Egyptian Lawmakers Want to Ban Fake Hymen
By JOSEPH FREEMAN
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jNs8Rni8PgIq8oij8K0JrdFT8YZQD9B51ILO3

CAIRO — Conservative Egyptian lawmakers have called for a ban on imports of a Chinese-made kit meant to help women fake their virginity and one scholar has even called for the "exile" of anyone who imports or uses it.

The Artificial Virginity Hymen kit, distributed by the Chinese company Gigimo, costs about $30. It is intended to help newly married women fool their husbands into believing they are virgins — culturally important in a conservative Middle East where sex before marriage is considered by many to be illicit. The product leaks a blood-like substance when inserted and broken.

Gigimo advertises shipping to every Arab country. But the company did not answer e-mails and phone calls seeking comment on whether it had orders from Egypt or other parts of the Middle East.

The fracas started when a reporter from Radio Netherlands broadcast an Arabic translation of the Chinese advertisement of the product. That set off fears of conservative parliament members that Egyptian women might start ordering the kits.

Sheik Sayed Askar, a member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood who is on the parliamentary committee on religious affairs, said the kit will make it easier for Egyptian women to give in to temptation. He demanded the government take responsibility for fighting the product to uphold Egyptian and Arab values.

"It will be a mark of shame on the ruling party if it allowed this product to enter the market," he said in a notice posted on the Brotherhood's parliament Web site on Sept. 15.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest political opposition group, holds 88 of Egypt's 454 parliament seats.

Prominent Egyptian religious scholar Abdel Moati Bayoumi said anyone who imports the artificial hymen should be punished.

"This product encourages illicit sexual relations. Islamic culture forbids these relations except within the confines of marriage," Bayoumi said. "I think this should absolutely not be allowed to be exported because it brings more harm than benefits. Whoever does it (imports it) should be punished."

In a country and a region where pre-marital sex is so taboo it can even lead to a woman's murder, the debate over the virginity-faking kit has revived Egypt's constant struggle to reconcile modern mores with more traditional beliefs — namely, that a woman is not a virgin unless she bleeds after the first time.

"Bleeding is not the only signal that yes, she's a virgin," said Heba Kotb, an observant Muslim woman who hosts a sex talk show on TV in which she fields calls from all over the Middle East.

Kotb noted that a medical procedure that reattaches a broken hymen by stitching is illegal in Egypt and can cost hundreds of dollars — prohibitively expensive for the poor. But many women still secretly seek it out in fear of punishment for pre-marital sex.

Such punishment could include slayings at the hands of relatives, a practice more commonly referred to as honor killings and common in the more conservative tribal areas of the Middle East.

The product is also causing a buzz on Egyptian blogs and news sites.

"If this thing enters Egypt, the country is going to go to waste. God protect us," commented a reader on the Web site of Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabie.

Marwa Rakha, an author and blogger who writes about dating issues, sees the product as a tool of empowerment for women in a macho Arab culture that restricts women's sexual urges but turns a blind eye to men galavanting.

"It sticks it in the face of every male hypocrite," she said.


Saudi Gets 5 years, 1,000 Lashes for TV Sex Talk
Comments by ‘sex braggart’ led to hundreds of complaints from viewers
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33206895/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/?gt1=43001

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A Saudi court on Wednesday convicted a man for publicly talking about sex after he bragged on a TV talk show about his exploits, sentencing him to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes, his lawyer said.

Talking about sex publicly is a taboo in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia.

Lawyer Sulaiman al-Jumeii said he plans to appeal the court's ruling and is confident the sentence against his client, which includes a ban on travel and talking to the media for five years after his release, will be revoked.

Al-Jumeii maintains that his client, Mazen Abdul-Jawad, was duped by the Lebanese LBC satellite channel which aired the talk show and was unaware in many cases he was being recorded.

"I hope you will not consider the case closed," the lawyer said. "I will continue pursuing the TV channel, even if no one stands by me, until it gets the punishment it deserves."

The program, which aired July 15 on LBC and was seen in Saudi Arabia, scandalized this conservative country where such frank talk is rarely heard in public. Some 200 people filed legal complaints against Abdul Jawad, who works for the national airline.

The program, "Bold Red Line," begins with Abdul-Jawad, dubbed a "sex braggart" and "Casanova" by the media, describing the first time he had sex at 14. He then leads viewers into his bedroom, dominated by red accessories, and then shows off blurred sex toys.

He is later joined by three male friends for a discussion on what turns them on.

Abdul-Jawad's lawyer maintains his client was referring to other people's sexual experiences and the toys were provided by the TV station.

Segregation of the sexes
The government moved swiftly in the wake of the case, shutting down LBC's two offices in the kingdom and arresting Abdul-Jawad.

The other three men on the show were also convicted of discussing sex publicly and sentenced to two years imprisonment and 300 lashes each, according to al-Jumeii.

The case itself was also tried before the wrong court, maintains the lawyer, who says it should have been heard by a specialized court at the Information Ministry qualified to issue decisions regarding editing, dubbing and other technical issues related to the case.

In his statement, al-Jumeii said the decision in the case was made "under pressure from public opinion" due to the media frenzy surrounding it.

He also said he will continue pursuing a lawsuit he has filed against LBC.

The kingdom, which is the birthplace of Islam, enforces strict segregation of the sexes. An unrelated couple, for example, can be detained for being alone in the same car or having a cup of coffee in public.

Saudis observe such segregation even at home, where they have separate living rooms for male and female guests.


'Code Pink' Rethinks Its Call for Afghanistan Pullout
In Afghanistan, the US women's activist group finds that their Afghan counterparts want US troop presence – as well as more reconstruction.
By Aunohita Mojumdar
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1006/p06s10-wosc.html

Kabul, Afghanistan - When Medea Benjamin stood up in a Kabul meeting hall this weekend to ask Masooda Jalal if she would prefer more international troops or more development funds, the cofounder of US antiwar group Code Pink was hoping her fellow activist would support her call for US troop withdrawal.

She was disappointed.

Ms. Jalhal, the former Afghan minister of women, bluntly told her both were needed. "It is good for Afghanistan to have more troops – more troops committed with the aim of building peace and against war, terrorism, and security – along with other resources," she answered. "Coming together they will help with better reconstruction."

Rethinking their position

Code Pink, founded in 2002 to oppose the US invasion of Iraq, is one of the more high-profile women's antiwar groups being forced to rethink its position as Afghan women explain theirs: Without international troops, they say, armed groups could return with a vengeance – and that would leave women most vulnerable.

Though Afghans have their grievances against the international troops' presence, chief among them civilian casualties, many fear an abrupt departure would create a dangerous security vacuum to be filled by predatory and rapacious militias. Many women, primary victims of such groups in the past, are adamant that international troops stay until a sufficient number of local forces are trained and the rule of law established. (Read more about Afghan women's concerns here.)

During their weeklong visit here, in which they met with government officials, politicians, ministers, women activists, and civil society groups, the small team of Code Pink members had hoped to gather evidence to bolster their call for US troop withdrawal within two years, and capitalize on growing anxiety back home about the war.

While the group hasn't dropped its call for a pullout, the visit convinced them that setting a deadline isn't in Afghanistan's interests, say Ms. Benjamin and fellow cofounder Jodie Evans.

"We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline," says Benjamin. "That's where we have opened ourselves, being here, to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, 'If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We'd go into civil war.' A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that."

Code Pink says it will continue to oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan – a move facing heated debate in Washington – and advocate for more funding for aid and humanitarian projects instead.

The group's visit coincided with a "peace trialogue" organized last week by the Delhi Policy Group that brought together women of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Some participants of the meeting, who have traditionally seen demilitarization as a key to peacebuilding, also faced strong opposition from local activists when they tried to include demilitarization in a statement published at the end of the gathering.

"In the current situation of terrorism, we cannot say troops should be withdrawn," Shinkai Karokhail, an Afghan member of Parliament and woman activist, told them. "International troop presence here is a guarantee for my safety."


Afghanistan and Leadership
Gen. McChrystal needs more troops now precisely so Afghans can take over the war effort later.
By MARK MOYAR
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574454810540018326.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

'We're at a point in Afghanistan right now in our overall campaign," the U.S. general says, "where increasingly security can best be delivered by the extension of good governance, justice, economic reconstruction." Afghan security forces "fight side by side with us" more and more frequently, he adds, and American troops are working hard to develop the Afghan security forces. Coalition forces are focusing on securing the population, because "the key terrain is the human terrain."

This all sounds like Gen. Stanley McChrystal's proposed strategy for victory. But those words were spoken in May 2006 by Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, then the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan.

Should we be concerned that the McChrystal strategy advocates the same counterinsurgency approach that has failed to achieve success in years past? Not necessarily. The easy part of any counterinsurgency is formulating the strategy and tactics. The hard part is implementing them.

Achieving results requires, first and foremost, skilled and motivated tactical leaders in suf ficient numbers—the absence of which caused the 2006 strategy to fail. With the insurgent environment different in every Afghan valley, command must be decentralized. So finding and implementing the right tactics is primarily the job of battalion commanders and district police chiefs, not presidents or four-star generals.

The quality of counterinsurgency leaders determines whether the patrols and ambushes required to protect government personnel and the population are conducted. Leadership determines whether policemen serve as impartial administrators or engage in timeless abuses like stealing livestock and demanding bribes at roadside checkpoints—abuses that alienate the population more than air strikes or national electoral irregularities.

Historically, leadership changes have accomplished much more than changes in methods or troop numbers. In Malaya, the British turned failure into success from 1952 to 1954 with the same strategy and tactics used by their unsuccessful predecessors because a new High Commissioner, Gerald Templer, replaced bad commanders with excellent officers from across the British Empire. The Iraq surge of 2007 prevailed because better Iraqi leaders and more American leaders participated in the "hold" phase of the same "clear and hold" approach that had foundered during the preceding years. It was those tactical leaders who changed the dominant images of Iraq from burning police stations to reopened city markets.

American troops in Afghanistan will never be so numerous that they can defeat the insurgents on their own, so Afghan forces must be given the good leadership they currently lack. The Afghan government will not have sufficient numbers of good officers for their expanding army and police any time soon. Gen. McChrystal intends to compensate by strengthening the partnership between American and Afghan forces.

The great challenge here is to determine how American leadership can improve the performance of Afghan forces. Although the U.S. government appears to have ruled out formal placement of Afghan troops under U.S. command, American commanders and advisers may well end up assuming de facto command of weak indigenous units, whether directly or through quiet guidance to Afghan officers. This arrangement usually produced success when employed in Iraq and Vietnam.

The Pentagon must also be shaken from its bureaucratic lethargy and compelled to dispatch more suitable officers as advisers to the Afghan forces. Too often we have sent officers who lacked the personality or experience to influence their Afghan counterparts for the better.

The U.S. also must press harder to get bad Afghan officers fired—else they persist in extortion, kidnapping and other crimes even with a robust American presence. The U.S. has formidable leverage because of its burgeoning aid and President Hamid Karzai's mounting political and military troubles. It has yet to employ this leverage as often or as smartly as it should. Encouragingly, Gen. David Petraeus said at a counterinsurgency symposium in Washington last Wednesday that it may be time to clean out the Afghan police and military leadership as was done very effectively in Iraq in 2007.

To rescue Afghanistan's security forces through partnering and advising, the U.S. unquestionably needs the extra 30,000 or 40,000 troops that Gen. McChrystal wants. That many troops are required to put American officers—commissioned and noncommissioned—with Afghan soldiers and policemen at all levels and at all times.

Without them, poorly led Afghan security forces will continue to abuse the citizenry more than they abuse the insurgents. And current rhetoric about "protecting the population" and "engaging the tribes" will end up with the millions of other words that never leapt from the strategy documents to the field.

Mr. Moyar is a professor at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Va., and the author of three books on counterinsurgency, including "A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq," published this month by Yale University Press.


Iran Isn’t Stalinist Russia
Michael J. Totten
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/118292

In the October 12 issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria makes a case for containing rather than confronting Iran, partly because he expects “a massive outpouring of support for the Iranian regime” if its nuclear-weapons facilities are attacked by the U.S. or Israel. “This happens routinely when a country is attacked by foreign forces, no matter how unpopular the government,” he writes.

As a precedent, he cites how Russians rallied to Stalin when Germany invaded in 1941. But of course Russians rallied to Stalin. No viable political opposition existed as it does today in Iran, and besides: they were attacked by the Nazis. The Germans weren’t liberators. Russia was not going to be treated better by foreign totalitarians than by its own. Even the U.S. and Britain backed Stalinist Russia under those circumstances.

The people of Afghanistan, on the other hand, were euphoric when NATO demolished the Taliban regime in 2001. The Taliban has since reconstituted itself as a terrorist and insurgent militia, but its approval rating among Afghan civilians is by some reports as miserable as 6 percent. Support for the U.S. and NATO has slipped recently, but it’s still telling that, according to an ABC News poll of public opinion, 58 percent still say the Taliban is the greatest threat to security, while only 8 percent say the same of the United States.
Very few Iraqis outside the relatively small Sunni community threw their support behind Saddam Hussein when President Bill Clinton bombed Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction facilities in 1998 or when President George W. Bush finished off his Baath party regime once and for all in 2003. Meanwhile, the various terrorist and insurgent militias that later rose up were almost exclusively sectarian and Islamist, not Baathist.

Even the Shia of south Lebanon — today’s Hezbollah supporters — initially hailed the Israelis as liberators in 1982 when they invaded to oust Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization from its state-within-a-state along the border and in West Beirut. Only later, when the Israelis did not leave as expected, did the prototype of Hezbollah begin to take shape.

An insurgency would probably break out in Iran, too, if it were invaded and occupied. Not that it matters — no one in the U.S. or Israel is pushing for an invasion and occupation of Iran. Destroying the regime’s nuclear-weapons facilities from the skies wouldn’t require anything like that.

Zakaria quotes Iranian dissident Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoeini, who says, “If there were an attack, all of us would have to come out the next day and support the government. It would be the worst scenario for the opposition.”

Some dissidents feel that way; others don’t.

Iranians, writer and dissident Kianoosh Sanjari told me when I met him in Iraq after he was released from the dungeon of Evin Prison, “are praying for an external outside power to do something for them and get rid of the mullahs. Personally, it’s not acceptable for me if the United States crosses the Iranian border. I like the independence of Iran and respect the independence of my country. But my generation doesn’t care about this.”

Hossein Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republic’s first “supreme guide,” Ruhollah Khomeini, said “Bring in the 82nd Airborne” to Christopher Hitchens. The younger Khomeini isn’t a rebel in North Tehran’s liberal enclave. He, like his late grandfather, is a cleric. “I think it was the matter-of-factness of the reply that impressed me the most,” Hitchens said about Khomeini’s call for American intervention. “He spoke as if talking of the obvious and the uncontroversial.”

I’m not saying Zakaria and the dissident he quotes are entirely wrong. I, too, know Iranians who hate the regime and say they’ll be furious if any country attacks for any reason. Public opinion in Iran is all over the place, even among those who don’t like the government. Some probably would react the way Zakaria warns, but others would not.

Iran’s proxy militias in Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq might ignite wars in three countries if their patron regime comes under attack, and they might cause even more trouble later if Tehran places them under a nuclear umbrella. How, or even whether, to stop Iran from acquiring the world’s worst weapons may be the most momentous decision President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ever make. Every option is terrible.

And thanks to the deadly years-long insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans are more averse to using military force than we were shortly after September 11, 2001. But let’s not learn the wrong lessons from what has happened since then. Middle Eastern countries tend to produce insurgencies against foreign-occupation soldiers, but that’s not at all the same thing as dissidents throwing their support behind a homegrown dictatorship that tortured, raped, and murdered them yesterday.


Re: Iran Isn’t Stalinist Russia
Emanuele Ottolenghi
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/ottolenghi/118752

Michael Totten has rightly flagged Fareed Zakaria’s argument that Iran can be contained for its flaws. One should add two points to Michael’s argument.

First, regarding the likelihood of a massive upsurge of popular support for the regime if Iran were attacked: whether it is likely or not, it is largely irrelevant, in my view. If a military strike is successful in degrading the nuclear program, one can afford a nationalist backlash.

Second, and more important, Zakaria’s statement that “a massive outpouring of support for the Iranian regime” is likely because this is what “happens routinely when a country is attacked by foreign forces, no matter how unpopular the government” is simply inaccurate.

While Iranians are unlikely to clap while they die under foreign bombardment, there are many precedents of nationalist backlash being short-lived and eventually turning against the regime. One needs only look at Serbia in 1999 and Argentina in 1982. In both instances, an authoritarian government dragged the nation into a war propped up by nationalist revanchism — Kosovo in 1999, the Falklands in 1982. I doubt Serbs loved the 78 days of NATO aerial bombing — they are still bitter today! Similarly, Argentineans by and large still consider the Falklands to be their own. But the military defeat of their authoritarian regimes, far from enhancing those regimes’ popularity, led to their downfall. Both countries have experienced a long season of democracy since then. While differences still exist between London and Buenos Aires, and between Belgrade and NATO, the odious regimes that triggered those wars are gone. And good riddance for their citizens!

To the list of examples, one could add Iraq in 1991. As soon as the guns fell silent, Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south rose up against the hated dictator and his regime. Their failure — thanks to the American decision to stand by and let them be crushed — cemented their distrust for America 12 years later. Regardless, the point is clear: the oppressed subjects of vanquished dictators may not love the foreign victor, but neither will they forgive their oppressors. And a military defeat exposes a despotic regime to its own weakness and vulnerability like nothing else does.

If Iran’s nuclear program were to be successfully targeted by military force, Iranians may not be expected to wrap themselves up in American or Israeli flags, no doubt. But it is questionable whether they will renew their pledge to the Islamic Republic and its murderous ideology.


US Funds Dry Up for Iran Rights Watchdog
Obama White House less confrontational
By Farah Stockman
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/10/06/us_cutoff_of_funding_to_iran_human_rights_cause_signals_shift/?page=full

WASHINGTON - For the past five years, researchers in a modest office overlooking the New Haven green have carefully documented cases of assassination and torture of democracy activists in Iran. With more than $3 million in grants from the US State Department, they have pored over thousands of documents and Persian-language press reports and interviewed scores of witnesses and survivors to build dossiers on those they say are Iran’s most infamous human-rights abusers.

But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that - for the first time since it was formed - its federal funding request had been denied.

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,’’ said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. “I was sur prised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.’’

Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran, which had become a signature issue for President Bush. But the timing has alarmed some on Capitol Hill.

“The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is at the forefront of pioneering and vitally important work,’’ said Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, in a statement yesterday. “It is disturbing that the State Department would cut off funding at precisely the moment when these brave investigations are needed most.’’

Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said, “It is a shock that they did not get funding.’’ A reason, he asserted, may be that “the Obama administration is so focused on engaging Iran that they don’t want this information to get in the way.’’

The State Department said it is keenly focused on human rights in Iran.

The job of doling out money to groups seeking to influence Iran has been shifted from the State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs Bureau to a lower-profile division, its US Agency for International Development. USAID spokesman Harry Edwards did not provide an explanation of why funding was denied for the Human Rights Documentation Center, widely seen as the most comprehensive clearing house of documents related to human rights abuses in Iran. He said the government’s funding priorities have not changed.

“US government priorities for the region continue to include support for civil society and advocacy, promoting the rule of law and human rights, and increasing access to alternative sources of information,’’ Edwards said. “Applications submitted to USAID are thoroughly reviewed against the evaluations criteria outlined in its solicitations.’’

The State Department has always been tight-lipped about who receives democracy funding for Iran, out of fear that the groups’ associates would be targeted in Iran. It is unclear how many other groups have lost their funding under the Obama administration.

Obama officials have argued publicly for a less-confrontational approach than Bush, in the belief that the Bush administration’s vocal support for democracy activists made them targets in Iran and stirred up fears of regime change.

The Obama administration has emphasized other forms of assistance, such as aid for software programs that help activists communicate on the Internet anonymously. It also has continued funding for exchange programs. In the coming months, for instance, the administration hopes to bring Iranian lawyers to major cities in the United States, including Boston, to talk with American lawyers about their concept of law.

Formed by two exiled Iranians in 2004 with a $1 million grant from the State Department, the center made its home near Yale’s campus, where it attracted Yale law school professors to its board. The board also includes the dean of Harvard Law School, Martha Minow.

The group has published 12 reports in English and Persian about the forced confessions of detained bloggers and journalists, the 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners, and the Iranian government’s campaign to assassinate dissidents abroad. Although the State Department has been the group’s main source of funds, the Canadian government granted it money to research human-rights abuses in the wake of the disputed election this year.

Currently, the group is working to develop a list of all those who were arrested following the election and a list of those responsible for alleged abuses in prison. But without additional funding, the group will shut down in May when its funding runs out, Redman said.

The group is not affiliated with any political party in Iran. It attracted controversy during its early years, however, when one of its founders and current board members, Ramin Ahmadi, gave a workshop in Dubai on tactics of underground political resistance to Iranian citizens who had secretly traveled there.

Since then, the Iranian government has accused Ahmadi of being an agent of the United States, and some of his trainees were arrested. Ahmadi, a medical doctor in Danbury, Conn., still vocally supports the opposition movement, joking at a recent panel at Yale Law School that he could sneak audience members into Iran if they wanted to join.

But at least three other groups that received funding under Bush’s democracy program for Iran have been told they would not receive funding this year, according to Roya Boroumand, founder of the Bormound Foundation, which works against the death penalty in Iran. Boroumand said her group does not get State Department funds, but that she is in contact with other organizations who do, and all are worried.

“If the rationale is that we are going to stop funding human rights-related work in Iran because we don’t want to provoke the government, it is absolutely the wrong message to send,’’ she said. “That means that we don’t really believe in human rights, that the American government just looks into it when it is convenient.’’

http://www.iranhrdc.org/httpdocs/English/reports.htm