Mustapha Karkouti poses for a portrait at Abu Dhabi International Airport in 2008. ( Philip Cheung / The National )
Mustapha Karkouti poses for a portrait at Abu Dhabi International Airport in 2008. ( Philip Cheung / The National )
Mustapha Karkouti poses for a portrait at Abu Dhabi International Airport in 2008. ( Philip Cheung / The National )
Mustapha Karkouti poses for a portrait at Abu Dhabi International Airport in 2008. ( Philip Cheung / The National )

Mustapha Karkouti: An invaluable friend and journalist with wisdom


Michael Goldfarb
  • English
  • Arabic

The Syrian-British journalist Mustapha Karkouti has died, aged 77.  Kharkouti, who lived for many years in the UAE, was a reliable interpreter of the complexities of Arab society to the rest of the world on programs like the BBC's Dateline London and as a columnist for Gulf News.

Off-camera, Karkouti was an invaluable colleague and friend to journalists from around the world. He guided many of us whose first reporting from the Arab world came in the fraught days after 9/11.

Mustapha Karkouti was born in 1943 in Latakia, Syria into a large working class family. He became involved in student politics and during the 1963 upheaval that brought the Ba'ath party to power Karkouti was arrested, imprisoned and tortured for his anti-Ba'ath activities.

Upon release he was warned to leave the country and moved to Beirut where in his own words, he "fell" into journalism.  He worked for news agencies and in the early 1970s was on the team that founded As-Safir newspaper. The paper's worldview was Arab nationalist, left of centre, secular. Modern. Karkouti was sent to London in 1977 as the paper's correspondent.


On April 30 1980, Karkouti was in the Iranian Embassy in London going through visa formalities when six armed men stormed in and took the 26 people inside hostage. They were demanding the release of Arab prisoners in the Iranian province of Khuzestan. The terrorists only spoke Arabic and Farsi, no English and so Karkouti ended up doing duty as an interpreter and liaison with the outside. He also tried to defuse the situation which four days into the crisis was turning violent. At one point Karkouti threw his body across the Iranian press attache's body to prevent the gunmen from shooting him.

The siege ended after six days when Britain's SAS stormed the building. Two hostages were killed.  The experience was traumatic and marked the journalist for the rest of his life.

But among colleagues the effect of the experience was well-hidden. Karkouti was well-known around London. As the correspondent for Gulf News, his flowing moustaches were a familiar sight at press conferences and high-level discussions of policy.  He was elected president of the Foreign Press Association and was voted on to the Chatham House council.

He left journalism and worked briefly for UNRWA in Amman but, frustrated by UN bureaucracy resigned after a year.  During his time in Amman he had met Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan and became an adviser to him in 2005, moving to UAE for the next nine years. He returned to London in 2014 where he continued to write.

When the Arab Spring took root and first Hosni Mubarak and then Muammar Ghaddafi were overthrown, he urged caution when it came to people trying to overthrow the Syrian regime. From deep personal experience he understood the complexities of that particular country and how the Assad family would deal with an uprising  His predictions of an unprecedentedly vicious war were sadly correct.

Although he had been in intermittent ill-health for several years his death has come as a shock to friends and colleagues. Within hours of the announcement social media was full of expressions of grief and praise for this singular man.

Those of us who report on the Middle East have lost an irreplaceable source of knowledge and very real wisdom about this region.

He is survived by his wife Faten Omary-Karkouti, a daughter Shahlah, and two sons, Ahmad and Talal.

Who are the Sacklers?

The Sackler family is a transatlantic dynasty that owns Purdue Pharma, which manufactures and markets OxyContin, one of the drugs at the centre of America's opioids crisis. The family is well known for their generous philanthropy towards the world's top cultural institutions, including Guggenheim Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate in Britain, Yale University and the Serpentine Gallery, to name a few. Two branches of the family control Purdue Pharma.

Isaac Sackler and Sophie Greenberg were Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York before the First World War. They had three sons. The first, Arthur, died before OxyContin was invented. The second, Mortimer, who died aged 93 in 2010, was a former chief executive of Purdue Pharma. The third, Raymond, died aged 97 in 2017 and was also a former chief executive of Purdue Pharma. 

It was Arthur, a psychiatrist and pharmaceutical marketeer, who started the family business dynasty. He and his brothers bought a small company called Purdue Frederick; among their first products were laxatives and prescription earwax remover.

Arthur's branch of the family has not been involved in Purdue for many years and his daughter, Elizabeth, has spoken out against it, saying the company's role in America's drugs crisis is "morally abhorrent".

The lawsuits that were brought by the attorneys general of New York and Massachussetts named eight Sacklers. This includes Kathe, Mortimer, Richard, Jonathan and Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, who are all the children of either Mortimer or Raymond. Then there's Theresa Sackler, who is Mortimer senior's widow; Beverly, Raymond's widow; and David Sackler, Raymond's grandson.

Members of the Sackler family are rarely seen in public.

Brief scoreline:

Toss: South Africa, elected to bowl first

England (311-8): Stokes 89, Morgan 57, Roy 54, Root 51; Ngidi 3-66

South Africa (207): De Kock 68, Van der Dussen 50; Archer 3-27, Stokes 2-12

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Andor
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How to wear a kandura

Dos

  • Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion 
  • Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
  • Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work 
  • Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester

Don’ts 

  • Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal 
  • Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
MATCH INFO

Tottenham Hotspur 1
Kane (50')

Newcastle United 0

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French business

France has organised a delegation of leading businesses to travel to Syria. The group was led by French shipping giant CMA CGM, which struck a 30-year contract in May with the Syrian government to develop and run Latakia port. Also present were water and waste management company Suez, defence multinational Thales, and Ellipse Group, which is currently looking into rehabilitating Syrian hospitals.

THE TWIN BIO

Their favourite city: Dubai

Their favourite food: Khaleeji

Their favourite past-time : walking on the beach

Their favorite quote: ‘we rise by lifting others’ by Robert Ingersoll

The Bio

Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”

Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”

Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”

Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”

The specs

Engine: 4.0-litre, six-cylinder

Transmission: six-speed manual

Power: 395bhp

Torque: 420Nm

Price: from Dh321,200

On sale: now

Hotel Data Cloud profile

Date started: June 2016
Founders: Gregor Amon and Kevin Czok
Based: Dubai
Sector: Travel Tech
Size: 10 employees
Funding: $350,000 (Dh1.3 million)
Investors: five angel investors (undisclosed except for Amar Shubar)

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