Is this Mohamed ElBaradei’s moment?

For a man who describes himself as a potential “agent of change” in Egypt, Mohamed ElBaradei draws decidedly mixed reviews.

The veteran diplomat, international lawyer and Nobel Prize winner, has emerged as a high-profile opposition igure over the past few weeks and a possible candidate to replace fallen autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

But Washington and Tel Aviv are deeply suspicious of the 68-year-old. They along with other allies were frustrated by what they said were blatant attempts by ElBaradei—who ran the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009 -- to undermine their efforts to ratchet up the pressure on Iraq before the US-led invasion and later on Iran over its suspected nuclear arms program.

More importantly, the citizens of the Arab world’s most populous state have hardly embraced ElBaradei since his return on January 27, three days after mass street protests against Mubarak’s rule began. Indeed, one of the most striking things about the movement that ousted the regime was its lack of a single leader.

Egyptians seem to respect ElBaradei but are wary of the long periods he spent away from the country. The army, which will surely continue to play a pivotal role in Egypt’s leadership, is also cagey about this outsider.

“ElBaradei won’t do,” said Khaled Ezzat, 34, an information technology engineer in Tahrir Square in late January. “He doesn’t have the experience here and he’s a little weak.”

At the same time, those who know ElBaradei say he may be just the man Egypt needs. In more than a dozen interviews over the past week, a number of senior advisers who served the Egyptian at the IAEA and diplomats who worked closely with him during his many years in Vienna, describe ElBaradei as charismatic and eloquent, a man with average management skills but an innate ability to inspire people. If his time at the IAEA is anything to go by, ElBaradei is both politically savvy and prepared to get tough.

The man himself downplays any run for the presidency, though he has not ruled it out altogether. He hopes the next president will be in the “40s or early 50s”, he said. But he is ready to help transform Egypt into a democracy that treats people with dignity and respects human rights.

“Right now the Arab world is in a sorry state of affairs,” he told Reuters a few days before Mubarak stepped down. “Right now we have six or seven civil wars and most (Arab nations) are characterized as authoritarian countries.”

“Egypt has always been a locomotive for change, for modernization, for moderation,” he said. “Hopefully it will pull up the Arab world and help it catch up with the rest of the world.”

In Cairo, mixed feelings

ElBaradei’s cosmopolitanism may be an advantage among some Egyptians but it is a source of suspicion for others.

When he first returned home to publicly oppose Mubarak in early 2010, authorities harassed his supporters and the official media tried to ridicule him, saying he knew nothing about Egypt and had no political experience.

The government’s campaign appears to have worked, at least in part. “I’m not convinced by ElBaradei, even as a transitional figure, he hasn’t really been present in the country,” Omar Mahdi, a sales manager, told Reuters in the first days of the protests.

Crucially, ElBaradei lacks deep connections with the military—a key factor in Egyptian power politics.

All the same, ElBaradei’s arrival in Cairo just as the protests got under way emboldened the crowds at a critical point. Could he end up being a sort of compromise figure, somebody who threatens neither the army nor the democracy movement?

“ElBaradei is a very acceptable option because he will not stay,” said Islam Ashraf, 24, a quality operations coordinator. “But we’re not really interested in faces. What matters to us is having another system.”

Suspicion in Washington and Tel Aviv

US officials have been reluctant to talk publicly about who they would prefer to be in charge of Egypt. Privately, however, they doubt ElBaradei is a serious player in Egyptian politics.

The Obama administration is also loath to be seen as anointing a potential successor to Mubarak. Those factors played a role in the studied indifference with which the United States responded to ElBaradei’s return to Egypt.

ElBaradei also has critics in Washington, Israel, London, Berlin and Paris who have not forgotten their frustration at what they describe as his attempts to undermine their drive to ratchet up the pressure on Iran over a nuclear program they fear is intended to develop weapons capability but Tehran says is for peaceful energy purposes only.

Suspicion of ElBaradei runs especially deep in Israel.

Several former IAEA officials told Reuters ElBaradei’s support for the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East is widely viewed in Israel as a call for the unilateral destruction of Israel’s nuclear arsenal—the existence of which the Jewish state neither confirms nor denies—which would render Israel vulnerable to attack in a hostile Middle East.

“I have my disagreements with the Israelis just as I have had with the Americans,” ElBaradei said.

One of those disagreements concerned the Israeli bombing in September 2007 of what US and Israeli officials said was a nascent nuclear reactor in Syria built with the help of North Korea. One former IAEA official said ElBaradei “went through the roof” when he found out about the Israeli strike against the facility, which Syria says was not a nuclear reactor.

Another diplomat said ElBaradei took the Israeli action as a “personal attack against him” and a “vote of no-confidence” because the Israelis decided to bomb the facility rather than ask the IAEA to confront Syria and inspect the site.

“The Israelis decided that ElBaradei could not be trusted to do anything about it so they chose to act pre-emptively and solve the problem,” the diplomat said.

Two years later, in September 2009, Israel and France suggested that ElBaradei was sitting on IAEA findings that pointed more concretely to a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program. ElBaradei angrily denied any such cover-up. The Israeli ambassador to the IAEA made clear his disapproval of the outgoing IAEA chief and conspicuously left his seat empty during a closed-door gathering of agency member states who took turns heaping praise on ElBaradei for his 12 years at the nuclear watchdog.

ElBaradei doesn’t hide his disapproval of other Israeli policies, especially those regarding the Palestinians. But he does say that Israel’s right to exist is beyond question.

“Israel is here to stay,” he told Reuters. “The idea that a democratic Egypt will cancel the peace treaty and go to war with Israel—this is total nonsense. Nobody wants to see yet another fight or confrontation.”

But he also made clear that Israeli security ultimately depended on a resolution of the Palestinian problem and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

“We understand that they (Israel) have to live within secure and recognized boundaries,” ElBaradei said. “But if they continue to carve up the Palestinian territory, they are not helping their security,” he said. “It’s a very short term view.”

He added that relations between Egypt and Israel constituted an imperfect peace and could be improved.

“It’s a pseudo peace,” he said. “You cannot even publish an Arab book in Israel. You cannot have an Israeli book published in Cairo. That is a very narrow definition of what you call peace.”

Inspiring, But No Manager

Is ElBaradei the man to change that?

Kenneth Brill, a former US ambassador to the IAEA who got to know the Egyptian well during his years in Vienna, said that one of ElBaradei’s strongest assets is his lack of links to the Mubarak regime. While his years out of Egypt mean he lacks a political base, it has blessed him with clean hands in a country rife with corruption.

“One of the things that makes him credible is that he’s the anti-Mubarak, he’s not corrupt,” said Brill, a former senior US intelligence official who now heads the Fund for Peace think-tank in Washington.

ElBaradei himself said his decades in democratic countries like the United States, Switzerland and Austria had given him an appreciation for how the rule of law and respect for human rights work in practice, something he’d like to bring to Egypt.

Many former associates credit ElBaradei with transforming the IAEA from a sleepy technical agency into one of the most high-profile organizations in the United Nations system.

“He boosted its budget and made his own position a powerful one by using his bully pulpit to criticize the Americans, Iranians, Israelis and others,” one former IAEA official said.

On the other hand, almost all also voiced doubts about his skills as a manager, saying he had little interest in budgetary or human resources issues at the agency.

“He’s a terrible manager,” said a former Western ambassador who had regular contact with ElBaradei for years.

Would that matter? One senior Western diplomat said that despite lacking a “Harvard Business School soft-touch”, ElBaradei is a “true leader”.

“Isn’t history full of people who were good leaders but poor managers?” he said. “I think he can rise to the challenge if given the opportunity.”

“My guess is he has a political future,” said Michele Dunne, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“He could very well be a presidential candidate, but we have no idea what the rules will be and who will be able to run,” she said.

Dunne said that both ElBaradei and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa have emerged as viable candidates after 18 days of demonstrations forced Mubarak to resign following 30 years in power.

“Both of them came out of this looking quite good,” Dunne said.

A lawyer, like his father

ElBaradei was born in 1942 in Cairo. His father, Mostafa ElBaradei, was a lawyer and at one point the head of the Egyptian Bar Association. Mostafa was a staunch supporter of an independent legal system and free press, views that annoyed the government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt from 1956 to 1970.

ElBaradei followed in his father’s footsteps and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Cairo in 1962. He then joined the Egyptian diplomatic service. While posted in the United States, he continued his education at New York University, where he received a doctorate in international law in 1974.

For the next four years he worked as a special assistant to the Egyptian foreign minister. It was a watershed time in Egyptian foreign policy, as Cairo ended its special relationship with the Soviet Union, cultivated ties with Washington and made peace with Israel.

ElBaradei was a member of the Egyptian delegation at the US-brokered talks in 1978 between Egypt and Israel that led to the Camp David Accords and a full peace treaty between the two countries the following year.

In 1980 he returned to the United States, where he began working for the United Nations and taught international law at New York University. Several years later, he moved to Vienna to work at the IAEA, where he held a number of senior positions until he was elected the agency’s chief in 1997.

It was the United States that proposed ElBaradei as a replacement for Swedish diplomat Hans Blix. Egypt did not endorse him. Several former IAEA officials and diplomats said it was probably because ElBaradei had no links to the Mubarak family - as well as concerns in Cairo that he was soft on Israel.

Several former senior agency officials suggested that ElBaradei may not have forgiven Mubarak for opposing his candidacy as IAEA chief.

“He never thought much of Mubarak,” one former official said.

In his office on the 28th floor of the IAEA building, ElBaradei kept a low profile in his early years. The agency was created in 1957 to promote nuclear verification and security, safety and the transfer of peaceful atomic technology. At first, it was mainly an accounting body that kept track of countries’ declared nuclear programs and carried out routine inspections to verify that those declarations were correct.

But its role changed after the 1991 discovery of Iraq’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. It became clear that routine IAEA inspections of all signatories of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) were insufficient.

The IAEA proposed a much more intrusive inspection regime and throughout the 1990s, IAEA experts dismantled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s nuclear arms program and monitored North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex, which was mothballed under a 1994 agreement with the United States.

Fallout over Iraq

Initially, ElBaradei got on well with the Americans. He was seen as shy and reclusive but had a clear vision of how he wanted to improve the agency. He rarely spoke to the media.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, ElBaradei decided the IAEA needed a makeover. He announced that beefing up security at nuclear installations worldwide should be a priority if countries were to protect themselves against terrorists willing to hijack a plane and ram it into a nuclear power plant. The administration of President George W. Bush backed ElBaradei’s campaign to boost the profile of the IAEA and focus attention on nuclear security.

But in 2002, as it became clear that the Bush administration was preparing for an invasion of Iraq, relations between the IAEA and the US began to sour.

ElBaradei had long urged Iraq to allow UN inspectors back into the country to finish verifying that Saddam’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs had been fully dismantled. IAEA and UNSCOM inspectors had fled in 1998 ahead of US-British air strikes against Iraq.

In the summer of 2002, Baghdad finally agreed to allow the IAEA and inspectors from the newly formed UNMOVIC group to return. Initially ElBaradei and the IAEA’s Iraq Action Team, led by French nuclear weapons expert Jacques Baute, were convinced that the Iraqis were still trying to develop atomic weapons.

But it soon became clear that this was not the case. The weapons were nowhere to be found and all US leads led nowhere. In early 2003 ElBaradei infuriated the Bush administration when he announced that he had found “no smoking gun” in Iraq and voiced skepticism about whether any smoking guns would ever be found. The US, readying for war in Iraq, alleged that Saddam Hussein had revived his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.

Baute discovered that the intelligence backing Bush’s allegation in his State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy processed uranium from an African country was based on crudely forged documents. ElBaradei informed the Security Council about the forgeries in early March 2003. It made no difference. Two weeks later, the US launched its invasion.

Another split with Washington

Sidelined in Iraq, ElBaradei turned his attention to Iran, where agency inspectors suspected the country was doing what its neighbor Iraq was not—developing an option to produce atomic weapons. Washington was turning up the pressure on Iran and ElBaradei feared it could be next in line for US-led regime change.

Determined to prevent another war, ElBaradei did everything to ensure that his reports on IAEA inspections of Iran’s nuclear program could not be used to justify a military attack against the Islamic Republic. Over the objections of the IAEA Department of Safeguards, ElBaradei and his political and legal advisers regularly toned down language in inspection reports and removed allegations they felt were less certain than others.

US officials accused ElBaradei of undermining their efforts to pressure Iran, accusing him of altering his inspectors’ reports in order to make Tehran look better and prevent the IAEA ‘s 35-nation board of governors from passing the Iran dossier to the UN Security Council.

ElBaradei’s chief inspectors—including former deputy director general Pierre Goldschmidt of Belgium and his successor Olli Heinonen of Finland—pushed ElBaradei to take a tougher public stance on Iran. ElBaradei resisted until 2008, when former IAEA officials said he finally caved.

“He had had faith in the Iranians that they were ready to resolve their problems but didn’t know how to do it,” Heinonen told Reuters. “I think he lost his illusions in January 2008. He didn’t go back (to Tehran) afterwards and his line on Iran hardened.”

ElBaradei’s hands-on approach to the inspection reports was not the only thing that annoyed Washington.

The hawkish US Assistant Secretary of State for arms control, John Bolton, dismissed French, British and German efforts to negotiate with Iran as a waste of time and launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to prevent ElBaradei from winning a third four-year term at the helm of the IAEA.

In late 2004, the Washington Post reported that ElBaradei’s phones had been bugged and US officials were poring over the intercepts looking for statements that could be used to oust him.

Some of those intercepts were later shown to Reuters in Vienna by intelligence officials. Rather than showing collusion with Iran, the transcripts proved little more than that ElBaradei was doing his job by speaking with the Iranians about their nuclear program.

Bolton’s efforts to oust ElBaradei failed. The Egyptian’s third term was unanimously confirmed in 2005 when all 35 members of the IAEA board—including the United States—voted for him. Several months later he and the IAEA received the Nobel Peace prize for what the Nobel committee said was “their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way.”

But the real reason ElBaradei and the IAEA received the award, agency officials and diplomats said, was his refusal to back down in the face of intense US pressure to support the Bush administration’s erroneous allegations about Iraq’s nuclear program.

YES WE CAN?

ElBaradei said the Iraq experience taught him the importance of “playing by the rules and complying with international law.” But it also made him an internationally recognized personality. He became increasingly confident in front of television cameras and was regularly featured on CNN and other television channels.

“He became a quote machine,” one diplomat said. “He really became media savvy. It was exactly what he needed. He does have an ego and the media helped feed it.”

Bolton remains sharply critical of ElBaradei. He told Reuters that ElBaradei’s approach to Iran was evidence of a profoundly “anti-American” attitude and proof that he cannot be trusted.

“He altered the Iran reports,” Bolton said, adding that once the IAEA finally referred Iran’s case to the Security Council in 2006, ElBaradei tried to undermine the council after it imposed sanctions on Tehran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment work.

“He proposed deals with Iran that would have undercut the UN Security Council resolutions as if they didn’t exist,” he added.

In his upcoming memoir “Age of Deception,” rushed to print months early because of the news in Egypt, ElBaradei pulls no punches in his description of Bolton, who he writes was his “ideological opposite, a champion of ‘us-versus-them’ foreign policy; he opposed multilateral diplomacy and consistently worked behind the scenes to discredit the IAEA, often blocking efforts to resolve nuclear proliferation issues peacefully. He strove to undermine everything that I stood for.”

ElBaradei denies being anti-American and makes no apologies for his approach to Iran. He points to the events leading up to the Iraq invasion when the New York Times and other US media outlets ran hyped-up articles citing unnamed intelligence sources that claimed that Iraq had huge stockpiles of WMD around the country, reports that were later shown to be false.

“I saw that the media, despite being called independent, how easily it could be manipulated,” ElBaradei told Reuters. “I saw that in Iraq, and I went to great lengths in Iran to ensure that the media would not be manipulated with the story.”

People who worked closely with ElBaradei defend his approach to Iran. One described him as “extra scrupulous” but determined to persuade Tehran to comply with its obligations not to develop nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei’s relations with Washington improved in the last year of the Bush administration, though people close to him at the time said he was pleased to see the Republicans voted out of office and overjoyed when Barack Obama won the White House.

When Mubarak resigned on Friday and handed all powers to a military council, ElBaradei told Reuters it was the “greatest day” of his life. Asked if he was going to run for the presidency, he said: “The issue is not on my mind. I have lived enough and am happy to see Egypt liberated.”

source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com

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How Hosni Mubarak Got So Rich.

There are no Mubaraks on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, but there sure ought to be.

The mounting pressure from 18 days of historic protests finally drove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office, after three decades as his nation's iron-fisted ruler. But over that time, Mubarak amassed a fortune that should finance a pretty comfortable retirement. The British Guardian newspaper cites Middle Eastern sources placing the wealth of Mubarak and his family at somewhere between $40 billion and $70 billion. That's a pretty good pension for government work. The world's richest man--Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim--is worth about $54 billion, by comparison. Bill Gates is close behind, with a net worth of about $53 billion.

Mubarak, of course, was a military man, not a businessman. But running a country with a suspended constitution for 30 years generates certain perks, and Mubarak was in a position to take a slice of virtually every significant business deal in the country, from development projects throughout the Nile basin to transit projects on the Suez Canal, which is a conduit for about 4 percent of the world's oil shipments. "There was no accountability, no need for transparency," says Prof. Amaney Jamal of Princeton University. "He was able to reach into the economic sphere and benefit from monopolies, bribery fees, red-tape fees, and nepotism. It was guaranteed profit."

Had the typical Egyptian enjoyed a morsel of that, Mubarak might still be in power. But Egypt, despite a cadre of well-educated young people, has struggled as an economic backwater. The nation's GDP per capita is just $6,200, according to the CIA--one-seventh what it is in the United States. That output ranks 136th in the world, even though Egypt ranks 16th in population. Mubarak had been working on a set of economic reforms, but they stalled during the global recession. The chronic lack of jobs and upward mobility was perhaps the biggest factor driving millions of enraged Egyptian youths into the streets, demanding change.

Estimates of Mubarak's wealth will probably be hard to verify, if not impossible (one reason dictators tend not to make it onto Forbes's annual list). His money is certainly not sitting in an Egyptian vault, waiting to be counted. And his delayed exit may have allowed Mubarak time to move money around and hide significant parts of his fortune. The Swiss government has said it is temporarily freezing any assets in Swiss banks that could be linked to Mubarak, an uncharacteristically aggressive move for the secretive banking nation. But that doesn't mean the money will ever be returned to the Egyptian people, and it may even find its way to Mubarak eventually. Other Mubarak funds are reportedly sitting in British banks, and Mubarak was no doubt wily enough to squire away some cash in unlikely places. Plus, an eventual exile deal could allow Mubarak to retain some of his wealth, no questions asked, as long as he and his family leave Egypt and make no further bids for power.

Epic skimming is a common privilege of Middle Eastern despots, and Mubarak and his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, were a bit less conspicuous than some of the Saudi princes and other Middle Eastern royals seen partying from time to time on the French Riviera or other hotspots. The family does reportedly own posh estates in London, New York, and Beverly Hills, plus a number of properties around the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh, where Mubarak reportedly went after resigning the presidency.

Mubarak also spread the wealth far and wide in Egyptian power circles--another Middle Eastern tradition--one reason he incurred the kind of loyalty that allowed him to rule for a remarkable three decades. Top Army officials were almost certainly on his payroll, which might help explain why the Army eased him out in the end--allowing a kind of in-country exile--instead of hounding him out of Egypt or imprisoning him once it was clear the tide had turned against him for good.

That money trail, in fact, will help determine whether Egypt becomes a more prosperous, democratic country, or continues to muddle along as an economic basket case. Even though he's out of power, Mubarak may still be able to influence the Army officials running the country, through the financial connections that made them all wealthy. And if not Mubarak, the next leader may be poised to start lining his pockets the same way Mubarak did. For Egypt to have a more effective, transparent economy, all of that will have to be cleaned up. There are probably a lot of people in Cairo who have been checking their bank balances lately.

source: usnews.com

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Why are reporters being attacked?

(CNN) -- Attacks against journalists send a message.

"It clearly conveys that the government is not in favor of democratic reforms because journalists represent free speech, and free speech is crucial to democracy," said Kelly McBride, a media ethics teacher at the Poynter Institute, a U.S.-based professional journalism training center and think tank.

"The point of silencing a journalist is to pull the curtain over what's happening," she said. "The other reason is to create fear, to intimidate other reporters."

Journalists from Egypt, Great Britain, the United States, India, Australia, Greece and other countries have reported being jumped, beaten, detained and interrogated this week while reporting on the uprising against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

At least one Swedish journalist was reportedly stabbed. One was marched back to her hotel at gunpoint. Many said their cameras and other equipment were smashed. A few are reportedly unaccounted for. First-hand accounts of the crackdown are lighting up Twitter. One of two correspondents from Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper tweeted a chilling timeline leading up to their apparent detainment.

In a one-day span, attacks on reporters included 30 detentions, 26 assaults and eight instances of equipment seized, and plainclothes and uniformed agents reportedly entered at least two hotels where international journalists were staying to confiscate media equipment, said the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based organization, on Thursday.

"Mubarak forces have attacked the very breadth of global journalism: Their targets have included Egyptians and other Arab journalists, Russian and U.S. reporters, Europeans and South Americans," CPJ said in a news release.

The Egyptian government has publicly criticized the violence and denied involvement, but on Thursday, Vice President Omar Suleiman said international TV reporters are part of the problem.

"I actually blame certain friendly nations who have television channels, they're not friendly at all, who have intensified the youth against the nation and the state," Suleiman said in a TV address.

"They have filled in the minds of the youth with wrongdoings, with allegations and this is unacceptable. ... They should have never done that. They should have never sent this enemy spirit."

The attacks and harassment of journalists seem to be part of an organized effort, said State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley. In a tweet early Thursday, he said: "There is a concerted campaign to intimidate international journalists in Cairo and interfere with their reporting. We condemn such actions."

State Department officials told CNN they have information that Egypt's Interior Ministry was behind the journalist detentions, citing reports from the U.S. Embassy in Egypt.

But in an interview with CNN, Crowley stopped short of naming the people behind the violence and harassment. "I can't tell you who is directing it but with the increasing number of instances of people roughing up journalist(s), cars attacked, offices broken into, journalists detained, these do not seem to be random events," he said.

Crowley suggested the attackers' endgame is intimidation, to make reporters afraid to file stories about an anticipated increase in anti-Mubarak protesters likely to take to the streets this weekend.

The violence toward journalists in Egypt seems more brazen and systematic than in any recent conflict, said Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the CPJ. Since 1981, it has tracked attacks and deaths of reporters targeted for doing their jobs. The only conflict in recent times that compares to the current situation, Dayem said, is the Algerian civil war in the 1990s.

The high number of attacks in Egypt might be, in part, because there were already a large number of reporters working in Cairo bureaus before the protests against Mubarak began, McBride said. News organizations, at least until recently, considered Cairo a convenient and friendly base from which to travel to more hostile areas in Africa and the Middle East.

Of course, that doesn't lessen outrage right now about the way reporters are being treated. But will it matter a week from now, a month from now? Will it affect the outcome of the movement to democratize Egypt?

"It's such a fast-moving story, it's impossible to know the answer now," 

said Barbara Cochran, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She was a vice president for news for National Public Radio and an executive producer of NBC's "Meet the Press."

She's covered several violent uprisings throughout her career, including China's Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

"This is not like any other face-off between a regime that refuses to leave power and a people refusing to back down," she said.

"How it's covered, whether journalists will feel secure enough to cover it, will matter."

Newer technology -- the Web, Twitter, Facebook, smaller and cheaper recording devices such as Flip Cams -- has liberated reporting in many ways, Cochran said. But it also made journalists easier targets.

"When I was working, you could get into a country, do the reporting and get out without anyone sending a tweet out about your presence," she said. "And there wasn't a huge rush to report immediately, as there is now with news agencies competing to be the first to report online what's happening."

The story in Egypt is also unique because the Egyptian government managed to shut off access to the internet, blocking information that bloggers might have provided.

Consider that without Twitter or other social media tools, 2009's popular protests against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over contested election results would have been largely underreported, McBride and Cochran said.

Foreign journalists were blocked from entering the country. Ultimately, Ahmadinejad remained in power.

"I thought Iran would (be the country) in my mind that hit rock bottom (in how it treated reporters), but what Mubarak is doing is unspeakable," said Dayem.

In denying that the Egyptian government is behind the violence, Mubarak told ABC News on Thursday that the Muslim Brotherhood is to blame.

But there are other regions where sustained violence toward journalists has been raging for years, and little change has come of it. In Mexico, for instance, cartel violence continues despite the disappearance or death of more than 30 reporters since 2006, CPJ reported.

Egypt, perhaps, seems different to Western audiences, said McBride.

"Cairo resonates with us. It's an ally, tourism is big there. Most people considered it safe. I think part of why this story has captivated an audience is because they are saying, 'This is not the Egypt I thought I knew.' "

SOURCE: Ashley Fantz, CNN NEWS

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Jordan's king fires Cabinet amid protests

By JAMAL HALABY, Associated Press

AMMAN, Jordan – Jordan's King Abdullah II fired his government Tuesday in the wake of street protests and asked an ex-prime minister to form a new Cabinet, ordering him to launch immediate political reforms.

The dismissal follows several large protests across Jordan_ inspired by similar demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt — calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai, who is blamed for a rise in fuel and food prices and slowed political reforms.

A Royal Palace statement said Abdullah accepted Rifai's resignation tendered earlier Tuesday.

The king named Marouf al-Bakhit as his prime minister-designate, instructing him to "undertake quick and tangible steps for real political reforms, which reflect our vision for comprehensive modernization and development in Jordan," the palace statement said.

Al-Bakhit previously served as Jordan's premier from 2005-2007.

The king also stressed that economic reform was a "necessity to provide a better life for our people, but we won't be able to attain that without real political reforms, which must increase popular participation in the decision-making."

He asked al-Bakhit for a "comprehensive assessment ... to correct the mistakes of the past." He did not elaborate. The statement said Abdullah also demanded an "immediate revision" of laws governing politics and public freedoms.

When he ascended to the throne in 1999, King Abdullah vowed to press ahead with political reforms initiated by his late father, King Hussein. Those reforms paved the way for the first parliamentary election in 1989 after a 22-year gap, the revival of a multiparty system and the suspension of martial law in effect since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

But little has been done since. Although laws were enacted to ensure greater press freedom, journalists are still prosecuted for expressing their opinion or for comments considered slanderous of the king and the royal family.

Some gains been made in women's rights, but many say they have not gone far enough. Abdullah has pressed for stiffer penalties for perpetrators of "honor killings," but courts often hand down lenient sentences.

Still, Jordan's human rights record is generally considered a notch above that of Tunisia and Egypt. Although some critics of the king are prosecuted, they frequently are pardoned and some are even rewarded with government posts.

It was not immediately clear when al-Bakhit will name his Cabinet.

Al-Bakhit is a moderate politician, who served as Jordan's ambassador to Israel earlier this decade.

He holds similar views to Abdullah in keeping close ties with Israel under a peace treaty signed in 1994 and strong relations with the United States, Jordan's largest aid donor and longtime ally.

In 2005, Abdullah named al-Bakhit as his prime minister days after a triple bombing on Amman hotels claimed by the al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

During his 2005-2007 tenure, al-Bakhit — an ex-army major general and top intelligence adviser — was credited with maintaining security and stability following the attack, which killed 60 people and labeled as the worst in Jordan's modern history.

source: Asociated Press

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Machetes, meat cleavers, axes: Cairo's new neighborhood watches

Unrest in Cairo, Egypt, has forced neighborhoods to provide for their own security.

Editor's note: CNN's Arwa Damon has reported from the front lines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here, she describes the street scenes of Cairo.

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- As curfew kicks in, young men carry sticks, swords, machetes, meat cleavers, axes -- anything they can find to arm themselves.

They come out en masse, set up makeshift checkpoints and guard access to their neighborhoods.

Children carry knives longer than their forearms. The kids wave down cars and peer in warily. They are among the youngest members of neighborhood watch groups that have sprung up across Cairo.

With their country teetering on the brink of the unknown, these residents have taken security into their own hands. Many haven't slept in days. The official police force is nowhere to be seen, say many witnesses.

One of the main roads through the capital -- Pyramid Road leading to one of Egypt's most historic sites -- resembles a battlefield rather than the popular food and shopping stop known to Egyptians and tourists. Windows are broken, awnings hang in tatters, stores that survived the various rampages remain shut, their windows white-washed or covered in newspaper.

This is not the capital that millions across the world would recognize; nor is it one that many residents want the outside world to see.

While the demonstrations at Tahrir Square speak to an era of change, the rest of Cairo speaks to the broader repercussions of demanding that change. Lines extend at popular bread factories amid fears of a food shortage.

As CNN films from a bridge nearby, people standing in line gesture for us to stop. A child picks up a rock.

"Why are you filming this?" a man shouts. "Is this a nice image? It's ugly!"

He threatens to break our camera.

Watch lawlessness in Cairo

That same anger and frustration is felt throughout the city, especially toward the news media. The rage has intensified among those away from the demonstrations -- some say the news media is showing distorted images of Egypt.

In the chaos at another bread line, a woman says Egyptians want President Hosni Mubarak to stay. The men there angrily demand that CNN leave, saying they don't want to be filmed in this sort of a desperate situation.

The same woman we met then comes to our car and apologizes for the way we are treated.

"It's only because of the terrible situation that we are in," she says, referring not just to the uncertainty but also to the struggle that daily life has become.

"We are good people. We are sorry."

It's not just the food shortages that are of rising concern. Most of the gas stations on major roads in the heart of the capital are closed. One owner, who did not want to appear on camera or have his station filmed, said it was because of security. He then ordered us to leave.

Scenes across Cairo

Another gas station had simply run out of fuel and was hoping that a tanker would appear. It doesn't seem likely.

Banks are all closed; the screens on ATM machines blank.

At one middle-class neighborhood, a woman in a black abaya demands to see our press credentials. A crowd gathers, shouting.

Muna al-Mahdi is the only person willing to air her grievances on camera.

"I am upset with the revolution in Tahrir Square," she says, her voice trembling with emotion. "It doesn't represent us. It doesn't represent our opinion. We are here sticking with Hosni Mubarak only.

"Give him two months, give him time to work," she says. "And then he can go peacefully."

Her voice quivers even more as she switches to Arabic to ask, "Who is going to govern Egypt? A bunch of youth?"

Another woman shouts: "I don't agree with you. You're not giving the right impression."

As the two women argue, a man in the crowd pushes his hand against the camera.

"Stop filming," he says.

Tensions rise. I head head back to the car with the rest of the CNN crew. Just as we're about to leave, a group of men -- headed by one wielding a machete -- stops the car in the parking lot.

The man screams to know what and why we are filming. He demands the tape, threatens to drive his machete into the hood of the vehicle. Eventually, we are able to leave peacefully.

It's another sign of the unknown.

Yet however much the winds of change are threatening to tear this nation apart, the demonstrators are determined to weather it.

"People here are supporting each other, you know. My neighbor gave us food, gave us water and all that we need. All the stores are supporting the people," Barak Saleh says as he heads back to the demonstration ground.

A group of young men carry a yellow sign painted in red. "Game over," it reads.

Overhead, a kite flutters in the wind.

source: CNN NEWS

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Charter flights to carry thousands of Americans out of Egypt

Washington (CNN) -- Charter flights that begin Monday will ferry the first of thousands of Americans away from the escalating crisis in Egypt, the State Department said.

"We will keep running the charter flights until we get [all] people out," said Assistant Secretary of State Janice L. Jacobs.

Relatives back home in the United States are relaying needed information to those trying to get out of Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor and other cities, she said. Internet service is down in most of Egypt and frustrated travelers have had to find other ways to get information.

"Lack of internet access makes our job more difficult," Jacobs said.

The State Department has established telephone numbers and an e-mail address for "understandably worried" Americans in Egypt and loved ones to communicate with the U.S. Embassy, she said.

The State Department is sending additional employees to Egypt and the "safe haven" locations in Europe to assist in the effort, Jacobs said Sunday.

Officials are looking at Istanbul, Turkey; Nicosia, Cyprus; and Athens, Greece, as possible destinations, although the list was not finalized Sunday afternoon, said Jacobs, who oversees consular affairs.

Government dependents and nonessential employees will be among the first to go, although any private U.S. citizen who chooses to leave will get out during the week, she added.

Those private citizens who do fly a charter will have to reimburse the government for the ticket and must make his or her own plans for further travel once they reach a "safe haven," Jacobs said.

Officials don't expect to need assistance from the U.S. military.

Travelers in Cairo and elsewhere have been upset by their lack of access to information and, in some cases, a live person on the phone.

The staff of the Cairo Embassy has been overwhelmed by inquiries and the State Department has a 24-7 task force and call centers, said Jacobs, adding that radio and TV, along with websites and telephones, are being utilized to provide travel updates.

The government is asking family members in the United States to continue assisting in the effort.

"That seems to be working pretty well," she said.

Jacobs advised Americans not to swamp the Cairo airport, which is open but is seeing more flight cancellations.

Travelers, if they have a commercial airline ticket, should continue working with their carrier on getting out, Jacobs said.

The U.S. Embassy has advised Americans in Egypt to limit their movements, avoid protests and use taxis when possible to reach the airport. Travelers should arrive in plenty of time and obey the hours of the curfew, which may be lengthened.

"We have a short window of time to operate these flights," the official said.

When asked about efforts to assist Americans in Alexandria, Luxor and other cities outside Cairo, Jacobs said the government is trying to get information to them and might considering flying charters out of areas with large pockets of citizens who cannot get to Cairo. About 100 Americans are stranded in Luxor.

Laura Murphy, who is on a stranded Nile River tour, told CNN that the ship's captain has anchored the boat in Luxor after being warned against docking at any of the stops along the Nile because those areas may be unsafe for tourists.

Murphy said two men with plane tickets to Cairo were stuck in Luxor because the plane never showed up.

"You cannot get away by water. You cannot take public transportation because it is unsafe and you cannot fly," Murphy said. "I'm safe but trapped."

Other countries, including Turkey, already have begun to fly out their citizens.

The State Department's charter flights will give first priority to Americans, Jacobs said.

"If there are seats available, we can make those available to other citizens," she said.

The State Department advises people interested in taking a charter flight out of Egypt to send an e-mail to EgyptEmergencyUSC@state.gov or call 202-501-4444. Relatives concerned that their loved one in Egypt may require help can use the same e-mail address and the same number if they are outside the United States or Canada.

 Those in the United States or Canada can call toll-free at 1-888-407-4747.

Government updates on Egypt: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_egypt_faq.html

U.S. Embassy in Cairo: http://egypt.usembassy.gov/

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