Forget everything you heard from the Arab Human Development Reports and Ahmed Zuwail about Egypt's scientific research and development lagging behind. The country actually has the most advanced bio-geneticists in the world, being able to retrieve all sorts of information from a DNA sample:

Security sources: DNA reveals bomber was from Egypt’s Delta region 

Authorities have announced that a body found at the scene of the Two Saints Church attack is suspected to be that of the suicide bomber.

According to DNA tests performed on the body, the bomber is suspected to be from Egypt’s Delta region, north of Cairo. Officials say that investigation results show he was a university graduate with no permanent job, who left his family home about one year ago.

Officials also say that investigations are still undergoing in order to confirm these finding and to track down the suspect’s family members for further interrogations.

This new information refutes previous statements by the government, which claimed that the bomber was of Afghan origin.

Wow. Just wow. Egypt has done such a great job at genome sequencing it can determine Delta genes, as opposed to Saidi ones. And it has the amazing ability of determining employment status, university enrollment and all sorts of other info.

All joking aside, this piece is a prime example of why basic scientific literacy is necessary in journalism. Still, I'd like to know how exactly DNA sampling helped find this suspect — if at all. 

A report I wrote in the aftermath of last month's parliamentary elections in Egypt for the Project on Middle East Democracy is out. You can get it here.

Written for a US policymaker audience, it takes the recent elections as an alarm signal for Egypt's future, reviews some of the Bush and Obama administrations' approaches to democracy promotion in Egypt and the limited support for more vigorous pressure on Egypt in Washington. Nothing that the latter is not about to change, it makes a few suggestions for steps the US could take in the aftermath of the elections, including downgrading relations with an unrepresentative People's Assembly and more forceful engagement with the Egyptian opposition, including endorsing widely shared goals such as the National Association for Change's six points for reform, and engaging with political actors even if they are outside parliament. In the wake of the Alexandria bombing, it also urges continued American support to address grievances of the Coptic community, such as restrictions on church-building.

While policymakers will look to the recommendations (which I hope are humble and realistic enough to be taken under consideration), there were two further points I was interested in making.

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Here are links to some recent articles on what's happening in Tunisia. One question raised by these articles (I excerpt the relevant passage below) is what danger do the protests pose the Ben Ali regime and what alternatives to it there are. Regimes like Tunisia have been extremely effective not only in containing opposition leaders but also in ensuring that none exist at all that have a wide popularity. There is no Tunisian Aung San Suu Kyi or Yukashenko. There are some prominent intellectuals and journalists, but there are not likely political candidates with any kind of organized base. This is the price that was paid in part by Western support for these regimes, and in part by the "social contract" enacted with the population.

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Abrams — the former Bush administration Middle East supremo widely credited for backing Muhammad Dahlan's coup attempt against Hamas that led to the Palestinian split — is shocked, shocked, that Dahlan is being accused of fomenting a coup against Mahmoud Abbas. But he also doesn't like his former Palestinian partner:

People like Dahlan and other former Arafat cronies, raised with the corruption and disarray of Arafat’s satrapy, have no role and no future in the PA. 

But what is it all about for Mr Abrams? That Palestinians are simply not ready to have their own state, of course.

Abrams now spends much of his time being Mr Democracy Promotion and lamenting the bad ways of the Obama administration. So where was he in 2006, when it suddenly became inconvenient to promote democracy in Palestine, Egypt and elsewhere?

Lina Attallah on the Alexandria bombing and Egyptian Copts' re-politicization:

While Coptic anger should not be misinterpreted as a sign of overall political dissent, the act of taking to the streets frames the tension along clear political parameters. This is particularly interesting given the decades-long state-engineered process of trivialising politics amongst citizens by co-opting religious institutions, such as the Church, by giving it full authority over the religious and social aspects of Egyptian Christians’ lives in exchange for preaching de-politicisation. This has consequently led to the Church playing a large role in Egypt’s Coptic community, encouraging its members to congregate, to become isolated and to direct concerns to religious authorities as opposed to civil leadership, resulting in a decreased interest in politics over time. 

The anger generated by recent events has the potential to reverse this political apathy amongst Egypt’s Copts and could result positively in renewed civil engagement. The fact that their anger is directed towards the regime, as opposed to their fellow citizens, is healthy and could lead to greater solidarity between fellow Egyptians of all faiths.

Stratfor's George Friedman has a rather breathless analysis of the implications of the Alexandria church bombing that sees it as some kind of precursor to an Islamic state in Egypt. That's quite a ridiculous jump to make when many other countries are experiencing terrorist attacks, and implicitly it assumes that a terrorist attack is a sign of a resurgent Islamist movement — as if the bulk of non-violent Islamist movements even support such an attack.

Let’s consider for a moment what an Islamist Egypt would mean. The Mediterranean, which has been a strategically quiet region, would come to life. The United States would have to reshape its strategy, and Israel would have to refocus its strategic policy. Turkey’s renaissance would have to take seriously a new Islamic power in the Mediterranean. Most important, an Islamist Egypt would give dramatic impetus to radical Islam throughout the Arab world. One of the linchpins of American and European policy in the region would be gone in a crucial part of the world. The transformation of Egypt into an Islamist country would be the single most significant event we could imagine in the Islamic world, beyond an Iranian bomb.

Well, that may well be true, but that "what if" is a pretty huge one. And concluding sentence is a masterpiece of mealy-mouthiness that doesn't say much:

At this point, however, anything out of the ordinary in Egypt must be taken seriously, if for no other reason than because this is Egypt, Egypt matters more than most countries, and Egypt is changing.

From a wonderful interview of Eric Siblin, the author of a book on cellist Pablo Casals popularization of Bach's cello suites, by Scott Horton of Harpers:

When the ideological barricades went up in Europe in the 1930s Casals, like many, took sides. His position was not surprising given his background. As someone whose father had been an anti-monarchist Republican, and as a native Catalan—which meant being very wary of Madrid’s centralizing powers—Casals was predisposed to favor the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. When Franco and his fascist troops, assisted by Hitler and Mussolini, won the civil war in early 1939, Casals was forced into grief-stricken exile. He remained an anti-Franco activist for the rest of his life, enlisting his reputation and cello for the cause. The most famous instrumentalist of his day, Casals went so far as to silence his cello, refusing to perform in any country that had diplomatic relations with the Franco regime in Spain. Casals would have related to the politics of Bono more than Bach.

His pioneering recording of the cello suites was made towards the end of the 1930s when the Spanish Civil War was convulsing his homeland. That monumental recording, which has never gone out of print, has remained the touchstone for every cellist since. Had the civil war not been raging in Spain, I doubt there would have been the same degree of urgency, desperation, and hopefulness in that epic recording.

This artist was displayed in December at Cairo Documenta — does anyone know who it is?

Thanks!

My latest column at al-Masri al-Youm, on the opportunities arising of the Alexandria church bombing, is up. An excerpt:

If there is a silver living to this horrible act, it is that we’ve seen a genuine outpouring of grief and indignation about the bombing, and a real willingness to break with taboos and platitudes from many ordinary Egyptians. There appears to be a growing realization that even if there is often little to be done against terrorists’ determination to carry out acts of murders, there is much to be done to defuse the tension of an environment in which many Copts consider the bombing the latest indignity they must endure.

Out of this terrible tragedy, therefore, is an opportunity for political and civil society actors. It is no coincidence that many of the Muslims who joined with Copts in the last few days’ protests were doing so not merely in solidarity, but also against a generalized failure of the state to build a positive vision for what it means to be an Egyptian citizen in the twenty-first century.

Note that a coalition of Egyptian NGOs has called for the state to act now to correct its own contributions to sectarian tensions.

Arabist reader André Bank sent me the following analysis of Jordan's recent parliamentary elections and the decision of the Islamic Action Front (a Muslim Brotherhood affiliated party) to boycott. I reproduce here for the benefit of others. His views, of course, are his own — but they certainly have shed some light for me on a subject I don't know much about.

Jordan’s parliamentary elections and the Islamist boycott 

By André Bank

3 January 2011

André Bank is a research fellow at the GIGA Institute of Middle East Studies in Hamburg, Germany. His main areas of expertise are regional conflict, foreign and domestic politics in the Middle East, with a focus on Jordan, Syria and Palestine.

Introduction

On November 9, Jordan held its sixth parliamentary elections after the partial political opening of the authoritarian regime in 1989. In the recent elections, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and the Islamic Action Front (IAF) as its affiliated party successfully boycotted, leading to an elected Lower House without any parliamentarians from the traditionally largest and only really relevant political party in Jordan. The government’s maintenance of the highly controversial “one-man, one vote” electoral system of 1993, which despite some cosmetic changes in May 2010 still highly discriminates against urban areas and clearly favours the rural, tribally dominated parts of Jordan, has been the obvious reason behind the Islamists’ decision not to participate in this year’s “election game”, thereby pushing through the second electoral boycott since the first one in 1997.  

In order to adequately understand the Islamists’ current electoral boycott, I hold that we should look beyond the specifics and minimal changes of the maintained “sawt wahid” electoral law and locate the boycott in its wider political and also historical context. This bigger picture of the politics of Islamists and elections in Jordan, I would argue, can be adequately grasped along three axes – or analytical lenses: First, the relationship between the MB/IAF and the Hashemite government. Second, the connections between Islamist politics in Jordan and the wider Arab region and in particular the Palestinian arena. And thirdly, internal politics and the dynamics within the MB/IAF itself, which – again – are also in various ways interlinked with the other two dimensions. 

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From Brookings' Shadi Hamid:

The Egyptian opposition needed a newcomer like Kifaya to energize it, and give it a renewed sense of purpose. But it also needed a traditional giant like the Brotherhood to amplify this new voice and extend it throughout Egypt and among the mass of Egyptians. In this respect, the old opposition and the new one were not mutually exclusive. They were two sides of the same coin – both necessary but in different, complimentary ways.

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I have an article in the January/February issue of Foreign Policy that is entirely about Egyptian political jokes in the Mubarak era (with a few thrown in about other Egyptian rulers for good measures). May it bring some levity to these dark times...

What would happen if you spent 30 years making fun of the same man? What if for the last decade, you had been mocking his imminent death -- and yet he continued to stay alive, making all your jokes about his immortality seem a bit too uncomfortably close to the truth?

Egyptians, notorious for their subversive political humor, are currently living through this scenario: Hosni Mubarak, their octogenarian president, is entering his fourth decade of rule, holding on to power and to life through sheer force of will. Egyptian jokers, who initially caricatured their uncharismatic leader as a greedy bumpkin, have spent the last 10 years nervously cracking wise about his tenacious grasp on the throne. Now, with the regime holding its breath as everyone waits for the ailing 82-year-old Mubarak to die, the economy suffering, and people feeling deeply pessimistic about the future, the humor is starting to feel a little old.

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A provocative idea from Brian Whitaker: what if the Sidi Bouzid protests in Tunisia are the most important story to come out of the Arab world in the past year?

Tunisia is in an unusually fortunate position as one of the few countries in the Middle East where foreign powers have little incentive to meddle. Its dictator, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali (23 years in power) is a western ally of sorts, but an embarrassing one. He's no great asset and his departure would be no great loss. If a recent WikiLeaks document is to be believed, the Americans find him impossible to deal with and have more or less given up on trying to work with him.

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I just returned this afternoon from a few days in the Egyptian countryside, with no phone and internet. News of the Alexandria bombing had reached us, but it didn't quite hit home until I caught up with news reports, all the activity on Twitter and today's various protests (confusingly both about the church bombings and in solidarity with Tunisia's Sidi Bouzid protests). The protests are ongoing, with a novelty being the police cordon and heightened security around the TV building in central Cairo. This story will unfold over the next few days, with so far little confirmed about the perpetrators.

I will thus reserve my take, for now, to the main issues:

1. The attacks could indicate a new al-Qaeda inspired group is operating in Egypt. It's unlikely that such a group is foreign, as the authorities were very quick to say (because somehow no Egyptian would do this?), although this could be a first manifestation of the "returnees from Iraq" phenomenon experienced elsewhere. It is unlikely that it's the revival of an Egyptian Islamic Jihad sleeper cell either, so we are probably talking about a "freelance jihadi" cell of some kind, the radicalization of a Salafi group (with Alexandria being a major center of Salafi activity) or, less likely, a more serious attempt at destabilizing Egypt by al-Qaeda in Iraq, which had issued threats against Egypt a few months ago (again the "returnees from Iraq" scenario would point to that). Whoever the perpetrators are, this goes to show how interconnected the world of jihadi Salafism is, and the porous borders it has with "Scientific" or non-violent Salafism.

2. It's yet another very worrying indication of rising sectarian tensions in Egypt. It's not so much the attack itself, but the recriminations it has engendered and the rioting that followed it. At that same time, it's also heart-warming to see so much indignation and solidarity on Twitter and elsewhere. Hopefully something good can come out of this drama and seeing Muslims call out for genuine, total equality between themselves and Copts is a good sign. Let's hope it's not all wasted by security interference, irresponsible clergymen and imams, and the other usual spoilers.

3. There is also something specifically Alexandrian about this. Yes, sectarian attacks have taken place elsewhere, but usually sparked by some clash over conversion or church-building, or in the case of the Naga Hammadi murders most probably local politics. This is of a completely different order, and more similar to the 2006 church murders I wrote about here. Something is rotten in Alexandria, not for the first time.

Here's a collection of links, articles and more about the church bombing.

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