"The turbulent Arab world: An insider's view"

Kamal Gaballa Al Ahram, Cairo (L) - Joel Legendre-Koizumi RTL France (R)

We had a great time with Kamal Gaballa today at FCCJ, Tokyo. I enjoyed being the moderator (emcee) of the Al AHRAM managing editor during his short visit in Japan. Kamal Gaballa, graduated from Cairo University, lectured about recent bombings in Syria and Iraq, about the future of the Arab Spring, in Libya, the failure of Muslim Brotherhood and the situation in Egypt and ISIL and Al Qaida. The title "Turbulence in the Middle east" is an euphemism chosen for the day. Situation is extremely serious.

Excellent specialists attendance, media, diplomats, experts, oil businessmen were in the room. Very attentive to Kamal's words. Words of a journalist, independent from his government or his own newspaper. In this regard, Kama Gaballa often is invited to tour around the world to comment about Middle East, including in Europe, Asia, Japan where he worked as a Al Ahram correspondent in the 2000's. Indeed the situation is far from being clear, I mentioned our French hostage in Algeria Hervé Gourdel in my introduction. The operations engaged by forces of several Arab nations led by the US and other European partners could take 2 years to oust ISIL, 2 years minimum. But then we ll have to educate, reconstruct and let the people build their own future. Question is who are the people in questions and who support terrorism today? Kamal said: the drama here is that "we are fighting each other" and he offered is views on future scenario (scenarii) for the turbulent Middle East. 

Here is the 60 minutes VDO of the event, Tokyo September 24th 201, in English and clarification segments in Arabic : http://youtu.be/FSp-rMjjT5A 


Thank you to Pac Manager Mrs. Chung for the coordination of the event.