On the day I arrived in Davos last week to participate in the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, each handshake was accompanied by a question about the situation in Lebanon. On the next day, each question was about the situation in Egypt. Brother Amr Moussa, Secretary General of the League of Arab States, spoke to me about the need for change and reform in Egypt. We had a private meeting after dinner at the hotel suite of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates. I found Sheikh Abdullah to be following the news from Egypt hour after hour. He was extremely concerned about the country and its people. The Secretary General cut his visit to Davos short on the next day and returned to Egypt. Sheikh Abdullah spoke in turn about the need for wide-scale reform in the region, and said that each of the countries of the GCC has its own problems in addition to the problem with Iran, which interferes in Palestinian affairs and in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and even in Egypt and other countries. Sheikh Abdullah was of the view that the countries of the region should seek reform without any foreign intervention, be it American or otherwise, that would hijack their march, and for reform to be real so as not to exacerbate the situation any further. Everyone has his own problems. Brother Barham Salih, Prime Minister of Kurdistan, spoke to me frankly about sectarian tensions in Iraq, and how people there are divided into Shiites and Sunnis. He said that some politicians he knew to be non-sectarian now speak with a sectarian tone that is reflected in their political stances. We were speaking in comprehensible Arabic when colleague and friend Mina Oraibi, head of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat's bureau in Washington, entered the discussion as well. Oraibi, like me, is a ‘flag-waver' and a true Iraqi. And so it was that I heard the [equivalent] words [in the Kurdish accent] for ‘nationalist', ‘this or like this', ‘talk', and understood what meant ‘Islamist onslaught', and learned that ‘Qashmara' meant ‘ridicule' in my accent, or ‘mockery' and ‘trickery'. As events unfolded in Egypt, I decided to return to London a day before the end of the conference, but not before I spoke to Mr. Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank, after he participated in a session on the challenges of leadership. I told Brother Salam as we left the session that I knew ‘Fayadieh' [Ar = Fayyadism] to be a suburb in the hills near Beirut on the Aley Road. He apparently knew Fayadieh and had been there before. So I asked him how this suburb became the name of a political doctrine now, as I had just read in the prestigious Foreign Affairs Magazine an article entitled “A Third Way to Palestine: Fayyadism and Its Discontents” by Robert Danin, about the efforts of Salam Fayyad to build the institutions of the Palestinian state and economy as the path to the desired state. I found Salam Fayyad to have read the article and to have had some reservations about it. Some 2500 leaders in politics, business, media, arts and other fields participated in the Davos meeting this year. I saw some Arab friends there that I habitually see each year, such as Prince Turki al-Faisal who participated in many sessions and who was being chased by television reporters from all sides. I also saw Sheikh Mohammed bin Isa and Sheikh Salman bin Khalifa from Bahain, and brothers Bassem Awadallah, Khaled Janahi, Issa Abu Issa, while Prince Salman bin Hamad was absent, the Crown Prince of Bahrain who attends every other year. Also absent were Brother Samir Rifai, Prime Minister of Jordan, and Brother Nasser Juda, the Jordanian Foreign Minister, although both men were registered to attend. Of my Arab businessmen friends I saw: Hamza Al-Kholi, Khalid Ali Reda and Ayman Asfari, and also Khaled Jaffali, Saeb Nahas, and Nabil Kazbari. As I sat down with Hamza, another businessman joined us. It seemed to me from his accent that he was Indian. He said that he lost one hundred million dollars this morning after stock markets worldwide fell by six percent. I reminded brother Hamza of what I once said as we left his plane after a trip from London. I said that I wished that during the trip, I had lost a hundred million dollars. He asked me in bewilderment why I wanted to lose and I said: “Just think how much money I would have if I can lose one hundred million dollars in an hour”. This year, my chats with Arab businessmen were dominated by political concerns which were all bad. When I found the Herald Tribune packed with a glossy 4 page cover in full color on Saudi Arabia, I became frightened. But I soon found out that it involves rare good news, which is that UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, has ranked Saudi Arabia as the 8th largest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment worldwide and 1st in the Arab world… Good news indeed…As for the rest… Do please accept my condolences. [email protected]
