Late last month, Israeli military planes carried out a strike on the outskirts of Damascus, targeting a convoy transporting anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah. The strike was the latest indication that Lebanon’s Party of God is not only directly involved in the violence in Syria, but will leverage the chaos there to bolster its More »
A decade ago, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) shone a spotlight on the sorry state of education in the Arab world with its inaugural Arab Human Development Report in 2002, and its 2003 follow-on report, “Building a Knowledge Society.” The reports’ statistics still shock: in one year, Spain translates the same number of More »
One hundred years after the Levant embarked on a journey to build modern political societies, our experiment has failed and we are now back to square one. Lebanon collapsed in the 1970s, Iraq disintegrated in the 1990s and 2000s, and Syria is in the process of tearing itself apart. Unlike Egypt, Tunisia, and several More »
As citizens across the Arab world call for better living conditions and greater personal freedoms, many countries have witnessed protests and revolutions. The year 2012 offered a clear example of how political transformations have impacted regional economies. Five Arab countries – Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon – are experiencing transitions. However, their current economic More »
Recent fighting in Lebanon between pro- and anti-Assad forces raises the specter that spillover from Syria will engulf its neighbor. With Washington focused on the crises in Syria and Egypt, perennially-on-the-brink Lebanon is a second-tier concern for now, but it will not remain so if Islamist militants gain the upper hand politically or, worse, More »
Asia specialists will not openly admit it, but they hate the Middle East. To them, the Middle East is the great distraction that keeps people from focusing on what’s really important – their own area in the Western Pacific. The media are primarily to blame, according to this narrative. The media love sudden drama, even More »
The conventional wisdom is that American presidents who win a second term are less bound by domestic electoral considerations that may impose constraints on their foreign policy. But in his second term, President Barack Obama is unlikely to take any bold initiatives in the Middle East. Indeed, he is far more likely not only More »
Lebanon’s many different sects have their own history, which makes formulating a unified national history challenging. The 1989 Taif Accord, which ended the 15-year Lebanese civil war, called for civic education to be uniform across the country in order to promote national unity. But as Paige Kollock reports for VOA, the goal remains More »
With President Barack Obama’s re-election, many people across the Middle East are contemplating what this region might expect from his second term. Over the next four years, Obama will likely continue the policy directions set in his first term: by completing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, and reaching out to global players like More »
The week began with the collapse of the cease-fire in Syria and many more reported deaths. The U.S. calls for stronger leadership in the Syrian opposition. With the docking of Iranian military ships in Sudan, analysts scrutinize their relationship. Despite new laws banning demonstrations, protestors take to the streets of Bahrain. A series of More »
Protests, then calm began the week in Lebanon with the funeral of Wissam al Hassan. The last of the debates between the U.S. presidential candidates focused on the Middle East, with an emphasis on Iran. An estimated three million pilgrims made their Hajj to Mecca this week. Israel and Hamas traded firepower before settling into More »
As someone who writes and lectures about women and gender in Islam, I am often asked if women had any role in the making of the Islamic tradition. Happily, the answer is always yes. There were in fact many prominent women in the early history of Islam. At the top of the list would have More »
The death of a senior Lebanese intelligence official in the October 19 bombing in central Beirut appears now to have been a targeted assassination. The official, Lebanese Internal Security Forces chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, was directly involved in providing logistical and supply-line support in Lebanon for the rebel Free Syrian Army, which is More »
- Protests in Tripoli against the government, Syria - IRD works to aid Syrian refugees who fled to Jordan - U.S. lawmakers clash over value of Iran talks - Turkey – surprisingly – is the leading jailer of journalists - A discussion with the author of “Waging War on More »
Fears are expressed almost every day that the war in Syria will spread to Lebanon, or to all of Syria’s neighbors. The problem, however, is not that the war “will spread” as if by nature, inevitably, the way spilled water spreads, but that it will be spread – deliberately, by the Assad regime. And that More »
As always, many developments throughout the region this week, ending with the deadly bombing in Beirut. In Egypt, protestors aired their grievances against the draft constitution and protestors were also on the streets in Jordan, Bahrain and elsewhere. The EU imposed another round of sanctions on Iran. Fighting continues in Syria with reports of More »
- An explosion rocks a Beirut neighborhood, kills top security official - Syrian rebels are bogged down in Aleppo - Egyptians again take to the streets in protests - A possible high-seas showdown off the Gaza More »
- Syrian refugee children are welcomed into Lebanese schools - An Egyptian rights group cites continued police abuses - Will the attack in Benghazi weaken the U.S. commitment to new democracies? - A green light is given to a pro-Israel/anti-Islam ad in the Washington More »
This week in the Middle East, Jews celebrated Shimat Torah and Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolved the country’s parliament and swore in a new one to pave the way for elections next year. In Egypt, President Mohamed Morsi’s 100th day in office passed, and the president removed Prosecutor General Abdel Maguid Mahmoud from his post More »
On October 1st, 2012, women organizers launched a Facebook page, “The Uprising of Women in the Arab World,” to highlight the discrimination against them which they don’t feel comfortable – or safe – enough to protest in the streets. In just ten days, the page has generated nearly 35,000 “likes” and conversation among more More »
