The canal project evokes memories of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the wildly popular colonel who led the 1952 overthrow of Egypt’s monarchy. Nasser nationalized the canal in 1956, ending nearly a century of control by the Europeans who financed and built it. Taking the canal galvanized the Egyptian public, even more so after it resulted […]
America’s foreign-policy hawks are once again circling high over their maps of the Middle East. They see several countries where they would like America to strike. Some of the hawks are neoconservatives. Others are liberal internationalists. Hillary Clinton’s hawkish shrieks are an unusual blend of their styles. Read Here – The Atlantic
On Saturday, 9 August 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt entered another phase in its beleaguered political life. The highest administrative court in Egypt, the Supreme Administrative Court, dissolved the political party of the Brotherhood in Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The Court also liquidated all of the FJP’s assets in an attempt […]
America’s tentative return to the battlefields of Iraq, however reminiscent it is of unfinished American business there, is also a deadly reminder that the Arab world is still trying to sort out the unfinished business of the Ottoman Empire, a century after it collapsed. Read Here – The New York Times
Africa’s resource wealth is certainly of huge importance to China, a manufacturing superpower that is urbanizing and building infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. Unlike Western powers, however, China sees raw materials as only one of the three pillars of its Africa strategy. The second pillar involves using Africa as a springboard to help Chinese businesses […]
As drones become more commonplace, what’s to stop terrorists from using them? Read Here – Bloomberg
The oil boom of the second half of the twentieth century brought modern technology to Saudi Arabia, but the aesthetic refinement of classical Islamic architecture began to disappear. Starting in the mid-seventies, the old houses were replaced with drab towers. Modern Mecca feels as if it were built by a people without history or tradition—a […]
The map of the modern Middle East, a political and economic pivot in the international order, is in tatters. Syria’s ruinous war is the turning point. But the centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and ethnicities — empowered by unintended consequences of the Arab Spring — are also pulling apart a region defined by European […]
China will realize that its presence in the region will cost more than planned and regularly ensnare it in conflict. Read Here – The Diplomat
Iraq is really three separate geographical regions, now contested by Kurds and Arabs ethnically, Arabic and Kurdish speakers linguistically, and Sunni and Shiite Muslims religiously. Ethnically Iraqis are approximately 75 percent Arabs, 20 percent Kurds, and 5 percent Turkmen and Assyrians. Religiously they are 65 percent Shiite Muslims, 30 percent Sunni Muslims, and 5 percent […]
looking beyond borders 