Richard Engel
Richard Engel
Richard Engelis an American journalist and author who is NBC News' chief foreign correspondent. He was assigned to that position on April 18, 2008, after being the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut Bureau chief. Engel was the first broadcast journalist recipient of the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for his report "War Zone Diary"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth16 September 1973
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
There was an insurgency under President Hosni Mubarak in the 1990s. Egyptian police and soldiers fought weekly battles with Islamists in the sugarcane fields and thick reeds along the Nile in rural southern villages like Minya, Sohag, Enna and Assiout.
The Muslim Brotherhood, or 'the Brotherhood' for short, is an Islamic group founded in Egypt in 1928. It has been pursuing a secret campaign to take over the government since its creation.
An Egyptian newspaper once publicly identified me as the C.I.A. station chief in Cairo. It seemed so stupid at the time. I was only 24, a little young to be a station chief, and, of course, I was never with the C.I.A.
There weren't many weapons in Egypt in the 1990s. Police controls on guns were very strict back then. That is no longer the case in Egypt today.
In popular Egyptian and regional culture, women are seen as weak, easy victims to temptation in the same way Eve couldn't resist that shiny apple in the Garden of Eden.
There are clearly many Egyptian free-thinkers and intellectuals - lots of wonderful Egyptian artists and architects and scientists.
Egypt is the most populous Arab nation, the seat of Sunni Islamic doctrine, and has tremendous political, religious and social influence on the rest of the region. For better or worse, it will lead the rest of the Middle East by example. So goes Egypt, so goes the region.
Initially, before the modern state of Iraq was created, there were three separate provinces here: a Shiite in the south, a largely Sunni one in the middle, and a Kurdish one in the north.
Egypt has a presidential system. The president runs the state. Who the president is matters profoundly.
Egypt has a devout population. People go out, they pray, they fast.
Everyone knows what can happen to soldiers who are in front line units.
Not surprisingly, in most Sunni regions there has little appetite for free U.S.-sponsored elections.
Syrians need to prepare for the aftermath if the Assad regime falls. Atrocities that could be considered war crimes have been committed in this country, and Syrians should rightly demand that the perpetrators be held accountable.
I had some training on how to cope with hostage-taking.