Caught on Tape: The Middle East's Culture of Cruelty.

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by Daniel Pipes FrontPageMagazine.com May 15, 2009 Some of the bravest and most distinguished analysts from the Middle East emphasize that region's culture of cruelty. Kanan Makiya titled his 1994 book about Arabs Cruelty and Silence. Fouad Ajami writes about Beirut being "lost to a new reign of cruelty," about Iraq's "plunder and cruelty and sectarian animus," and about the region's "cruelty, waste, and confusion. "That cruelty, usually at a remove from outsiders, became cinematically vivid on April 22, 2009, when ABC News aired a tape of a prince from the United Arab Emirates sadistically torturing an Afghan merchant he accused of dishonesty. No less instructive were the passive reactions of his government and of American officials. The story reveals much and is worth pondering: Issa met Nabulsi in Houston, where Nabulsi provided him with hotel and limousine services. Their relationship developed into a business partnership that lasted over twelve years. But Nabulsi is now suing Issa for breach of contract in a federal court in Houston; to support his accusations, Nabulsi made public a 45-minute tape of Issa torturing an Afghan grain dealer named Mohammed Shah Poor in 2004. Issa accused the dealer of cheating him of a grain delivery to his ranch worth about US$5,000 and assaulted him at night in a remote spot. Asked why neither he nor his brother didn't report the torture he saw on the tape to authorities in the UAE, Nabulsi said, "I mean the whole government is all brothers. I mean the president is al Nahyan, the crown prince is al Nahyan, the foreign minister is al Nahyan, the foreign minister is al Nahyan. What can you do?" ABC News ran an initial television story of the tape (which can be seen here) http://tinyurl.com/ckagrz . Its accompanying print story, "Torture Tape Implicates UAE Royal Sheikh," http://tinyurl.com/lsgqhm summarizes the gruesome details:Read the rest of the story here http://tinyurl.com/owpffy