Egypt Blogs America; Gets Arrested

"Homeland Security" image credit Phantamage.

Readers will recall we've been blogging a bit about the folks over at Egypt Blogs America. It's a group of 8 Egyptian bloggers who have been brought to the US for a series of first-hand looks at the election campaigns as part of a project by the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at The American University in Cairo. The first trips they visited Washington, New York and other major cities. This week, after having returned briefly to Egypt, they are on their way back to visit journalism schools to which they've been assigned in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Austin, Texas, Syracuse, New York and Nebraska. (Disclosure: We'll be collaborating on a Second Life project with them in coming weeks.) The group has done an insightful and witty job of covering the 2008 US presidential election (including links to sites such as If the World Could Vote, where 90 percent of the 614,000 people from 207 countries have picked Obama over McCain).

In their own country these bloggers are fighting for freedom of speech and the press. Many of them have been actively harassed by their government for their efforts. Wael Abbas, for example, had his YouTube account shut down because of his anti-torture coverage.

Imagine their surprise last night when enroute back to the US, two of the bloggers were arrested and detained; one for four hours and the other for ten before being released to do what they came here to do -- observe and record.

(Ironically, they arrive in the US as the Egyptian government in recent weeks has launched a campaign of arrests and harassment of bloggers.)

They were traveling with a letter saying they were coming to the US for a US Agency for International Development (USAID) funded election trip. There is a certain irony when one branch of the US Government spends hundreds of thousand dollars on a program to improve America's reputation among Egyptian bloggers and journalists (USAID has a multi-billion dollar budget to promote democracy, peace and security) while another branch undermines that goodwill. USAID, while not specifically in the public diplomacy business, was funding a project that had potential public diplomacy rewards. The Egyptian bloggers were on an exchange program the long-term intent of which is to engender positive relations between countries. What better way to do this than by demonstrating the principles of free speech and democracy in the US through empowering people to come here and report on our process?

That is, until one of your sister agencies decides to arrest them at the border.

An ongoing problem in the government is the stovepiping of the organizations. Bureaucracy and turf wars create disjointed and ineffective communication. Efforts have been made to try and create better means of communication between various departments. The Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, for example, attends regular joint meetings with Defense Department and Homeland Security. A more robust program of comprehensive understanding between agencies needs to be accomplished through better use of technology at lower cost.

We look forward to seeing what the bloggers at Egypt Blogs America have to say about this.

[UPDATE: Blogger A.D. from Egypt Blogs America has blogged about his arrest. The post is in Arabic and Google translator doesn't help much. Anyone who has a better translation into English, please let us know.]