Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Letters to the Editor

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 24 - 30 May 2001 Issue No.535
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

What's in a name
Sir- I read the article about the situation in Algeria in Al-Ahram Weekly (17-23 May). I noticed an error, which is certainly not a mistake, since it was repeated several times. The error concerns the name of the head of the inquiry commission. It is not Assa'd Mohaned but Isaad Mohand.
This has some importance because Isaad Mohand is a genuine amazigh (Berber) name from Kabylia, and Assa'd Mohaned could be seen as an attempt to "Arabise" this name.
Just for the record, Mohand is the Kabyle way to say Mohamed. We say Mohand just as we would say Mehmet in Turkish or Mamadu in western Africa.
Fares Djama
Paris, France

Give a man a chance
Sir- I was particularly interested in your newspaper's coverage of the take over of the Foreign Ministry by Mr Ahmed Maher in last week's issue. Most Egyptians were disappointed that Amr Moussa was leaving the ministry for the Arab League. It is no secret that he is greatly admired by Egyptians and Arabs alike for his integrity and charisma. However, your comments on the new foreign minister sounded somewhat biased. While seemingly criticising the inevitable comparisons that are bound to cover Egyptian newspapers for months to come between the outgoing and incoming ministers the Weekly itself contributed to this media frenzy.
Ahmed Maher has barely been in office a week. He is a man with a long history in Egyptian diplomacy and has served his country admirably in many posts. Let us not focus too much on differences in style between the two men. Let us also not rush to judgement and translate the differences in style (with Maher decreed more moderate and subdued and lacking charisma) to automatically mean a drastic change in Egyptian foreign policy. Give the man a chance!
Fatma Mustafa
Agouza

Following orders
Sir-I am not among the privileged few who attended French schools when the French still ruled over the cultural life of Egypt's elite. I did not grow up intoning "our ancestors the Gauls," nor was I ever deluded into thinking that French civilisation was the sole ray of light in an otherwise bleak world. I knew, as I imagine most other people did, that the French occupation of Algeria, and the attempts to repress the resistance and war of liberation, were extremely brutal, for the British have never had a monopoly on colonial savagery.
I was shocked, however, at the recent revelations of General Paul Aussaresses, who has admitted to torturing and killing 24 people himself, and spoken out about the habitual use of torture in the French campaign to break the resistance. It is not so much the idea of torture as policy that shocked me. Since this story "broke" (was it really news?), the media has also emphasised the fact that decision-makers knew about the horrors going on in the barracks under their command. What horrifies and saddens me is the fact that the men carrying out the torture were the same men who had fought the Nazis, the maquisards of the valiant French resistance to German occupation. How could the same people who had fought so desperately for their country not understand the irrepressible desire of others like them to be free in a sovereign state? Sadly, it seems that once they found themselves in the occupiers' position, they behaved much like them. Or did they permit themselves to indulge their most vicious instincts because their victims were Arabs?
Odette Ghali
Alexandria

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