It's business and politics as usual after the Eid, observe Gamal Nkrumah and Mohamed El-Sayed Sudan featured prominently in both independent and the official press this week. The decision of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) to pull out of the Sudanese government of national unity caused a stir not only in Khartoum but in Cairo as well. The independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom published a full page interview with the speaker of the Sudanese parliament Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Taher. "If the south splits from northern Sudan, Israel will control 1,000km of the River Nile," Al-Taher was quoted as saying. According to the paper, he claimed that the SPLM conceals internal disputes by inflaming media-oriented fracas with the north." Al-Taher stated categorically that Egypt was one country that stands to lose if Sudan splits into two rival states. He warned that Egypt should be far more comfortable dealing with a united Sudan, that a divided Sudan would not be conducive to the advancement of Egyptian national interests in the Nile Basin. The Sudanese speaker added that it was the SPLM that has not abided by the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), and not the ruling National Congress Party (NCP). The Sudanese armed forces pulled out 86 per cent of its troops from the south, while the SPLM only withdrew eight per cent of its troops from the north. "They accuse us of breaking the CPA, but they are the ones that have broken their pledges," he explained. Moreover, Al-Taher argued that foreign interference has compounded the problems of the Sudanese political scene. He warned that the SPLM with the tacit connivance of foreign powers -- most notably the United States and Israel -- have stoked the flames of civil strife in Sudan and are determined to internationalise the Sudanese conflict. "America masquerades as a mediator, but in reality it backs to the teeth of Sudanese armed opposition groups both north and south," Al-Taher was quoted as saying. On the domestic front, many papers were preoccupied with the aftermath of Eid Al-Fitr and the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Many papers took the opportunity to warn against the influx of cheap Chinese goods into the Egyptian market. That spells disaster for the Egyptian textile industry, the papers concluded. The official daily Al-Akhbar ran a feature about the clothes market a few days before the Eid. "Chinese clothes compete with Egyptian clothes... [low-income] people opted for popular second-hand clothes markets that exist everywhere in Cairo, and where prices are affordable for them." In much the same vein, the weekly Akhbar Al-Yom ran a feature about the crimes that usually take place on the eve of the Eid. "Police records confirm that there was a surge in crime committed before the Eid. The main reason behind this was the recurrent demands cited by family members [asking the breadwinner] to buy cookies, new clothes... etc. Surprisingly, policemen stress that the scenario of crimes is almost the same." Pollution featured prominently in the papers, too. At this time of the year, Cairo is enveloped in a hideous black cloud. Nobody knows for certain why, even though the peasants who burn the rice chaff are blamed for the dreadful pollution. It is in this context that Galal Dweidar, writing in Al-Akhbar, lamented the government's inability to eliminate the dire consequences of the black cloud. He did not mince his words about the consequences of the black cloud that shrouds the sky of Cairo these days in the evenings. The phenomenon has afflicted the capital for more than a decade now. "The strange thing about this phenomenon is that despite all the efforts exerted by the government and the Ministry of Environment, the authorities are unable to face this damned [black] cloud," Dweidar noted. "This proves the state's failure to deal with the repeated occurrence of this phenomenon that has been occurring for 15 years now," he concluded. The issuing of fatwas, or religious edicts, was severely criticised by the secular press. The liberal daily Al-Wafd, for example, condemned the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mohamed Sayed Tantawi's statement calling for lashing journalists who are accused of slander. "Journalists denounce the statements of the Sheikh of Al-Azhar," ran the headline of Al-Wafd on Friday. "With all due respect to Al-Azhar and its figures, symbols and religious and spiritual roles, this [statement] exceeds Al-Azhar and [undermines] the regime," wrote Anwar El-Hawwari, the editor-in-chief of the paper. Sheikh Tantawi came under intense fire from other pundits as well. Saad Hagrass, for one, was quoted as saying in the independent daily Al-Dostour that Tantawi's statement was detrimental to the interests of Muslims and tarnishes the image of Islam. "The statement is part of a series of proclamations insulting Islam," Hagrass warned. "It emphasises the extent of deterioration in the official religious establishment which promotes backward ideas and issues statements that help the regime in punishing the opposition. This [situation] proves the contradictions within the state: at a time when the government calls upon the Muslim Brotherhood to separate religion from politics, it abuses religion and involves it in politics to serve its interests," he explained. "This also emphasises the fact that the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood are fighting to wear the 'religion cloak', and the victims are democracy, freedom and the idea of modernising Egypt," Hagrass concluded on a sombre and thought- provoking note. In a similar vein, Bahieddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies, was quoted in Al-Wafd as saying the government was to blame for clamping down on freedom of expression. He was especially livid about the threats to journalists. "The regime looks down on freedom as an enemy, and it has been liquidating the opposition for two years now," Hassan warned. "The face-saving of Egypt's image abroad requires dropping the lawsuits filed against journalists." Makram Mohamed Ahmed writing in the daily Al-Ahram about Condoleezza Rice's visit to the region and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was obviously critical of the US government's Middle East policy. "Unless the Palestinian and Israeli sides agree on a clear-cut set of [basic] principles governed by a definite timetable, the November conference will be merely a waste of time and effort in pursuit of an illusion. It would be a meaningless effort that cannot lead to the establishing of the Palestinian state in the near future," Ahmed summed up the prospects for the scheduled November summit in Annapolis.
