Wag the child: In Guinea, who's exploiting who?

Literature Review is an occasional series investigating how the Western press covers an African country or issue.

Child exploitation, slavery and trafficking are all serious problems in West Africa. I should know. I am most likely guilty of it.

For the past four years, my wife and I have employed a maid who has then taken a girl from her village and hired her to do some of the housework she can’t get to while she’s cleaning and cooking for us. Our maid claims this is right (in her eyes) by sending the girl to night school and supplementing her income by teaching her to weave, an art form that she can make a lot of money in the future. By taking these girls out of the village, our maid has always claimed she is making life better for the “bonne” who would most likely be married off by now and not have the chance to go to school.

Is that human trafficking? Most likely. Is it a bad thing? I don’t know. Is it part of Burkinabé culture? Surely.

Don’t get me wrong, child exploitation is a problem here. The little girls who walk from bar to bar at night selling boiled peanuts most likely were trafficked from their villages. Ditto for the young boys spending all day in the blinding sun selling Chinese junk.

But after reading a recent story from IRIN about abandoned children being sold into slavery, I have to wonder if the children are the only people being exploited. The story documents anecdotes from residents of Conakry, Guinea who have noticed a significant increase of children living on the streets. Predictably, IRIN spoke to a few kids they found digging through garbage who related that their parents had died and life with their often violent grandmother became too unbearable. So they left.

The UN-based news organization then provides some context.

From IRIN:

Manimam Condé, who coordinates between the Guinean government and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Forecariah (city in southern Guinea), said unwanted children had reason to be afraid: Traffickers solicited children's parents and guardians, promising to give them a better life but actually putting them to work - or worse.

"Some children are sold and others are put directly to work - sent to work on plantations, or to sell things [carrying them] on their heads in markets," she told IRIN

Some children are... sent to work on plantations or to sell things... Sometimes parts of children are used as sacrificial offerings for ceremonies

"You also have sales of organs and body parts for medical uses. Sometimes parts of the children are used as sacrificial offerings for ceremonies."

According to the Conakry-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), Action Contre l'Exploitation des Enfants et des Femmes (ACEEF - Action Against the Exploitation of Children and Women), tens of thousands of unwanted children like these in Guinea are being forced to work in slave-like conditions.

Maybe I am completely inured to the problem of poor Guineans (or West Africans for that matter), but something about this story doesn’t seem right. Red flag number one would be the statement that “tens of thousands” of Guinean children work like slaves. That’s an awful lot of children. To insure there is not a dry eye in the house, the story also references the age-old myth of trafficking in human organs. I’ll admit, from time to time you do hear stories in Ouagadougou of people using organs for some weird fetish, but it often is used to blame Nigerians for something. The problem with using body parts for fetishes is that the bodies usually show up (like they did in Ouagadougou). The story makes no reference to that.

The bottom line is I can’t help shaking the fact that these children are targets – targets of another international organization fudging facts to push the dial of sentiment up to 11 regarding an already serious and sad problem.

Data-free research?
If one wants to investigate the problem of child trafficking, how about looking through some data. Each year, the US government ranks individual countries on the extent of the problem of human trafficking and the degree which governments attempt to tackle it. Once this information is collated, the State Dept. ranks the countries in a three-tiered system – one being best, three being worst – which they confess weighs more towards government intervention than the actual scope of the problem.

Guinea earns the ranking of a tier-2 country, which the State dept. admits is set aside for “[g]overnments that are making significant efforts to meet the minimum standards.” So, Guinea gets a C for effort.

Taking a look at the country narratives from the report, the problem in Guinea is severe:

Guinea is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Guinean children are trafficked within the country mainly from impoverished rural areas of Upper and Middle Guinea; girls are trafficked for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation and boys are trafficked for forced labor as street vendors, shoe shiners, beggars, and for forced mine and agricultural labor

The Government of Guinea does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so, despite limited resources. To strengthen its response to trafficking, Guinea should pass legislation prohibiting all forms of trafficking, increase efforts to investigate and prosecute traffickers and rescue victims, with a focus on children subjected to sexual exploitation.

The Government of Guinea continued solid efforts to raise awareness about trafficking during the reporting period. The government contributed funding for some costs associated with an ILO study on the number of children in domestic labor, mining, and street vending, or who are associated with drug or arms sales. The National Committee to Combat Trafficking hosted a workshop in July 2006 to evaluate whether Guinea's national action plan is in compliance with ECOWAS' trafficking guidelines, concluding that it does comply. The government has integrated trafficking-related issues into the primary school curriculum. The Ministry of Defense, through its own child protection office, has developed a 2007 plan to combat child trafficking. The government continued to contribute personnel, vehicles and other travel resources to an intensive national media campaign against trafficking that it launched jointly with UNICEF in 2005.

As harrowing as these descriptions can be, you should try reading through the rest of West Africa’s country reports. I am not trying to belittle the problem of human trafficking, but is it as grave as this story portrays? Even in a chaotic country like Guinea, where the members of Lasnane Conté’s government seem to spend more time keeping their pockets filled – and in power – than tending to the needs of everyday people.

I take you and you and you for my wives
Oh, the story does provide proof of the increase in children trafficking, by lamely blaming the practice of polygamy and a lack of family planning. As for family planning, Guinea does have a high population rate, but less than other fast-growing countries in the neighborhood: Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. The culpability of polygamy is also complicated. A few years ago, George Packer wrote a great piece about the collapse of Cote d’Ivoire that investigated why so many people from West Africa immigrated to the country. He found that young people from large, often polygamous families came looking for work because their parents could no longer afford to take care of them. It is a valid argument, although extremely anecdotal.)

AIDS, which creates orphans and puts extreme financial pressure on families, is fingered as another culprit. It would be a more compelling argument if it were not due to Guinea’s relatively low AIDS prevalence and orphan rate.

Of course, Guinea’s economy could be facing shocks from years of government neglect and last year’s general strikes (and violent government reaction) that rocked the entire country. This economic malaise could provide a tipping point for parents on the edge who are forced to make the horrific choice of letting go of their children so they themselves can stay afloat. Traffickers, of course, prey on exactly these situations by making empty promises that they’ll find good jobs for their children. All of this could happen. It’s unlikely to happen at the rate this story suggests.

To be sure, child trafficking is a problem throughout West Africa. However, blowing another one of Africa’s social issues out of proportion is also problematic. It not only perpetuates the stereotype of a helpless continent where life is nasty, brutish and short. Fabricating misery also deters foreign businesses from investing in these countries, providing economies with the essential capital to continue growing.

If this were just a major metropolitan daily newspaper spewing its regular parade of stories on AIDS widows, witch hunts and the like, I would just shrug. But for the United Nations to be so carefree with facts, I have to ask what is more important: Portraying a perplexing issue with some reason and nuance or making sure those development checks from guilty Westerners keep rolling in?

Literature Review: Guinea-Bissau on drugs

Literature Review: Guinea-Bissau

What the press – from both sides of the pond – is saying about Guinea-Bissau

Literature Review is an occasional series investigating how the U.S. press covers an African country or issue.

Think of the following list of films. Scarface, Midnight Express, Traffic, Another Day in Paradise, Goodfellas and the recent release, American Gangster. If the business of America is business, the business of Hollywood seems to be the drug business. Of course, without an eager audience, Hollywood flaks wouldn’t be bending over backwards telling these often dreary and lurid tales.

It’s not that the Europeans lack good drug movies – no, the French Connection doesn’t count. It’s just that mainstream American popular culture seems so much more fixated on the evils of drugs than their Europeans do. If I can generalize: Drugs in European popular culture are generally seen as a means (and a window dressing); whereas in the States, drug use is most often an ends.

If you were going to write a movie about this next story, would you rather have a flashy Hollywood screenwriter (I hear one may soon be available) or a European willing to pen a gritty screen play. Would the American look to write a morality tale? Would the European want to tell it as a slice of life? Most important to me: who would do the soundtrack?

As the success of Blood Diamonds proves, directors have found it’s easier to make serious films about Africa when the tragedy is safely ensconced in history. The problem with this tale is it exists in the present, and we don’t know how it will turn out.

History’s first draft
Thus, we’ll have to leave it to the journalists to give us their first draft of history. The quick take: The West African state of Guinea-Bissau, plagued by political and military instability since its freedom from Portugal in 1974, often cited as one of the world’s poorest countries, is now in a bitter fight over its territorial integrity since the arrival of assertive drug lords who have begun using the nation as a transit hub for European-bound cocaine. They have done so because this poor nation – which just celebrated the installation of its first two ATM machines – does not have the capability to police the nearly 90 uninhabited islands, rivers and mangrove swamps that make up its 400 mile border with the Atlantic Ocean. Finally, leaders of such a fledgling country can be found to be easily, shall we say, persuaded to look the other way.

American journalists, deft practitioners of gauging reader interest, are never one to shy away from a tale of thick plot lines and deep meaning. However, because the story takes place on Europe’s doorstep, so to speak, those from the continent have beaten their colleagues from Western Hemisphere to the punch. In fact, for a story that has been running for nearly six months, only one major American broadcast daily has filed a report on this subject matter: National Public Radio. Although Time magazine recently sent a reporter.

After reading stories from Reuters, the BBC webiste, The Independent, BBC radio, even IRIN, one is beaten over the head by the brutal paradoxes fashioned in Guinea-Bissau now that a ton of cocaine is transported nearly every day through its porous borders.

For example, the capital city Bissau’s infrastructure may be failing – every reporter does not fail noticing the deplorable shape of the roads – but an expanding and increasingly restless nouveau-riche busies itself by building fancy houses, driving around town in unmarked new 4x4s, hiring local security forces, partying in new fancy discos where one pays the rough equivalent of a hard day’s labor for a drink. One estimate puts 60 Colombians in Bissau, buying up businesses and generally throwing money around.

A dash of context
For those in need of context: A mere six ounces of cocaine is roughly equal to a year’s salary in Guinea-Bissau. It is said that traffickers move on average a 600 kilo shipment through the country every day, which is roughly equivalent to 20 percent of all foreign aid (in 2006 dollars), 14 percent of the country’s export revenues and three times the amount of foreign investment.

For those keeping score, we have the details of an emergent high class with their newfangled entertainments and statistics on the street sale of cocaine. Yet we have no proof that drug money is funding these new gadgets. Secondly, who says its Colombian drug money? For one, reporters breathlessly point out the details of the detention and subsequent liberty of two Colombians found with automatic weapons, explosives, a large amount of money and a diagram listing government and military members. One of the Colombians had already been convicted in the U.S. After a few weeks in detention – famously, the country has no prison – both men were freed on bond. If you’re surprised, the same thing happened a year before – only those two were caught with $25 million worth of blow. (That consists of my only street drug reference in this story.)

Just any facts, ma’am
One worry that cropped up while reading these stories is finding confirmation for facts. Getting anyone to talk about an illicit market – however large and powerful – must be difficult. But how sure are we that reporters double-check the facts given to them? It’s especially disheartening when the titles “Western intelligence sources” and United Nations Drug experts,” “top US Drug Enforcement Agency official” are substituted in stories and quotes for people with real names.

Let’s be honest here, these people are making pretty large claims. For example, this is “the worst drug trafficking problem we’ve ever encountered on the continent,” from the DEA guy. Even those people with names make some serious allegations. "The region is directly under attack, there is no other word which we can use," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Are we supposed to take their word for it?

The Reporters Without Borders investigation claimed that the main problem for local journalists – and foreign investigators – is that the drugs problem is Guinea-Bissau’s crazy aunt in the attic: the problem no one talks about in polite company. Fair enough. But, the NPR report provided lyrics to a local pop song about the houses people are building with the help of drug funds. Perhaps the best quote I heard from any story came from the BBC radio documentary, where the rector at Guinea-Bissau’s only university was asked about the complicity of the very powerful military with the alleged drug lords: “If they don’t know what is going on, then they are incompetent because it is their job to know what is going on. If they know, they are corrupted.”

I must wonder if reporters spending a little time here felt the same thing about everyone else in the country.

Hey Arlo, what rhymes with ‘flying into Guinea-Bissau?’
With appropriate caveats due to the issues of unverifiable facts noted above, here is how the so-called drug specialists claim cocaine has infected the country of Guinea-Bissau.

First, the drugs must get to Guinea-Bissau. One popular method, according to the press, is airplanes. Guinea-Bissau is pretty much a straight shot across the Atlantic from South America (read: Columbia), one reporter was told, making the journey easy for a small twin-engine aircraft to cross the ocean every night. This plane then lands on one of the many (BBC radio claims) small airstrips the Portuguese built during the colonial era on one of the largely uninhabited 90 islands dotting the country’s coastline. These planes touch down with roughly 800 kilograms of cocaine, a European street value of about $100 million.

Sometimes those planes land elsewhere. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has long questioned the complicity of the country’s military in the drug transfer. This office believes that an estimated 2.5 metric tons of cocaine has landed at a military airstrip. Their theory is bolstered by the fact that two soldiers were arrested in April in a car carrying 635 kilos of cocaine.

Another theory is that bags are literally thrown out of planes onto these uninhabited islands and then picked up by people in speed boats.

Boats are another method of transportation popular in many stories. Earlier this summer, Senegalese police found 2.5 tons of cocaine on a deserted sailing boat (along with plane tickets from Brazil to Bissau.) A BBC-made map shows that most of the cocaine seized throughout West Africa in the past three years has in fact been found at sea.

This has lead to the famous incident – famous because it has been retold in nearly every story – of local farmers a few years back found bags of a white powder floating in the sea. They took some for themselves, and then put the powder on their crops, only to watch in horror as the plants wilted and died. The smugglers, hearing of the packages, returned to the villages willing to buy the bags. Happily, the farmers’ harvest wasn’t ruined after all.

Once the cocaine makes it to Guinea-Bissau, reporters become a little fuzzy on what happens next. Most just claim it is transported to Europe, although some stories suggest it also goes “elsewhere” – but nobody has ever filled in that blank. Some stories claim most of the drugs leave by ship; light aircraft also deliver the drugs to market. A portion of the cocaine is carried with the same criminals who smuggle illegal immigrants to Europe. Also, like the drug distribution system to the U.S., some drugs are brought in by “mules.” A few stories hint that other West African states are also in on this racket.

Just say non
Only one story, from Reuters, noted the sticky fact that even though a guesstimated one-third of the total amount of cocaine entering Europe is shipped through West Africa, drug traffickers are merely meeting demand. The story points out that an estimated – the numbers monitoring drug use are most likely speculated upon as drug shipment data – 4.5 million Europeans used cocaine last year, a million more than the year before.

From information I have, cocaine is Europe’s second most popular drug, after cannabis, but is it has presently reached “historically high levels” of use. Other than surveys, one method to measure drug problems is to tally those seeking help to get off the drug. In the Netherlands and Spain, at least one in four treatment demands involve cocaine. Throughout Europe, those demands have doubled between 1999 and 2004. In 2005 cocaine was to blame for some 400 deaths.

One interesting fact is that drugs of all stripes fell in street price throughout Europe. The value of cocaine fell more than 20 percent in the five year period between 1999 and 2004.

Guiné Portuguesa é nosso
What these reporters say in passing, but fail to investigate thoroughly, is Guinea-Bissau’s fragile political culture. A major reason for this stems from the fact that Guinea-Bissau is a former Portuguese colony, which like Angola and Mozambique, had to fight its way to independence, giving the military unquestioned loyalty and power – which it spent the next 30 years abusing.

The Portuguese first hit the shores of modern-day Guinea-Bissau in 1644, ready to begin dealing slaves. By the 1950s locals began pushing for independence, and the move became formal with the formation of the Partido Africano de Independencia da Guiné e Cabo Verde, called PAIGC. By the turn of the new decade, when most Francophone and Anglophone African nations were gaining their own independence, the PAIGC began an armed rebellion. They were soon aided by China, Cuba and the Soviet Union, sending enough arms and munitions to fight the Portuguese to a stalemate. (Some claim that newly-independent neighboring African states also aided the guerrilla movement.)

By 1972 the PAIGC controlled 60 percent of the country, and the Portuguese dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar was stumbling through its last few years. Portugal had placed 40,000 troops in the small country. But the rebels continued to inflict heavy loses against the colonial power, which some claim lead to the coup d’etat that brought down the 41-year Salazar regime in April 1974. On September 10 of the same year, Portugal granted the Guinea-Bissau’s independence.

Independence from what?
To what avail? As the Central Intelligence Agency points out, since independence, the country “has experienced considerable political and military upheaval.” That may be putting it lightly.

The victorious PAIGC created a single party that brutally and harshly ruled the country into the early 1990s. Cape Verde left the two-country union in 1980. With Guinea-Bissau’s economic output falling steadily, an internal coup took place, really just a shifting of the cards, with the ruling PAIGC creating a Revolutionary Council to continue managing the country.

Skip ahead a little more than a decade to when Guinea-Bissau held its first multi-party elections in 1994. As the country awaited the second multi-party legislative elections in 1998, a faction of rebel troops seized control of the army barracks in Bissau, its international airport and other locations. The soldiers immediately formed a military junta, called for the resignation of the president and his administration. They promised to hold elections in July.

Troops loyal to the government rebelled and fighting broke out. At least 200,000 civilians fled Bissau, sparking fears of a humanitarian disaster. Many members of the army began defecting to the rebel side. A truce was not worked out until late July, which was enforced by troops from Senegal and Guinea. By October, a demilitarized zone was created in the capital, but cease-fires continued to fall apart. With a majority of once pro-government forces now fighting for the rebels, the government agreed to dissolve itself and create a period of national unity.

Presidential and legislative elections were held in November 1999, and longtime opposition candidate Kumba Yalá, who beat out a PAIGC candidate, was finally declared winner in January. In 2003, with more electoral shenanigans in the air, officers acting on orders of the army chief arrested Yalá, simultaneously creating a new government. After much trial and more error, legislative elections were finally held in March 2004, but chaos reigned again: the head of armed forces was killed and civil unrest ensued.

Presidential elections were finally held in June 2005, and Yalá was defeated in the first round of voting. The eventual winner, Joao Bernardo ‘Nino’ Viera, running as a candidate for a faction of PAIGC, was the deposed leader following the 1998 coup, which eventually led to civil war.

Menage á trois
Through this all, it leads to little wonder why Guinea-Bissau remains a very poor state with very weak government institutions. It currently ranks 44 out of 48 countries in government performance, according to the Ibrahim Index of African Governments, posting the largest decline of any sub-Saharan African state since the beginning of the decade.

Today, it finds itself caught in a strange trifecta between the military and its alleged allies, the drug traffickers. As Reporters Without Borders points out, “a heterogeneous government fears head-on confrontation with the army because of the danger of plunging the country into another civil war or triggering a major inter-ethnic conflict.” With no funds, and seemingly no international friends, the government has little chance of defeating either.

Can we get a fact check?
Part of the problem, journalists point out, is that the country – and its government – has been largely abandoned by the West. That’s not an uncommon reality for former Portuguese colonies, and certainly not all that rare for small West African states.

But the drug problem keeps worsening, international observers tell us. Thus, there’s a sense of urgency in these stories, as if the FARC-style kidnappings will soon rear its head in Bissau. Never mind the subtext of many of these stories that sheepishly mention other than the fancy unmarked cars, big houses, expensive discos, the country barely lives up to its billing as Africa’s number one narco transit point.

It’s also interesting to point out that for the lone journalist from a major U.S. media organ covering this story, the UN staff was at pains to point out ties between drug traffickers and terrorists. "The real stake in West Africa is the money that is generated through drug trafficking which is, per se, an explosive tool," Antonio Mazzitelli, the regional head of the UNODC told NPR. "It can affect democratic rule. It can finance rebellions. [It can] be a reason for taking up arms and perpetuate corruption, bad governance and instability."

Here comes the calvary?
Of course, who knows how much bluff the UN has. By reading the large pile of stories on this topic, they must be on to something. Of course, the NPR reporter also admitted that Guinea-Bissau is a very charming place to visit.

This claims still don’t answer the question of what can be done in Guinea-Bissau. The BBC radio documentary pointed out that the UNs first plan to help police Guinea-Bissau’s borders called for a project costing “several hundred million dollars,” which apparently was laughed out of Manhattan. Their second, admittedly more scaled back, version calls for nearly $20 million over three years. The government of Portugal recently hosted a one-day donor conference to line up support for the plan. It appears to have been a success – to the tune of $6.7 million. The Portuguese themselves offered $3 million for the program, the European Union will kick in another $2.9 next year and Britain, Germany, Italy and the U.S. all anted up several hundred thousand each.

The question I have: With the money most likely being set in place over the next few months, will Guinea-Bissau hold the same attraction to reporters? Or will the threat of drugs prove a far more appealing story than the fight against them?

Literature Review: Egypt

What the press is saying about that country with the cool pyramids?
Literature Review is an occasional series investigating how the U.S. press covers an African country or issue.

For the foreign correspondent, Egypt represents a dilemma. Stories in the international press from there fluctuate between the two extremes of dreary and gruesome. And no wonder: Today’s Egypt is a land that seems to be teetering on the brink of civil calamity. For the foreign correspondent worth his or her salt, a dateline in Egypt must be like a right of passage. Since time immemorial these dynamic writers have duly set off and filed stories on the overcrowded slums of Cairo, the general population’s rabid hatred of the West (not to mention Israel), the corrupt, nasty government of Honsi Mubarak, the seething Islamists, journalists (and now bloggers) languishing in prison and more recently, the hotels on the Sinai Peninsula left in charred, smoking ruins. (Let me know if I missed anything.)

There is problem with this line of thought, however. If we are to believe writers, Egypt has forever seemed to be on the verge of some melt down. When wasn’t Cairo overcrowded? When didn’t at least some of the population have second-thoughts about secular government? When did people anywhere adore blatantly corrupt leaders? And that’s why many of these breathless narratives suffer from the problem of low-hanging fruit. Of course, it’s important to document all the viciousness occurring in a country. If you didn’t you’d be remiss – and be sent back home. The mathematics behind these reports, however, feels too simple: oppressive government + struggling democrats + “reform-minded” Islamists = “modern” Egypt.

Underneath these stories, I feel a little weariness creeping into the once-stolid omniscient narrator of newspaper journalism. You know, the quaint tug of the world’s most dangerous nagging question: I flew all the way here for this? I can picture reporters asking themselves: Isn’t there something deeper, more fundamental going on here? Perhaps it’s something I could find if my editor would allow me to skip the next protest and actually sit down and speak with people. (If not, maybe I could at least go snorkeling.)

Working for the clampdown
From the looks of it, maybe it is best we don’t investigate further. Politics is a tough game in Egypt. The papers have done a good job keeping us informed on the comings and goings of the political class. “The regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is in the midst of one of its largest crackdowns against public dissent in a decade,” the Christian Science Monitor reported last week. Judges handed down prison sentences to seven journalists; emergency laws allow the government to allow upwards of 1,000 “activists” from the Muslim Brotherhood to stew in jail; labor activists have been detained for inciting strikes. On top of that, groups of Bedouins, who claim the police do not properly protect them, recently turned their anger on the headquarters of the ruling party’s headquarters and defaced pictures of President Honsi Mubarak, according to the Associated Press.

Put away the fact that Egypt must have a lot of prisons. The implication of all these stories is the well documented fact that Egyptian authorities have no compunction against torture. "It's hard to explain why, except that torture becomes a habit," Aida Seif al-Dawla, a psychologist who runs a rehabilitation center for victims of violence, told the Christian Science Monitor. "But there's no question that police abuse has gone through the roof.”

The San Francisco Chronicle recounted a story about a video posted on the internet taken from a cell phone camera of a 13-year-old boy released after spending seven days in police custody for allegedly stealing tea bags. In the video, the boy was “tattooed with bruises and burn marks, and his torso a patchwork of bandages.” He died a few hours later.

Moving on from the gruesome details of the boy’s torture, the story considers whether the proliferation of cell phones with cameras will put the brakes on police brutality. "Activists that have worked to end torture have told me: 'You've done more in a few days what we were not able to do in 10 years,' " said a 32-year-old Egyptian blogger responsible for posting films of police torture videos.

One major daily considers the long-term prognosis of the Mubarak regime. For those waiting for the 79-year-old man (ranked by Parade Magazine as the world’s 18^th-worse dictator in 2007) to simply ride off into the sunset, don’t be on it. The Washington Post said the ruling coterie is grooming 41-year-old Gamal Mubarak, a former investment banker in London, to succeed his father. The reporter even tagged along to a youth conference (populated by the ruling class) where Gamal – who is known in Egypt as “Jimmy” – gave a barely passable speech. What he lacks in charisma, Jimmy may make up for in business savvy. He has already helped usher in the beginnings of reform to Egypt’s economy. (World Bank president Robert Zoellick recently pointed out that Egypt tops the list of reforming countries at a speech at the National Press Club.)

So, will sophisticated Jimmy throw off the reins once he takes power? Just like father-son leadership changes in Morocco, Jordan and Syria, the apples rarely fall far from the tree. "People always think, 'He uses the Internet and he speaks good English and therefore he won't be like his parents,'” a Middle East expert at George Washington University told the Post. “But it never seems to work out that way.”

Stranger than fiction
The reality underlying every one of these stories is the strange truth that U.S. taxpayers provide a hefty allowance to the Mubarak government. According to the State Dept., U.S. military assistance to Egypt amounts to more than $1.3 billion per year and USAID has ponied up more than $25 billion in development assistance between 1975 and 2002.

The New York Times reports that (at least one) member of the Egyptian opposition complains that Condoleezza Rice now only half-heartedly broaches the subject of human rights violations with the Egyptian government. By referring only to “advocates and analysts,” the story attempts to make the point that in previous years, the Bush administration aggressively campaigned for democracy in countries like Egypt. Apparently it worked. However, the administration now cannot be bothered.

“I think the American government does give Egypt leeway to deal with the domestic opposition so long as Egypt supports the American foreign policy in the region,” Mustapha Kamel el-Sayyid, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, told the New York Times. That includes helping Israel and the Palestinians find common ground and opposing the spread of Iran’s influence.

In their defense, American officials claim they continue to raise these issues, yet the Egyptians often bristle at Washington’s interference in domestic affairs.

A confederate knows
Journalist maxim # 679: The problem with low-hanging fruit is that it is often better left for the kids. Or the chickens.

In a country as large, complicated and promising as Egypt, there must be a million stories to tell. Make that a billion. But readers aren’t finding those stories. Oh, newspaper editors (and newspaper ombudsman) will stammer and shout: That’s a repressive regime in Egypt! And one of our “allies,” too. The Truth must get out!

I don’t mean to get all Edward W. Said here, but American writers have always represented Egypt as a country of menacing cries, zealous Arabs mixed in with the occasional bout of proper “European” conduct. Don’t believe me; check out this passage from William Loring’s 1884 book A Confederate Soldier in Egypt:

It was my first experience among these transformed Eastern people, and the impression was vivid. Returning to see European dress and vehicles in common use, it seemed at first as though Oriental Cairo touched by the hand of Ismail had lost some of its time-honored splendor. In truth, Cairo showed in former days the glittering ostentation of the favored few, which sadly contrasted with the most squalid and repulsive poverty of the many. There was that sort of wretchedness which made Egypt a pest-house, but the improvement of the people and the forced observance of sanitary precautions in the fourteen years of the reign of Ismail had effaced many sad and sorrowful pictures. In all that time Egypt had never been visited by an epidemic ; formerly the curse was periodical. No man of feeling who knew the past failed to be gladdened by the change ; every such man kindly extended his sympathy to that ruler who had fearlessly wiped out old customs and landmarks in the interest of humanity ; whose reign commenced with heaps of mud houses, and closed with so many finely constructed buildings and other material improvements ; who transformed Egypt into a civilized country, where the stranger was welcomed, and through which he could journey with as much comfort and safety as in any other part of the world.

Today, lefty media groups complain newspapers merely present international events through the frame of the war on terror: “Friend” of U.S. worries about Islamic extremism, yet continues doing harm to its people. Righties would say – well, I honestly don’t know what they’d say. The point is, what will people in, say, 75 years declare when they come across today’s tracts? Like Loring before, we’re projecting the profound worries of our age – human and political rights, freedom from poverty, an overwhelming fear of terror – onto our stories.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. Until you’ve asked yourself whether we’ve grown up enough to move off the well trodden path of misunderstanding and misrepresenting countries like Egypt. Like the Cold War before, the War on Terror will someday be short-listed to the dust bin of history. But as journalists, we seem set on rehashing the same mistakes our forefathers made. Let me be clear: We need a new lens to view this old country. Let’s retire the antiquated arithmetic of glittering ostentation + wretchedness = “modern” Egypt.