In contrast however, Iraq, the Palestinian Territories and Yemen had fallen behind."
A mysterious murder exposes a rift within the country’s ruling circle
LATE last month Chouaib Oultache walked into Algeria’s police headquarters with a score to settle. What happened next is not entirely clear, but official reports say Mr Oultache pumped three bullets into the head of Ali Tounsi, the country’s powerful police chief, before being shot and wounded himself.
A few years ago, Mr Tounsi had hired Mr Oultache, a retired air force colonel and a close friend, to head the police helicopter unit. By the official account, Mr Oultache went crazy after reading in the newspapers that he was being investigated for corruption. He may have suspected a betrayal by his old friend. ...
The return of Mohamed ElBaradei from abroad is rattling Egypt’s rulers
EGYPTIANS may breathe a sigh of relief. Seven of their political parties have formed a united front to defend the country against a foreign plot. Whether this conspiracy is Zionist or perhaps American remains unclear. But the parties agree that it aims to undermine Egypt’s stability and that its spearhead is none other than Mohamed ElBaradei, winner of the Nobel peace prize and the recently retired head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
The revelation of such a plot surprises few in Egypt. Ever since November, when Mr ElBaradei declared that, if rules were made fair, he might just consider running for president in 2011, expectations have grown that allies of Egypt’s current ruler, Hosni Mubarak, would find ways to attack this upstart rival. When Mr ElBaradei arrived in Cairo last month for a ten-day visit, such expectations soared. Not only did the thousand cheering fans who mobbed him at the airport outnumber the active membership of the seven government-sponsored opposition parties now aligned against him. The soft-spoken former diplomat became the talk of Egypt’s chattering classes, as scores of prominent intellectuals declared their backing for him, and membership of a Facebook support group rocketed to 160,000. ...
President Paul Kagame has improved people’s lives at the expense of freedom
THE government of Rwanda is doing a lot of things right. It is pretty open in its handling of aid money. Most foreign governments and charities are so impressed by its detailed plans and apparent lack of corruption that they are funnelling more of their aid directly through Rwanda’s government. President Paul Kagame says he expects direct budget support to rise by a quarter this year, to $519m.
The country has recovered valiantly from its year zero in 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered. Its centralised state is leading the way in economic and technological reform in the region. It is improving the country’s infrastructure, education and farming, and seeks to preserve its ecology. It pushes equality for women, who comprise half the government and parliament. ...
Israel builds still more facts on Palestinian ground, while stalemate persists
EVEN as the Americans strive to jump-start fresh talks between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli government has been using the hiatus to intensify the refashioning of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as their future capital. This week the city’s Israeli mayor, Nir Barkat, unveiled his latest plan to turn Palestinian districts into Jewish biblical heritage parks. Fearing that their half of the city is being cast in an increasingly Israeli mould, Palestinian stone-throwers clashed with Israeli forces on the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, which Muslims venerate for its al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, and which Jews revere as the site of the biblical Temple. While George Mitchell, Barack Obama’s envoy, is yet again bidding to open “proximity talks” between the two sides, the Palestinians have been literally losing ground.
Unlike previous Israeli prime ministers, who built on the open hilltops above Arab population centres in the West Bank and on the edge of Jerusalem, Binyamin Netanyahu and his officials are concentrating on Jewish settlements bang in the midst of them. Car-parks and conservation areas, rich with Israeli symbols, are sprouting across East Jerusalem. Settlers with state protection are opening religious schools there. Scarcely a week passes without an Israeli newspaper heralding new Jewish housing units being built in Arab districts. Israeli archaeologists are scraping away the eastern parts of the city’s Arab surface in search of a Jewish past. Last month one of them declared she had “probably” found King Solomon’s city walls. ...
The strongest Islamist militia is now formally linked to al-Qaeda
THE war in Somalia between the Islamist militias known as the Shabab and the Western-backed supposedly “transitional” government headed by Sharif Ahmed, himself an Islamist who promotes sharia law, is getting even bloodier. The UN says that ferocious fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, has caused at least 8,000 residents to flee this month, to add to the 1.5m Somalis already displaced, out of a population that once exceeded 8m. Government forces, which control a shrinking slice of the capital, are still on the defensive. But independent reports are scanty; it is hard to say exactly what is going on from day to day. Chaos and terror prevail.
For instance, when three Shabab fighters were found dead this week in Mogadishu’s Bakara market, each shot in the head, it was unclear who had killed them. Some said government forces. Others blamed Ethiopian spies. Or was it Hizbul Islam, a radical Islamist outfit that has fallen out with the Shabab? Or perhaps the Shabab itself was dealing with turncoats. ...




