Word: mukhabarat
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Many first-generation Arab Americans regard intelligence work as a deeply dishonorable profession. After all, most of them fled to the U.S. from countries where intelligence agencies, or mukhabarat in Arabic, are instruments of repression, used by unpopular regimes to brutally suppress dissent. And the CIA's reputation is doubly dubious: it is tainted by association with many Arab mukhabarat, and has a history of interfering (often ham-fistedly) in Middle Eastern politics...
...frailest. Its president, Hosni Mubarak, will have ruled the country for 27 years by October; but instead of looking for a democratic succession, his regime has only sought to pile-drive his legacy into the future, disarming the opposition with rigged elections and run-ins with the mukhabarat, the ubiquitous internal security police. That agenda can be seen at work in the handful of parliamentary elections that took place last weekend, polls that resulted, not surprisingly, in a complete victory for Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party...
...hand, yanking it away from the window. "Don't point at that building, don't even look at it," he said, his voice cracking in fear. "I will explain later." After we had driven out of that neighborhood, he told me the building was the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the dreaded internal spying agency, and my driver feared that even looking at it too closely might bring us - or him, anyway - no end of trouble...
...After the war, whenever we passed the old Mukhabarat HQ, my driver and I got a childish thrill by pointing to it, for no good reason. It is only the smallest of many, many freedoms that Iraqis gained after the U.S.-led coalition toppled the dictator. They also got the right to vote, satellite TV, cellphones, the ability to travel out of Iraq, and a new education system that doesn't brainwash children into worshiping Saddam...
...emir," or leader of the criminal gang. The guards described him as a bold and brazen criminal who masterminded the kidnapping of many high-value targets: rich businessmen, government officials, even a tribal sheik. The gang leader had been a senior official in Saddam's dreaded intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. The emir was also an expert in torture, able to extract information from the most stubborn captives. But he rarely took part in the interrogations anymore; in fact, he only occasionally visited the house. While he concentrated on other, unspecified business interests, the kidnapping organization...