Posted in amuse-gueules
By David Hury and Hassan Choubassi
One of the things that I hate the most about Beirut these days is the traffic. I know it’s trite to complain about traffic, but it’s become so bad here that it comes close to ruining the city for me. I try not to leave the house during rush hour if I can help it, which is difficult because rush hour has, for all intents and purposes, become between 7:30 and 12:00 in the morning and from 2:00 to 7:00 in the evening. The only time I don’t mind driving around the city is on Sundays.
I’ve pretty much given up on any improvements in the issue, from better enforcement of traffic laws to, god forbid, a functioning public transportation system. My motorcycle has got some issues right now, and there’s a ban on motorcycles after 6:00 PM in the city anyway, so I’ve been stuck riding in shared cabs, or services, as they’re called.
That said, Elias has put up a post on ideas about public transportation, mostly ferries and railways, which I’d love to see but for which I won’t be holding my breath any time soon. In all fairness, though, I complained in the comments of that post that I’d like to see a bus schedule and map, and I have since come across an incomplete (and likely inaccurate) version of the former. Line 2, which I sometimes take when I’m not in a hurry (it takes between an hour and an hour and a half to get from Hamra to Achrafieh), is not on the schedule. It would be nice to see a map of the actual routes (and have those routes followed by the drivers, who sometimes deviate from the route if they feel like they can save some time) like this, or even like this.
In the meantime, though, we’ll just have to content ourselves with fantasizing about the metro route we’d take to work on the map for Beirut’s non-existent subway (click to enlarge) or talking about the lack of transport on Facebook.
Posted in Beirut, Lebanon, transportation
I’ve written here before about the question of expertise, especially as it relates to places like Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. This is a subject that, much to the chagrin of my friends, I think and talk about a fair amount. The question of expertise is a large one with many manifestations, from the contemporary NGO industry to 20th century decision-making in Egypt, but since this is the internet, I usually find myself griping about “expertise” in the media, which I generally consume online.
In the last couple of years, I’ve started getting put on a lot of email lists through this blog — everything from the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington to PR firms to US senate campaigns. (By the by, the latest press release from Caracas’s man in Washington tells me that Venezuela has decided to cancel Haiti’s debt, and so good on them.) Lately, I’ve been getting emails from a certain PR firm pitching expertise on a wide range of issues, such as:
What’s interesting is that the expertise they’ve been hawking is that of a single person, a certain “right wing political analyst and human rights attorney” who previously served as an adviser for Mitt Romney and now works at Robertson’s response to the ACLU: Jordan Sekulow. According to Wikipedia, he was born in 1982 and has just graduated from Pat Robertson’s law school. Now, I don’t know anything about Sekulow except for what his PR agents routinely send to me and what it says on Wikipedia. Maybe he’s a really smart and well-read guy, but I fail to see how a twenty-something with a professional degree can be an expert on much of anything, not to mention Haiti, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Kenya, counter-terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Oh, and Obama and the Supreme Court. (Incidentally, I imagine that those like Sekulow who think Obama’s comments on the recent Supreme Court ruling are “inappropriate” probably haven’t read Roosevelt’s swipe at the court in his 1937 State of the Union Address.)
I don’t know Sekulow and don’t mean to pick on him here, but he’s symptomatic of a larger problem that is running rampant in the American media. His case even goes further than I thought by introducing an even more disconcerting aspect to the issue: the fact that so-called “experts” are being represented by PR firms to shore up opportunities for them to expound on whatever the topic of the day is.
I’d be curious to know who’s paying for Sekulow’s public relations. Is it his employer, or is this an initiative that he’s taken upon himself? In any case, this illustrates how in today’s media environment, expertise has ceased to be in-depth knowledge of a subject, becoming instead a talking-point commodity that needs to be advertised and peddled like fake Rolex watches or ginsu knives but which has little or nothing to do with any actual understanding of the place or issue ostensibly being discussed.
The Barney Fife of Middle Eastern “expertise” is at it again. With a couple of exceptions, I try to not write about Michael Totten, mostly because his ignorance makes my head hurt, and his childish worldview is depressing to me. Some things, however, cannot be ignored. Usually, Totten doesn’t allow himself to wander freely into undisguised racism — his “analysis” is generally of the patronizing paternalistic order, without being overtly bigoted. But this time he’s outdone himself.
In a discussion with Lee Smith, whose book was panned recently by Max Rodenbeck in The National, these two luminaries of all that is Arab and Muslim sit down and have a chat about “why they hate us.” The gist of their logic is summarized here by Totten:
On the subject of anti-Americanism, I think you nailed it, and it really isn’t that complicated. You wrote, “Anti-Americanism is the region’s lingua franca, and from Nasser to Nasrallah it has not changed in over fifty years. The United States is hated not because of what it does, or because of what it is. The United States is hated for what it is not, not Arab and not Muslim.”
Later, in the comments, Totten “unpacks” it for his more obtuse readers:
They hate everybody. We are part of “everybody.” They didn’t notice us or care before we showed up in the region, but we’re there now, we can’t leave any time soon, so we’re stuck with each other.
They also hate each other as much as, if not more than, they hate us. It doesn’t matter how nice Barack Obama is. He can’t change this. None of us can change this.
One thing that’s very strange about it, and makes it initially hard to discern from up close, is that almost all Arabs are extremely polite and hospitable in person. If you go there, you won’t feel the hatred unless you are spectacularly unlucky.
So there you have it. Anti-American sentiment is completely isolated from any American actions. Arab Muslims have a problem with Americans because they’re not Arab Muslims. It has nothing to do with US support for Israel, the invasion of Iraq or support for authoritarian despots in the region. Hell, it’s not even because ”they hate our freedom,” as Bush would have it. The reason why Arab Muslims are anti-American is because they’re anti-everybody. They hate everyone, including themselves, and if you haven’t noticed, it’s because Arabs are polite and won’t tell you to your face that they despise you for being, well, not them.
And since hostility to the US is completely irrational and ungrounded in any actual problems with American foreign policy, the logical conclusion is that nothing can be done to curb it. That being the case, Lee Smith gives us his informed opinion about what US policy in the Middle East should look like:
So how do we carry ourselves in the Middle East? My advice comes from the book’s title: the strong horse not only punishes his enemies, he also rewards and protects his friends, sometimes by punishing their enemies.
The rest of the discussion is interesting for its total lack of understanding of al-Qaida, which Lee Smith insists is but an arm of Arab regimes’ foreign policy. His discussion of that point is a little muddled, because he can’t seem to decide whether its the long arm of Syria, Jordan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
So it’s really a nice, circular justification for US foreign policy. Do whatever you want, because at the end of the day, your actions have no bearing at all on how you are perceived in the world. So being that Arabs only respect force, you need to be the “strong horse,” and presumably that involves killing more Arabs (any ones will do, really). As Rodenbeck shows:
Thus, in his view, America could justifiably have attacked any number of Arab countries in retaliation for September 11 – when, he writes, “19 Arabs had struck the United States on behalf of Arab causes – Palestine, US sanctions on Iraq, US troops in Saudi Arabia, and so forth – supported by Arab rulers and the Arab masses alike.” The necessary response, Smith writes, was “a punitive war against the Arabs” – and Saddam Hussein simply “drew the short stick”.
This sort of rhetoric wouldn’t be so serious and could be chalked up to Totten’s American, aww-chucks approach to foreign policy if those unfamiliar with the region weren’t likely to swallow it wholesale. But the fact of the matter is that this sort of talk is attractive to a lot of people in the US who don’t want to believe that US actions have anything to do with anti-American resentment. And the logical conclusion to this line of thinking is ugly and somewhat frightening, mirroring the situation in Gaza, as summed up by one of Totten’s loyal readers who writes in the comments:
If those in the Middle East want to kill each other, let them have at it. If they feel they have to bring their insanity here, it is time to introduce them to the concept of the vendetta. Nasser dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood by killing their families in toto; They need lessons of total retaliation, until they understand. I believe it is one aspect of the Third Rule.
Further, they need to be put in isolation until they learn to behave or, if not possible, they should be treated like rabid animals.
Posted in Islam, Israel, Middle East, al-Qaida, hackery
Yesterday, an Ethiopian Airlines flight servicing Addis Ababa from Beirut crashed shortly after taking off in bad weather, killing 90 people. I don’t have anything to add to this, except that my thoughts are with all those whose loved ones died.
Although we always hear about crashes like this, this particular one feels closer to home, not only because it happened here in Beirut, but also (selfishly) because I’ve taken this particular flight before when traveling to Addis or continuing on to Nairobi.
UPDATE: Miss T mentions the subtext of this crash: the economic situations that push so many Lebanese to go find fortune throughout Africa and so many Ethiopians to endure horrible lives as indentured servants in Lebanon to try to make the lives of their families a little better. This article from The Guardian especially hits home:
Riad Ismael’s 36-year-old nephew Yasser was among those missing. Like so many in this nation of expatriates, Yasser had left Lebanon soon after graduating, having been unable to find a job. After five years working in a Lebanese restaurant in London he moved to Sudan to pursue his speciality – computer engineering – before starting his own business in Angola. The young father had taken time off to fly home to Lebanon via Ethiopia to visit his wife and two children, aged five and two.
“When we find answers to who is responsible for this crash we have to ask another question: why does the young generation of Lebanese have to live in exile?” said Riad Ismael, the mayor of a village near the south Lebanon town of Nabatiyeh.
“Yasser is like all young guys in Lebanon. , His motives were to build a better future and provide for his family. He was far away from his family and always wanted to return home. He came home to give them money and then died. It is a tragedy.”
Many of the Ethiopians killed in the crash were also economic migrants, but in the reverse direction – young women who left homes and families to travel to Lebanon to work as domestic helpers in the homes of wealthy Lebanese.
Many are treated as little more than slaves, human rights activists claim. In many cases servants go unpaid, are confined indoors and made to work long hours seven days a week. Some are beaten and even sometimes raped.
“Why do you Lebanese never treat us good?” screamed one Ethiopian woman as security forces prevented her from entering the governmental hospital in Beirut today to identify a body. “We are human beings like you. God created us. Why don’t I have the right to come in and see my sister?”
Outside the hospital a group of Ethiopian women stood quietly in a corner, waiting for news of friends on the flight – young women like the friend they knew as Warkey, who arrived in Lebanon to work for a family in Nabatiyeh,
“She had worked for two years and her family had not paid her salary once,” said one of Warkey’s friends, who asked not to be named. “She even had to buy her own clothes. So she ran away and I took her in. But she said she missed her parents so much and had to go home. She was only 20.
“We went to the embassy and they did not help. Because she had run away and did not have any papers, she ended up being arrested and put in prison,” she said, her dark brown eyes welling up with tears.
“They let her out of prison on Saturday and drove her to the airport, so she could take that flight.”
I recently wrote a post on here about getting robbed. In fact, that post was pretty much the same as an email I sent out to my colleagues a few hours after getting home from the police station. The email seems to have made the rounds, resulting in a little bit of media coverage, which is good if it gets the word out to alert other possible victims.
In any case, here’s an English language article for which I was interviewed by an news site I’ve never heard of, and here’s an Arabic language article in Al-Akhbar, which is just a short preface and a translation of my original message. (They seem to have misspelled my name in Arabic, assuming that it’s pronounced Seen, which any James Bond or Puff Daddy fan would know is not the case.)
Like many people around the world, I don’t know much about Haiti. And also like many people, I’ve been interested in reading as much as possible about the island over the last week. (This is also likely due to the heavy procrastination that sets in when I’ve got a mountain of papers to grade.)
In any case, I’ve been really disappointed with most of the articles that I’ve seen recently. They often range from Haiti-is-so-screwed-because-Haitians-are-lazy to Haiti-is-so-screwed-through-no-fault-of-its-own-but-because-evil-Americans-want-to-enslave-it. Surely, the truth is somewhere in between.
So saying that, here are a few things I’ve come across on Haiti. And as usual, please share other good links in the comments.
Articles & Reports:
Books:
Finally, if you’d like to donate money to help with the earthquake relief, you can do so through UNICEF, Partners in Health or the Red Cross.
Posted in Haiti, amuse-gueules
I wrote this last night when I got in from the police station. It’s not the sort of thing I generally post about, but I’m putting it up here for others who might be in the wrong cab at the wrong time. Also, see this and this.
Earlier tonight, I was robbed at gunpoint. There were two men in a black Mercedes with red service plates. I finished work a little late and took a service from BarBar in Hamra at around 9 pm to my home in Achrafieh. In hindsight, I should have suspected something when the driver, who was parked across from the gas station next to BarBar where the buses stop, immediately agreed to service wahad instead of trying to hassle me for servicein, or even a taxi. He took a short detour from the bridge explaining that he had to drop off the other “passenger.” He then sped up until we were on the airport road, and as soon as we arrived at the first tunnel at Salim Salam, the “passenger” pulled out a gun and pointed it at me.
He wanted my wallet, but I told him all I had was the 2,000 LL in my pocket. He insisted, and so did I. Finally he asked to look in my bag, and I pulled out a small notebook for him and told him it was all I had. Strangely enough, he seemed convinced, and even stranger, didn’t ask for my watch, my phone, my jacket or my bag. At the end of the tunnel (the whole gun pointing process must have taken only a minute or so), he slowed down and I got out having finally escaped with only paying service wahad, despite the gun. The whole thing probably took less than 15 minutes from BarBar to Salim Salam. I thought I had managed to get their license number, but the police told me later that it should have only had 6 digits, not 7. Unless, of course, it was a normal plate that had been painted red.
After repeating the plate number (or what I thought it to be) twice in rapid succession and then saving it in my phone, I tried to call 112, but there wasn’t any reception. Then I managed to find a corner store to call from, and 112 hung up on me. Finally, I got through to someone, and they said there was nothing they could do, and that I should just go to the police station. I flagged down some kids and got them to take me to the army checkpoint under the bridge that crosses downtown. They soldiers told me that they couldn’t do anything either, so I went to the Gemmayzeh police station, where they proceeded to tell me that it wasn’t their jurisdiction, that I should go the Mousseitbeh station, which is the closest to where I was actually robbed. I asked if they could give me a ride, to which the daraki replied with no conscious irony: “just take a service.”
Finally, I made it there, and after several hours, I’m doubtful that the police will be able to do much. They did tell me, though, that two Iraqis were robbed at the same place (from BarBar to Salim Salam) by what sounds like the same two guys in the same car last Thursday. Those two gentlemen, it seems,were forced to part with $3,000 and a laptop, so finally, I feel somewhat lucky to have gotten out of the whole mess for a measly two thou.
I write you this, because I hope that everyone will be cautious when taking a cab. Something didn’t feel right with these guys from the get-go, and I should have never gotten in with them, but besides the small signs of not haggling and vaguely resembling the plot in the US warden message, I can’t say what sets these guys apart from other service drivers. In my experience over the last several years, in the evening, drivers usually tool around with a friend for company and often take a bit of a roundabout way to get where I need to go.
So if I had to offer you advice, I don’t know what it would be, except stay away from a late 80s to early 90s model black Mercedes with a red plate bearing a number that’s similar to 3678683 driven by a guy around 45-50 years old with a big bald spot, salt and pepper hair and a mustache, accompanied by a taller younger guy with black curly hair, bad skin and a dark complexion. That is probably simultaneously too specific and too vague to be very helpful, but it’s all I’ve got to offer.
For my part, from now on, I think I’ll take my chances getting pulled over for driving my motorcycle after 6.
Warden Message
December 23, 2009The Embassy has received several reports in the past few weeks regarding a theft ring that seems to be targeting foreigners using service cars. Service cars are privately owned vehicles bearing red license plates that act as public transportation for multiple passengers at one time. Typically, the passenger is picked up by a service car that already contains two people (the driver and one passenger). The driver then takes the victim to a more isolated area or the freeway where the first “passenger” robs the second passenger by threatening him/her with a gun.
The Embassy advises all American citizens to be wary of these service cars. Carry the number of a reputable taxi company with you in case of emergencies. If you do choose to use a service car, make sure that it has the red government plate. If you notice anything unusual or the car seems to be taking a different route than you expected, ask to stop the car and exit the vehicle immediately. If you should fall victim to this or any other crime, please report it to the Lebanese authorities immediately.
Americans living or traveling in Lebanon are encouraged to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate through the State Department’s travel registration website, <https://travelregistration.state.gov/> https://travelregistration.state.gov/, so that they can obtain updated information on travel and security within Lebanon. Americans without Internet access may register directly with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate.
Matthew Yglesias points out a post from Charles Murray, in which he counts non-white faces in Paris:
I collected data as I walked along, counting people who looked like native French (which probably added in a few Brits and other Europeans) versus everyone else. I can’t vouch for the representativeness of the sample, but at about eight o’clock last night in the St. Denis area of Paris, it worked out to about 50-50, with the non-native French half consisting, in order of proportion, of African blacks, Middle-Eastern types, and East Asians. And on December 22, I don’t think a lot of them were tourists.
Mark Steyn and Christopher Caldwell have already explained this to the rest of the world—Europe as we have known it is about to disappear—but it was still a shock to see how rapid the change has been in just the last half-dozen years.
Yglesias tries to fisk him, pointing out that people from French overseas territories are black, that there are a lot of tourists in Paris and asking how can you be sure the person isn’t white anyway? Yglesias is right that Murray sure looks like a racist, but he’s wrong about Murray’s “data.” That’s the plural of anecdote, right?
First of all, Paris is full of non-white people, or people “with origins,” as it’s often put these days. France is also full of non-tourist foreigners, and these two things are not synonymous. A few years ago, there was a movement to allow non-citizens the right to vote in municipal elections in Paris (a right already allowed in some suburbs, like Saint Denis). Part of their campaign was an ad that showed that 1 out of every 7 Parisians were not French. Having been a non-French Parisian for the better part of a decade, that number seems about right to me.
So something like 15% of Parisians are not French. Now it’s impossible to know how many of those were white, and how many were not, and I’d be uncomfortable making a guess. And then we come to the French “with origins,” who are from North Africa, black Africa, southeast Asia, east Asia, the subcontinent, Latin America, wherever. These people are French, whether racists in the Front National or Charles Murray like it or not.
Last week, while I was in Paris, I went out for sushi with some friends. Had Murray counted us, he would have likely counted 2 for the “native French” and 2 for “non-native French.” He would have been wrong: Jean-Louis’s family is originally from Vietnam and Yazid’s family hails from Algeria, but they’re both as French as can be. Nicolas would have been counted as a “native French,” even though part of his family is originally from Belgium. I would have also been counted, although I’m neither French nor “native-French,” so actually, the only foreigner at the table would have been me.
When Murray speaks of “native French,” he’s mirroring the term of les français de souche, which literally means of French extraction or descent but in practice means white. So someone whose grandparents are Italian, Belgian or Spanish (or Hungarian in the case of Sarkozy) is generally considered to be “of French extraction” but someone whose grandparents were Vietnamese, Algerian or Congolese is usually not.
Also, neighborhoods count. There isn’t a neighborhood called St. Denis (unless Murray was in the banlieue, which I doubt). There’s a rue St. Denis that covers a fair amount of diverse ground and then there’s Strausbourg St. Denis, which has big Turkish and African areas. And that’s the thing, different neighborhoods have different makeups, so it’s impossible to generalize one area to all of Paris and just as impossible to generalize Paris to the rest of France. If he were to count faces in the Marais, he’d have seen a huge number of homosexuals and Jews; in Chinatown, lots of Asians; By Gare du Nord and Louis Blanc, lots of Indians and Pakistanis; by Rue de la Pompe, mostly rich white people.
This point should be obvious to anyone who’s ever lived in a big metropolitan city. Would it be a safe assumption to say that America is being overrun by hipsters because I spent three days counting skinny jeans and white belts in Williamsburg? Of course not. And the same goes for Paris.
So finally, I don’t doubt that Murray saw that 50% of the people on the street in a particular Parisian neighborhood weren’t white. I’ve looked up to in the subway in New York or the Métro in Paris to see that I was the only white face in the train. So what? The cultural and ethnic diversity of metropolitan cities is actually one of the things that I miss most living in Beirut. For xenophobes and racists like Murray, though, this is proof of an ominous takeover by sinister Muslims who hope to establish the Imperial Caliphate of Eurabia.
Personally, I think such people should be banned from ever eating in a Japanese, Mexican, Chinese or any other “non-native” restaurant as long as he lives, he should be doomed to the repetition of WASPy cuisine for the rest of his days. Or as a certain Seinfeld character would have it, no soup for you, Mr. Murray!
Posted in Europe, France, immigration, race
I’ve just come across this good piece on Yemen by Bernard Haykel, who seems to be at Princeton now in addition to NYU. In it, he warns against overt American military aid and argues for a more regional approach that includes the Gulf states.
His point about Saleh using US financial and military aid is somewhat in line with my previous post:
Saleh is now trumpeting the presence of al Qa’eda to garner financial and military support from the West, but the funds and arms now being sent from Washington may be deployed against more threatening enemies, like the Houthis, or used to maintain the patronage networks that keep Saleh in power.
…in the aftermath of the Detroit incident Washington is abuzz with calls for increased funding and more direct military involvement. But this would be a grave mistake, and not only because armed intervention on behalf of the Yemeni government would appear to confirm al Qa’eda’s chosen narrative, in which the US is a vile anti-Muslim power that seeks to strengthen and maintain corrupt and illegitimate regimes at all costs, including the death of countless innocent civilians, while denying Muslims freedom and just governance.
And his point about a regionally brokered solution seems logical to me:
The United States and its western allies cannot defeat al Qa’eda in Yemen with military force; only Muslims, and their states, can win this war.
Indeed, it is for Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states that Yemen poses the most serious problem: a failed Yemen, with an active al Qa’eda presence and a radicalised and impoverished population is first and foremost a threat to its neighbours. An opportunity now exists for GCC states to take the lead in addressing the problems in Yemen, beginning with a major mediation effort to end military hostilities between the Houthis and the Yemeni army as well as the Houthis and Saudi forces. This should not be difficult to achieve: Qatar has already brokered an agreement in 2008 guaranteeing the Zaydis greater cultural and religious rights – which is all they seek – though Saleh has evaded and delayed its implementation.
The GCC, unlike the West, has the relationships and resources required to play a constructive role in Yemen, and the country’s neighbours, which have a serious long-term interest in solving Yemen’s problems, are not afflicted by the blinkered obsession with al Qa’eda that confines the American perspective.
The GCC states could be similarly engaged with the secessionist forces in the South, mediating in co-ordination with the existing Yemeni opposition parties and Saleh’s government. Ending these two sources of domestic tension will bring the much-needed stability that is required to deal effectively with al Qa’eda, and it may well have the ancillary benefit of reforming the regime’s broken political machine at the same time. It must be remembered that one of the main reasons for Al-Qaeda’s renewed strength in Yemen is that the movement was defeated in Saudi Arabia, through the use of a clever combination of intelligence, security and propaganda tactics. The same can be undertaken in Yemen, to similar effect. But it will require a radical shift in strategic thinking in the Gulf – and especially in Saudi Arabia – predicated on the realisation that Yemen’s woes and a weak Yemeni state pose a severe threat to the regional order. Defeating al Qa’eda may be the West’s priority, but it is the GCC alone that can help put Yemen on the path to stability and prosperity – and only this, in the end, will deprive al Qa’eda of its firm footing on the Arabian Peninsula.
The only problem I can think of about this point is Saudi Arabia’s checkered past when it comes to intervening in Yemen and tolerating Al-Qaida, the first having the potential to be as ham-fisted as American intervention in the region, and the second being problematic in the long run for stability in the region and American security.To hope for a wiser response from the Saudis is probably wishful thinking.
As for the Emirates, I can’t really see them playing much of a role besides possibly pledging money. This leaves the Qataris as effective mediators, since they’re seen (with reason) as a much more neutral party than Riyadh and have been getting more and more involved in regional diplomacy, from Lebanon to Darfur, albeit with varying success. If Doha can get Riyadh to lay off a bit so it can try to come up with a solution that brings all of Yemen’s actors (Houthis, eastern tribes, southerners and the regime) to the negotiating table, Yemen might not self-destruct.
More likely, though, Saleh will be unwilling to make real democratic reforms, and he will solicit more money and guns from Washington, London and Riyadh to combat AQAP. And he’ll make some raids and kill some members of AQAP, leaving the rest of the guns and money to deal with rivals in the north, and perhaps even more importantly, the south.
Obama would do well to try to avoid this scenario by braving the inevitable criticism from Republicans who think the solution to everything in the region is in the form of cruise missiles and special forces and holding out for a smarter, more regional approach that is more likely to actually help solve the problem instead of just pouring more fuel on the fire.
Posted in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, USA, Yemen
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