Middle East & North Africa

718 Items

Hezbollah supporters distribute sweets to passersby, as they celebrate the fall of the Syrian town of Qusair to forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah fighters, in Bazzalieh village, Lebanon, near the Lebanese-Syrian border, Wednesday, June 5, 2013.

AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Journal Article - International Security

Foreign Intervention and Internal Displacement: Urban Politics in Postwar Beirut

| Winter 2023/24

Dozens of in-depth interviews in Lebanon after its civil war show how wartime displacement transformed localities in ways that transcend religious identity. With more than 80,000 people displaced from southern Lebanon because of fighting since October 7, 2023, the Israel-Gaza war is likely to strengthen Hezbollah’s grip when the displaced populations return and in localities in south Lebanon where displaced populations settle. 

Displaced Ethiopians from different towns in the Amhara region wait for food to be distributed at lunchtime at a center for the internally-displaced in Debark, in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia

AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene

Policy Brief - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Women in Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School

SVAC Explainer: Wartime Sexual Violence in Tigray, Ethiopia, 2020–2021

| March 2023

The Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC)dataset measures reports of the conflict-related sexual violence committed by armed actors during the years 1989–2021. The dataset includes information about the prevalence, perpetrators, and forms of the reported sexual violence by each armed actor in each conflict-year. The information used to compile these data comes from three sources: the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. 

Qumya, Mandate Palestine, 1948.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Social Cohesion and Community Displacement in Armed Conflict

    Authors:
  • Daniel Arnon
  • Richard J. McAlexander
  • Michael A. Rubin
| Winter 2022/23

Mass killing such as cleansing and genocide is a common occurrence in war. Communities face the terrible choice of leaving their homes ahead of military action, or staying. Analysis of the previously restricted “Village Files,” a Zionist survey of Arab Palestinian communities conducted in the 1940s, finds that the key indicator of whether a community flees imminent violence is social cohesion.

The ghost town of Kayaköy (Livisi) in southwestern Anatolia

Wikimedia CC/William Neuheisel

Analysis & Opinions - Political Violence @ a Glance

Why Do Mass Expulsions Still Happen?

| Jan. 30, 2023

Meghan Garrity details the history of mass expulsions since the centennial of the signing of the Lausanne Convention—a treaty codifying the compulsory “population exchange” between Greece and Turkey. An estimated 1.5 million people were forcibly expelled from their homes: over one million Greek Orthodox Christians from the Ottoman Empire and 500,000 Muslims from Greece.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool

Report - Center for Strategic & International Studies

The Evolution of Russian and Iranian Cooperation in Syria

| November 2021

Although Russia and Iran have converged around the overarching objective of strengthening the Assad regime, Moscow and Tehran's engagement in Syria illustrates a complex mosaic of overlapping interests, broader regional entanglements, and contending approaches to post-war reconstruction. Russia and Iran's visions on the future of Syria include diverging views on military reform and economic investment. However, these disagreements are unlikely to lead to a breakdown of the relationship.