Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 161
July 9, 2017
Remembering Peter Berger, with Affection
TAI is mourning one of our founding board members, the eminent sociologist Peter Berger. If you haven’t yet, please read TAI editor Adam Garfinkle’s obituary, in which he appreciates both the greatness of Peter’s work and the charm of his friendship.
We on the staff who worked with Peter directly on his weekly column wanted to add our remembrances to Adam’s, because aside from being an invariably elegant and erudite writer, Peter was a joy to work with.
Peter’s blog posts are superb because he was rarely if ever didactic. You, the reader, are in a joyous conspiracy with him to discover all that is strange and delightful in human behavior, especially of the religious sort. This was the tone he took in personal conversations, too—delight in talking to a dear accomplice. He would almost always call us after we would post his writings, often to tell us how much he liked the photos we had chosen, and to talk about his many grand, ongoing projects. We will miss him very much.
Damir Marusic, Executive Editor:
Peter started writing for us regularly in 2010. His renown and fame were intimidating, and my earliest few emails were as formal as could be, all addressed to “Professor Berger”. I can see from looking at my email archives that between July 8 and July 9 I had received a call. I remember very well that one of the first things he said to me was “Please, you must call me Peter.” I wish I could remember specifically more of what else we talked about that first time, but I do recall being put completely at ease by this erudite and yet incredibly warm and funny man. I hung up with a smile on my face. An email I sent the next day starts “Hi Peter”.
The fairly regular conversations and check-in calls throughout the years were always a treat. On occasion, I would ask Peter for reading suggestions, and he would cheerfully oblige (I am particularly indebted to him for pointing me to W. Montgomery Watt’s Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman). But more often than not, our correspondence would be an extended free-associating riff on something he had written.
A case in point: Peter had just written an essay for us musing on the legacy of the Habsburg monarchy on the occasion of the passing of Otto von Habsburg. He and I had broached the subject in previous conversations given that he had been born in Austria and I in Croatia, and I had sent him a note telling him how much I had enjoyed reading his piece. He replied:
I’m glad you like the essay. Of course you realize that, as a citizen of Croatia, you too belong to the Monarchy. Unfortunately, it is in the Hungarian part. But when I and my friends stage the coup which will reorganize the state, Croatia will become one of the realms co-equal with Austria and Hungary, and the Emperor will also be crowned in Zagreb. (The fourth realm will be Bohemia.) We are planning the coup for around 1910, shortly after Franz Ferdinand ascends to the throne (in our alternative history he will of course not be assassinated in Sarajevo). No, don’t worry. I have not lapsed into dementia. I’m just inviting you into the counter-factual game that my friend and colleague Thomas Luckmann have been playing from time to time. (Co-author with me of The Social Construction of Reality, and Slovenian on his mother’s side.)
With a tear in my eye, I’m grinning ear-to-ear as I re-read this—and countless other emails like it.
Rachel Hostyk, Associate Editor:
My first real interaction with Peter was a surprise. I’d only corresponded with him about publication dates, nothing substantial, and I never expected anything in reply. Then one morning I received this cryptic injunction: “England expects every man to do his duty.” Suspecting that Admiral Nelson’s famous order was not directed at me—seeing as I was American and he was dead—I wrote to Peter to ask whether he’d acquired an Anglophilic computer virus. Peter informed me that it was neither a virus nor the Admiral’s ghost at work. He’d been testing his email system, which Microsoft had changed without his knowledge. As he put it: “I am an 18th-century sage trapped in this digital age (where you need a Microsoft-assigned password to access the door to your bathroom).”
Later I began to edit Peter’s posts regularly, and discovered that he took special interest in the photos we attached to his essays. He would make suggestions, and if I came up with something better, he was thrilled. Perhaps after years of studying religions with their wide variations in iconography, he knew the value of an arresting image. For this and other services (which included sorting out some confusion regarding Jesuits named Xavier), he dubbed me “The Mother of All Editors,” a title derived from a flowery Arabic epithet. I told him I’d put it on my business cards. One of these days….
* * *
We hope our readers will return to Peter Berger’s copious archive on our site. Here is only a small taste to start you off:
And finally, his lovely commemoration of his wife, Brigitte:
The post Remembering Peter Berger, with Affection appeared first on The American Interest.
July 8, 2017
Climate Politics and the English Language
No surprise: the “Final Communiqué” of the (largely irrelevant, purely cosmetic) G20 summit was difficult for the participant countries to agree on. One of the main sticking points? Again, no surprise: climate change. Here’s part of the final language on “Energy and Climate”:
We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The United States of America announced it will immediately cease the implementation of its current nationally-determined contribution and affirms its strong commitment to an approach that lowers emissions while supporting economic growth and improving energy security needs. The United States of America states it will endeavour to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently and help deploy renewable and other clean energy sources, given the importance of energy access and security in their nationally- determined contributions.
The Leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible. We reiterate the importance of fulfilling the UNFCCC commitment by developed countries in providing means of implementation including financial resources to assist developing countries with respect to both mitigation and adaptation actions in line with Paris outcomes and note the OECD’s report “Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth”. We reaffirm our strong commitment to the Paris Agreement, moving swiftly towards its full implementation in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances and, to this end, we agree to the G20 Hamburg Climate and Energy Action Plan for Growth as set out in the Annex.
Take note of the stark contrast in the language used in the official statement between the U.S.-authored first paragraph and the “Paris”-focused second. Whatever one’s priors are on how climate change is best addressed, it’s difficult not to immediately recall George Orwell’s seminal essay “Politics and the English Language“—on how bad political writing is (at minimum) a tell for very lazy thinking.
The first paragraph is written in crystal clear, easy to understand prose. The United States, which in contrast to Europe is actually succeeding in cutting its own emissions, is doing so by bringing comparatively clean natural gas to market through fracking. It is looking to leverage this bonanza to help provide energy security to its allies. And insofar as it does this by providing them with natural gas, it will be helping wean them off of dirty coal as well, thereby further lowering global emissions.
The second paragraph is difficult to understand—all empty aspirations and limp hectoring swimming in a soup of acronyms and allusions to reports and annexes. Its only clear call to action is for developed countries to contribute money to the so-called Green Climate Fund—an effort that to date has fallen far short of expectations, and that President Trump has (correctly) criticized as an ill-conceived slush fund. Now go back and read the final sentence: “…full implementation in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances…” Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.
The FT reported that the phrase in the first paragraph, about helping other countries access and use “fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently”, was particularly contentious. That should tell you all you need to know about how ideological and deranged environmental politics has become.
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Teleworkers Catching up to Strap-Hangers
Removing the bane of most employees’ morning routine—a long slog from the suburbs to a workplace in the city center—might also be the most potent way to reduce carbon emissions. You don’t need to be well-versed in the complexities of labor economics to grasp this simple concept: Teleworking reduces infrastructure costs for municipalities and limits transportation expenses for workers, both in terms of time wasted and money spent riding trains, metros, and busses.
And as an article from City Journal notes, the number of teleworkers now almost rivals the number of strap-hangers across the country:
The proportion of the labor force working from home continues to grow. In 1980, 2.3 percent of workers performed their duties primarily at home; by 2015, this figure had doubled to 4.6 percent, only slightly behind the proportion of people who commute via mass transit. In legacy core-metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), the number of people working from home is nearly half that of those commuting by transit. In the 47 MSAs without legacy cores, according to the American Community Survey, the number of people working from home was nearly 250 percent higher than people going to work on trains or buses.
The article goes a step further in deciphering these trends. It juxtaposes them against another major shift in the American way of life:
[An] important demographic force contributing to the work-from-home inclination is Americans’ continuing move to lower-density cities, which usually lack effective transit, and to the suburbs and exurbs—where 81 percent of job growth occurred between 2010 and 2014. While most metropolitan regions can be called “polycentric,” they are actually better described as “dispersed,” with central business districts (CBDs) and suburban centers (subcenters) now accounting for only a minority of employment. By 2000, more than three-quarters of all employment in metropolitan areas with populations higher than 1 million was outside CBDs and subcenters.
The effects of these combined changes are only set to grow.
And yet urban planners persist in their folly of “investing” tens of billions of dollars on urban rail projects that, between the coming of autonomous vehicles and the growing role of telework, will almost certainly be underutilized. Those elephants you see before you, dear urbanists: they’re white, not green. An environmentally conscious urbanism should seek to create a favorable business climate for the tech-heavy and emissions-light businesses of the future.
Of course, a 100 percent commitment to telework has proven difficult to sustain even for lean web startups; IBM and Yahoo have also notably reined in their employees’ ability to work wherever they choose. But this isn’t an either/or proposition, especially when it comes to the environment. A reduction in the number of days spent at the office still means lower emissions and less demand for the next generation of mass transit.
The post Teleworkers Catching up to Strap-Hangers appeared first on The American Interest.
Teleworkers Catching Up To Strap-Hangers
Removing the bane of most employees’ morning routine—a long slog from the suburbs to a workplace in the city center—turns out might also be the most potent way to reduce carbon emissions. You don’t need to be well-versed in the complexities of labor economics to grasp this simple concept: teleworking reduces infrastructure costs for municipalities and limits transportation expenses for workers, both in terms of time wasted and money spent riding trains, metros, and busses.
And as an article from City Journal notes, the number of teleworkers now almost rivals the number of strap-hangers across the country:
The proportion of the labor force working from home continues to grow. In 1980, 2.3 percent of workers performed their duties primarily at home; by 2015, this figure had doubled to 4.6 percent, only slightly behind the proportion of people who commute via mass transit. In legacy core-metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), the number of people working from home is nearly half that of those commuting by transit. In the 47 MSAs without legacy cores, according to the American Community Survey, the number of people working from home was nearly 250 percent higher than people going to work on trains or buses.
The article goes a step further in deciphering these trends. It juxtaposes them against another major shift in the American way of life:
[An] important demographic force contributing to the work-from-home inclination is Americans’ continuing move to lower-density cities, which usually lack effective transit, and to the suburbs and exurbs—where 81 percent of job growth occurred between 2010 and 2014. While most metropolitan regions can be called “polycentric,” they are actually better described as “dispersed,” with central business districts (CBDs) and suburban centers (subcenters) now accounting for only a minority of employment. By 2000, more than three-quarters of all employment in metropolitan areas with populations higher than 1 million was outside CBDs and subcenters.
The effects of these combined changes are only set to grow.
And yet urban planners persist in their folly of “investing” tens of billions of dollars on urban rail projects that, between the coming of autonomous vehicles and the growing role of telework, will almost certainly be underutilized. Those elephants you see before you, dear urbanists: they’re white, not green. An environmentally-conscious urbanism should be looking to create a favorable business climate for the tech-heavy and emissions-light businesses of the future.
Of course, a 100 percent commitment to telework has proven difficult to sustain even for lean web startups; IBM and Yahoo have also notably tightened the reins on their employees’ ability to work from wherever they choose. But this isn’t an either/or proposition, especially when it comes to the environment. A reduction in the number of days spent at the office still means lower emissions—and less demand for the next generation of mass transit.
The post Teleworkers Catching Up To Strap-Hangers appeared first on The American Interest.
July 7, 2017
At G20, Xi and Modi Ignore Tensions
In case you haven’t heard, China and India are engaged in their worst border stand-off in years—a dicey dispute at the tri-junction of India’s Sikkim state, China’s Tibet, and neighboring Bhutan that was triggered by China’s construction of a road near a vulnerable Indian corridor. There has been scant sign of progress since the dispute erupted, with troops from both sides jostling along disputed frontiers, Bhutan and India siding together to reject China’s sovereignty claims, and Beijing fruitlessly calling for Indian troops to withdraw.
But you wouldn’t know any of this from the public interactions between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi at the G20 summit. As The Times of India reports, the two leaders were photographed smiling on the sidelines and exchanged warm praise for their mutual efforts at a meeting of BRICS leaders:
PM Modi started his speech by thanking Xi for his welcome and hosting the meeting. “Under Xi’s chairmanship, the progress and positive momentum of BRICS has further deepened our cooperation,” the PM said. […]
Concluding the meeting immediately after the Prime Minister’s remarks, Xi appreciated India’s strong resolve against terrorism and the momentum in BRICS introduced under India’s chairmanship and through the outcomes of the Goa Summit in 2016.
He also appreciated India’s success in economic and social development and wished India even bigger success.
To be fair, the Sikkim dispute did cast something of a pall over the G20; China rejected a formal bilateral meeting with India because “the atmosphere was not right.” And the two leaders reportedly discussed the border issue in private sideline talks, where they likely shared harsher words than they mustered before journalists’ clicking cameras.
Still, the dynamic on display here was a strange one, as the leaders of China and India smiled for the cameras and congratulated each other while their armies square off in a dispute that has some eerily recalling the 1962 war. Perhaps this is another reminder that the photo ops and PR posturing of the G20 has very little bearing on actual diplomatic reality. Or, perhaps, it is a signal that Xi and Modi are genuinely interested in cooling rising tensions. We’ll be watching to see if the Sikkim border quiets down accordingly.
The post At G20, Xi and Modi Ignore Tensions appeared first on The American Interest.
Putin Makes His Pitch To German Business
With the world’s eyes turned to the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a direct appeal to German readers with an op-ed in the business daily Handelsblatt. After much throat-clearing, Putin arrives at the point about halfway through:
We are facing several major challenges. The old economic models have all but exhausted their possibilities. Protectionism is becoming the norm, while unilateral, politically motivated restrictions on trade and investment, as well as technology transfer, are nothing but masked protectionism. We believe that these sanctions are not only doomed to fail, but also run counter to the G20 principles of cooperation in the interests of all countries.
I am confident that only open trade based on common norms and standards can stimulate global economic growth and the gradual improvement of interstate relations: Just as it is set forth in the fundamental principles of the World Trade Organisation’s activities. […]
Only by acting together and pooling our efforts can we overcome the current imbalances, ensure sustainable growth, develop fair trade and competition rules, reduce poverty and resolve acute social issues.
Like Putin’s famous NYT op-ed urging restraint in Syria, his Handelsblatt pitch represents a disingenuous exercise in self-promotion that has been carefully tailored to a foreign audience. It may not be honest, but reading between the lines does offer insight into his true priorities.
First, this is clearly a plea for sanctions relief directed at Europeans who have taken the biggest hit due to them. As Putin knows full well, German companies have always been one of the weaker links in the EU consensus upholding sanctions on Russia. German firms were at the forefront of opposition to sanctions in 2014, and they have been leading the charge against the new sanctions proposed by Congress, which would hobble German energy interests by targeting Nord Stream 2. With a carefully placed appeal in Handelsblatt—the German equivalent of the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times—Putin is making a direct pitch to the people most amenable to his argument that sanctions are counterproductive.
In a neat rhetorical trick, Putin also equates sanctions with “protectionism”, another dog whistle to the class of people most impacted by Donald Trump’s rhetoric. This is the Xi-at-Davos move, with Putin playing off widespread antipathy among the globetrotting elites for Trump to position himself as a champion of the liberal economic order. Later, along similar lines of reasoning Putin goes on to praise the Paris climate accord and vows that Russia will uphold its commitments. And it’s all in the service of lifting sanctions.
Finally, Putin is striving to position himself as a serious interlocutor, not some pariah leader from a third-rate state. This, too, he’s done before: recall the UN speech about the need for a unified front against global terrorism, made shortly after he had sent his troops into Syria. Here he is trying a slightly different tack, checking off all the bien pensant buzzwords (“sustainable growth,” “fair trade,” “poverty reduction”) to convince readers that Russia is a reliable peer deserving of a seat at every table.
Of course, the reasons to doubt Putin’s sincerity are manifold: in his pursuit of Russian interests, Putin has more often sought to undermine global institutions than uphold them. But glitzy confabs like G20 have always been a venue for posturing and virtue signaling rather than an honest discussion of interests. Putin’s Handelsblatt op-ed shows that he can play that game as well as anyone.
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Utopianism Alive and Well at the UN
What’s a bigger waste of time than the G20—an unwieldy global forum where world leaders can preen and strut while accomplishing next-to-nothing? How about trying to pass a global treaty outlawing nuclear weapons in the United Nations? The NYT (where else?) has the story:
For the first time in the seven-decade effort to avert a nuclear war, a global treaty has been negotiated that proponents say would, if successful, lead to the destruction of all nuclear weapons and forever prohibit their use.
Negotiators representing two-thirds of the 192-member United Nations finalized the 10-page treaty this week after months of talks. […]
“The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years,” said Elayne G. Whyte Gómez, Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and chairwoman of the conference, which was broadcast live on the United Nations website.
Hurray? Yeah, no:
In a joint statement released after the treaty was adopted, the United States, Britain and France said, “We do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it.”
The statement said that “a purported ban on nuclear weapons that does not address the security concerns that continue to make nuclear deterrence necessary cannot result in the elimination of a single nuclear weapon and will not enhance any country’s security, nor international peace and security.”
All that is so patently obvious it really need not be said. But when faced with a treaty surpassed in its utopian foolishness only by the legendary Kellogg-Briand Pact, we suppose things need to be spelled out.
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What Would a Recession Look Like?
At least since the current president took office, the American political system and the economy have been singing deeply discordant tunes. The political situation looks like it’s teetering on the edge of crisis: Washington is consumed by the politics of scandal and personal destruction; the ruling party is dysfunctional; the outrage-polarization cycle is accelerating; the threat of political violence is unusually acute. The economy, meanwhile, feels stable and secure: Growth is chugging along, the stock market is soaring, the housing market is in high gear, and unemployment has reached historic lows.
But in the Wall Street Journal, Greg Ip reminds us that it’s entirely possible that the economy, too, will plunge into mayhem in the foreseeable future:
If you drew up a list of preconditions for recession, it would include the following: a labor market at full strength, frothy asset prices, tightening central banks, and a pervasive sense of calm.
In other words, it would look a lot like the present.
Those of us who have lived through economic mayhem before feel our muscle memory twitch at times like this. […]
If today’s conditions don’t dictate a recession or a market meltdown, they expose vulnerabilities that make either more likely in the face of some catalyzing event.
The interaction between politics and economics is Western societies is, of course, highly unpredictable. After the financial meltdown of 2008, the center famously held, in both Europe and in the United States. It wasn’t until well into the long hangover after the crisis, as growth sluggishly returned, that politics turned more radical and establishments started to fall.
A recession today would be like an earthquake rocking a political edifice that is already showing cracks. Many of our embattled institutions, now surviving even under an erratic president and unprecedented polarization, would come under still more strain.
The impact would be particularly pronounced in state and local politics. The Great Recession exposed the fact that many state and local governments were following an unsustainable fiscal trajectory, promising lavish pension benefits for public employees that depended on shady accounting and unrealistic rates of return. A handful of cities, including Detroit and Stockton, were forced into bankruptcy.
Many governments have attempted to adjust their pension systems since the crash, but despite the market boom, there are signs that the situation is continuing to deteriorate. Puerto Rico is insolvent; California has started to renege on some pension payments to retirees; Illinois is paralyzed and unable to pass a budget. A recent Moody’s report showed that even the most optimistic market scenario would not begin to resolve the pension crisis; if markets tumbled, the multi-trillion dollar shortfall would spike significantly.
So one obvious flashpoint as state and local revenue streams dry up would be the conflict between public-sector unions and policymakers in city hall and governors’ mansions. It’s easy to imagine Wisconsin-style protests and Illinois-style government shutdowns on a large scale as governments try to rein in civil-servant benefits to keep schools open and police on the streets. And political polarization (the cities and states that are deepest in debt are disproportionately blue) could kill efforts to deliver Federal aid.
Meanwhile, the politics of trade could also get ugly. In 2010, the Economist called protectionism “the dog that didn’t bark” during the 2008 meltdown—despite the tendency of recessions to pressure governments to erect trade barriers, centrist Western leaders almost universally refrained from doing so. But the dog might well bark the next time. The Overton window on trade has shifted as the post-Cold War consensus took a beating over the past five years. Not only did the current President run on a protectionist platform, the most popular figure in the opposition party is a vocal critic of establishment trade policy. Given that one of the biggest trade villains, from an American trade-hawk’s perspective, is Germany, any conflagration on this front could further weaken the Western alliance. And the prospect of a trade war with China that pundits have been warning about since Trump took office would loom larger.
So resource scarcity and rising unemployment would turn up the temperature of many existing fiscal and economic debates. But those specific fights would take place against a backdrop of broader political dysfunction. In the wake of the Great Recession, many economists set about studying the way financial crises have historically affected political systems. The conclusion is clear: Crises tend to undermine confidence in institutions, produce gains for radical parties, especially on the right, and ratchet up polarization further. (These effects are less pronounced or non-existent in recessions that don’t involve financial crises). The Great Recession has not produced the kind of political radicalism that overtook the world in the 1930s. Liberal democracy is embattled, but alive. But a persistent failure to deliver rising living standards would probably make radicalisms of various stripes more appealing to more people than they are today.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, pundits and economic observers warned somberly that a President Trump would be so menacing to American institutions that he would immediately produce a stock market collapse and a recession. That situation clearly did not materialize. But maybe a recession will happen anyway for structural reasons—and maybe that’s when our institutions will really come under threat.
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U.S. Pokes China With a Double Flyover
While Presidents Trump and Xi brace for tough talks at the G20 Summit, the U.S. Air Force is sending strong signals in both the East and South China Seas. The WSJ:
The U.S. sent two B-1B Lancers over the East China Sea on Thursday in a joint drill with Japanese fighters, the Air Force said in a statement. It was the first time they had performed the drill at night.
The U.S. bombers continued to the South China Sea before returning to the Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. The Air Force said the exercise demonstrated the right of freedom of navigation.
Predictably, Beijing is fuming:
“China has always supported and respected freedom of navigation by every country in the South China Sea and East China Sea based on international law,” ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Friday at a regular press conference. “But we strongly oppose some countries showing off military power in the name of freedom of navigation, which damages China’s sovereignty and safety.”
Both flyovers come less than a week after the Trump administration’s second freedom-of-navigation in the South China Sea, and while the U.S. Navy is engaged in naval exercises with China’s rival claimant Vietnam. And the administration has been turning up the heat on China on many other fronts: issuing secondary sanctions, announcing a Taiwan arms package, and threatening a trade war as Trump sours on Beijing’s ability to help with North Korea.
Even as the administration tightens the screws, Trump has hinted at an opening: “never give up,” he said at Hamburg when asked by a reporter whether he had abandoned efforts to cooperate with Xi. For now, though, American actions are sending a much tougher message to Beijing: if you don’t pressure Pyongyang, we will pressure you.
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A Killer Goes Free in Cairo
On June 23, Egypt’s President Sisi granted clemency to some 500 convicted criminals, a common practice of Arab leaders on the eve of Eid al-Fitr, the end of the month-long Islamic fast of Ramadan. Among those discharged was Hisham Talat Mustafa, a billionaire real-estate magnate and politico with close ties to the Mubarak regime. In 2009, Mustafa was convicted of contracting to have his girlfriend, the Lebanese diva Suzanne Tamim, murdered in Dubai. Eight years and multiple political upheavals later, the release of Mustafa highlights how little Egypt has actually changed.
The story of Suzanne Tamim’s murder is a sensational tale. Tamim, a Lebanese singer who won Arab Star Search in 1990, became Mustafa’s paramour while he was serving as a parliamentarian member of the policy secretariat of then-President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). He was also a close associate of Mubarak’s son and heir apparent Gamal. Mustafa, who was already married, reportedly wanted Tamim to be his second wife, but she refused and subsequently took up with Iraqi kickboxing world champion Riyad al-Azzawi.
Jilted and furious, Mustafa paid a former Egyptian security official $2 million to kill his erstwhile lover. In July 2008, retired police officer Moshen al-Sukkary flew from Cairo to the United Arab Emirates, where he executed Tamim in her apartment—nearly severing her head with a large knife. Alas, Sukkary left a trail of bloody footprints while fleeing the scene, and Emirati police eventually traced the sneakers that made them to a Dubai mall, where Sukkary had purchased them just days earlier. Sukkary was subsequently identified and extradited to Egypt, where he implicated Mustafa in the conspiracy.
In the spring of 2009, the trial mesmerized Egyptians. It appeared to be a slam-dunk case. Not only had Sukkary confessed to the crime and fingered Mustafa, the evidence included recorded phone conversations between Mustafa and the hitman. The question was whether Mustafa—notwithstanding his wealth and connections—would receive a fair trial in a judicial system notoriously manipulated by an authoritarian regime.
The Mubarak regime initially placed a gag order on the trial, but after two local newspapers released details about the killing, the government instead decided to use the trial to showcase the state’s “independent” judiciary. The media affairs secretary of Mubarak’s ruling NDP, Ali Din Hilal, pointed to the indictment of Mustafa as proof that “the ruling party knows no cronyism and that nobody in Egypt is above the law.” Most Egyptians knew better, and were genuinely shocked when Mustafa and his trigger man were found guilty and sentenced to death in May 2009.
While the judgment against Sukkary stuck—though his sentence was subsequently commuted to life in prison—the state’s highest court soon threw out the guilty verdict for Mustafa due to alleged procedural errors. The 2010 retrial again found Mustafa guilty, but sentenced him to just 15 years. When he was released just before the Eid, Mustafa had served less than half of his term. At the time, many concluded that he was receiving special treatment due to his social status. But the fact that he was sentenced at all was nonetheless noteworthy given his connections with Egypt’s seemingly entrenched autocracy.
Since his incarceration, there have been two uprisings and four regime changes, but media interest in Mustafa’s story has nonetheless persisted. On several occasions, Mustafa reportedly appealed for his release based on alleged medical conditions, but those appeals were denied. Meanwhile, his company, the Talat Mustafa Group (TMG), was sued for various indiscretions regarding its $3 billion Madinady (“My City”) project. TMG reportedly purchased land from the state for a gated community and golf course along Cairo’s ring road for nearly $1 billion under market value, a sweetheart deal for a regime associate. The legal proceedings caused shares in TMG stock to plummet by nearly 10 percent.
After his release, however, the value of TMG stock surged by nearly 15 percent. Was this business-friendly signal what Sisi had in mind when he released Mustafa? Perhaps. Egypt’s business community, which strongly supported the July 2013 overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi and backed Sisi’s presidential bid a year later, remains an important constituency for the Egyptian government. Or was the pardon a signal to the Egyptian judiciary, which has at times been at odds with Sisi? Or maybe it was simply a holiday goodwill gesture to a figure who, if the reports are accurate, has suffered medically in prison.
Nobody knows, which is par for the course in Egypt. Indeed, one of the most persistent features of Egyptian decision-making through all the turmoil of recent years has been opacity. Seven years after the revolution, Mustafa’s release represents business as usual in Cairo.
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