Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2000, pages 38-41

Issues In The News

 

Compiled by Delinda C. Hanley

 

Arabian Peninsula

 

GCC Debate Lifting Iraq Sanctions:

Qatar presented a proposal to help lift United Nations sanctions on Iraq at a June 3 meeting of the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain—in Cairo. An Iraqi Culture and Information Ministry spokesman said Saudi Arabia and Kuwait blocked the initiative. Qatar in May called for the Gulf Arab states to normalize ties with Iraq and lift the sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 seven-month occupation of Kuwait.

 

Saudi Women Attend Council:

Saudi Arabian women, including some female members of the Saudi royal family, journalists, writers and academics, attended a session of the Shura consultative council on May 30 for the second time. The Saudi-owned pan-Arab al-Hayat daily said 60 women attended the session, which discussed high marriage costs.

The council’s head, Sheikh Mohammad Ibrahim bin Jubair, said the kingdom had no immediate plans to let women serve on the council due to religious and social norms, but the assembly would continue to invite women to attend sessions that pertained to women’s affairs.

 

Saudi Donates to Syria:

Saudi Arabia will donate $77.5 million to Syria to finance the purchase of electricity equipment for a major electricity generation plant in northern Syria, officials told the Saudi Gazette on May 28. Economic sources said the money was part of a bigger donation of $520 million and a soft loan of $200 million that was agreed earlier to co-finance a 1,065-megawatt electricity generation plant near Aleppo, some 350 km. north of Damascus.

 

Bahrain Promises Elected Shura:

Bahrain’s Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Sulman al-Khalifa announced at a May 29 session of the Shura council plans to allow its appointed members to be chosen by popular vote in about five years, and to let women join the assembly starting later this year. In 1975 Bahrain dissolved its elected parliament, two years after it was set up. In 1994 the island’s Shi’i Muslim community began demanding restoration of parliament. In 1996, the island increased the council’s members to 40 from 30 to widen popular representation

 

First Arabic Newsweek in Kuwait:

The first Arabic-language edition of the U.S. weekly magazine Newsweek was issued in Kuwait on June 6, with Jordan’s Queen Rania on the cover and a lead story entitled, “The New Face of Arab Women.” The magazine, which underwent years of trials and negotiations, is published in Arabic by Kuwait’s Dar al-Watan, which also publishes a daily newspaper, al-Watan. The content of the magazine is largely a translation of the international English-language Newsweek edition, already issued in Japanese, Korean, Spanish and soon Russian.

 

Gulf War Victims Receive $662 Million:

The U.N. Gulf war reparations body, flush with funds from the U.N. oil-for-food deal, said on June 8 it had paid out a further $662.4 million to people and companies for property lost in Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Kuwaiti individuals and companies received $384.1 million in the latest batch. Reparations account for 30 percent of the revenue generated by the oil-for-food program in Iraq and have totaled $6.8 billion.

 

Oman Revises Voting Procedures:

Oman has revised some aspects of the way its consultative Shura council is chosen in a bid to ensure that July elections are fairer than before, officials said on May 29. Some 175,000 people, 25 percent of Omanis over the age of 21, will be able to vote for the new Shura council. The Interior Ministry official said more than 600 nominees had registered for the polls, including about 36 women, and final figures would be announced soon. There were 736 nominees, including 27 women, at the last election for the 82-seat assembly. Sultan Qaboos issued a landmark decree in 1997 allowing women to stand for election and to vote for the council. The current council has two women, and officials said increasing the number of eligible female voters is part of the process of extending women’s rights.

 

Qatar and Bahrain Discuss Hawar Islands:

The World Court at The Hague began public hearings on May 29 into the territorial dispute over the disputed Hawar islands. Qatar took the case to the World Court in 1991, and the hearings are the final phase of the court’s longest case in its history. The small but potentially oil- and gas-rich Hawar islands have been controlled by Bahrain since the 1930s but are claimed by Qatar. Bahrain also claims the town of Zubarah, which is on the mainland of Qatar. In 1986, Qatar and Bahrain nearly went to war over the islands until Saudi Arabia intervened.

 

UAE Hires Female Cabbies:

Azza Mohammed, a 35-year-old mother of six, on June 7 became the first female taxicab driver in the Persian Gulf. Mohammed and six other women are part of a new female cab service launched by the Dubai Transport Company in the UAE for women customers. Company director Mohammad Obaid Al Mulla told the Saudi Gazette that the government-owned DTC had been flooded with requests from women customers who did not want to be driven by men. The women drivers, 25 to 35 years of age, come from the Emirates, Syria, Sudan and Jordan.

 

Serial Killer Shocks Yemen:

A Sana’a University morgue worker, Mohammad Adam Omar, from Sudan, is on trial in Yemen for raping and murdering 16 women, including at least six students, and selling body parts, between November 1999 and April of this year. The case has deeply shocked the Yemeni public, according to reports in the Arab News of Jeddah, and students have demanded the sacking of officials in the medical faculty and security department for alleged negligence.

 

Fertile Crescent

 

Drought Raises Food Fears:

A special report from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization examined the effects of severe drought on many parts of the Middle East, including Iran, Iraq and Jordan. According to a May 11 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report, rainfall in parts of Iran is down by 25 percent from last year, with 18 of the country’s 28 provinces suffering. In Iraq, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have fallen to around 20 percent of their average flow, with serious consequences for irrigated farming. Jordan’s agricultural production has been severely damaged by two years of drought. The report says the scarcity of food and water, already affecting many countries in South Asia, is causing mounting concern as it claims a growing number of lives.

 

Jordanian Woman Appointed to U.N. Post:

Jordan’s first senior woman minister, Rima Khalaf, has been appointed as assistant secretary-general of the United Nations Development Program, sources in the UNDP said on June 6. Khalaf, the former deputy prime minister of Jordan, will be director of the UNDP regional bureau for Arab states. In her last post, the U.S.-educated Khalaf headed the country’s economic team overseeing IMF-guided liberalization and led Jordan’s successful drive to win World Trade Organization membership.

 

BBC Sues Israel Over Driver Death:

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has demanded that Israel pay compensation to the family of Abed Takkoush, 53, the father of seven, a driver employed by BBC in Lebanon, who was killed on May 23 in his parked car by Israeli tank fire near the Israeli-Lebanese border. BBC’s Jeremy Bowen was filming the aftermath of a shooting the previous day when he was machine-gunned and his driver was killed. The driver’s death, caught on film, was one of four civilian deaths which, if committed willfully, Amnesty International said on June 6 should be investigated as war crimes. The BBC and Amnesty said there was no fighting in the area at the time and the people killed, including a 16-year-old boy, all appear to have been targeted without warning.

 

Lebanese Secure Borders with Israel:

Peacekeepers from the nine-nation U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon began verifying Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The Lebanese National News Agency reported June 13 that the Lebanese government plans to form a force of 1,000 army and police troops to maintain security in areas vacated by the Israeli army. The Lebanese government says it will not send army combat units to the border because it is not Israel’s policeman. Lebanon has said border security will be guaranteed only when Israel negotiates peace with Arab nations including Syria, the main power in Lebanon.

 

Lebanon Tries SLA Members:

A total of 72 members of the pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army are in the midst of trials in Lebanon, accused of collaborating with the enemy. Defense lawyers for the fighters have called for acquittals or lenient sentences, saying their clients had been coerced or forced into collaborating with Israel. The court, whose verdicts cannot be appealed, has already sentenced 101 ex-militiamen to jail terms of up to five years. For nearly two decades, the SLA, which was trained, armed and paid for by Israel, helped the Israeli army control a strip of Lebanese territory along the southern Lebanese border and the lives of 120,000 people, jailing and expelling those deemed a security threat to them or the Israeli occupation. About 1,500 former SLA members surrendered to Lebanese authorities while nearly 7,000 ex-militiamen and family members sought refuge across the border in Israel.

 

Israelis Wound Child at Border:

Israeli soldiers wounded a five-year-old Palestinian child on June 9 when they fired at a crowd of Palestinian refugees across the border with Lebanon who were throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. A Reuters photographer earlier saw some children cross the fence to apple groves on the Israeli side and bring back apples under Israeli fire. Members of Hezbollah, the guerrilla group in control of the Lebanese side, came to the scene and stopped the crowd from throwing more stones, the witnesses said. Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon have been traveling to the south to see their relatives in Israel across the border fence after Israel withdrew from the area in May.

 

Syria Names Bashar Al-Assad President:

Syria’s Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam named the son of the late President Hafez Al-Assad chief of the armed forces on June 11 after promoting him from colonel to lieutenant-general, a government spokesman said. Bashar Al-Assad succeeds his father, who died on June 10, as head of the army. His appointment came hours after the ruling Ba’ath Party nominated the 34-year-old for the post of president. The move appeared aimed at consolidating Bashar’s status as new leader of Syria and at ensuring a smooth succession.

 

Iran/Iraq

 

Defector Claims to be Iranian Terrorist:

An Iranian defector, who identified himself as Ahmad Behbahani, told the CBS News program “60 Minutes” that he was an intelligence official involved in supervising Iranian terrorism operations, including two anti-American attacks, for more than a decade before his defection to Turkey. He is currently seeking asylum in the United States. Behbahani said he was involved in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He also said Iran planned the 1996 bombing of a U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel.

 

Iranian Women Protest U.S. Treatment:

Seven Iranian delegates to a women’s conference at the United Nations complained they were treated like criminals by U.S. immigration officials who demanded they be fingerprinted upon arrival in the country.

The delegates from three non-governmental organizations returned home, choosing to miss the conference, which began June 5, rather than submit to the procedure. U.S. federal law requires non-immigrant visitors from four countries that are on unfriendly terms with the United States—Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan—to be fingerprinted and photographed on arrival in the United States.

 

U.N. May Allow Iraq to Rebuild Plant:

A United Nations team has visited Iraq to decide whether an animal vaccine plant destroyed by U.N. arms inspectors on the grounds that it was used to produce germ warfare agents should be rebuilt. The former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), charged with dismantling Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, confiscated and destroyed much of the plant’s equipment in 1996, saying Iraq had used the factory to produce germ warfare agents. Iraq says the factory produced about 12 million doses a year of animal vaccine for the deadly foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), which infected at least one million farm animals in Iraq last year. In May the U.N. sanctions committee released $143 million of farm and irrigation equipment and supplies desperately needed by Iraq to cope with the current drought.

 

Iraq Sanctions Cause Row:

Six-month extensions of the United Nations oil-for-food program for Iraq have been routine since it began in 1996, but on June 8 there was a heated debate in which both Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov and deputy Chinese Ambassador Shen Guofang blasted the sanctions. Nevertheless the U.N. Security Council extended both the decade-old strict sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the “oil-for-food” program.

 

Israel/Palestine

 

U.S. Rejects Israel’s UAV Missiles:

A U.S. House panel has rejected Israel’s request for $50 million to develop unmanned air vehicles capable of shooting down ballistic missiles. Israel presented to House and Senate leaders a proposal for the U.S. to pay $350 million over the next seven years to increase the capability of Israel’s anti-missile defense program. Defense sources said the Israeli concept involves using U.S. missile technology to attack its neighbors, in contrast to the Arrow missile developed by Israel and the U.S. to intercept enemy missiles in Israeli air space. The Israeli daily Ha’aretz on June 8 blamed the Israeli sale of an airborne early-warning system to China for the congressional rejection of the UAV allocation.

In Washington, the Federation of American Scientists has released satellite photographs of what it has identified as an Israeli Jericho missile base in Sadot Micha, south of Tel Aviv. The photograph shows three medium-range missile batteries which the group said could be fitted with nuclear warheads.

 

Israeli Police Evict Sun Bathers:

Several thousand Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank have been slipping across the border without the requisite permits, which take days to acquire, to go to the beaches of Tel Aviv on their day off. Israeli authorities have started rounding up the swimmers, many of them youngsters, described by police as a “security threat,” and escorting them back to the border crossings. Police also arrested 10 Israeli bus drivers who provided transportation. The ban on sharing public beaches with Israelis contrasts sharply with the laxity displayed toward Palestinians who work daily in Israel.

 

Palestinians Killed in al-Nakba Marches:

Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in demonstrations and marches from May 10-20 to commemorate and mourn 52 years of dispossession and loss on the May 15 anniversary of Israel’s creation, which Palestinians observe as the anniversary of al-Nakba, Arabic for “the catastrophe.” Six people died during clashes, another two children were killed by a settler bus, and an estimated 1,270 Palestinians were injured, many seriously, by live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, clubbing and tear gas, as occupation forces traded bullets for stones. According to the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights (LAW),164 Palestinians were wounded in Hebron, 207 in Bethlehem, 382 in Ramallah, 63 in Nablus, 263 in Toulkarem, 67 in Jenin, 40 in Qalqilya, 71 in Gaza and 13 in Jerusalem.

 

Palestinian Prisoners Hold Hunger Strike:

Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails declared a hunger strike on April 30 to protest their continued imprisonment under deplorable conditions. More than 2,200 Palestinian political prisoners and prisoners of war remain in Israeli prisons, many suffer deteriorating health and denial of family and legal visitation rights, in addition to, in many cases, solitary confinement and torture. Israeli soldiers wounded 40 Palestinians protesting the detention of prisoners, according to the May 14 Arab News of Jeddah.

 

West Bank, Gaza Among World’s Poorest:

The level of poverty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is among the highest in the Middle East and North Africa, according to a World Bank and the Palestinian National Poverty Commission report. Poverty in the Palestinian self-rule areas places them among some of the lowest-income countries in the world, on a par with states such as Nicaragua, Ghana and Vietnam, according to a May 28 article in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper.

 

New Gaza Hotel Planned:

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal signed an agreement with private Palestinian firms on May 27 to build the first five-star hotel in Palestinian-ruled Gaza. The prince will contribute $2 million of the total $35 million cost of the 225-room luxury hotel, which will be built on a 15-dunum (four-acre) plot on the golden beaches of Gaza. The Palestine Land Company would invest $15 million in the construction of the hotel, which it would carry out with PADICO and the Palestine Co. for Trade Service. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat praised Alwaleed for helping the recovery of the ailing Palestinian economy, noting that after its completion in 15 months, the hotel will create more than 500 jobs.

 

Tunnel Found Linking Gaza, Egypt:

Palestinian security forces on June 7 unearthed a tunnel between Egypt and the Rafah area of the Gaza Strip apparently used to smuggle goods into Gaza from Egypt. Police closed the 150-yard-long, 9-yard-deep tunnel, made some arrests and reported the discovery to an Israeli liaison committee, noting it was the 26th such discovery in the past two years by Palestinian security forces.

 

North Africa

 

Algerian Clashes Kill 24:

Clashes between armed groups and security forces in Algeria left 20 suspected militants and four security agents dead, national media reported June 7. The four community guards were killed during an ambush by suspected Islamic insurgents in Tarik Ibn Ziad, 110 miles west of the capital, Algiers, the Liberté newspaper reported. In a search for the attackers, soldiers killed 20 suspected militants near Sidi Daoud, 45 miles east of Algiers, La Tribune newspaper reported.

 

Egyptian Cave Drawings Found:

George Cunningham, an American pilot living in Egypt, discovered cave drawings while on a fossil-hunting desert outing 25 miles southeast of Cairo at the end of May. The cave drawings appear to be from three eras: the earliest, which could date back to 7000-6500 BC, are hunting scenes, and a later drawing appears to be religious, with gods or goddesses, and could date to the early Pharaonic dynastic period, around 3000-2500 BC. From yet another era comes writing that includes hieroglyphic elements, like a primitive version of an eye of Horus. Specialists speculate that it could represent a transition between languages, either before or after hieroglyphics.

 

Libya Schedules HIV Trial:

Libya has set a trial date of Sept. 17 for five Bulgarian nurses and a doctor accused of intentionally infecting 393 Libyan children with the HIV virus, the precursor to AIDS. The indictment says the medics, who could face the death penalty if convicted, used blood products contaminated with HIV as part of an attempt to destabilize the state. Nineteen Bulgarian medical staff working in Bengazi were detained in February 1999 during an investigation into how the children were infected, but 13 were later freed.

 

Moroccan King Pardons Editors:

Morocco’s King Mohammed granted a royal pardon on May 28 to two editors sentenced to jail terms of up to six months for libeling Foreign Affairs Minister Mohamed Benaissa, whom they accused of mismanagement and corruption when he was ambassador of Morocco to Washington in the mid-1990s. In early May, France-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) called on the Moroccan monarch to ensure press freedom. The journalists, Mustapha Alaoui, editor of the Arabic weekly al-Ousbou, and Khalid Mechbal, editor of Chamal newspaper, are now free to continue writing.

 

Tunisian Ruling Party Sweeps Elections:

Tunisia’s ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), won 3,885 seats out of a total 4,128 seats in 256 municipalities in local elections held on May 28. Five legal opposition parties fielded candidates in 64 districts. The five parties and independent candidates won 243 seats in the municipalities where they stood. Their share of the vote amounted to 5.9 percent, while the RCD took 94.1 percent. Opposition parties and independents won six seats at the previous local elections, held in 1995. Turnout was 84 percent, compared with 92.5 percent in 1995. Voting in one municipality was postponed until a later date because of flooding.

 

Central Asia

 

Turkish Marines Storm Greek Isle:

Turkish soldiers stormed Kyparissia, a Greek beach in the western Peloponnese, on June 2 in a NATO military exercise involving more than 2,000 troops from the United States, Spain, and Greece. The exercise was part of Dynamic Mix 2000, NATO’s biannual war game for troops to prepare to bolster security in the eastern Mediterranean. Overall, it involves 15,000 troops, 65 ships and 290 planes from 14 alliance countries. A loud explosion rocked Rhodes on June 9, sending people running out of their houses and triggering speculation on the Greek island that it might be a ship exploding off Turkey or a bomb. Authorities believed the blast came from a Turkish warship conducting exercises nearby.

 

The Subcontinent

 

World Bank Backs Indian Road Loan:

The World Bank approved a $516 million loan to help India improve its highway system and double or treble the width of existing roads and improve access to key ports. A bank statement on June 8 said the improvements would help bring down transport costs by boosting the capacity of existing roads, reducing traffic jams and road accidents, and improving road surfaces. India’s National Highway Authority said earlier this year that it planned to raise $4.6 billion to fund its road-building projects and that it also expected loans from international donors.

 

India’s Churches Condemn Attacks:

India’s church leaders on June 9 strongly condemned recent violence against Christians and accused the government of not doing enough to protect the country’s minority communities. Addressing a news conference, church leaders from across India said the bomb attacks on four churches in three states the previous day and the murder of a Roman Catholic priest two days earlier were “planned,” but did not spell out who they thought was behind them. The church leaders listed 35 anti-Christian incidents since the beginning of this year and said the new round of violence, which follows a series of attacks early last year, suggested the Hindu nationalist-led coalition government was either unable or unwilling to rein in militant Hindu organizations. Christians, who account for barely two percent of India’s billion-strong population, and Hindu activists have been at odds over the controversial question of religious conversions.

 

Pakistan Concedes to Striking Traders:

Pakistan’s military-led government June 9 neared agreement with striking retailers, paving the way for a possible end to their unprecedented 14-day-old business shutdown. But the government still plans to go ahead with a controversial survey to trace tax evaders and document the black-market economy, estimated to be nearly as big as the official economy of $60 billion. Pressure from merchants has forced previous governments to back away from tax-reform plans, creating splits with the international donors. Retailers have closed their shops to protest against the government survey to trace tax evaders and register them for a general sales tax, the official APP news agency reported. The strike has been the most serious challenge to military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf since he took power in an Oct. 12 army coup that toppled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

 

Pakistan Condemns U.S. Terrorism Report:

Pakistan denied an allegation in a U.S. National Commission on Terrorism report issued on June 5 that it was not fully cooperating with the international community against terrorism. “Pakistan itself is a victim of terrorism and wants to combat the menace,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said, apparently referring to frequent sectarian violence or bomb blasts that Islamabad often blames on an unspecified “foreign hand” or intelligence agents of arch-rival India. The charge against Pakistan of supporting terrorism is often linked to its backing of Kashmiri freedom fighters seeking self-determination rather than Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. The U.S. congressionally appointed panel’s report suggested that Washington should aggressively target states that still support terrorism and should use other measures, like sanctions, against countries such as Greece and Pakistan which allegedly are “not fully cooperating” against terrorism.

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