It started with "assalaamu alaykum" and ended with "may God's peace be upon you." Inbetween, President Barack Obama dotted his speech to the Muslim world with Islamic terms and references meant to resonate with his audience. The real substance in the speech were his policy statements and his call for a "new beginning" in U.S. relations with Muslims, as outlined in our trunk news story. But the new tone was also important and it struck a chord with many Muslims who heard the speech, as our Middle East Special Correspondent Alistair Lyon found. Not all, of course -- you can find positive and negative reactions here.

(Photo: Iraqi in Baghdad watches Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Mohammed Ameen)

Among Obama's Islamic touches were four references to the Koran (which he always called the Holy Koran), his approving mention of the scientific, mathematical and philosophical achievements of the medieval Islamic world and his citing of multi-faith life in Andalusia. These are standard elements that many Islam experts -- Muslims and non-Muslims -- mention in speeches at learned conferences, but it's not often that you hear an American president talking about them.

Two religious references particularly caught my attention because they weren't the usual conference circuit clichés. One was his comment about being in "the region where (Islam) was first revealed" -- a choice of past participle showing respect for the religion.

The other came when he said Jerusalem should be "a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer." The Sura al-Isra is the Koran chapter about Mohammad's Night Journey to heaven, which tradition says started in Jerusalem on what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews the Temple Mount. It was an interesting way to cite Islamic tradition to say Jerusalem should be "a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together." The interjection "peace be upon them" had both an Islamic tone and an interfaith touch.

(Photo: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip watch Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

Obama also gave the American Muslim population estimate -- 7 million -- that prompted him to tell a French interviewer earlier this week that the U.S. could be considered "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." He didn't repeat that phrase in his speech, however, possibly because the figures don't back it up. Figures for Muslim populations are dodgy because many countries don't keep such data. Recent estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million, so he's taken about the highest figures around. If those figures are correct, the U.S. would still only rank only about 30th on the list of countries with the largest Muslim populations. That's way down on this Wikipedia list, with Azerbaijan and Burkina Faso. That's nowhere near the really big Muslim populations like the top three Indonesia (195 million), Pakistan (160 million) and India (140 million). Maybe that's why his speechwriters backed off the "one of the largest" claim.

The end of the speech also had an interesting twist. Obama reached for one of the quotes from the Koran that Muslims cite most frequently when they call for tolerance among peoples: "The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

(Photo: Egyptians in cafe watch Obama's speech, 4 June 2009/Asmaa Waguih)

But he followed it up with quotes from the other two Abrahamic religions: "The Talmud tells us: 'The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.' The Holy Bible tells us, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God'."

What did you think of Obama's speech?

Here's a short video about the speech:

By Edmund Blair

It was a simple question but it touched a raw nerve.

Mohamed, my 46-year-old taxi driver, had been wondering where I learnt Arabic. So I explained that I had been based in Egypt a few years ago and had now returned to take up a new post in the Reuters bureau. So, I asked, how’s life these days?

And then it began. He launched into a tirade about an economy where the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer,a government that only seemed concerned about staying in power and the difficulty of paying for the education of his four sons — the eldest of whom he is now supporting through university.

Taxi drivers are an all-too-common sounding ground for foreign journalists and the kind of rant I listened to is probably not so unusual the world over. But what made Mohamed’s comments striking is that taxi drivers in other countries probably aren’t, like him, fully qualified accountants.

“There are doctors, engineers, teachers, all of them driving taxis. They just don’t earn enough otherwise,” he told me, grinding to a halt as a pick-up tried to do a U-turn in the middle of a narrow road. “This government doesn’t even provide order.” It’s hard to argue with that point on the streets of the capital where even the newest cars have scratches and dents, testimony to traffic rules that seem to be regarded — at least to any visitor — as optional.

Mohamed quit accountancy 15 years ago when he realised it couldn’t pay the bills. Now he earns about 50 to 60 Egyptian pounds, $9 to $11, for each 10-hour day. That’s what he takes home after paying for fuel and keeping his car on the road, giving him about 1,200 to 1,400 pounds a month. He might earn just half that as an accountant for the government, which still dominates the job market despite a raft of liberalising reforms introduced by a cabinet appointed in 2004.

Since those reforms were implemented, the economy has grown at quite a clip. Growth hit 7 percent last year, the level economists had long said Egypt needed to finally start creating enough jobs to cut unemployment rather than simply keep pace with population growth in this country of 80 million (The global crisis has taken its toll on the export and tourist-oriented economy, however, and depressed growth to 4 percent this year).

Despite a strong performance that has drawn praise from the World Bank and international investors, most ordinary Egyptians say the only thing that has changed for them are prices — food and other goods have become more expensive. Inflation and subsidised bread shortages sparked public protests and violence last year — the height of the boom — and prompted the government to order a 30 percent hike in some state wages. The debate filling newspapers now is whether the government will deliver an adequate rise in this year’s budget starting in July.

It’s not just workers who are struggling. Middle class Egyptians are feeling the squeeze. Mohamed pays for extra private tuition for his kids because he says the state system is inadequate. It is a story you hear from many middle class households. As if to prove Mohamed’s point, the independent Al-Masry Al-Youm daily, on the day he spoke, carried a frontpage article describing a school in south Egypt with 952 children,educated in two shifts a day, but only 100 chairs. Girls have seats and boys sit on the floor, it said with an accompanying photograph.

When I could get a word in edgeways, I asked Mohamed why there weren’t more protests like last year. “I’ll tell you,” he explained. “The people are not united, they are afraid to go out and protest. And, of course, most people are too busy trying to feed and educate their families.”

That’s also a common refrain. The Egyptian authorities tend to send heavy security to head off protests and only allow regular demonstrations in a few specific spots in the capital.
Even when demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak, in power since 1981, and his government hit the streets of the capital more broadly around 2005, they rarely gathered more than a few hundred activists. The argument then, as now, was people just have too many other concerns.

“I’m sorry to have spoken to you like this. But I have so much frustration inside. It’s a beautiful country but it is run badly,” he said. Appropriately, we were running alongside an attractive stretch of the Nile by then.

At the end of the drive, I asked him if I could use his name but he said he’d probably end up in jail if I did. So I’ve changed it though I am not sure he would have been locked up. I also tipped him $5 on top of the $5 fare (you can go a long way rather cheaply in Egypt). Most of my taxi drivers aren’t so lucky with my tips but I’m still not sure I offered him enough after he gave me such insight.

The overthrow of Madagascar’s leader may have had nothing to do with events elsewhere in Africa, but after four violent changes of power within eight months the question is bound to arise as to whether the continent is returning to old ways.

Three years without coups between 2005 and last year had appeared to some, including foreign investors, to have indicated a fundamental change from the first turbulent decades after independence. This spate of violent overthrows could now be another reason for investors to tread more warily again, particularly as Africa feels the impact of the global financial crisis.

"Although I don't think these instances of instability in Africa are related to each other or part of a pattern, I think there's no doubt external constituents and businesspeople around the world will assume there is a pattern," said Tom Cargill, Africa Programme Coordinator at London thinktank Chatham House.

The fact that coup makers have succeeded without being forced to step down or even face major censure could also embolden those who might be tempted to take power in bigger countries, where falling growth is encouraging disaffection.

"Look at ... other African countries, so-called pivotal states: Nigeria is in a terrible state, so is Egypt, so is Kenya, all these so-called big countries," said Hussein Solomon, a political science professor at the University of Pretoria.

Although there can be a tendency to group very diverse African states together, the picture is far from uniform - Ghana's presidential election two months ago was one of Africa's closest, but avoided major violence, reassuring investors despite an acute fiscal crisis.

But social pressures are growing across Africa as a result of the world economic crisis.

The dramatic U-turn by rich countries as they bail out or buy up failing industries is also prompting a reassessment of the model sold to Africa by Western donors since the Cold War -- a combination of market capitalism and multiparty democracy.

Cargill said factors were both the financial crisis and the rise of one-party state China, an increasingly important source of investment and trade for Africa.

"I think in future the whole idea of the democratic capitalist system will be tested and questioned, and there will be some who take advantage of its being questioned for their own private ends to launch their own bids for power," he said.

That debate is already taking place at the African Union, whose rules ban unconstitutional seizures of power but whose chairman for the next year, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, opposes what he says are foreign democratic structures imposed on Africa.

The AU has told Madagascar that any seizure of power by unconstitutional means would be considered a coup d'etat, punishable by AU sanctions or suspension.

But that sits uneasily with Gaddafi's rebuke last week of Mauritania's first democratically elected leader, largely confined to his village after being deposed in a coup last year.

"He must accept the fact,” said Gaddafi, who seized power in 1969 “He is not the first head of state to be overthrown.”

Is Africa returning to the old ways or did it never really leave them behind? Will a reassessment of the financial model pushed by Western donors also mean a new look at the multiparty democracy?

It was really only a matter of time.

Within days of the end of Israel’s offensive in Gaza - which included the dropping of massive ‘bunker-buster’ bombs to destroy the vast network of tunnels that run under Gaza’s border with Egypt - the tunnels are up and running again.

The tunnelers say they are not interested in smuggling weapons - the food and fuel that Gazans so desperately need are far more profitable contraband anyway.

To see the tunnels open again - so soon after the end of 22 days of military operations - has riled Israel and led to warnings that further military force could be used against the tunnels.

The warnings are of little concern to those doing the digging and the smuggling - if Israel wants to stop the smuggling, they say, open Gaza’s borders.

Stopping the smuggling was one of the stated aims of Israel’s offensive. Although Israel has been bolstered by US and European support in its bid to cut off the smuggling of rockets - the facts on, and under, the ground suggest the aim was not achieved.

Stopping militants firing rockets at Israel was another stated aim. That has been achieved by a ceasefire - but Israeli intelligence estimates Hamas and other militant factions still have plenty of rockets in stock which could be unleashed if this ceasefire crumbles like so many before it.

Dealing Hamas a ‘crushing blow’ was another stated aim. That one is hard to gauge - Hamas, despite losing some of its top leaders in the campaign, has claimed ‘victory’ and still seems to be standing in Gaza.

‘Changing the reality in the south’ was another stated aim.  Again hard to gauge although much of the pre-war reality has not changed - Israelis are still living under the threat of a rain of rockets, Palestinians are still living in destitution behind a crippling blockade.

All of which, inevitably, has led to questions about what exactly has been achieved by the devastating offensive - apart from massive damage to Gaza’s infrastructure, a shocking casualty toll, a battering of Israel’s international reputation in some quarters and an impoverished and embattled population in Gaza which - on the face of it - is not blaming its Hamas leaders for the onslaught but is pointing the finger squarely at Israel.

Some commentators have said Israel achieved one important goal by reestablishing its ‘deterrence’ - its ability to make its enemies think twice before attacking - that was badly dented by an inconclusive outcome to the 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon.

Other commentators are questioning whether the means justify that end.

‘Ah - the usual suspects,’ an Israeli colleague told me when I pointed out this commentary from left-wing columnist Gideon Levy in Haaretz which raises questions about what was achieved.

Its worth noting that even the ‘usual suspects’ were far more circumspect in their criticism in the early stages of the war - indeed some were even supportive in line with the vast majority of Israeli public opinion and the mainstream media.

Reading the comments on Levy’s essay- or on this one by Gadi Baltiansky on the website of Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth - still gives a fair, if non-scientific, reflection on popular opinion in Israel which is still firmly behind the war.

More scientific is the poll published today by Israel Hayom/New Wave - which shows hawkish former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gaining steadily in popularity ahead of elections in just under three weeks.

Netanyahu - according to his adviser Ron Dermer - would have added another aim to the Gaza offensive: “Ultimately Hamas must be toppled because it is a threat to Israel,” he told Reuters here.

With the election fast turning in to a referendum on the war and its outcome - one last aim could still be achieved.

As my colleague Dan Williams reported here the fate of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit held by Palestinian militants in Gaza could be in play again - with Israel appearing more flexible on Hamas demands for the release of 1,400 inmates held in Israeli jails in return for the release of Shalit.

If that happens before election day the polls could still have some surprises in store.

Two Algerians were detained by Egyptian authorities recently while trying to obtain a work visa from the Israeli embassy in Cairo, a local newspaper has reported, despite the fact that Algeria and Israel are still officially at war.
 
A survey, published by an Algerian newspaper, showed that up to half of Algeria’s young men are tempted by the idea of fleeing to Europe as illegal migrants to escape misery at home.
 
Why do so many people from a country – renowned by many in the Arab world for sacrificing up to one million people in a war to end 130 years of French rule - want to escape to Europe?
 
Algeria is a rich nation but its people are poor. It is the world’s fourth largest gas exporter and the tenth of oil. Foreign currency reserves have soared to $138 billion at the end of Nov. 2008 from $41 billion at the end of 2004.
 
Yet, the UNDP’s human development index, which measures quality of life, puts Algeria in 104th place, behind countries such as Cape Verde and Belize.
 
High unemployment, estimated at 70 percent among people under 30 - though official statistics give far lower figures - is driving many Algerians to desperate measures.
 
Earlier this year, police in the town of Chlef fought angry youths who had burned shops and buildings in the latest in a series of protests against lack of housing and jobs and what critics call an unresponsive political elite.
 
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has led his North African Arab country out of a brutal civil war by combining military force with an amnesty for militants, but getting Algerians out of poverty appears to be proving more difficult.
 
He looks well placed to stay in office after his allies pushed through a law that allows him to seek a third term in office when his second term ends next year.
 
High oil prices over the past few years have helped the country of 33 million launch a $140 billion five-year national economic development plan and repay a large part of its foreign debt.
 
The Algerian government has promised a $100-150 billion national development drive from next year. But many Algerians ponder how to cope until such a plan takes off.
 
“We are desperate,” said Mohamed Tegar, a 32-year-old resident of Chelf. “We are six men living in a very small flat and all of us are unemployed. We don’t understand the local authorities’ reaction.”

President-elect Barack Obama has been getting a lot of advice these days on how to deal with Muslims and Islam. He invited it by saying during his campaign that he either wanted to convene a conference with leaders of Muslim countries or deliver a major speech in a Muslim country "to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular”. But where? when? why? how? Early this month, I chimed in with a pitch for a speech in Turkey or Indonesia.  Some quite interesting comments have come in since then.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

Two French academics, Islam expert Olivier Roy and political scientist Justin Vaisse argued in a New York Times op-ed piece on Sunday that Obama's premise of trying to reconcile the West and Islam is flawed:

Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.

Instead, Mr. Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a “post-civilizational” president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.

Also on Sunday, the Istanbul newspaper Sunday's Zaman ran a piece by sociologist Dogu Ergil who spelled out what he thought "moderate Muslims" expected of Obama.

(Photo: Blue Mosque in Istanbul, 9 Dec 2008/Tan Shung Sin)

Moderate or non-ideological Muslims expect Mr. Obama to support democratic trends in their countries, but not to push them from above using ruling elites that will never adopt a democratic agenda but rather will simply play for time, making only cosmetic changes. This will, in turn, further reinforce the power of autocratic regimes that are threatened by genuine democracy.

Muslim moderates look at religion as a cultural affair, wanting to render it autonomous of politics so that it will be protected from political power and in the same way, preventing it from seeking political power. So they want the Obama administration to press their governments to enact reforms that will pave the way to democratic politics and legal changes that will allow for more individual freedoms. They do not want a hypocritical stance from an America which advocates democracy but supports the most authoritarian regimes in the Arab world for the sake of oil deals and other strategic ends. The Bush administration set a very bad example of paying lip service to democracy, which, in fact, worked as a vehicle to blackmail Arab regimes and served America's strategic interests.

Michael Fullilove at the Brookings Institution made a pitch for an Obama speech in Indonesia in the New York Times while several Moroccan blogs have been running a campaign (including a petition with a long list of reasons) to have him speak there. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an exiled Egyptian sociologist and human rights who is a visiting professor at Harvard and Indiana universities, made the case for Indonesia or Turkey in the Washington Post.

Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador in the United States and Britain, has a long list of suggestions for a reformed U.S. policy towards the Muslim world in the Harvard International Review.  The list is fairly extensive, although it would have been even more informative if it had included suggestions for what should change in the Muslim world.

(Photo: Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, 21 Dec 2007/Mohsin Raza)

How Obama manages issues in the Muslim world will determine the success or failure of his foreign policy...

In the Muslim world ... perceptions have been shaped by decades of uneven handed policies and by US double standards that placed the security of Israel and the need for cheap oil above considerations of international law and justice for the Palestinians. In essence, Muslims regard US policies as responsible for the trust gap between the United States and the Islamic world. In the West, opinions concerning the cause for the gap with the Muslim world are more mixed. The most common view attributes this rift in relations not only to US policies but also to factors internal to the Muslim world-- to the weakness and contradictions in those societies and particularly to the democratic deficit, which allows radicals to build support for their cause. This, in fact, inspires the idea that the United States should lead efforts to restructure the Muslim world. Irrespective of the reality, both perspectives urge the need to review and recast US foreign policy.

My vote for the most interesting argument goes to Roy and Vaisse, who ask the basic question of what role religion actually plays in the big issues facing Obama.

The truth is, Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Mr. Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its “leaders”.

(Photo: Olivier Roy, 4 Dec 2007/Charles Platiau)

Who are these leaders that President Obama would convene anyway? If he picks heads of state, he will effectively concede Osama bin Laden’s point that Islam is a political reality. If he picks clerics, he will put himself in the awkward position of implicitly representing Christianity — or maybe secularism. In any case, he would meet only self-appointed representatives, most of them probably coming from the Arab world, where a minority of Muslims live.

Do you think Obama should launch a special initiative aimed at the Muslim world, or, as Roy and Vaisse argue, assert that "American values are universal and do not suffer any kind of double standard, and that they could be shared by atheists, Christians, Muslims and others"?

Now here's an interesting question. The New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama wants to make "a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office." But from which one? As NYT staffer Helene Cooper explains, it's a question that's fraught with diplomatic, religious and personal complications. After a day of calling around Washington, she found a consensus:

It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there. It has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

That's a diplomatic answer, the kind you'd expect to get inside the Washington Beltway. Let's look at this more from the point of view of religion. If the American president gives a major speech in a Muslim country, it will be seen as an indirect comment on the type of mosque-state relations found in that country. It's not for him as a non-Muslim to endorse a certain type of Islam over another, say Sunni over Shi'ite. But as a politician from a country where church-state relations are a lively issue, one could expect him to ask what message his choice will send concerning the political relationship with religion in the state he chooses.

There is no obvious answer. There are Muslim states with close or distant links to violence in the name of religion, which should rule them out from the start. There are Muslim states that do not respect full equality for women, religious minorities and other groups -- that's a strike against them. Others Muslim states seem stuck in a time warp, or are politically unacceptable because they are not even barely democratic. This is where the diplomats start to see some daylight. But there is also overlapping among these groups, so no model candidate emerges. The world is a complicated place, an insight that should now return to U.S. foreign policy after eight years of denying this reality.

Seen that way, the diplomats Cooper consulted seem too cautious. While there is no ideal candidate, two Muslim countries seem to represent more of what Obama might want to see than Egypt -- Indonesia and Turkey. On Indonesia, Cooper writes "the very fact that Mr. Obama once lived and went to school there would make choosing it seem like cheating." Says who? It's the most populous Muslim nation in the world and it has an Islamist problem that it is fighting better than many others.

Cooper also rules out Turkey because a Turkish diplomat told her his country had no problem with its Islamic identity but it had a secular system. Turkey's certainly not perfect, but isn't it trying more than many other Muslim countries to harmonise its faith, its past and its future in a globalised world?

(Photo: Saudi women pose with Obama cutout in Jeddah, 6 Nov 2008/Susan Baaghil)

So those are my picks. Where do you think Obama should deliver this speech?

    It looked like a perfect picture story, with all the right elements — the Nile, a fountain, 2,000 large inflatable bananas heaped in the shape of a pyramid, all set in a framework of Austrian conceptual art theory. The idea was that when the fountain began to shoot water into the air the bundles of bananas piled up from the base would explode and the bananas would disperse, floating gently down the Nile.

    ”The numerous, individual elements of the floating bananas are not only supposed to change the river’s colour but also, while drifting down the river are expected to develop distinctive dynamics, individually and through mutual interplay,” read the blurb from the Austrian Cultural Forum/Cairo (acf/c), which dreamt up and organised the event.

    ”For a few hours ‘Going Bananas’ draws special attention to the daily metamorphosis as the core of our lives, intentionally posing the pivotal questions of life: ‘Why?’ The acf/c’s motto for this year — ‘Everything is in a state of flux’ — thus culminates in its grand conclusion,” the Austrians added.

    The idea, they said, was that boats would follow the bananas down river to the Nile Barrage,  monitoring both their movements and the reactions of the local people. At the barrage they would collect all the bananas, which were about 1.60 metres long, and give them to children’s homes. At the launch ceremony on the terrace of the Grand Hyatt hotel, overlooking the Nile, cultural forum director Clemens Mantl hinted at the bureaucratic hoops he had to jump through to set up the event. The governor of Cairo had agreed to sponsor it and the river police were out on the Nile in force to make sure it all went smoothly. Mantl called the project ‘a masterpiece of bureaucracy’.

    So there we were, sipping our soft drinks in the stiff northerly breeze and awaiting the explosion of bananas. About 10 minutes behind schedule the fountain started up, sending a jet of water maybe 100 feet into the air. But the breeze was so strong that it blew the plume far off to the south and the water fell back into the Nile, leaving the balloons immobile. In the meantime the wind was blowing the odd banana off the basin of the fountain and the police boats were zipping around to pick them up and put them back in the pyramid. But the plume of water stubbornly continued to fall far away from the bananas. Mantl said all should be well when the fountain people turned on spouts around the base of the basin. The spouts did start to spurt water but it was a feeble trickle and the bananas firmly stayed put.

    By this time the spectators had began to drift away, and I went with them. The Austrians said later that they finally dispersed the bananas by hand and boats picked them up well before they reached the barrage. “Obviously it didn’t go as planned, but when all the boats went out to pick them up, the interaction with the people was very nice,” said one of the Austrians.

The streets of the Egyptian capital Cairo have been unusually quiet since the start of the month and cabbies say they now drive around in fear of the massive police presence, evident at all major intersections. The big junctions have a police “liwa” on duty — equivalent in rank to an army major-general — along with up to a dozen subordinates enforcing, or perhaps working out how to enforce, a draconian new traffic law.

The newspapers publish daily reports of the number of tickets they have given out the previous day — at least several thousand, for offences such as failing to wear seat belts or stopping beyond the white line at a junction.

On the first day some drivers were ticketed because they did not have the first aid kit which the new law requires them to carry, although the Interior Ministry had postponed that requirement for three months until pharmacies could stock up on them.

Egyptians assume that this unusual requirement is designed to benefit some businessman close to the government but no one has identified a suspect or produced any proof. With millions of vehicles on the road, many of them without working lights or brakes,let alone first aid kits, much money is at stake.

What has most put people on edge is the sudden shift away from tolerance of rock-bottom driving practices and vehicle maintenance standards. The trouble with the new system is its unpredictability.

One driver of a four-wheel-drive vehicle was stopped and had his licence seized because the vehicle had a metal crash bar attached to the front. When the driver argued that was how the cars rolled off the production line and came out of the showroom, his argument fell on deaf ears.

Drivers have warned me that I should have all the dents and scratches patched up on my car in case the police don’t like the look of it. But I’m happy to take my chances. After all, most cars are in worse shape and they can’t remove half the vehicles from the streets of Cairo without massive disruption.

Even since the new law came into effect, policemen have still been seen taking money from drivers, not a good omen for what the Interior Ministry billed as a fresh start. As long as those meant to enforce the law are taking bribes, there will be no law enforcement, as one taxi driver put it.                 

   “(It) is a very sensitive topic, so sensitive it can break many people’s hearts, and so delicate it can destroy many Mujahideens’ dreams.”

    A senior Jihadi offers us an unusually frank insight into problems of recruiting dedicated and disciplined foreign fighters to battle U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.

    The stone in the heart of Ebu Yasir el-Turki is the Turkish Jihadi who leaves his home in Adana, Konya or Gaziantep to fight alongside the Taliban and militant Muslim brothers hailing from Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, or Europe. The portrait he paints, — with evident embarassment, for he appears to be a Turk himself — is of ‘fairweather Jihadis’  seeking swift, easy glory and a quick return home, there to live comfortably off richly embroidered stories of derring-do.

    “At the moment, in the Jihadist communities in Afghanistan,  Turks are not very valued. They are considered guests who have come on a vacation, with exceptions,” Yasir, of the guerrilla Islamic Jihad Union, says in an interview posted on the Turkish Jihadist website Sehadet Vakti (Time for Martyrdom) and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

    “The Turks here are so famous that they are given as examples in many conversations. They say ‘do not do as the Turks do’ or ‘do not be as Turks are’… Believe me, no community wants to accept these Turkish Mujahideen.” 

   Why, then, this washing of dirty linen in the very public realm of cyberspace? Yasir clearly  sees a broader problem for the Mujahideen.

    Too many Turkish volunteers, he says, are moved by emotion rather than genuine religious zeal. They can be weak people, who choose jihad as an escape from social and private problems. Watching a video about Jihad and martyrdom in the comfort of an air-conditioned flat in Turkey is one thing.

    “But it is different here. Sometimes they have to stay in a room … for months, when it is hot and cold.”                                           

   They come saying they will stay for a year, seeking death and revenge against Western occupiers, but passions subside and many leave after only a few months.  Security experts and diplomats in Kabul talk of an increased level of foreign fighters this year; most of all Pakistanis, but after that Chechens, Uzbeks, Arabs and Turks. The Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, said this week they had caught a Turk, a Saudi and a Kuwaiti in Paktia province, close to the Pakistani border.                                                                                       

Yasir makes some revealing observations about his Turkish brethren and by implication, about Turkey.

    “Praise be unto Allah, we started to improve them, but it is very difficult. Every Turkish brother comes as a commander and they do not like being under (anyone’s) command because they were brought up in a democratic environment. They feel the need to express their ideas on every subject,” he said.

    Talk of Jihad and sacrifice turn to a longing for the comforts of home. The Turk would have grown up in a secular order and, Yasir seems to say, the mantle of the Jihadist hangs ill about his shoulders. He lacks also the fear of persecution when he returns that helps motivate the Egyptian, the Uzbek or the Chechen.

     “The excuses are standard.”

    If he is married, he has to return to sort out his wife’s problems, if single, he must go back to marry, or he is depressed or he argues with camp instructors. “We are fighting here, not playing games,” the Turks are told. “This is not a tourist facility for you to be able to say ‘I decided I am leaving.’ Is Allah’s religion so simple for you?”

    The faint of heart parry his rebukes, referring back to early jihads that, they say, lasted only four months. “May Allah reclaim these brothers,” says Yasir.

    So, they go.

    This, for the Jihadis back in Afghanistan, is where the problems begin. Back in Turkey, the failed Mujahideen assumes the role of returning hero, collecting money, rallying admirers and then sending them off to Afghanistan. There they pitch up, unbidden and unwanted. What, Yasir asks, do we do with them then?

    “Here our purpose is not to disparage anyone,” says Yasir. “It is to show people their mistakes.”

    The Turks, says Yasir, have had their distinguished fighters and martyrs, especially in the early years after the U.S.-led invasion when he says they numbered about 2,000. Now he estimates there are about 150 Turkish Jihadi though there is no way of verifying this. He talks with some reverence of Cuneyt Cifti, known by the codename Saad Ebu Furkan, who in March drove a truck packed with explosives into an Afghan and allied army compound, killing two allied soldiers and two Afghan civilians.

      Though a Turk by family background, Cifti grew up largely in Germany.

    Yasir acknowledges the hardship in the mountains and on the plains of Afghanistan. The number of Mujahideen who hold out for five years is small, “not more than the fingers on one hand”; but those who come should agree to stay for at least one year and should come out of religious conviction and not emotion.

    “If we do it, we should do it right, or it might be better to stay where we are and not go to the battlefields … (and)  create problems for the Mujahideen.”