That is the story of the Dakar 2021 where a certain Al-Attiyah, a backpacker in search of glory near his land. The Dakar Rally 2021 route, features about 5,000 kilometres made up of 12 stages. Despite months of uncertainty mainly due to the pandemic, this 43rd edition is the second to be held in Saudi Arabia. It will start on 3 January from Jeddah and finish on 15 January in the same place. Nasser Al-Attiyah, a native of Qatar, is the favourite candidate to take the top prize. Here is his story as told by the France 24 television edition of today.
2 January 2021
Dakar 2021: Al-Attiyah, backpacker in search of glory near his land
Qatari Toyota driver Nasser Al-Attiyah during a technical check on January 1, 2021 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before the start of the 2021 Dakar FRANCK FIFE AFP
Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) (AFP)
He knew the Dakar when he still arrived in the capital of Senegal and signed his three victories in the famous rally-raid in South America, but Nasser Al-Attiyah still has a dream: to win in Saudi Arabia, in the environment of the Gulf countries that he knows so well.
At 50, the Qatari driver is taking part at the wheel of his Toyota Hilux from Sunday in his 17th edition of the Dakar.
And it is an understatement to say that Al-Attiyah loves the Dakar: since his first participation in 2004, he has posted a worse result, when he did not give up, a 10th place, precisely for his debut in the rally-raid. who was still arguing in Africa.
Since then, he has entered his name on the charts three times (2011, 2015, 2019) with three different cars, and has won at least one stage per edition without stopping since … 2007 for a total of 35 successes!
But Al-Attiyah remains by his own admission on “a big disappointment”: he nevertheless finished 2nd in the 2020 edition, behind the Spaniard Carlos Sainz (Mini), but for the start of the Dakar in the Saudi desert, he was another goal was set.
“It was great to be in a new region with incredible landscapes and above all, we were very confident, but from the start of the rally, we started to have punctures. In all, I suffered eleven punctures”, he recalled on the official Dakar 2021 website.
– 150 km of cycling –
The tire problems, used until then for South America, resolved, “NAA” has also adapted its physical preparation.
While he focused on endurance, adapted to low oxygen levels at high altitude in South America, he worked his muscle building to tame the dunes of the Saudi desert on the program of the twelve stages of this Dakar 2021. until January 15.
“I adopted a different physical program which focuses on building muscle,” he told AFP.
With his co-driver since 2015, Frenchman Matthieu Baumel, “we train according to the countries where the Dakar takes place”, underlined the driver born in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
“The program varies between cycling 100 to 150 kilometers per day, running or other exercises,” said the man who is nicknamed “Superman” in his country.
With the confinement imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the champion had to adapt.
– “Dance on the dunes” –
“I have a simulator at home and a gym that kept me in the rally spirit,” he explained.
Al-Attiyah is a symbol of the rise on the international scene of Qatar, a small emirate of the Arabian Peninsula that has become in a few decades an essential name in the field of sport in particular.
Before training in the gigantic and luxurious Aspire sports complex in Doha, Al-Attiyah experienced difficulties in his youth in financing his ambitions to become a great racing driver.
The one who is said to “dance on the sand dunes” has forged an impressive track record in rally as well as in rally-raid: he has been 16 times Middle Eastern champion, WRC2 world champion or four times winner. of the World Cup off-road rallies.
He also shone at the Olympic Games, shotgun in hand, to finish 4th in the skeet event at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and 3rd at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
While waiting for a new Olympic challenge in Tokyo this summer, Al-Attiyah is aiming for a fourth coronation on the Dakar. Everything is looking good: in October he won the Andalusia rally and his car will be struck with the number 301, just like in his successes in 2015 and 2019.
Robert Malley in this article titled The Unwanted Wars published in September / October 2019 of Foreign Affairs gives some answers to this question that has been marauding everyone for millennia. Why the Middle East Is More Combustible Than Ever, would, sarcasm apart, be a good start to try to understand the multi-layered mess of all past and passing powers. Here are some excerpts of the article.
Rifles and rifts: Houthi rebels in Sanaa, Yemen, December 2018 Hani Al-Ansi / Picture Alliance / dpa / AP Images
The
war that now looms largest is a war nobody apparently wants. During his
presidential campaign, Donald Trump railed against the United States’
entanglement in Middle Eastern wars, and since assuming office, he has not
changed his tune. Iran has no interest in a wide-ranging conflict that it knows
it could not win. Israel is satisfied with calibrated operations in Iraq,
Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza but fears a larger confrontation that
could expose it to thousands of rockets. Saudi Arabia is determined to
push back against Iran, but without confronting it militarily. Yet the
conditions for an all-out war in the Middle East are riper than at any time in
recent memory.
A
conflict could break out in any one of a number of places for any one of
a number of reasons. Consider the September 14 attack on Saudi oil facilities: it could
theoretically have been perpetrated by the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group,
as part of their war with the kingdom; by Iran, as a response to
debilitating U.S. sanctions; or by an Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Iraq. If
Washington decided to take military action against Tehran, this could
in turn prompt Iranian retaliation against the United States’ Gulf allies,
an attack by Hezbollah on Israel, or a Shiite militia operation against U.S. personnel in Iraq.
Likewise, Israeli operations against Iranian allies anywhere in the Middle
East could trigger a regionwide chain reaction. Because any development
anywhere in the region can have ripple effects everywhere, narrowly containing
a crisis is fast becoming an exercise in futility.
When
it comes to the Middle East, Tip O’Neill, the storied
Democratic politician, had it backward: all politics—especially local
politics—is international. In Yemen, a war pitting the Houthis, until not
long ago a relatively unexceptional rebel group, against a debilitated central
government in the region’s poorest nation, one whose prior internal conflicts
barely caught the world’s notice, has become a focal point for the
Iranian-Saudi rivalry. It has also become a possible trigger for deeper
U.S. military involvement. The Syrian regime’s repression of a
popular uprising, far more brutal than prior crackdowns but hardly
the first in the region’s or even Syria’s modern history, morphed into an
international confrontation drawing in a dozen countries. It has resulted in
the largest number of Russians ever killed by the United States and
has thrust both Russia and Turkey and Iran and Israel to the brink of
war. Internal strife in Libya sucked in not just Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey,
and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) but also Russia and the United States.
There
is a principal explanation for such risks. The Middle East has
become the world’s most polarized region and, paradoxically, its most
integrated. That combination—along with weak state structures, powerful nonstate
actors, and multiple transitions occurring almost simultaneously—also makes the
Middle East the world’s most volatile region. It further means that as long as
its regional posture remains as it is, the United States will be just one
poorly timed or dangerously aimed Houthi drone strike, or one particularly
effective Israeli operation against a Shiite militia, away from its next costly
regional entanglement. Ultimately, the question is not chiefly whether the
United States should disengage from the region. It is how it should choose to
engage: diplomatically or militarily, by exacerbating divides or mitigating
them, and by aligning itself fully with one side or seeking to achieve a sort
of balance.
ACT
LOCALLY, THINK REGIONALLY
The
story of the contemporary Middle East is one of a succession of rifts, each new
one sitting atop its precursors, some taking momentary precedence over others,
none ever truly or fully resolved. Today, the three most important
rifts—between Israel and its foes, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between
competing Sunni blocs—intersect in dangerous and potentially explosive ways.
Israel’s
current adversaries are chiefly represented by the so-called axis of
resistance: Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and, although presently otherwise occupied,
Syria. The struggle is playing out in the traditional arenas of the West Bank
and Gaza but also in Syria, where Israel routinely strikes Iranian forces
and Iranian-affiliated groups; in cyberspace; in Lebanon, where Israel faces
the heavily armed, Iranian-backed Hezbollah; and even in Iraq, where Israel has
reportedly begun to target Iranian allies. The absence of most Arab states from
this frontline makes it less prominent but no less dangerous.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu near the Syrian border in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, March 2019 Ronen Zvulun / Reuters
For
those Arab states, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been nudged to the
sidelines by the two other battles. Saudi Arabia prioritizes its rivalry with
Iran. Both countries exploit the Shiite-Sunni rift to mobilize their
respective constituencies but are in reality moved by power politics, a
tug of war for regional influence unfolding in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and
the Gulf states.
Finally,
there is the Sunni-Sunni rift, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE vying
with Qatar and Turkey. As Hussein Agha and I wrote in The New Yorker in March, this is the
more momentous, if least covered, of the divides, with both supremacy over the Sunni
world and the role of political Islam at stake. Whether in Egypt, Libya,
Syria, Tunisia, or as far afield as Sudan, this competition will largely define
the region’s future.
Together with the region’s polarization is a lack of effective communication, which makes things ever more perilous. There is no meaningful channel between Iran and Israel, no official one between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and little real diplomacy beyond rhetorical jousting between the rival Sunni blocs.
According to UNCHR, those fleeing their own countries for fear of persecution travel collectively around two billion kilometres per year to reach a safe haven. To honour their resilience and determination and to remind us of the long and tortuous journeys they are forced to make on their way to safety, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has launched the www.stepwithrefugees.org campaign to mark 2019 World Refugee Day.
The number of migrant and refugee school-age children around the world has grown by 26% since 2000. Eight years on from the beginning of the Syrian conflict, a new paper released today and at an event in the Netherlands looks at the importance of making sure that education systems are set up to address the trauma that many of these children face before, and during their journeys to new countries. In particular, teachers need better training to provide psychosocial support to these children, including through social and emotional learning.
In Germany, about one-third of refugee children suffer from mental illness, and one-fifth suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Unaccompanied minors are particularly vulnerable. One third of 160 unaccompanied asylum seeking children in Norway from Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Somalia suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Among 166 unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents in Belgium, 37-47% had ‘severe or very severe’ symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD.
Rates of trauma among the displaced in low and middle income countries are also high. For instance, 75% of 331 internally displaced children in camps in southern Darfur in Sudan met diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, and 38% had depression.
Image: Anthony Upton/ARETE/GEM Report
In the absence of health centres, schools can play a key role in restoring a sense of stability. Teachers are not and should never be leant on as mental health specialists, but they can be a crucial source of support for children suffering from trauma if they’re given the right training. But they need basic knowledge about trauma symptoms and providing help to students, which many do not have. NGOs, including the International Rescue Committee, iACT, and Plan International, are training teachers to face this challenge through their programmes, but their reach is not enough.
In Germany, the majority of teachers and day-care workers said that they did not feel properly prepared to address the needs of refugee children. In the Netherlands, 20% of teachers with more than 18 years of experience working in mainstream schools reported that they experienced a high degree of difficulty dealing with students with trauma. The vast majority of these teachers (89%) encountered at least one student with trauma in their work. A review of early childhood care and education facilities for refugee children in Europe and North America found that, although many programmes recognized the importance of providing trauma-informed care, appropriate training and resources were ‘almost universally lacking’.
The paper shows the importance of social and emotional learning, as an approach to psychosocial support which targets skills, such as resilience, to manage stress, and is often rolled out through interactive, group-based discussions or role play. It shows the importance of this approach for less acute situations but emphasizes that for more challenging cases trained specialists are needed.
It is also important to involve parents in social and emotional learning so that activities can continue at home. One programme in Chicago looked at addressing symptoms of depression among Mexican immigrant women and primary school children with in- and after- school programmes and home visits, for instance, and improved school work, child mental health and family communication.
Key recommendations:
Learning environments must be safe, nurturing and responsive.
Teachers working with migrant and refugee students who have suffered trauma face particular hardships and need training to cope with challenges in the classroom.
Psychosocial interventions require cooperation between education, health and social protection services.
Social and emotional learning interventions need to be culturally sensitive and adapted to context. They should be delivered through extra-curricular activities as well.
Community and parental involvement should not be neglected.
The MENA region countries, notably the republics amongst them, have undergone upheaval of vital importance lately. The latest but not least would be the military dominating civilian life and society in Egypt. This country being at the forefront of all the republics in all domain of governance could be an indicator of the trend for the other governments. Algeria and Sudan come literally on the brink of following, such as their own military dominating the country’s civilian and societal life.
Amgad Hamdiin his 20 May 2019 article elaborates thus on the Egyptian Institute for Studies.
It is no longer a secret that the military dominates civilian life and society as a whole in Egypt. The present cabinet with all its civil ministries is no longer the only civilian front for the military rule. In fact, the military has tightened its grip on all aspects of civil life through employing military officers, both retired or in office.
On 22 December 2018, Hala Zayed, the current Minister of Health, announced that directors of 48 model hospitals (29 of which belong to the Ministry of Health and 19 to the Ministry of Higher Education) will be chosen from among the military. This decision violates all legal and constitutional values of ensuring that all citizens have equal opportunities when applying for a job based on objective evaluation criteria, not due to belonging to any State body or party, whether civilian or military. This move comes after founding the Faculty of Military Medicine, a critical development in the course of military dominance over the civilian sphere, and within the framework of seeking to tighten control over service sectors that are directly related to citizens, such as the health sector.
Militarization of leading positions in the Ministry of Health
As the Egyptian government that came after the military coup sought to exclude all components of the civil society, the phenomenon of controlling the vital sectors in the Ministry of Health, including the security, finance and administrative sectors, in addition to dozens of jobs in the middle administration at the level of director-general, which is difficult to monitor because of lack of transparency in the announcement of mechanisms of military personnel appointment in those positions.
The prevalence of the presence of the military in various sectors of the Ministry of Health contributed to increasing anger among employees, in light of the huge salaries that those military commanders receive added to the huge salaries they receive from the army starting from 15 thousand pounds to officers with the rank of Colonel and up to 25 thousand pounds for officers with the rank of Maj. General, which increases the psychological burden on civil servants in those sectors, whose salary may not exceed 1500 pounds per month.
A- The military in the Ministry of Health
Among the most important military figures that were appointed in leading positions at the Ministry of Health after the July 2013 coup:
1- Major General Mohamed Fathallah, an anesthesiologist in the Armed Forces, was appointed to the position of spokesman for the Ministry of Health, from 29 July 2013 to 25 November 2013, and was then promoted to the Head of the Health Minister’s Office.
Fathallah only made one statement on the number of deaths during the dispersal of the Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins as well as subsequent events all over the country, during his tenure as an official spokesman of the Ministry of Health. On 15 August 2013, one day after the massacre, the Egyptian Ministry of Health officially announced that the incidents left 578 dead and 4201 injured all over the country, including 288 deaths in Rabaa only.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Coup Alliance, known as the National Alliance Supporting Legitimacy, announced that the number of victims after the dispersal of anti-coup sit-ins reached 2,600 in Rabaa Adawiya alone; and some Brotherhood leaders, such as Mohamed El-Beltagy and Essam El-Erian, said 3000 protesters were killed by the army and security forces on 14 August, while the number jumped to 4000 or 5000, including those viewed as “coup victims” in general. However, the Human Rights Watch said the death toll reached one thousand.
Commenting on this:
– The Ministry of Health was supposed to issue several consecutive statements on the situation following the initial statement. However, only three statements were issued between 14 and 17 August.
– The total number of victims announced by Major General Mohammad Fathallah, the official spokesman of the Ministry of Health, (578 people), after only one day of the Rabaa sit-in dispersal cannot be accurate due to the state of liquidity and severe disintegration of the State institutions at the time.
– No subsequent data were issued to indicate the status of the injured and the hospitals to which they were transferred, and whether there were subsequent deaths among the injured.
– The Ministry of Health did not play its role in preserving the rights of the dead and injured through issuance of official death certificates showing the real causes of death or injury, which could support the legal position of the families of those affected in the course of criminal prosecution of army and police forces involved in killing demonstrators.
– So far, the Ministry of Health has not released any new data or statistics regarding the massacre of dispersal of Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins, especially causes of death.
– The Ministry of Health did not respond to the complaints raised by the Egyptian or international press about discrepancies in statements about the numbers of victims and remained silent.
The appointment of a military doctor in this position as spokesman of the Ministry of Health, at this specific stage, begs a question about the accuracy and transparency of information regarding the incident, where the victims were civilians and the convicts were army and police forces, amid silence of the official spokesman of the ministry.
2- The position of assistant to the Minister of Health for Financial and Administrative Affairs was mostly occupied by the military except for the period from January to October 2015, where the current Minister of Finance, Mohamed Maeit, held the post: Major General Ahmed Farag took over from 2006 until the January Revolution (2011), then Major General Ashraf Khairi, and after that Dr. Maeit as we mentioned earlier, and finally Major General Sayed Al Shahid, who has been in this position until today.
3- The Central Department of Administrative Affairs: Dr. Ahmed Emad Eddin, former Minister of Health in March 2017 appointed Major General Ahmed Baligh Al Hadidi as Head of the Health Ministry’s Central Department of Administrative Affairs. The Administrative Affairs Sector is responsible for all types of maintenance within the ministry office including plumbing, carpentry, electricity, as well as sending and receiving the office correspondence.
4- General Security Department: Dr. Ahmed Emad Eddin, the former Minister of Health, appointed Major General Ahmed Zaghloul as Assistant to the Minister of Health for Political Communication and Security Affairs, replacing Major General Ahmad Said, former Director of the Ministry of Health’s Security Department. Also, the former minister of health appointed Major General Hisham Abdel Raouf as assistant to the minister for basic care.
As we have seen, the military control all sectors of the Ministry of Health as well as the overall policy-making within the Ministry and the Ministry’s resources, logistics, personnel files, communication systems, facilities and services, in addition to the operating system and internal regulations.
B- Management of model hospitals
The decision of Hala Zayed, the current Minister of Health, to appoint the directors of the model hospitals (48) from among those who have a military background is the most dangerous decision in the context of development of the course of military dominance on the health sector in Egypt, for the following reasons:
– The decision is the first of its kind that restricts applying for a civil position to the military.
– The decision allows the military to systematically invade the Ministry of Health’s middle administration, as directors of hospitals, which enables them to control the joints of the health sector as a whole, not only the top administration and policy-making, but also extends to the executive.
– The decision represents a qualitative leap in the path of imposing military hegemony on society, through the appointment of soldiers in service or retired in civil service sites where there is direct interaction with citizens on a daily basis.
– The appointment of the military as directors of government-owned hospitals, this time not as military doctors, but as professional soldiers assigned to work in administrative not technical positions. Therefore, the decision represents a quantitative and qualitative transformation in this regard.
– The decision will increase the drop-out and emigration of doctors due to deprivation of the possibility of promotion and holding administrative positions in the ministry.
– This military move is an encroachment on the civil rights and social structure of the Egyptian working environment. It is also a negative indicator of the tendency towards a full militarization of society.
– The aim of such decision is to appease the military, who were fired from their positions in the armed forces, especially after the coup of 2013.
The UAE Government, in cooperation with the World Economic Forum (WEF), has opened the Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution in the UAE at AREA 2071, Emirates Towers in Dubai, the first of its kind in the region and the fifth globally.
In line with the rapid global changes and developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Center aims at preparing strategies, policies and developing solutions to the most pressing challenges in the region and the world. In addition, it works towards developing mechanisms, applications and uses for the fourth industrial revolution in the UAE.
Mohammed Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of the UAE Cabinet Affairs and The Future, vice chairman of the Board of Trustees and managing director of Dubai Future Foundation stated that the opening of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution reflects the vision of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
Al Gergawi also highlighted that the UAE is continuously developing new business models that are dependent on technology and the outcomes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, to join global efforts for shaping a better future.
Borge Brende, president of WEF said: “In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, countries and businesses need to move fast or risk getting left behind. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain have the power to benefit everyone, but they must be shaped strategically to maximize the benefits and mitigate the risks.”
“We are looking forward to working with the UAE to accelerate the impact of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network’s work in this area and scale projects globally” Brende added.
The opening of the Centre was attended by His Excellency Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Deputy Managing Director of Dubai Future Foundation, His Excellency Borg Brenda, President of the World Economic Forum, Her Excellency Dr Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director General of Smart Dubai, His Excellency Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of Dubai Future Foundation, alongside a number of senior representatives from the local government and the World Economic Forum.
The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR UAE) is a collaboration between the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF) and the World Economic Forum (WEF).
An affiliate center of C4IR San Francisco, opened in 2017, C4IR UAE researches key focus areas in the fourth industrial revolution network: Blockchain and Distributed Ledger, AI and Machine Learning, and Precision Medicine.
Blockchain is the first project area launched under C4IR UAE in 2019 and will look into the governance frameworks around implementing blockchain across government sectors. The center will also trial a supply chain pilot, focusing on the correct governance protocols and practices with regards to security, data privacy and identity verification within blockchain. Across the three project areas, C4IR UAE aims to showcase UAE case studies, policy, and governance frameworks to WEF’s global network, as well as develop new research and policy around relevant UAE 4IR topics.
The Centre’s official launch follows the MOU signing that took place at the Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, in the presence of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council.
The Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution in the UAE, seen as the fifth of its kind in the world after the United States of America, Japan, India and China, comes as part of the strategic partnership between the UAE government and the World Economic Forum.
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