In the summer of 2009, three young Americans went for a hike. Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd were living together in Syria, teaching and writing. Their friend Josh Fattal was visiting from the U.S. The three took a tour to a waterfall in the Kurdish highlands of Iraq, and as they hiked along a road that turned out to be the border with Iran, an armed man in uniform waved them over.

The next thing they knew, they had embarked on a two-year ordeal in the infamous Evin prison in Tehran. They join NPR's Renee Montagne to talk about their new memoir, A Sliver of Light.

Link

Lara Logan 2012 BGA Speech on Afghanistan

Her ‘Crime’ Was Loving Schools

Twice the Taliban threw warning letters into the home of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistan girl who is one of the world’s most persuasive advocates for girls’ education. They told her to stop her advocacy — or else.

She refused to back down, stepped up her campaign and even started a fund to help impoverished Pakistani girls get an education. So, on Tuesday, masked gunmen approached her school bus and asked for her by name. Then they shot her in the head and neck.

“Let this be a lesson,” a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said afterward. He added that if she survives, the Taliban would again try to kill her.

Surgeons have removed a bullet from Malala, and she remains unconscious in critical condition in a hospital in Peshawar. A close family friend, Fazal Moula Zahid, told me that doctors are hopeful that there has been no brain damage and that she will ultimately return to school.

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These events coincide with the first international Day of the Girl on Thursday, and they remind us that the global struggle for gender equality is the paramount moral struggle of this century, equivalent to the campaigns against slavery in the 19th century and against totalitarianism in the 20th century.

Link

Saudi Women Get the Vote but Real Power is Elusive

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in the next set of municipal elections, scheduled for 2015. That's good news. But not as good as you might think.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/26/saudi-women-get-the-vote-but-real-power-is-elusive/#ixzz1Z7bPBvNf

An Eye for an Eye: Iran's Blinding Justice System

Iran's judiciary has postponed the blinding of a man as punishment for throwing acid in the face of a young woman in 2004, after she rejected his offer of marriage. The delay came in the face of mounting outcry from both inside Iran and the West over the sentence, which is permissible under qesas, a principle of Islamic law allowing victims analogous retribution for violent crimes.

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Bahrami, who was scheduled to administer the blinding drops to an anesthetized Movahedi herself, learned of the delay outside the Judiciary Hospital in Tehran. Human-rights groups and Western governments pleaded with Iranian authorities last week to call off the punishment

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2071529,00.html#ixzz1Md0WnLZf

 

Talk of Women’s Rights Divides Saudi Arabia

Good  article that captures societal shifts that are happening in Saudi Arabia

Uvealblues

JIDDA — Roughly two years ago, Rowdha Yousef began to notice a disturbing trend: Saudi women like herself were beginning to organize campaigns for greater personal freedoms. Suddenly, there were women asking for the right to drive, to choose whether to wear a veil, and to take a job without a male relative’s permission, all using the Internet to collect signatures and organize meetings and all becoming, she felt, more voluble by the month.

The final straw came last summer, when she read reports that a female activist in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province, Wajeha al-Huwaider, had been to the border with Bahrain, demanding to cross using only her passport, without a male chaperon or a male guardian’s written permission.

Ms. Huwaider was not allowed to leave the country unaccompanied and, like other Saudi women campaigning for new rights, has failed — so far — to change any existing laws or customs.

But Ms. Yousef is still outraged, and since August has taken on activists at their own game. With 15 other women, she started a campaign, “My Guardian Knows What’s Best for Me.” Within two months, they had collected more than 5,400 signatures on a petition “rejecting the ignorant requests of those inciting liberty” and demanding “punishments for those who call for equality between men and women, mingling between men and women in mixed environments, and other unacceptable behaviors.”

Buffett and the Prince

After losing billions on U.S. stocks beginning in 2000, Alwaleed Bin Talal says he may become richer than the Oracle of Omaha. His strategy: holding an IPO for his luxury hotels and building the world’s tallest tower in his homeland.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal sits under an almost full moon near a campfire at his rustic retreat in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He’s surrounded by a zoo with zebras and giraffes, an artificial lake and a lodge that has an indoor pool, saunas and steam rooms. Three hooded falcons are perched on stands in front of him.
Five young women, dressed in black miniskirts and jackets and orange knee-high boots that match their nail polish, serve clove-and-cardamom tea to Alwaleed and his entourage, which includes his personal physician.
On this evening in late March, the prince perks up in his easy chair as a newscast on a large-screen television behind the campfire reports on a rally in global hotel stocks -- a sign of hope for the billionaire investor who’s trying to revive his slumping fortune, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue.

Wall Street Journal Report on Saudia Arabia

The WSJ has 10 articles on the economy, culture, and future os Saudi Arabia here.

Deserted

AL WALEED, IRAQ — What does it feel like to raise a newborn baby in an inhospitable desert where scorpions crawl about and sandstorms threaten to bring down one’s tent?

Lubna Falah is about to find out. She will soon deliver her baby. This is not her first child, but she has never tried to raise one in a tent.

In Baghdad, Lubna had a beautiful home. That was then. Now she is left with bad dreams and repeated nightmares. Lubna is an Iraqi Palestinian, a double refugee, living in the desert close to the border with Syria. Her ancestors fled Palestine 60 years ago when Jewish forces took control of their home in Haifa, and now she is trying to flee Iraq. She is the sister of my friend Lina.

X-Treme Censorship

Suzie, writes a great blog from Saudi Arabia. It is entertaining and really captures the flavor of the culture.
Her latest post on censorship of in Saudi Arabia, takes me back. Sometimes the "man with the magic marker" was so precise I would think that the girl was wearing an evening gown, without realizing that the photo had been doctored to cover up her bare flesh! Check out the precision in the photos below! I have always wondered how many chaps are employed in this sector (and how they get this job), what with the thousands of magazines coming in to the Kingdom weekly (not to mention cd covers)...
Uvealblues


One of the CDs I got for Capt. Kabob is called "One of the Boys," by a female artist named Katy Perry. Ok, I have to admit here that 16 year old Capt. Kabob thinks Katy Perry is pretty hot, but he really likes her music too. When he opened up the CD, we were both astonished however. I hadn't noticed when I bought it, but the tightly sealed plastic wrap packaging had been removed and had been replaced with a clear plastic resealable envelope-type wrapper. The front cover of the little booklet tucked inside serves as the front of the CD cover. This little booklet insert has photos of the artist, a list of the songs and lyrics, as well as the artistic credits.

This is what the real cover of the CD should have looked like:



And here's what the actual CD cover that I purchased looks like:

Religious Directives....hmmm....

Pope Decries ‘Clouds of Evil’ Over Africa at Mass
LUANDA, Angola (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass for the largest gathering of his African pilgrimage Sunday, telling a crowd on the outskirts of this seaside capital that reconciliation on the war-ravaged continent would come only with a ''change of heart, a new way of thinking.''

The Vatican said as many as 1 million people turned out on the dusty field near a cement factory to hear the pope at the last major event of his seven-day trip, which began Tuesday in Cameroon.

Speaking from a tented pink altar, the pope said evils in Africa had ''reduced the poor to slavery and deprived future generations of the resources needed to create a more solid and just society.''

''How true it is that war can destroy everything of value,'' said Benedict, wearing a pink cape and mopping his sweaty brow with a white handkerchief kept inside his sleeve.

Later he was scheduled to meet with representatives of women's rights groups to praise the role of women in African society.
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''It is nearly always the woman who maintains intact human dignity, defends the family and protects cultural and religious values,'' the pontiff said, lamenting that the importance of family ''is not given the consideration it deserves.''


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Hardline Saudi clerics urge TV ban on women, music

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – A group of Saudi clerics urged the kingdom's new information minister on Sunday to ban women from appearing on TV or in newspapers and magazines, making clear that the country's hardline religious establishment is skeptical of a new push toward moderation.
In a statement, the 35 hardline clergymen also called on Abdel Aziz Khoja, who was appointed by King Abdullah on Feb. 14, to prohibit the playing of music and music shows on television.
"We have great hope that this media reform will be accomplished by you," said the statement. "We have noticed how well-rooted perversity is in the Ministry of Information and Culture, in television, radio, press, culture clubs and the book fair."
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French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, in town for meetings with Saudi officials, told a news conference that during lunch he sat between a female Saudi surgeon and a female journalist. He said while one woman is allowed to perform surgery and another is allowed to teach, neither is permitted to drive.
"I find that bizarre," he said.

Sandstorm Riyadh March 10, 2009

Well this will wreak havoc with your sinuses! It apparently shut down the airport as well!

Saudis Race All Night, Fueled by Boredom

We used to witness a fair amount of drag racing in Riyadh as well and hence drove with extra caution on the weekends..

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia
This may be the most popular sport of Saudi youth, an obsessive, semilegal competition that dominates weekend nights here. It ranges from garden variety drag racing to “drifting,” an extremely dangerous practice in which drivers deliberately spin out and skid sideways at high speeds, sometimes killing themselves and spectators.

For Saudi Arabia’s vast and underemployed generation of young people, these reckless night battles are a kind of collective scream of frustration, a rare outlet for exuberance in an ultraconservative country where the sexes are rigorously segregated and most public entertainment is illegal. They are, almost literally, bored out of their minds.

“Why do they do it?” said Suhail Janoudi, a 27-year-old sales clerk who was watching the races from the roadside with a faint smile around 1:30 a.m. “Because they have nothing else to do. Because they are empty.”

Some Arab Women Find Freedom in the Skies

A decade ago, unmarried Arab women like Ms. Fathi, working outside their home countries, were rare. But just as young men from poor Arab nations flocked to the oil-rich Persian Gulf states for jobs, more young women are doing so, sociologists say, though no official statistics are kept on how many.

Flight attendants have become the public face of the new mobility for some young Arab women, just as they were the face of new freedoms for women in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. They have become a subject of social anxiety and fascination in much the same way.

As Taboos Ease, Saudi Girl Group Dares to Rock

This is great!! There are some very talented musicians in Saudi Arabia. We used to have extended jam sessions and concerts together with many Saudi musicians in the Diplomatic Quarter, housing the embassies, in Riyadh. More power to these young ladies!

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album cover photographs. Even their jam sessions are secret, for fear of offending the religious authorities in this ultraconservative kingdom.

But the members of Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, are clearly not afraid of taboos.
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Yet rock and roll itself is suspect in Saudi Arabia in part because of its association with decadent lifestyles. Most of the bands here play heavy metal, which has only added to the stigma because of the way some Western heavy metal bands use images linked to satanism or witchcraft. In Saudi Arabia, people are sometimes imprisoned and even executed on charges of practicing witchcraft.

The first rock bands appeared here about 20 years ago, according to Hassan Hatrash, 34, a journalist and bass player who was one of the pioneers, and their numbers gradually grew. Then in 1995, the police raided a performance in the basement of a restaurant in Jidda, hauling about 300 young men off to jail, including Mr. Hatrash. They were released a few days later without being charged. There is no actual law against playing rock music or performing publicly.

“After that, the scene kind of died,” he said.

How Many Lashes Can One Man Take?

Thousands, if they're performed correctly.

There were protests in Egypt this week after an Egyptian doctor was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes by the Saudi Arabian government for prescribing medicine to a princess that "drove her to addiction." The wife of the convicted doctor worried publicly that the sentence would kill him. How many lashes can one man stand?


It depends on how you're lashed. It's very unlikely that the doctor will die from his sentence if it is administered in the usual Saudi Arabian way—i.e., broken up into weekly bouts of 50 lashings each. (Women are given 20 to 30 at a time.) But a string of regular punishments administered over a span of seven months could still be dangerous. After just one round of lashings, he could suffer lacerated or bruised skin. More serious problems are likely to arise after repeated, weekly abuse—including nerve damage and infection.

Saudi Women Find Unlikely Role Model: Oprah

This article notes how Oprah resonates with Saudi women, which in my experience is true, but misses the larger picture, which is that Saudis have a very special affinity for America. There were many nights that my Saudi techs would ask me if I watched the e.g. 'Lakers vs. Celtics game last night" --broadcast at 2am due to time differences.,...
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia—Once a month, Nayla says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.

A young Saudi homemaker who covers her face in public might not seem to have much in common with an American talk show host whose image is known to millions. Like many women in this conservative desert kingdom, Nayla does not usually socialize with people outside her extended family, and she never leaves her house unless chaperoned by her husband.

Ms. Winfrey has not answered the letters. But Nayla says she is still hoping.

“I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”
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Maha al-Faleh, 23, of Riyadh, said, “Oprah talks about issues that haven’t really been spoken about here openly before.

“She talks about racism, for example,” she said. “This is something that Saudis are very concerned about, because many of us feel that we’re judged for the way we veil or for our skin color. I have a friend whose driver touched her in an inappropriate way. She was very young at the time, but she felt very guilty about it — and Oprah helped her to speak about this abuse with her mother.”

The End is Nigh?

"Saudi Jeans" thinks that the latest tirade by Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan may be his undoing...

Saudi Arabia’s top judiciary official has issued a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV networks that broadcast immoral content. The 79-year-old Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan said Thursday that satellite channels cause the “deviance of thousands of people.”

Memo From Cairo: 9/11 Rumors That Become Conventional Wisdom

I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when the attacks occurred. From the very get go, Saudis were incredulous that arabs could plan and execute such an attack (as alluded to later in the article)...

However, I think that the conspiracy theories detailed below are not limited to the Middle East but are also felt in the rest of the world, based on conversations I have had with numerous people from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America since then...

CAIRO — Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom here that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too.

This is not the conclusion of a scientific survey, but it is what routinely comes up in conversations around the region — in a shopping mall in Dubai, in a park in Algiers, in a cafe in Riyadh and all over Cairo.

“Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.”

It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.

Countries Make Push to Increase Eye Donors

The non-acceptance of corneal transplantation in the third world continues to be a problem. It is encouraging to see that efforts to increase acceptance are being made in Syria. I should also acknowledge that Dr. David Paton, who started Orbis' Flying Eye Hospital, also started the first eye bank in the Middle East. (The article also quotes my friend, Dr. Hunter Cherwek, the current medical director of Orbis).
Orbis continues to promote corneal transplantation in every country it goes to. In fact, the article reminds me of an interview I and an Orbis colleague of mine, Dr. Ahmed Gomaa, did in conjunction with a local ophthalmologist in Enugu, Nigeria last summer. The interview was nationally televised and accepted calls from listeners. One caller asked, with great concern evident in his voice, whether or not a corneal donor would still be able to see in the after-life. The local ophthalmologist gave a colorful answer replete with Biblical references that convinced the caller that he would have vision in Heaven even if he donated his corneas. The entire exchange was quite charming, yet not one that would typically occur in most nationally televised debates in America.


Eye donation recently got a new public face in Syria, where the Grand Mufti, the highest official of religious law, pledged to donate his corneas upon death to help one of the thousands of people waiting for transplants there. In India, it is Bollywood film stars like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the former Miss World, who have pledged their eye tissue for transplant.
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Doctors in Syria perform hundreds of transplants a year, said Dr. Said, director of the National Program for Blindness Control. But the supply of tissue from the United States has been dropping, and the corneas the country does get go only to wealthy people who will pay $1,000 or more per eye. A new eye bank in Syria is part of a regional effort to drum up corneal tissue in the Middle East and parts of northern Africa.
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“As corneal transplants become more and more successful, there are more and more candidates for the procedure,” said Dr. Hunter Cherwek, medical director of the Flying Eye Hospital, a DC-10 airplane run by the nonprofit group Orbis that flies to various countries to train eye surgeons. “It truly becomes a supply and demand issue, where the techniques are expanding the demand.”

Orbis is working with a government agency to increase eye donations in Vietnam, where Dr. Cherwek estimates that “thousands, likely tens of thousands could benefit from corneal transplantation.”
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The shortage of eye tissue in many places means that transplants are available only to the wealthy. Building domestic eye banks, experts say, could reduce the price of corneas and allow more people to get transplants. But the experts also say that such growth, however beneficial, is unlikely to improve a more basic problem: lack of access to eye care for the poor.