his life, Suzanne Thabet, a young woman who came from a privileged background. In spite of this, her parents allowed her to wed Mubarak having recognized him as an ambitious young man who would become something big someday.

They were right, as his hard work and perseverance would see him become the Air Force Chief of Staff in 1972.

OCTOBER: HIS FINEST HOUR IN THE AIRFORCE As the commander of the Egyptian Air Force, Mubarak had the difficult mission of kick-starting the surprise attack on Israeli forces during the October 6 War. Mubarak knew that he was in charge

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Mubarak’s leadership resulted in unprecedented levels of economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s.

A file photo dated on March 2007 ,23 shows Former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak attends a meeting in Ankara, Turkey. (Getty)

of a make or break moment for the Egyptian military, if done right the rest of the forces would be able to carry out their operations. But if any mistakes were made on the Air Force’s part then the Egyptian military’s entire strategy would falter.

Fortunately, under his command, the first airstrike was a success and served as an important turning point in the war. While the effects of the war were not immediate, it was a major factor that led to both Egypt and Israel sitting down at the negotiating table, and after years of diplomatic effort, Egypt regained the Sinai Peninsula which it had lost in the aftermath of the 1967 War.

ASCENDING TO THE PRESIDENCY His efforts during the war did not go unrewarded, in 1975 President Sadat named him as the new Vice President of the Republic. As Vice President,

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he oversaw a major transformation for Egypt as Sadat was trying to steer his country away from its previous socialist policies and embrace more open market policies paving the way to major economic growth in the country. He also oversaw Sadat’s efforts to reconcile with Israel, something that resulted in Egypt’s temporary expulsion from the Arab League. Just as October 6, 1973, was a major milestone in Mubarak’s life the same date in 1981 would be another one. During a military parade commemorating the war, a number of Islamist terrorists murdered President Sadat sending shockwaves across the country and the Arab world. Suddenly, Mubarak’s life was turned upside down as in a matter of hours he transitioned from Vice President to Egypt’s new President.

While Mubarak might have dreamt of succeeding Sadat, never in his life did he want his succession to be as graphic as this.

For the next 30 years, Mubarak served as President of Egypt. As a leader, Mubarak expanded upon Sadat’s economic policies making Egypt a great place for businessmen and entrepreneurs, and his leadership resulted in unprecedented levels of economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s. He also tried to tackle some of his society’s ills, as he enacted policies to alleviate the problems of overpopulation. His wife, Suzanne, also founded an initiative that aimed to reduce the country’s levels of illiteracy.

As president, Mubarak also played a major role at the international stage. He had warned Saddam Hussein against invading Kuwait. Hussein did not heed these warnings and proceeded to occupy Kuwait in 1990. Immediately afterward, Mubarak led the emergency Arab League meeting which ended in a rejection of Hussein’s operations, and it was at that moment when Mubarak and the Arab League had to take a major decision. While the thought of Arab armies fighting each other was and still is undesirable, the Arab League made the choice to begrudgingly aid Western militar-

ies in repelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Under Mubarak’s command, the Egyptian military was one of the major coalition forces that participated in Operation Desert Storm. Mubarak would also play a major mediating role in the peace talks between Palestine and Israel during the 1990s and 2000s

MUBARAK’S PATRIOTISM, HIS LEGACY AND BEYOND In 2011, major protests around Egypt called for Mubarak to resign as president. Although he was President of the Republic, there was another title he had and valued much more: patriot. As such, Mubarak decided to listen to his fellow Egyptians and resign from his post, ending a three-decade-long tenure becoming

Although Mubarak was President of the Republic, there was another title he had and valued much more: patriot.

the country’s longest-serving president. Even though so many other leaders in his position would have fled and sought refuge in another country, Mubarak’s love for his country caused him to remain living in Egypt amongst his people. His post-presidential life wasn’t easy as he faced a trial over alleged corruption charges, but he was cleared of these charges in 2017 and was able to live the remainder of his life in harmony. Mubarak made virtually no public appearances since his resignation, but in October 2019 a YouTube video from a channel called Mubarak archives was uploaded. The 25-minute-long video showed the retired Mubarak reflecting on his memories of the October War and the struggles the military endured during 1973. It was as if the late President felt that his time on this earth was coming to an end, and so he wanted to leave behind one final message to his people and the youth of Egypt. During his lifetime, Mubarak went from an underprivileged young man to Commander of the Air Force, to war hero and President of the Republic. While he will always be remembered for making lasting impacts while occupying those posts, his greatest legacy will always be his patriotism and love for Egypt

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From L to R, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, US President Bill Clinton, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan pose for the family picture at the end of the Sharm el-Sheikh Middle East summit 17 October 2000. (Getty)

Egyptian president Anwar al Sadat (1981 - 1918) speaks with Vice President Hosni Mubarak while they travel from Cairo to Alexandria in the Egyptian presidential helicopter, 1977.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (R) shakes hands with jet pilots during a visit to a military dependency, 29 April 1991.

(Getty)

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Coronavirus Adds New Layer of Iranian Isolation

Allied Countries Cancel Flights and Suspend Visas in a Vote of NoConfidence in Tehran’s Efforts at Containment

by Joseph Braude Iran’s long list of adversaries has grown by one more as coronavirus has spread rapidly throughout

the country, infecting even senior officials. The outbreak has added a new layer of isolation, as major Iranian allies and trading partners have cancelled flights and suspended visas. Meanwhile, despite reassuring rhetoric from President Rouhani, Iranian

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officialdom evinces signs of escalating alarm.

CLOUDS GATHER AS CORONAVIRUS CASES MULTIPLY Over the last ten days, Iran has won the unenviable distinction of hosting the largest number of coronavirus cases outside of China, where the virus is believed to have originated. President Hassan Rouhani attempted to play down the extent of the threat and reassure Iranians not to be afraid of coronavirus. Indeed, he went so far as to blame Tehran’s “enemies” for exaggerating the threat, saying «we should not allow America to add a new virus, named disruption of social activities and immense fear, on top of coronavirus. This is a conspiracy that we are witnessing and you also can see in foreign propaganda.»

Yet even as Iranian officials were seeking to reassure the public and the international community that the virus was contained, the leader of the Iranian government’s task force charged with containing coronavirus, Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi — who had urged the public not to overreact to the virus only days earlier — announced in a homemade video that he himself had tested positive for the disease. So far the Iranian Ministry of Health admits that 95 Iranians have tested positive for the disease, but Western health researchers suspect the total may be as high as 18,000.

Iranian Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi (L) wipes his sweating as he speaks on his tests positive for coronavirus as he holds a press conference with Iranian Government spokesman and Spokesperson for the Prevention and Struggle for Corona, created by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Ali Rabiei (R) in Tehran, Iran on February 2020 ,24.

(Getty)

IRANIAN ISOLATION DEEPENS Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, February 25, in Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. was «deeply concerned» that the Islamic Republic government «may have suppressed vital details about the outbreak.»

Pompeo went on to decry the Iranian government’s policy of censoring unflattering news and to urge «all nations, including Iran, [to] tell the truth about the coronavirus and cooperate with international aid organizations.”

Few nations appear prepared to take Tehran at its word that the virus is under control. The UAE took the extraordinary step of banning all flights to and from Iran. According to the Emirati General Civil Aviation Authority’s statement, “effective immediately… all passenger and cargo aircraft traveling to and from Iran will be suspended for a period of one week, and could be up for extension.”

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Despite the calm reassurances from Iranian officials, such drastic steps from friendly or neutral governments are difficult to interpret as anything other than a vote of no-confidence in Tehran’s efforts at containment.

Perhaps equally surprising, the Russian government, which often behaves as a de facto Iranian ally, announced it was effectively barring Iranians from entry into its territory. On February 26, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova announced Russian authorities planned to cease issuing visas for regular and transit travel to Iranian citizens. Despite the calm reassurances from Iranian officials, such drastic steps from friendly or neutral governments are difficult to interpret as anything other than a vote of no-confidence in Tehran’s efforts at containment.

AN UNDERWHELING RESPONSE Indeed, from what can be observed from afar, those efforts have done little to merit confidence. In one crucial measure of the trustworthiness of Iranian reassurances, independent flight trackers have confirmed that Iran’s Mahan Air airline, a partially owned subsidiary of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, has continued flights to four Chinese cities in the past three weeks despite consistent denials by Iranian officials. China, of course, has been the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak with uncounted tens of thousands of infected cases.

Iranian officials themselves have begun behaving in ways that suggest they are considerably more alarmed than their rhetoric indicates. On Monday, within the halls of the Majles, Iranian legislators voted against the general outlines of the government›s proposed budget bill and to cease all further deliberations over fears that lingering in the building risked exposure to the virus. One anonymous MP told Iranian press that «if the Majles had approved the general outlines of the bill, the parliamentary regulations would force the MPs to hold two consequent Majlis sessions per day», which would have meant congregating further and risking infection.

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The Strongest Military Is an Inclusive One Why Equality Wins Wars

by Jason Lyall What makes an army successful in battle? A few factors come to mind: strength in numbers, tactical acumen, the type of political institutions at home.

New technologies, including artificial intelligence, drones, and hypersonic weapons, might also tip the

balance. But one of the most important determinants of battlefield performance is consistently overlooked: equality among soldiers, regardless of their ethnicity.

How societies treat their constituent ethnic groups can make the difference between stunning success and crushing defeat once the shooting starts. As I argue

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in my new book, the last two centuries of warfare show that inclusive armies—meaning that all ethnic groups represented in the military are considered full citizens of the state they are serving—enjoy far greater success than non-inclusive ones. When armies are drawn from marginalized or repressed ethnic groups, by contrast, performance suffers.

These divided armies typically spend as much time coercing their own soldiers to fight as they do actually waging war against the enemy.

The last two centuries of warfare show that inclusive armies enjoy far greater success than noninclusive ones.

Ethnically divided militaries end up trapped in straitjackets of their own design. They also offer a warning: military power flows not from soldiers’ weapons but from the relative status of those who wield them. With populism and xenophobia on the march globally, militaries that succumb to these currents will find themselves vulnerable to armies— and societies—that preserve hard-won inclusion.

When states go to war, these arrangements carry over into their militaries, where ethnic inequalities are extremely corrosive. Soldiers drawn from marginalized or repressed ethnic groups will be reluctant to fightand die for a regime that subjugates them. They are also more likely to bond along ethnic lines tocollectively resist or subvert their superiors.

Military commanders, sensing these dangers, often take steps toprevent indiscipline—they may rig the ethnic composition of their units to prevent soldiers in the same ethnic group from banding together, or they may simplify their tactics to foreclose opportunities for these soldiers to defect or desert to the enemy.

Some even resort to mass violence against their own soldiers to compel what they cannot command.

PATCHWORK ARMIES

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga women fighters speak together during a training session by German military officers during the German Defence Minister›s visit at a facility on the outskirts of Arbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region, on August ,21 2019. (Getty)

We tend to write about armies as anonymous machines, faceless and uniform, but the reality is much more complicated. Diversity, particularly in terms of ethnic makeup, has characterized military organizations for centuries. Since 1800, the typical army has counted soldiers from five different ethnic groups in its ranks. Napoleon’s Grande Armée contained more Poles, Germans, Italians, and Dutch than French soldiers during its fateful 1812 march to Moscow. The nineteenth-century armies of Qing China integrated Han, Mongol, and Manchu populations and relied on numerous local auxiliaries.

France, Italy, and the United Kingdom all built colonial armies in which their own soldiers were minorities. During World War II, Nazi Germany deployed more than two million non-Germans from at least 20 different ethnicities on the eastern front.

The“Russian” Red Army was no less diverse. Its 45th Rifle Division had soldiers from 28 ethnic groups when it decamped at Stalingrad in 1942.

How such armies perform on the battlefield depends on whether they can manage the diversity in their ranks. And since armies reflect the states that send them, the answer comes down to how the states in question treat their constituent ethnic groups. Some construct inclusive national identities that afford equal political status to all. Others, however, exploit ethnic divisions and discrimination as tools of rule. In more extreme cases, states impose a strict hierarchy of citizenship and belonging, with “alien” populations violently relegated to the bottom.

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Yet such measures exact a steep toll on battlefield performance. Saddled with disgruntled soldiers, left with a reduced menu of tactics, and forced to divert resources to sanctioning their own soldiers, divided armies enter battle at a significant disadvantage to their more egalitarian foes. Put simply, diversity without equality is dangerous.

THE COST OF INEQUALITY To measure just how costly military inequality is, I built a data set, Project Mars, that maps ethnic division in the ranks of nearly 300 armies in 250 conventional wars since 1800. I then evaluated how well these militaries performed in battle, tracking how many casualties they suffered and inflicted, whether they were prone to mass defection or desertion, and whether they deployed specialized units known as “blocking detachments” to shoot their own retreating soldiers.

The results paint a clear picture. States that treat all soldiers the same way regardless of ethnicity typically field powerful militaries; belligerents with ethnically divided armies are much less effective.

Unequal militaries have a 75 percent chance of suffering more casualties than those inflicted on the enemy, compared with a 25 percent chance for more

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egalitarian belligerents. Mass desertion, a fairly rare occurrence in diverse but egalitarian militaries, is a near inevitability in highly unequal militaries. Mass defection, too, is more common when militaries don’t treat all their soldiers equally. And as inequality among soldiers rises, armies become far more likely to field deadly blocking detachments.

History is littered with cautionary tales of fighting while divided. Consider, for example, the crushing defeat of a -60,000strong Mahdist army by a much smaller Anglo-Egyptian force at Omdurman, in what today is Sudan, in 1898. That lopsided victory is typically ascribed to the superiority of Western military technology at the time, above all an early type of machine gun that decimated the Mahdist forces. But that account misses another critical factor: the sky-high inequality in the ranks of the Mahdist military. The leader of the Mahdist state, the khalifa, ruled atop a narrow ethnocracy and had unleashed repeated waves ofviolence against his own people.

His military was largely composed of repressed ethnic groups and tribes, half of which deserted or defected well before Omdurman. Special units of regime loyalists forced the reluctant soldiers that remained into battle. Small wonder, then, that they fared so poorly.

Inequality affects even individual units. During the brutal Battle for Moscow in October 1941, German troops encircled the 38th and 108th Soviet Rifle Divisions. The two divisions, trapped side by side, were roughly the same size and had comparable weapons. But only the 108th managed to fight its way out, losing nearly three-quarters of its soldiers in the process. The 38th was overrun and destroyed so completely that it was struck from the official Soviet roster of units. The main difference between the two? The more successful 108th was mixed but mostly Russian in its ethnic composition, whereas the 38th was drawn almost exclusively from repressed national groups in the North Caucasus.

A PERSISTENT THREAT What may seem like an artifact of a bygone era of mass industrial warfare in fact determines battlefield success to this day. Consider the wars raging across the Middle East and South Asia. The spectacular

failure of Sunni-dominated Iraqi Army units to fend off the advancing troops of ISIS, in 2014 and 2015 can be traced to soldiers’ grievances over the marginalization of the Sunni populace under then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Likewise, the Syrian Army, led principally by Alawite officers, has been gutted by tens of thousands of desertions and defections among the majority-Sunni rank and file, who resent their second-class status in President Bashar al-Assad’s narrow ethnosectarian vision of Syria. And the Afghan National Army continues to suffer rampant desertion owing to interethnic abuses in its ranks and suspicion among non-Pashtun soldiers of the pro-Pashtun-leaning government in Kabul.

These pitfalls will remain as long as ethnicity is a salient cleavage easily exploited for political gain.

Even Western democracies, including the United States, are not immune: the tribalism, populism, and white nationalism taking hold in these societies may at some point relegate certain identity groups to second-class status, including in the military.

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Memebrs of the Army›s 369th Infantry Regiment prepare to march with fellow soldiers, boy scouts and various other military aligned groups in the 369th Infantry Regiment Parade in Harlem on May ,18 2014 in New York City.

The parade, which takes place on the historic Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, looks to celebrate the contribution African Americans and Puerto Ricans have made to military. (Getty)

The spectacular failure of Sunnidominated Iraqi Army units to fend off the advancing troops of ISIS, in 2014 and 2015 can be traced to soldiers’ grievances over the marginalization of the Sunni populace under then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. forcing soldiers to fight

Elsewhere, that outcome is much closer: China’s repression of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet and India’s new anti-Muslim citizenship bill are both examples of ambitious but risky efforts to recast citizenship along rigid ethnic lines. If these governments persist, their efforts will sooner or later affect their militaries, too.

Ethnic politics will also shape the use of next-generation technologies in future conflicts. Adversaries will be able to microtarget disgruntled soldiers with social media, encouraging and facilitating their defections.

Rigid command-and-control structures, designed to prevent indiscipline by marginalized or repressed soldiers, will be a particular disadvantage against fast-moving, artificial intelligence–driven enemies.

But AI might also allow the commanders of divided armies to better monitor potentially disloyal soldiers.

To prevent desertion or defection, leaders might track their troops with biometric devices and restrict them to certain geographic areas, policed by drones or other automated systems. Such technologies would not only create a credible threat of punishment,

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harder to avoid sanction; they might also embolden leaders to risk new wars.

Factoring in the effects of ethnic inequality could give states a leg up in future conflicts, affording predictive insights into an adversary’s potential military performance. Unlike other factors, inequality is relatively easy to assess from the outside, largely through open sources such as social media, which can provide clues almost in real time. With sufficient information, military planners could supplement their traditional data—on the enemy’s equipment and organizational structure—with ethnic inequality scores for individual units. They could then pinpoint units prone to break under pressure or those that will standand fight, helping to shape campaign plans before a war begins. Commanders could use similaranalyses to evaluate the resilience and combat power of local proxy forces, newly rebuilt militaries in allied states, and even insurgent organizations such as the Taliban or ISIS. The lesson for modern militaries is clear: every military is a risky experiment in social engineering, and centuries of warfare point to the power of inclusion for turning that experiment into a success.

Equality creates lethal armies; inequality weakens them from within. Bigotry and racism are selfinflicted wounds that undermine national security.

At a time of rising uncertainty in world politics, U.S. policymakers would do well to deepen their commitment to a diverse and equal military.

Inclusion is not only a good in itself but a means of bolstering the nation’s military power in stillunimagined wars.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

After the Invasion of Kuwait, Edward Saeed was Under Attack Until He Stopped Writing for Majalla The year 1990 was difficult for everyone in the field of journalism and politics. The Arab media was divided, war was declared on all levels, and unaffiliated journalists were disoriented. Additionally, French authorities locked down all Arab media establishments tied to Saddam’s regime in the wake of his occupation of Kuwait, and we found ourselves amidst a raging war which we neither planned nor were ready for.

Majalla magazine played a crucial role in the ongoing battle by reporting the invasion and the international vigilance to confront it. On another front, powerful pro-Saddam media was also widespread, and it stated that Iraq is facing the western alliance and claimed an alleged plot against Baghdad, ignoring the displacement of more than one million Kuwaiti and other individuals and heinous executions committed against them.

Within this brawl, pro-Saddam associates launched a campaign against Majalla magazine, and articles were written attacking the prominent scholar and writer Edward Saeed who was one of the magazine’s leading writers. The late Edward Saeed was constantly asked to leave the so-called “oil nations” and join Saddam’s division.

At the end of the year, I was surprised by Dr Saeed’s letter of apology to carry on writing in Majalla, admitting he faces enormous pressures demanding him to stop. We exchanged correspondence, and I had no need to explain to him the nature of the political dispute and I reassured him that Majalla magazine never held anyone accountable for their views or inclinations, and in return, no one should expect from us political statements consistent with theirs. Indeed, Saeed was known for criticizing Saddam and his occupation of Kuwait and also refusing speech polarity from Western countries and their ongoing silence towards the Israeli occupation, without linking the two matters together.

Unfortunately, he was subjected to pressure and refrained from writing, for many of his friends in Washington, who were Arab figures, diplomats, and intellectuals of the Arab American community, allied with Saddam and formed an opposition group supporting the Iraqi invasion back then!

Edward Saeed continued visiting us in London and valued that Majalla was the first Arab publication which transported him to the world of the Arab readers who used to read his translated intellective writings from American media and other Western publishing houses.

Majalla was Saeed’s first experience writing to Arabs, and it revealed everything he used to overlook. He gained vast popularity and respect among the Arab intellectuals, and I had met Saeed during my days in the US. I attended his first lecture at the American University in Washington when I was studying there in the early ’80s and then working as a reporter for the Al-Jazeera newspaper in the capital as well. Saeed had exceeded the limits of his academic fame, as he was a professor of comparative English literature at Columbia University, and he became one of the most prominent figures in political media discussions in the United States. He was also known for his most renowned book «Orientalism» and other publications such as “Kharej al Makan”. Moreover, he was an accomplished pianist.

When Saeed began writing for Majalla, we were concerned about his Arabic writing kills, and he told me he asks his mother to proofread his works. Then we agreed he would write his article in English.

Saeed is greatly valued in the West. His worth was only recognized by the elites of the Arab world, and this made him one of the Magazines very important pillars for many years. * Abdulrahman al-Rashed is the Chairman of Al Arabiya›s Editorial Board and former General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel. A veteran and internationally acclaimed journalist, he has served as the editor of Majalla magazine, and is a former editor-in-chief of the Majalla’s sister publication the leading Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat.

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by Abdulrahman Al-Rashid

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India’s Growing Surveillance State New Technologies Threaten Freedoms in the World’s Largest Democracy

by Gautam Bhatia

march. And in Hyderabad, police stopped a pedestrian and fingerprinted him to check for “past criminal activity.”

In December 2019, as protests against a controversial new citizenship law swept India, three incidents in different parts of the country revealed the state’s growing powers of surveillance. In Delhi, police officers used facial recognition devices to screen individuals entering a protest venue.

In Chennai, surveillance drones circled above a protest

While surveillance technology has proliferated in India over the last decade, institutional and legal safeguards have not kept pace. The Indian Parliament has yet to enact a data protection law, and the courts have failed to adequately grapple with the ethical and constitutional challenges posed

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by invasive new technologies. The Indian public, for its part, has largely shrugged off the steady creep of the surveillance state, which now collects huge amounts of data in a legal and judicial vacuum—and at times in open defiance of the law and judicial orders.

India’s neighbor to the north, China, looms large in international media as an Orwellian state, with its expanding use of facial recognition technology and invasive data collection practices. By contrast, India is often portrayed as a chaotic democracy, its government far weaker and less capable than the fine-tuned autocracy in Beijing. That image belies the changing reality in India, where the government’s embrace of powerful new surveillance technologies increasingly threatens the rights of its people.

THE DATABASE STATE

The footage of the CCTV cameras from different areas is seen after the inauguration of the Integrated Command and Control Centre of Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) by Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, at Sector44-, near Huda City Center Metro Station on December 2019 ,7 in Gurugram, India. (Getty)

In recent years, police forces have begun to routinely fingerprint and use facial recognition devices on individuals deemed “suspicious”—invariably without any evidence of wrongdoing—in broad sweep-and-search actions that often target poor neighborhoods heavily populated by Muslims and migrants from north India. The CEO of an Indian facial recognition software company called FaceTagr made the pervasive character of such surveillance starkly clear when he proudly proclaimed that his company’s new technology would enable the police to photograph anyone who looked suspicious and check the image against a criminal database.

Indeed, the police used FaceTagr in exactly this way to screen individuals at a popular festival. Such “dragnet” screening is a blatant violation of privacy rights, as it essentially treats every individual like a potential suspect, subject to an endless continuing investigation. The rot, however, starts from the top: the surveillance activities of India’s security agencies are exempt from legislative oversight.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have drawn criticism for instituting policies that threaten civil rights and undermine the constitutional order, including the expansion in 2019 of India’s antiterror laws that dangerously broaden the government’s scope of action in battling “terrorism.” But the trend toward intensified use of surveillance technologies predates the current government.

Electronic databases of intercepted telecommunications, in particular, began to proliferate after the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed 165 people. Chief among these databases is the Central Monitoring System (CMS), a centralized telephone interception system that “automates” the wiretapping of criminal suspects, replacing old-fashioned manual interception.

Since its inception, authorities have kept the workings of the CMS wrapped in secrecy. But coupled with the fact that existing law exerts minimal scrutiny over telephone

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In particular, the distribution of information about individuals across different databases enables profiling, the kind of -360degree view of people’s lives that creates the potential for vast abuse by both state and nonstate agencies. interception requests, the centralization of the interception architecture under the CMS has concerned many legal observers and activists. The same is true of the plan to introduce a far more intrusive surveillance system called Netra, which would automatically intercept voice traffic over the Internet via Skype and other online platforms through the use of predefined filters that pick up words such as “attack,” “bomb,” “blast,” or “kill.” As with the CMS, the Indian government has disclosed little about Netra’s operation—it’s unclear to what extent the systems are in use. Though both the CMS and Netra are supposed to be standalone surveillance systems, the government has begun building a more centralized network of India’s intelligence operations, forging a national intelligence grid across several government agencies and a criminal tracking system that seeks to connect all of India’s police stations to a “national database of criminals.”

Supporters of such measures argue that intelligence agencies can perform their jobs much more efficiently if surveillance is centralized and automated rather than more distributed, federated, and manual. But the expansion of surveillance databases and the centralization of information pose real dangers. In particular, the distribution of information about individuals across different databases enables profiling, the kind of -360degree view of people’s lives that creates the potential for vast abuse by both state and nonstate agencies.

This is a particularly fraught issue in India, where in the past malign actors have used voter rolls and other sources of information about identity to targetindividuals and communities during periods of communal riots and violence.

THE PERILS OF AADHAAR The most pervasive form of government surveillance in India comes not in the form of some secret database but as a card.

A Congress party–run government launched the Aadhaar program in 2009 with the stated goal of giving every Indian a clear, stable form of identification—many Indians lack official documents such as birth certificates and therefore struggle to access banking services or welfare benefits. Over one billion people are now enrolled in Aadhaar, making it

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the largest biometric identification system in the world. Since its advent, subsequent governments, including Modi’s, have expanded its application. Though authorities pitched Aadhaar as a means to better provide public services, the system had other, more dangerous uses. Speaking a decade ago, the former intelligence officer (and current National Security Adviser) Ajit Doval revealed that Aadhaar “was intended to wash out aliens and unauthorized people.” The Modi government tried to make enrollment in Aadhaar mandatory for banking transactions and mobile phone connections, but the Supreme Court invalidated these requirements in 2018.

Nevertheless, Aadhaar remains necessary to pay income tax and access welfare benefits.

Aadhaar’s creators chose a centralized database—as opposed to a more segmented, federated format that would have made broad surveillance and profiling more difficult—and they rolled out the entire program without accompanying legislation in order to circumvent challenges; in a 2013 interview with Forbes, Aadhaar’s founder, the entrepreneur turned politician Nandan Nilekani, suggested that if the government implemented Aadhaar quickly, opposition to the system would be unable to consolidate. Parliament eventually enacted a law sanctioning Aadhaar in 2016 (five years after enrollments had begun). A large team of lawyers—which I was a part of after 2016—challenged the constitutional validity of Aadhaar, but the Supreme Court upheld the program in 2018 on the basis that those who felt their data had been wrongly collected could always “opt out” of the system.

(The court’s reasoning made little sense, because enrolling in Aadhaar had already become mandatory to access subsidies and make income tax payments.) The Supreme Court did

The CEO of an Indian facial recognition software company called FaceTagr made the pervasive character of such surveillance starkly clear when he proudly proclaimed that his company’s new technology would enable the police to photograph anyone who looked suspicious and check the image against a criminal database.

strike down a provision in the 2016 law that allowed private companies to utilize the Aadhaar database, but a few months later Parliament reenacted that provision in almost exactly the same form (a leaked conversation in early 2019 between industry lobbyists and an official who worked on the Aadhaar program suggested that private companies sought to persuade the government to reconsider the court decision and allow the private sector access to the database).

The threats Aadhaar poses to individual rights are legion.

Already, authorities have allegedly used information collected via Aadhaar to illegally purge voter rolls in certain states. Another threat springs from the controversial National Register of Citizens, a cataloging process intended to identify illegal immigrants in the border state of Assam that identified over four million people allegedly living illegally in India.

The government may sync the biographical information of these “noncitizens” with the Aadhaar database to ensure that these people cannot access welfare benefits anywhere in the country. Authorities could therefore use Aadhaar as a form of “blacklisting” and “whitelisting” individuals—a worrying possibility that lawyers raised before the Supreme Court in the 2018 hearings, but to no avail. Empowered to unilaterally deactivate any individual’s Aadhaar, the government has the authority to render that person “civilly dead,” or unable to function in society.

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A security guard shows broken CCTV cameras one day after the Delhi Police stormed the Zakir Husain Library and beat up students Sunday evening, at Jamia Millia Islamia on December 2019 ,17 in New Delhi, India. (Getty)

the state for a specific purpose, that information can be used only for that purpose), “data minimization” (no more data can be collected than strictly necessary to fulfill a legitimate state goal), and proportionality (government action targeting an individual must be commensurate with that individual’s actions).

While digital databases of some kind or the other are in use in many societies, the wider context of its use makes Aadhaar particularly dangerous. It builds a centralized and pervasive database in a country with weak data protection legislation and a culture of state impunity when it comes to surveillance and the abuse of rights. Its current “function creep,” where Aadhaar becomes a drawbridge that is pulled up to exclude individuals who have been declared noncitizens from accessing basic necessities required to function in society, is an example of the perils of this particular database.

TRANSPARENT CITIZENS, OPAQUE GOVERNMENT There are several ways to check the overreach of Indian state surveillance. The first is to design databases so that information silos cannot be merged. Yes, such a change may have an adverse impact on collaboration between different agencies of government. That is, however, precisely the point: limiting the information that the state possesses at any given time about its citizens is a crucial part of protecting liberty and privacy. That safeguard also needs to be enshrined in law: India needs robust data protection legislation, modeled perhaps on a European Union law that holds member states to strict legal standards for data collection, storage, and use. These strictures include, for instance, “purpose limitation” (if data are collected by

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At present, a committee of the Indian Parliament is considering a proposed data protection bill approved by the cabinet. The bill, however, falls well short of international standards, global best practices, and Indian constitutional principles. For example, it provides sweeping powers to the state: the government can exempt “any” government agency from the provisions of the bill if it is “necessary or expedient” to do so “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, [and] public order.” It dispenses with the proportionality standard in favor of the much broader and vaguer “expediency,” thus allowing critics to warn of the government having a near “carte blanche” in its surveillance practices. Indeed, the present bill is a revised version of the legislation that was sent to the cabinet in mid2019-; the head of the committee that devised the earlier bill—retired Supreme Court Justice B. N. Srikrishna—himself remarked that in its new form it could turn India into an “Orwellian state.” In the meantime, a set of scholars and civil society activists drafted an alternative bill that they argue is more in line with both the Indian constitutional framework and global best practices (in the interest of full disclosure, I assisted in the drafting of this alternative “civil society bill”).

In a functioning democracy, concerns about large-scale civil rights violations caused by surveillance activities should be litigated in the courts. But the recent track record of India’s judicial branch on such issues does not inspire confidence. The Madras High Court, for instance, sanctioned the use of drones in surveilling protesters in December. The constitutional challenge to Aadhaar languished for six years and was heard by the Supreme Court only in 2018, when the program had become a fait accompli.

Perhaps the most effective way to challenge—and roll back—India’s surveillance apparatus is through public pressure; only when issues of privacy become political and a part of mainstream social movements does the state become more transparent to its citizens. For example, such a movement successfully persuaded Parliament in 2005 to enact legislation guaranteeing the right to information (the RTI Act requires government departments to provide information to all citizens at minimal cost). Until that time, Indians will continue to remain vulnerable to a rapidly expanding surveillance state.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Mean Streets The Global Traffic Death Crisis

by Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow Some causes of death have little trouble catching the public’s attention. Avian flu, Ebola, and Zika have dominated news cycles and prompted international travel advisories. Plane crashes interrupt broadcasts and lead to thorough government investigations.

Cancer, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS now

attract billions of dollars of research. But one of the biggest killers of all gets little attention from governments, the media, or the general public. Car crashes killed 1.35 million people in 2016—the last year for which World Health Organization data are available—a grisly 3,698 deaths a day. Traffic injuries are now the top killer of people aged five to 29 globally, outpacing any illness and exceeding the combined annual casualties of all of the world’s

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armed conflicts. And the toll continues to rise: it grew by 100,000 in just three years, from 2013 to 2016. This does not include the up to 50 million people who are hit and injured by motor vehicles each year, some grievously, but who nonetheless survive. The economic losses are estimated at three percent of global GDP. In many high-income countries, the per capita traffic death rate has dropped over the last 50 years, in part thanks to advances in car safety and stricter drunk-driving laws. In the United States, traffic fatalities have fallen by nearly a third since the middle of the twentieth century. But even so, 36,560 Americans died in car crashes in 2018— about as many as were killed by guns. Moreover, the news is getting worse for people not in a vehicle.

In 2018, the number of Americans killed by cars while walking or riding a bike reached 7,140— the highest since 1990, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and a 41 percent increase since 2008.

Globally, the absolute number of traffic deaths has crept upward as ever-greater numbers of people make more trips. Low-income countries, with lax safety standards and poorly designed roads, fare the worst: they boast just one percent of the world’s motor vehicles but suffer 13 percent of total traffic deaths. Ethiopia, for instance, had 26.7 traffic deaths per 100,000 residents in 2016, almost ten times the rate in Sweden and double that in the United States.

A general views shows the destroyed al-Tunsi public market also known as the Friday market after a vehicle crashed off a nearby bridge falling onto the market and killing the occupants, and wounding many others in southern Cairo on June ,22 2010. Top right is a grave yard which resemble uncompleted shells of small buildings.

(STR/AFP via Getty Images)

To the extent that policymakers have reacted to this crisis, they have tended to do so through incremental measures: passing universal seat-belt laws, mandating air bags and antilock brakes, lowering speed limits, and raising penalties for drunk driving. These are valuable steps, but they are nowhere near enough. That’s because the root cause of traffic danger isn’t defective cars or unruly drivers. It’s the roads themselves.

DANGEROUS BY DESIGN At the turn of the twentieth century, city streets were largely shared spaces, where people on foot mixed in the street with vendors, streetcars, cyclists, and carriages. The arrival of the motor vehicle was initially viewed with horror, as U.S. traffic deaths climbed from just 26 in 1899 to 29,592 in 1929. To increase speed and safety, streets were widened and cleared of obstacles. Engineers and public officials jammed multilane roads, highways, and bridges

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Traffic injuries are now the top killer of people aged five to 29 globally, outpacing any illness and exceeding the combined annual casualties of all of the world’s armed conflicts. into previously quiet neighborhoods in order to move as many cars as quickly as possible through cities. Many cities didn’t even bother to build new sidewalks since destinations were so far away from one another that it was not feasible to walk. When the widened roads became just as congested and dangerous as the ones they replaced, engineers responded with still more construction, turning streets into automotive monocultures, where the mere idea of walking, biking, or taking public transit was viewed as foolish. But the multilane roads did not solve traffic congestion; they only enabled more and more drivers to take to the streets. In 1955, the urbanist Lewis Mumford noted that widening roads to solve traffic congestion was like loosening one’s belt to solve obesity—it temporarily eased constraints but did not solve the underlying problem.

The result of a century of car-focused design is that on every continent, roads and lanes tend to be wider than is necessary or safe. Although this keeps cars farther apart, bigger lanes—usually around 12 feet wide—reduce what traffic planners call “friction,” a healthy interaction among drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, and others that induces safer behavior.

Inevitably, roads designed for speed are deadlier.

Psychology plays a role—oversize lanes encourage drivers to drive at dangerous speeds and to view everyone else on the street as obstacles—but so does physics. A pedestrian struck by a car moving at 25 miles per hour has a 90 percent chance of surviving. If that car is moving at 40 miles per hour, the odds drop to 50 percent.

Compare the traffic death statistics for four sprawling cities—Charlotte, Dallas, Jacksonville, and Phoenix—to those for New York City.

Although New York City’s traffic-choked streets might not seem safe, its pedestrian death rate in 2017 was no more than a third of that in each of those cities, and the overall traffic death rate was

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a mere fifth. That’s not because the residents of those cities are worse drivers but because those cities’ roads were built for fast driving and without safeguards for pedestrians.

In the United States, federal and state street-design guidelines explicitly promote wider lanes, even though they are known to be deadlier. In other words, far from being “accidents”—and indeed, the World Health Organization and other traffic-safety proponents have shunned that term—traffic deaths are caused by roads that are operating exactly as designed.

Traffic segregation is another principle that dominated twentieth-century road design, to the detriment of safety. The idea is that pedestrians (and everyone else) should be kept safely out of drivers’ ways. In London and Tokyo, pedestrian fences force the walking public onto the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong posts bright blue signs: “Beware of Traffic.” But segregation isn’t always possible. Streets throughout Africa, the Americas, and Asia have poor or no sidewalks. Many cities in the developing world have seen pedestrian spaces taken over by parked cars, motorcycles, and vendors, forcing people to walk into the street.

Even though the root of the problem is the way the streets were designed, the trend has been to blame the victim. In many places, news reports of crashes tend to repeat claims (often dubious) that injured pedestrians or cyclists were distracted, delinquent, or insufficiently visible. In 2017, Honolulu

It’s all well and good to claim that driverless cars operating in a closed, connected system would be safer.

But everything is different on the open road, where those cars would need to drive alongside hundreds of millions of human-driven vehicles.

criminalized texting while walking across the street despite having no evidence that it was a serious safety issue. Other American cities, such as Salt Lake City, implore pedestrians to carry highvisibility flags when crossing the street.

In cities as different as Chicago and Los Angeles, there is frequent talk of licensing bike riders or requiring them to wear bike helmets. Although bike helmets are a reasonable precaution, legally requiring them for all riders only reduces the number of cyclists on the street and thus the trafficcalming effect that they bring. In many Australian cities, for example, helmet laws have not lowered traffic deaths; instead, they have merely hobbled public bike-share systems, whose riders don’t want to carry a helmet wherever they go. Helmets aren’t what make biking safer. There are no helmet requirements in Denmark, the Netherlands, or Norway—countries where bikes are widely used for transportation and that nonetheless report fewer bike deaths per mile ridden than the United States.

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Daily Life In Rotterdam, Netherlands, on February 2020 ,20.

Rotterdam is a city of the Netherlands with plenty of cycle paths and is part of the cycle junction network. There sre several free bicycle parking areas where you can also charge your electric bike, and many shops to rent or buy a bike.

(Getty)

percent of the global population.) In city after city, a new generation of urban planners is finding new ways to reduce traffic deaths by retrofitting roads, sometimes dramatically.

Although the average transportation agency confines itself to repairing potholes, repaving roads, maintaining signs, and so on, there is much more that municipal governments can do. From 2007 to 2013, both of us worked in the New York City Department of Transportation under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Our approach to traffic safety was simple and cost effective. Instead of dreaming up megaprojects, we took a long, hard look at the streets we already had, this time from the perspective of the most vulnerable people.

As well-meaning as most traffic-safety laws tend to be, they aren’t enough. Many societies have already had a century of practice training better drivers and writing better safety laws. Despite the laws on the books, vast numbers of crashes involve excessive speed, a failure to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, or drinking and drug use. In ,2017 29 percent of traffic deaths on American roads involved alcohol. An estimated ten percent of crashes involved distracted drivers, many of whom were using cell phones. Instead of trying to legislate safety, a more effective approach is to design it.

PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE The process can and should begin in cities. Although a 2018 study of 26 countries by the International Transport Forum found that most traffic deaths occur in rural areas, where speeding is common and where there is no space on the road for pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcyclists, the pattern is shifting as urbanization continues across the world. (By 2050, city dwellers are expected to compose 68

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Between 2007 and 2013, the Department of Transportation redesigned lengthy portions of 137 streets and revamped 113 intersections— expanding the space to walk, decreasing crossing distances for pedestrians, and making streets navigable enough for children, senior citizens, and people with physical disabilities to cross.

By narrowing lanes and putting drivers in closer contact with pedestrians and cyclists, the redesigns forced drivers to proceed, turn, and change lanes more slowly and predictably. We also collaborated with the New York City Police Department to implement reduced speed limits, using cameras to catch cars speeding, running red lights, or intruding in bus lanes.

What’s more, we converted 180 acres of New York City road space into bike lanes, bus lanes, and new pedestrian space. This included making 2.5 acres in Times Square car free: Broadway was transformed from a taxi-choked corridor into a walkable haven.

Instead of being forced by crowds to venture into the street, pedestrians now amble through the iconic destination at their leisure. We also introduced the first parking-protected bike lanes in the United States. In many cities, if a bike lane even exists, it is sandwiched between a lane of parked cars and a lane of moving traffic. Parking-protected bike lanes, by contrast, run alongside the curb and push the parking zone for cars a full lane into the street.

This means cyclists don’t have to ride within arm’s reach of passing cars.

The results were visible in every borough—in the crowded avenues of Manhattan, the residential side streets of Brooklyn, the commercial centers

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of Queens, and the busy boulevards of the Bronx and Staten Island, many of which hadn’t changed in generations. From 2001 to 2019, traffic deaths along all of New York City’s 6,000 miles of roadway dropped by over 44 percent—from 394 to just 219—even as the number of pedestrians on the city’s streets increased and bike ridership tripled.

The city saw a 37 percent drop in pedestrian deaths and similar reductions for those injured in a car.

This people-focused strategy has worked for some of the world’s most unforgiving streets, including in several cities where we worked with Bloomberg Associates and the Global Designing Cities Initiative to apply many of the designs pioneered in New York City. Mexico City was once one of the world’s most dangerous cities, with some 1,000 traffic deaths a year. But between 2015 and 2017, Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera had 171 intersections redesigned so that there were clearly defined lanes, pedestrian medians, and crosswalks. He also reduced the citywide speed limit and ramped up traffic enforcement by using speed cameras. The redesigns helped lead to an 18 percent reduction in traffic deaths, including a 24 percent drop in pedestrian deaths. The number of bike riders killed fell by 78 percent.

Halfway around the world, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, officials introduced shortened crosswalks for pedestrians at a busy intersection in the city center, modifications that made it easier to cross the street while also forcing vehicles to slow down significantly in order to turn. The number of serious

Although bike helmets are a reasonable precaution, legally requiring them for all riders only reduces the number of cyclists on the street and thus the trafficcalming effect that they bring.

injuries fell by half in the six months after the project, and the number of deaths went down from one before the change to zero after.

In Mumbai in 2017, a traffic-safety project at the menacing Mithchowki intersection reclaimed 17,760 square feet of roadway from cars and redesigned them for crowds of pedestrians. Using brightly painted movable barriers, a road-safety team created safe waiting spaces and simplified the process of crossing the street. After the modifications, officials noticed a 53 percent increase in sidewalk use. More important, 81 percent of people surveyed said they felt safer at the location as a result of the project.

Similarly, between 2018 and 2020, Milan under Mayor Giuseppe Sala transformed ten squares that were once clogged with parked cars into communityfriendly spaces, with benches, tables, and planters.

Where cars once roamed, children now play ping pong and neighbors greet one another.

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BMW VISION iNEXT concept car on display at Brussels Expo on January 2020 ,9 in Brussels, Belgium.

The BMW Vision iNEXT is fully electric, fully connected and offers autonomous driving. (Getty)

impact on human health, what about high-end technologies? The driverless-car industry contends that it is at the forefront of the traffic-safety charge—promising that autonomous vehicles could be programmed to maintain safe speeds no matter the environment. They point out that a combination of GPS data and sign-recognition cameras in cars can limit a vehicle to the posted or official speed limits.

It’s all well and good to claim that driverless cars operating in a closed, connected system would be safer. But everything is different on the open road, where those cars would need to drive alongside hundreds of millions of human-driven vehicles, whose operators are still speeding, cutting one another off, and jockeying for position. There has been only one death involving an autonomous car, but even one death doesn’t speak well of the technology’s capabilities in city centers alive with thousands of human actors—a jumble of people walking, biking, making deliveries, panhandling, and so on.

Most of the time, urban planners do not have to reinvent the wheel. They have the experience and testimony of others to draw on. For instance, the Global Street Design Guide synthesizes the realworld experience and practices of experts from 72 cities spanning 42 countries. The guide has now been adopted by 100 cities and several nongovernmental organizations focused on traffic safety. It represents a sea change for street design, putting pedestrians and cyclists, rather than freight and private vehicles, at the top of the street hierarchy.

Often, all it takes to make streets safer is paint, planters, and basic materials already in stock in city depots, such as stones, signs, and flexible traffic posts. Even so, given the scale of the changes, municipal governments will require sustained investment to expand on these proven safety practices and turn the tide on traffic deaths.

THE ROAD AHEAD If low-tech solutions can have such a tremendous

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Transportation officials can’t wait for driverless cars to make streets safe. Sidewalks won’t extend themselves; crosswalks won’t magically appear.

Countries can’t bet their futures on the promise that better cars or better drivers will reverse the damage caused by a century of car-obsessed roadway design. If cities want infrastructure that accommodates all users, they need to lead by example and reclaim, redesign, and reconstruct their roads.

Government and public health officials routinely face problems that exceed their capacities and powers. Traffic deaths are not one of them. Indeed, traffic-related fatalities are unusual in that their causes are as straightforward as their solutions.

Eliminating most health hazards on the roadway doesn’t require new technologies or unsustainable investments. It requires changing how we view traffic deaths and injuries, treating them as avoidable byproducts of a crisis in urban design rather than an inevitable feature of modern life.

There is already a revolution underway to redesign city streets to a new standard. But there is still much work to be done and a growing population that needs protection.

This article was originally published in the March/ April 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine and on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Coronavirus Spreading Quickly Across the Globe Health Officials Around the World Struggle to Contain COVID- 19 40

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In response to this crisis, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has decided to quarantine twelve towns in both provinces barring anyone from traveling to and from them.

People buy face masks at a retail store in the southeastern city of Daegu on February ,25 2020. (Getty)

by Ali El Shamy What started out as a small outbreak in Wuhan, China has spread to other parts of the world. The rapid spread of the COVID19-, more commonly known as corona, virus has forced the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it a global health emergency last month, so far the worst-hit countries other than China are South Korea, Japan, Iran, and Italy.

THE CORONAVIRUS HITS ITALY HARD Thus far, European health ministries have done

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a good job of containing the virus, however, the spread that has been happening in Italy is a cause for concern. It was almost three weeks ago when European health ministers from the EU27- met to discuss the coronavirus and in the aftermath of the summit German Health Minister Jens Spahn warned that “It could get worse before it gets better, because as long as it’s not under control in China, these regional epidemics can transform into a worldwide pandemic.”

Italy is the worst affected country in Europe, as of the writing of this piece, there have been 219 reported cases of coronavirus infection and seven deaths resulting from the disease. The overwhelming majority of cases have been in the northern provinces of Lombardy and Veneto, however, the first recorded case in the country was in fact in its capital Rome. In response to this crisis, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has decided to quarantine twelve towns in both provinces barring anyone from traveling to and from them.

Conte has further stated that such measures might last for weeks. People residing in said towns have been queueing up in supermarkets, stocking food and provisions in fear of what comes ahead.

A massive health crisis might be brewing in Europe, nevertheless, this has not persuaded the European Commission to consider closing borders between states and restricting free movement.

On the contrary, EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides seemed to be calm amid the commotion as she noted that the UN’s WHO has not advised travel restrictions in Europe.

She further stated any travel restrictions should be «proportionate and coordinated» among EU states.

Just this week, Austria halted a train traveling through the Brenner Pass which is situated between

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the borders of it and Italy after two passengers seemed to display coronavirus like symptoms, but the train resumed again after the passengers tested negative for COVID19-.

Some events happening in Italy have been canceled as a result of the outbreak. After two cases were confirmed in Venice, the last two days of the famous Venice Carnival were called off. Milan’s Fashion Week was affected as Giorgio Armani’s presentation was held behind closed doors and people could only see it via an internet live stream.

Although the Serie A football league will carry on as usual some games will be played behind closed doors, among those games is the anticipated derby between Inter Milan and Juventus.

In an ironic affliction, the Iranian Deputy Health Minister, Feverish Iraj Harirchi, has been tested positive for coronavirus

OUTBREAK IN SOUTH KOREA BRINGS RELIGIOUS SECT UNDER SCRUTINY Despite its close proximity to China, up until recently, South Korean authorities were effectively preventing a coronavirus outbreak. However, this is not the case anymore as within one week the fewer than a dozen confirmed cases grew to 977, additionally ten people tragically lost their lives.

Most evidence indicates that the city of Deagu might have been the epicenter of the outbreak. The BBC also reports that South Korean authorities believe that the Shincheonji Church based in the city might have unintentionally helped spread the virus, Business Insider further reports that around 60 percent of the confirmed cases are members of the Church. Authorities also believe that a -61yearold member of the Church might have been one of the first infected with the coronavirus which would only spread broadly across the sect. Despite the secretive nature of the Church, it’s leader Lee Man-hee agreed to hand over a list of names of its 200,000 members to health authorities which are now conducting extensive testing on all members of the Church. Many members of Korean society already have a negative view of the Church, and

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A man, wearing a respiratory mask, walks in the streets on in 2020 ,25 February Milan, Italy. Getty

A guest wearing a respiratory mask waits for the start of the Dolce & Gabbana›s Women Fall - Winter 2020 fashion collection on February 23, 2020 in Milan. Milan Fashion Week was overshadowed by the coronavirus outbreak.

Getty

this incident might increase hostile sentiments towards it.

JAPAN TAKES CAUTIONED APPROACH TOWARDS DIAMOND PRINCESS SHIP Japan is another badly hit country as it has 156 confirmed cases and one death. Bizarrely, the Diamond Princess cruise ship has more cases of the virus than the country itself with 691 of those of the ship have been confirmed to have the virus and four others have passed away. In operation since 2004, the ship has been taking tourists on cruises around Asia and Australia. When the virus spread within the ship, Japanese authorities decided to keep the ship at one of its docks and quarantine its passengers. The move has been criticized by some observers who note that the cruise ship did not have facilities to quarantine and treat patients. Japanese health authorities acknowledged that the operation was not ideal, but stated that it was the best that they could do since it was not feasible to move the 3,900 passengers to other locations for quarantine.

Furthermore, a thousand of the passengers have been set to leave the cruise ship after almost two weeks of quarantine.

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IRANIAN HEALTH OFFICIALS NOT IMMUNE TO DISEASE Iran has been the hub for coronavirus in the Middle East. As of the writing of this piece, there have been 95 cases and 16 reported deaths. The first confirmed death from the coronavirus was in the city of Qom, and since then authorities have been implementing tight measures to curtail the spread of the virus.

The Guardian reports that in Tehran and 13 other provinces schools, universities, cinemas, and theaters have been closed, moreover public buses in the capital have been disinfected. To protect their citizens from the virus, the governments of both Turkey and Pakistan have decided to close their borders with Iran. In an ironic affliction, the Iranian Deputy Health Minister, Feverish Iraj Harirchi, has been tested positive for coronavirus.

In a video he posted to social media he stated that he is now isolating himself and taking medication for the disease, he also somberly said that disease ‘doesn’t distinguish between statesman and ordinary citizen’. He nevertheless, ended the video on a more optimistic note that the country would defeat the virus.

Youthful Memories and the Harsh Reality of Life Abroad When I think back to when I began working with Majalla 33 years ago, I remember the hardships I faced while settling in and adjusting to life in London. As a young man, I never thought that I would end up spending most of my life in this city.

In a way, Majalla served as my companion during the first few years of life in an alien city away from home where I didn’t have a shoulder to lean on or enough knowledge of the English language to manage my daily errands and communicate with others, particularly coming from a francophone country. So I couldn’t help but bring all my burdens with me to work, but working at the Majalla office every day made life abroad easier. The office became a surrogate homeland. I believe the most valuable thing I have learned from this “nationhood” is that the Arab World’s ambition to strengthen ties among each other was, to a great extent, was accomplished through our daily interactions with each other whether in Majalla or its sister publication the pan Arab daily Asharq Alawsat, since each one of us came from a different Arab country. For me, it was a great advantage to my journalistic experience in comparison to my previous job at a local publication which had journalists from the same background who spoke the same language.

When I look back at my beginnings with Majalla and my archive of articles, investigations, and interviews, I feel wistful. Going down that memory lane means a great deal to me since it narrates a long history of events in the Arab world which left impressions on our lives today, whether it’s the spark of the Iranian revolution or the Soviet’s invasion of Afghanistan and the effects that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of “the Arab Afghans” phenomenon which alarmed the region and the world on a political and security level for many years. Also, the Iraqi- Iranian war, the invasion of Kuwait and the repercussions that left a great mark in history.

It is worth mentioning my first article in Majalla’s pilot issue which never made it to print.

The article was about president Marshal Josip Tito’s illness and how it could lead to the breakdown of the Yugoslav federation. I remember writing this article a decade before the destructive wars that ignited between the regions of the country which ended in dismantling the area into six entities.

In the early 1980s, the Majalla and Asharq Alawsat offices were located in a small street named Gough Square, just off of Fleet Street which headquartered most British newspapers back then. A few years ago, I went to that building after a long time, I can’t pretend that the scene brought tears to my eyes as the building was unrecognizably renovated, and nothing was preserved apart from the building’s number ‘4’. Nonetheless, I was nostalgic, not only because I had spent a big part of my life in that building, but also because of our battle to succeed and our daily struggles with pen and paper before the existence of the internet and computers. During that time, our magazine faced significant competition from a considerable number of Arab magazines. Majalla had several editors-in-chief during my time there and each one of them left a mark, whether that be on the magazine’s management or on the work atmosphere among us. (I enjoy using the term ‘family’ when talking about our team, and I am not sure if such an atmosphere still exists in other Arab prints.)

It is important to mention the founders of Majalla and Asharq Alawsat, Hisham Mohammad Ali Hafez, who were the reason that the magazine continued to thrive since its inception, and also the work of my friend, the former editor-in-chief Abdul Karim Aboul Nasr, who gave Majalla its unique political identity.

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by Elias Harfoush

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Elyes Fakhfakh: Tunisia’s New Prime Minister Designate Races Against Time to Form New Government www.majalla.com

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Egyptian Artist Creates Work Inspired by the Ancient Past, with a Story for the Future In a Search for Harmony and Balance, Dina Shalaby Explores the Timelessness and Wonder of Ancient Egyptian Aesthetics

by Yasmine El-Geressi

Egyptian artists Dina Shalaby. (Supplied)

The mysteries of the ancient Egyptians are huge, but the key to understanding the life, culture and belief systems of the ancient civilization under its strong rulers is in front of us—in its exquisite art and architecture. Just as hieroglyphs were a visual language, ancient Egyptian art also followed specific rules in order to be read and understood and it is very hard to dispute the particular allure it has held for artists and designers some 5,000 years later. Egyptomania reached fever pitch during the 20th century: The discovery of the tomb of the boy pharaoh, Tutankhamun, by Howard Carter in November 1922, sparked enormous popular interest. The grandeur and “exoticism� of the pyramids, temples, Sphinx, hieroglyphics, made this great civilization a recurring subject in architecture, film, art and popular culture and generic Egyptian imagery

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Akhenaten The Spiritual Rebel. Inspired by a sunk relief from 1336-1355 BC, Amarna, modern day Minya, 300km south of Cairo; displayed at the Metropolitan museum in New York. (Supplied)

proliferated everywhere.

But while the artwork was stunning to look at, the creative impetus and much of its decorative appeal stems from the concept of ma’at, or balance and harmony, and the importance the ancient Egyptians attached to symmetry. Ma’at, which was thought to comprise the very fabric of creation passed down when the Gods instilled order on a chaotic universe, evolved over the decades and remained the ethical and moral foundation of the Egyptian people.

This timeless and universal concept of the search for harmony and balance is captured in Malakoot, an art project

by Russian-Egyptian visual artist Dina Shalaby, who, driven by a renewed appreciation of her national patrimony following an illustrious career in international management consulting that left her searching for a more balanced way to achieve happiness and fulfillment, mixed media and her “deep passion for pharaonic Egypt to create pieces inspired by the past and with a story for the future.”

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Immersing herself in art came as a natural answer, for it had always been her companion. But what surprised Dina was that unexplainable urge to dive back into the art of Ancient Egypt and explore all its complex layers.

“The call for Malakoot, came to me a few years ago after I had spent more than a decade intensely pursuing success in education, career, travel and intellectual endeavors. I had studied journalism in Egypt, international business in Italy, worked in international management consulting in both countries and eventually in the US. It was a thrilling journey and looking back I wouldn’t change a thing except maybe for the unsustainable rhythm and intensity

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that came with it. The strive and the conditioning of modern life to achieve more, faster, better. To stay on top of your game. To be the center of your universe. To keep running and there, at the end of that race, happiness is waiting, wearing the hat of success and achievement. But at what price? Very likely a burnout,” Shalaby, who held her solo debut exhibition in Cairo and took part in several group exhibitions, told Majalla.

Dina studied journalism in Egypt, international business in Italy, worked in international management consulting in both countries and eventually in the US. But despite the rewards of her success, the rhythm and intensity that came with it were unstainable, she explains.

“The strive and the conditioning of modern life to achieve more, faster, better. To stay on top of your game. To be the center of your universe. To keep running and there, at the end of that race,

“I fell in love with their way, the depth of their perception and the elegance of how they expressed it all. How they achieved integrity by harmonising opposites, substituting competition and conflict with complementarity and thus achieving the oneness of practicality and spirituality, the masculine and the feminine, love and wrath, intellect and intuition.”

happiness is waiting, wearing the hat of success and achievement.”

Feeling like she could no longer could, nor wanted, to sustain that race, Shalaby felt the need for a deep change.

“Something was missing. I quit my job and, oh madness, I had no clear plan of what I would do next. I only knew I needed time and hopefully, a new soul,” she added.

Immersing herself in art came as a natural answer, for it had always been her companion. But what surprised Dina was that unexplainable urge to dive back into the art of Ancient Egypt and explore all its complex layers. “Something was telling me that this is where I would find the answer I was looking for. Otherwise how could they have achieved all these puzzling material and spiritual feats and lasted for so long?” she said.

With every piece of Ancient Egyptian

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Bird Ladies Bathing In Light. Inspired by a figurine from Naqada II, Qena, Upper Egypt, 3400-3500 BC. Displayed at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. (Supplied)

While the artwork was stunning to look at, the creative impetus and much of its decorative appeal stems from the concept of ma’at, or balance and harmony, and the importance the ancient Egyptians attached to symmetry. guided their actions: a value system and a life model where balance was Law. Where living in harmony and being in touch with the inner self and the outside world were the measures of happiness, success and a person’s worth,” she said.

Nut, Goddess Of The Sky. Inspired by a cosmographical map of B.C.. 330 Egypt from )(Supplied

art that she put on paper in a new light, Shalaby’s answer became clearer and clearer: “there was a different path to happiness and success and it’s the one Ancient Egyptians walked. And that was a story I wanted to tell.”

After mining for the gold nuggets of wisdom contained in Egypt’s past, Shalaby became particularly inspired by the Egyptians’ emotional intelligence and moral philosophy that resulted in a strong ethic in the ordering and harmonisation of one’s life, flavoured with an attitude of benevolence and prevailing sense of balance that is an indispensable basis for higher wisdom.

“The ancient Egyptian civilization has achieved what no other could, not even ours. Their architectural genius, for one, is still puzzling. But what was an even bigger achievement is the moral anchoring they developed and that

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“I fell in love with their way, the depth of their perception and the elegance of how they expressed it all. How they achieved integrity by harmonizing opposites, substituting competition and conflict with complementarity and thus achieving the oneness of practicality and spirituality, the masculine and the feminine, love and wrath, intellect and intuition. How finely they understood the human psyche and addressed the core drivers of a human soul: the need for love and protection, the healing power of gratitude, the creative power of mind and intention. So many moving pieces, always in perfect harmony, singing the same song. Thousands of years have passed but everything about their philosophy feels as relevant as ever, so universal and timeless.”

“I have my answer now and a new soul.

All the moving pieces of my story are in harmony now and sing the same song in my heart. I try to convey that through my art and celebrate the minds and hearts that led me to it. May we all find our answers!”

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Elyes Fakhfakh: Tunisia’s New Prime Minister Designate Races Against Time to Form New Government

by Majalla-London -1 Early Life and Education Elyes Fakhfakh was born in the Tunisian capital of Tunis in 1972. He would then attend the National Engineering School of Sfax where he earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1995. He would continue his education at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon in France where he earned a masters in engineering.

Being the studious young man that he is, he also earned a master’s in business administration from the University of Évry Val d›Essonne.

Fakhfakh went back to Tunisia in 2006 to work as the general manager of a company that specializes in car components. When the company was bought by a Spanish corporation, he became the general manager for Caveo Automotive Group, and he stayed at that position until 2011.

-4 Entrance into Politics The political landscape in Tunisia, as political participation increased and people could form political factions and parties for the first time. Fakhfakh went on to join the social democratic party Ettakatol.

Under the Islamist Jebali government he was appointed Minister of Tourism. In December 2012, he was given another -2 Life and Work Abroad role this time he became the Minister Fakhfakh would go on to work as a project manager for Hutchinson SA, a of Finance, so for a while he was in French company that manufactures rubber charge of two ministries. In March 2013, and is a subsidiary of Total SA. Under Fakhfakh’s only post became that of his management, 45 of the company’s Minister of Finance, and that was under the factories around the world managed to cut government of the Islamist Ali Larayedh. production costs. Afterward he became the His ministerial career ended in January ,29 project manager of the company’s branch 2014, however that wasn’t the end of his political career. in Poland.

-3 Return to Tunisia

-5 2019 Presidential Elections Fakhfakh decided to throw his hat into

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the 2019 presidential race, running as the nominee from Ettakatol. He went out in the first round having earned only 11,532 votes, or 0.34 percent of the total votes cast.

-6 Chosen to Alleviate a Political Stalemate The 2019 parliamentary election posed a dilemma in Tunisia’s political sphere.

While Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Ennahda Movement earned the most votes, it don’t not have a majority that would enable them to form a functioning government. In accordance to the Tunisian constitution, it up to the president to choose the Prime Minister.

In turn, the Prime Minister designate is to form a government which the parliament approves. As such, the newly elected Tunisian president, Kais Saied, chose Elyes Fakhfakh as the new head of government. However, he soon might face an early challenge since the Ennahda announced that its members would not vote in favor of Fakhfakh’s government.

As a result, his tenure might be a short lived one and Saied might be forced to dissolve parliament and hold early parliamentary elections.