RE: Where does UAE stand? from Angie

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <maryanne@ratbusters.net>]

Many visitors to Egypt are somewhat set back by this as well. We have soldiers and guards everywhere, armed. This is a country that has been in WAY too many wars and hasn't gotten a chance to relax. Most of the terrorism incidents in Egypt were aimed at the military and police and the majority of victims were from these people rather than foreigners...but the foreigners made the papers. The American school in Cairo is especially interesting. We have the usual cohort of soldiers that stand around the school "guarding" it but mostly being bored witless, I think. Probably right now they really are armed, but for a while when things were peaceful and no one worried, they took the rifle magazines away after one of them fell asleep with his head on the barrel of the gun and his hand on the trigger. Definitely not good for the kindergarteners. So you have the highly visible guards, then you have the Egyptian secret police...who aren't all that secret because they wear nice sports clothes and carry walkie talkies. Then  if the American ambassador has kids at school, you have the US security people PLUS their Egyptian counterparts. AND we have the Israeli embassy kids there too, so the Mossad or whatever they are....locally we nicknamed them "The Car Thieves" because on the whole they are fairly muscular, fit young men who don't look like they have any business hanging around a school....are also at every approach to the school.  They each carry a small backpack for the cut-off Uzi or whatever and they have communications devices that are inside the shoulder of their shirts....so they are always walking around talking to their shoulders....very inconspicuous!  Believe me, I drove my kids to school every day...it was their special time rather than because they really needed it...and sometimes it was quite a traffic jam just because of the security.  And don't get me started about ambassadorial parties where they block every approach to my house and I get in huge arguments just to go home. 

 

There is nothing like this is anywhere in the US.

 

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
maryanne@ratbusters.net 
www.ratbusters.net

-----Original Message-----
From: BE [mailto:betndez@budget.net]
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 12:31 PM
To: ridecamp@endurance.net
Subject: RC: Where does UAE stand? from Angie

One of my most vivid impressions of the WEC in the UAE was going into the stadium guarded by armed guards--there to prevent terrorism.

Heidi

    Yes, mine too, and thanks for pointing this out.  That is an experience that probably most in the U.S. have not had. . . attending concerts, ball games, any large public gathering, and being surrounded by men with weapons.  During my years of traveling in developing countries, several in Africa as well as Southeast Asia, it was first scary and shocking to walk along streets or enter buildings being faced with men holding big guns at the ready (I don't know what kind but some looked like machine guns and others looked like elephant rifles) pointed at my chest.  Amazingly, after awhile I got used to it and hardly gave them a glance.

In time people, like horses, become inured to almost anything.

Is there a message here for us?

Betty Edgar