In the Arab spring, new social media and the established media disseminated the voices of dissent and images of state brutality worldwide. The sheer drama of these unfolding events conveyed to us by correspondents physically embedded among the protestors, vividly conveyed the elation involved in c
For all those who are afraid or suspicious, I invite them to go to the streets of Syria. One main defect with academic writing is that it avoids bombast. Hence, it doesn’t say that those young men and women who have been protesting in the streets of Syria for more than five months are heroes.
The establishment and deepening of a democratic culture is a long-term project and is intergenerational. As divisions open up between the elites and the street as well as within the elites, the events of 2011 across the Middle East and North Africa represent a powerful first step in a larger proce
Indonesian church bombing sparks fears of increasing religious violence. Guangdong riots over ‘landgrabs’. US drone crashes in Kismayo, Somalia. Fresh clashes hit southern Philippines . Shooting at ‘CIA station’ in Kabul. All this and more in today’s security briefing...
Libyans face the complex challenge of creating a new order and a new society from the rubble of the old. Lessons learned elsewhere on peacebuilding and statebuilding offer a checklist and an evidence-based framework for action.
Extremist Islamists may only be one small part of a wide cross-section of disenfranchised Libyans who could no longer bear the tyranny of Gadaffi, but they pose the question whether reactions to the Arab Revolutions are ever entirely innocent of double standards.
A relatively stable Egypt now has the challenge of establishing a legitimate democracy. This is a long journey, however, in a country where keeping the military and government honest has taken precedence over supporting a political party that might one day be in charge of government.
The United States's political-military strategy for drawdown in Afghanistan is in trouble, even as Washington is tempted by increased high-tech military engagement in other theatres of war.
A triple diplomatic challenge to Israel from Turkey, Palestine and Egypt both reflects the region's political transformation and reveals the key flaw in Israel's attitude to its neighbours, says Khaled Hroub.
It is time to challenge the conventional explanations of gender based violence. Patricia Daley argues that it can only be understood in association with contemporary geo-economic forces and the Central African experience of modernity
On her return from Tunisia, the author kept in touch with some of the young people in the south, and began a diary recording their ongoing struggle. We publish as in Kasserine, talk is of a general strike and death threats in Tunis.
The author, who travelled to Tunisia last April, recorded her multicultural experiences at a time of revolution to share, as requested, with the outside world. In Part Two, she has kept in touch with some of the young people in the south to update us on the grim realities of their ongoing struggle
