Anguish over abducted BBC correspondent Alan Johnston grew this week.
Dozens of foreign and Palestinian journalists held simultaneous demonstrations on both sides of Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, calling for the release of a British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent who was kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen six weeks ago. …
“We have not forgotten his plight and we will not stop until he is freed,” said Simon McGregor-Wood, chairman of the Foreign Press Association, reading a statement for the group. “There has been precious little reliable information as to his well-being or whereabouts.”
Here is a smattering of the headlines currently on Google News:
Abbas says knows whereabouts of BBC Gaza reporter
Swissinfo, Switzerland - Apr 27, 2007Demand freedom for Alan Johnston
Arab American News, MI - 9 hours agoEU lawmakers urge more efforts to release BBC reporter in Gaza
EUbusiness (press release), UK - Apr 26, 2007Cyprus calls for release of BBC reporter kidnapped in Gaza
People’s Daily Online, China - 3 hours agoMulti-faith appeal for BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston
Journal Chrétien, France - Apr 27, 2007EU parliament calls on the PA to secure the release of BBC reporter
International Middle East Media Center, Palestinian Territories - Apr 26, 2007
This festering, unresolved situation is deeply damaging to the Palestinians. No matter how sympathetic people may be to the cause, no Westerner is going to forget about a kidnapped BBC reporter missing in Gaza for six weeks. It cannot be glossed over.
The top story quotes Abbas as saying that “the British journalist Alan Johnston is with a group of rebels.”
Rebels? That’s a new one on me.
Is that like the “deviant group” of that, according to Saudi officials, the 172 miscreants rounded up in Saudia Arabia? The NYT fills us in:
Saudi security officials said Friday that they had broken up a vast terrorist ring, arresting 172 men who planned to blow up oil installations, attack public officials and military posts, and storm a prison to free terrorist suspects.
The wide-ranging plot was uncovered over seven months, officials said, as one lead yielded another, allowing authorities to seize a cache of weapons buried in the desert and more than $5.3 million in cash.
The government referred to the ring as a “deviant group,” the phrase often used to describe the ideology of Al Qaeda.***
The Saudis now acknowledge that there is a war (against al Qaeda) going on inside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And that’s not all. Tomorrow’s Times is reporting that the influence of Prince Bandar, who was called home to the kingdom a year ago or more, is on the wane. He was the lubricant of the Saudi-Washington relationship for 20 years (and a particularly close friend of the Bush family).
As for what it all means … who knows? After 50 years of stability in the Middle East (which Brent Scowcroft lauded as a success, because “we had peace”), there is no doubt but that we now face chaos and unpredictability. The cautious platitudes spouted by the Democratic candidates at the debates the other night were hardly encouraging if you’re looking for guidance from one of the people who might soon be president (November 2008 only seems like it’s far off in the future).
To me it looks like a chain of unpredictable events was unleashed in the Middle East by the toppling of Saddam—beginning with the liberation that turned into an occupation, which attracted an infestation of parasites, who feed on the carcass of that catastrophic debacle (which was most recently described by Hitchens thus):
I was among those who thought and believed and argued that this example [of the no-fly zone that enabled Kurdistan to blossom into a success story] could, and should, be extended to the rest of [Iraq]; the cause became a consuming thing in my life. To describe the resulting shambles as a disappointment or a failure or even a defeat would be the weakest statement I could possibly make: it feels more like a sick, choking nightmare of betrayal from which there can be no awakening.
The world is upside down. Everyone is searching for a historical template, a frame, a prism through which to view and thus easily explain the tumult and chaos and suggest a way forward. No one has a clue.
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*** see this post about the possibility of an al Qaeda angle in the Johnston kidnapping story.
