Governments Need to Disrupt the Business of War Crimes

Anton Moiseienko and Matthew Neuhaus, writing in Just Security:

International crimes are typically complex and coordinated, involving multiple perpetrators. For instance, crimes against humanity by definition entail a “widespread or systematic” attack against civilian population. This means they need to be funded and resourced, creating a financial footprint.

They can also generate profit, sometimes in a manner that fuses commercial and political motivations. A series of “industrialist” trials at Nuremberg concerned the activities of major German industrial conglomerates embedded within the Nazi war machine. In its judgment against officials of IG Farben, the chemical company that had supplied poison gas to concentration camps, the Tribunal wrote that “Farben marched with the Wehrmacht and played a major role in Germany’s program for acquisition by conquest.”

Today’s equivalents of IG Farben also march with invading armies; fund atrocities; sell off lands and properties acquired by conquest; and profit off contracts to “rebuild” razed cities. Russia’s war against Ukraine offers a stark illustration, as we detail in a recent report.

They are very right to reference Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but it is surprising in this context not to note Gaza or Sudan as other places where this approach is relevant.

Jean-Noël Barrot appelle à la démission de Francesca Albanese, la rapporteuse spéciale de l’ONU pour les territoires palestiniens | Le Monde

France is more interested in joining the Trump administration in shutting up calls for accountability for Israel’s crimes in Gaza then actually doing something to stop them. Barrot is a mediocrity and here is simply parroting Israel’s talking points.

Epstein never cracked the Gulf. After death, he’s finally a player. | Semafor

A piece of the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and DP World chief Ahmed bin Sulayem that I missed earlier:

Beyond the vulgarities is an accusation that is inflaming Muslim passions: Epstein appears to have been in possession of a piece of the Kiswah, the cloth that covers the Kaaba. It’s impossible from the emails to verify the authenticity of the assertion, but the cloth looks close enough to the real thing that it’s been weaponized online, with accusations that the UAE supplied one of Islam’s holiest artifacts to a sex offender. An image of Epstein showing the cloth to bin Sulayem is being used as proof that the UAE’s elites are hostile not just to political Islam or the Palestinian cause, but to the religion itself. (DP World and bin Sulayem haven’t commented on the reports.)

This Must Be the Podcast: Stephane Lacroix

Marc Lynch interviews renowned French islamologue Stephane Lacroix about his new book on Egyptian salafism. Marc is right here than Stéphane is one of the most exciting writers on modern Islamist movements around.

Renewed U.S.-led Talks in Madrid Lend Momentum to Western Sahara Diplomacy, but Big Challenges Remain | International Crisis Group

First direct talks since 2019.

After the Epstein revelations, Jack Lang leaves a mixed record at the Arab World Institute | Le Monde

Of course what’s coming out now - beyond Lang (and his daughter’s) proximity to Epstein – is Lang’s propensity to lead a life well beyond his means by maintaining a constant stream of activity with wealthy benefactors. The Institut du Monde Arabe merits a more serious president - who knows, maybe even someone with more extensive experience in the Arab world than the last 12 holders of the office, who have not had much! France has plenty of prominent academics, diplomats and other top officials who might the fit the bill – even some of Arab origin!

UAE edged out of Riyadh defense fair | Semafor

Around 30 Emirati companies were listed as participants, but none showed up; the exhibition space allocated to EDGE Group — one of Abu Dhabi’s biggest arms makers — was turned into a coffee shop. Reuters reported over the weekend that UAE firms were planning to pull out of the show.

Ashes to Pistachios • EQUATOR

A surrealist story by Syrian Kurdish writer Golan Haji, translated by Robin Moger, who provides a useful introduction to the author.

Aboul Nanaat would join us for the sessions where we discussed films we’d never seen. His passion was for book titles, and he knew a vast number of them off by heart. He would finger through catalogue cards in school libraries and the cultural centre’s archives, pore over the Babtain Encyclopaedia of Modern Poetry, skim the listings of new releases in the Lebanese press and issues of The Arab – but I can’t recall him having ever read a book. To him, titles mattered more than content: they were the distillate, the key. What need was there to run flailing into a novel’s ocean of blather, to force down a dense textbook or work of criticism that only pretended to gravity and depth? Why batter through a mountain of paper only to find yourself back where you began, unable to remember a word past its title? To Aboul Nanaat, the only true book – or the only perfect book – was the Quran, because it was memorised word by word.

OpenAI in talks with Abu Dhabi’s G42 to create specialized ChatGPT version for UAE | Semafor

OpenAI is working with Abu Dhabi-based G42 to build a new version of ChatGPT tuned for the UAE to accommodate local language, political outlook, and speech restrictions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The fine-tuned version is being designed for use by the country’s government, OpenAI officials told Semafor. When complete, it will be one of the first examples of a local implementation of the popular chatbot, offering a glimpse into how American tech companies will handle a global AI expansion that may require regional versions of the technology.

The odd thing here is why is the UAE not relying on the LLMs is has developed locally – even if they are not as advanced?

We owe it to Epstein’s victims and to British democracy to demand historic change | Gordon Brown | The Guardian

This a rare sign of decency from a top politician these days.

Neal Spencer · At the Grand Egyptian Museum: New Pharaonism - London Review of Books

The Grand Egyptian Museum, announced at the height of Hosni Mubarak’s rule and styled ‘the largest museum in the world dedicated to the people, history and culture of Ancient Egypt’, opened in November last year with a lavish ceremony broadcast round the world. It is estimated to have cost more than $1 billion ($300 million of which was a loan from Japan) and sprawls over an area the size of seventy football pitches. The financial crash of 2008, the Arab Spring and Covid meant that its construction took almost twenty years. Much has changed in that time. The last decade of construction took place under the military regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who installed one of his generals as its head – the first non-Egyptologist to direct a major Egyptian museum.

To get to the Grand Egyptian Museum, you must arrive by car or bus via the new roads that connect the edge of the Giza plateau to the gated communities and shopping centres that have sprung up in the desert. The physical separation of the museum from Cairo is a little like that of the Getty Museum from Los Angeles, but here it is not merely a matter of space or vistas. The regime is keen to keep international visitors away from sites of popular resistance and the struggle of daily life; a nearby military airfield has been turned into a tourist entry point and renamed Sphinx International Airport. The museum building, designed by the Irish-Japanese firm Heneghan Peng, is understated, slung low in the landscape next to the pyramids. Its steel-framed sloping façades are made up of triangular panels of translucent alabaster and expanses of glass. There is none of the inflated, ill-proportioned pharaonism that can be seen in buildings recently commissioned in Cairo, such as the shiny Bashtil train station. The most impressive areas, the conservation centre and science laboratories, are hidden underground. A consortium led by Hassan Allam Holding, one of the favoured corporate partners of the Egyptian military state, manages the whole facility.

I visited the museum in April and found it remarkably well laid out (as a decidely non-specialist in Egyptology or the curatorial arts) and full of fascinating artifacts. This piece raises a number of fair points, positive and negative,  about the space and what story it tries to tell about Egypt’s past.

The End of Rent Controls Promises Disruption in Cairo - New Lines Magazine

In early 2025, a video went viral on Facebook. In it, a middle-aged Egyptian woman in a black galabiya and patterned hijab addresses President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, telling him that, over the preceding 11 years, she has been on his side, despite “hardship, pain and humiliation.” She says that as life became more and more expensive, she continued to trust his words that Egyptians needed to be patient. She followed him even when people could no longer pay their bills, and half the population went to bed hungry. “But if you take that pen and sign off on Egyptians being kicked out of their houses, that will be the end of our common path, Mr. President,” she says. “If you sign this law, you will lose us.”

The CIA World Factbook is no more | AP News

But the very useful World Leaders page is still there - a very useful and quickly updated list of members of government for every US-recognised country in the world.

Human Rights Watch researchers resign after report on Palestinian right of return blocked | World news | The Guardian

From what I understand, the report had gone through all internal vetting before being blocked by senior leadership, for fear of the potential backlash of being seen as challenging a Jewish-dominated state in Israel.

See also this piece in Jewish Currents which expands on The Guardian’s version. It’s disappointing to see former HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth defend the organization’s decision and argue that the report’s legal argument did not stand despite not having read the report, and that HRW’s legal department endorsed it in review.

Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, Son of Libyan Dictator, Is Killed - The New York Times

Out of nowhere! Seif had been safe since his capture in 2011, ambiguously held by militias in Zintan for years as a hostage but also allowed to hold some meetings and hint at a political comeback.

Iliad Translations

This is a wonderful example of what the web can be - a simple, ad and clutter-free, comparison of various translations of The Iliad into English.

Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi’s New Republic | Verso Books

I’m excited about Hossam El-Hamalawy’s forthcoming new book on the Egyptian security state!

The agents of coercion in Egypt – its military, police, and intelligence services – have been locked in a perennial struggle for power since their inception. Each institution has vied for dominance, shaping and reshaping the country’s political landscape. Yet, the seismic upheaval of the 2011 revolution forced these factions to put aside their differences and forge an alliance in the face of an existential threat: the revolutionary aspirations of the Egyptian people.

He also recently posted a YouTube video about it that explains what it’s about.

CIA to name veteran Middle East case officer as head of covert operations - FT

CIA director John Ratcliffe has chosen an intelligence operative who heads a critical station in a Middle East country to be deputy director for operations, according to several people familiar with the decision.

How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump | The New Yorker

Absolutely scathing reporting. Such a disastrous presidency in so many ways, and such a disastrous party leadership.

Adam Shatz | Remembering Hugh Roberts

On the great historian of Algeria Hugh Roberts, who recently passed away. I got to know him a little when we both lived in Cairo, and fondly remember our many arguments and conversations.

La stratégie séparatiste des Emirats arabes unis

Writing in Le Monde, Jean-Pierre Filiu outlines the separatist strategy of the UAE in Libya, Yemen and Sudan where it has backed violent factions with local agendas that undermine any possibility of national reconciliation and stability: Haftar and the east in Libya, southern separatists in Aden, and of course the genocidal Darfur militias (chiefly the RSF). Translation by AI (Claude):

The “Sparta of the Middle East,” as the United Arab Emirates has sometimes been described, has distinguished itself for more than a decade through a highly militarized and particularly aggressive foreign policy. Such a strategy bears the mark of Mohammed Bin Zayed, the current president of the federation of emirates, and is driven by an obsessive hostility toward the “Arab Spring,” that wave of popular protest that made the dictatorships of the region tremble in 2011.

While the strength of such a strategy may lie in its counter-revolutionary coherence, it leads the United Arab Emirates to support secessionist movements in numerous theaters, accentuating the fragmentation of the concerned states instead of guaranteeing some form of authoritarian restoration.

. . .

The Sudanese tragedy thus brings to a climax the disaster that the UAE’s separatist strategy represents in terms of mass suffering for the populations concerned and the disintegration of the regional order.

What Does Trump Want in the Middle East? | Foreign Affairs

Marc Lynch on Trump’s Gulf visit.

Trump Is Poised to Accept a Luxury 747 From Qatar for Use as Air Force One - The New York Times

If the Qataris also intend to cover the costs of converting the plane to Air Force One specs, that is an even more massive amount of money. That Trump could then own it is absurd.

Hafiz Al-Assad signed Rolex Submariner up for sale. I guess some Syrian Air Force general needs cash.

A quick thought on the escalation between India and Pakistan: it might be a first test of what kind of a world we’re in - especially if U.S. gets less involved, China more, and other actors like Saudi or Qatar play a more significant role than they would have before.