Middle East & North Africa

109 Items

Arab Spring at 10

James A. Dawson

Analysis & Opinions - Journal of Democracy

The Arab Spring at 10: Kings or People?

| Jan. 01, 2021

Ten years after the onset of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa are torn between two visions of progress: a democratic one that seeks to replace the leaders who dominate the region, and an ostensibly modernizing one that seeks to replace the people who inhabit it. Though the latter project is currently ascendant, it is likely to founder on its own internal contradictions. Arab publics may be ambivalent about democracy, but the region retains considerable democratic potential.

University students hold Lebanese flags as they chant slogans against the government, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019.

AP Photo/Bilal Hussein

Analysis & Opinions

The Lebanese Intifada: Observations and Reflections on Revolutionary Times

| Nov. 10, 2019

On Thursday 17 October 2019, thousands of exasperated Lebanese citizens took to the streets of Beirut in protest. The spark was the government’s latest plan to impose taxes on the popular and free based application, WhatsApp. Yet the protests were in fact the consequence of a series of ongoing and related crises: a fiscal crisis of insufficient revenues; a debt crisis; a foreign currency shortage crisis; a developmental crisis of stagnating growth compounded by rising unemployment and cost of living. One can certainly add to this list an infrastructural crisis—most popularized by the 2015 garbage protests, but part and parcel of people’s everyday lives as experienced in the problematic provisioning of electricity, water, and more. Such crises are largely homegrown, in that they are the result of decades-long mismanagement of public funds, rampant corruption, and political polarization. They are however exacerbated by regional and international players.

(AP Photo/BilalHussein)

(AP Photo/BilalHussein)

Analysis & Opinions

UN's children in conflict report reveals depravity of modern warfare

| July 30, 2019

The annual report on Children and Armed Conflict that the United Nations Secretary-General submitted to the Security Council this week comprises the usual grim inventory of large-scale crimes and atrocities covering over 24,000 verified grave violations against children in 20 countries. Yet behind these depressing statistics are several more troubling phenomena that the report does not mention, and that have crystallised through the half dozen continuing conflicts across the Middle East and South Asia.

(Aljazeera)

(Aljazeera)

Analysis & Opinions - Aljazeera

Why are so many children killed in wars?

| July 28, 2019

Al Jazeera has obtained a copy of the United Nations' report annual report on children and armed conflicts in advance of its publication. It found evidence of more than 24,000 cases of children being killed, maimed or forced to become child soldiers last year. So what needs to be done to protect the lives of our children?

(AP Photo/Hesham Elkhoshny)

(AP Photo/Hesham Elkhoshny)

Analysis & Opinions

Arab Accountability Begins Here: Riyadh and Cairo in the Dock Over Khashoggi and Morsi

| June 19, 2019

The entire Arab region should pay attention to this week's calls by two respected United Nations agencies for international investigations into the deaths of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and ousted former Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi.

(AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

(AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Analysis & Opinions - Agence Global

Mohammad Morsi in Life and Death Mirrors Wider Arab Agonies

| June 17, 2019

BEIRUT — The death today of former elected President Mohammad Morsi of Egypt should be seen as perhaps the single most iconic moment of modern Arab political history. For he represented everything that is good and bad about political authority and governance in the past century of Arab statehood. Yet his legacy will only be fully clarified in the decades ahead when the fate of the ongoing Arab uprisings is also clear.

Analysis & Opinions

Tarek Masoud - The Shifting Politics of the Middle East | Snack Break with Aroop Mukharji

| Feb. 09, 2019

Host Aroop Mukharji interviews Dr. Tarek Masoud, the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, about the shifting political dynamics of the Middle East, the region's potential for democratization, and a triple snack of doughnuts, coffee, and Turkish delight.