Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Egypt's most powerful man tries to tame the media.
As next year’s presidential elections loom larger on the national horizon, the country seems to be heading towards a political non-event.
Tunisia’s second high-profile political assassination highlights the gravest shortcoming of the nascent Islamist government: the inability to contain the violence that increasingly threatens Tunisia’s fragile transition - a violence set to divide loyalties and destroy social cohesion, foreclosing
In the weeks after the 1991 elections, official Algerian rhetoric too was replete with appeals to the popular will and the promises of a swift and total return to democracy. Promises that, two decades on, have yet to be fulfilled.
For all its problems, Algeria never became an Islamic state. Like Algerian progressives in the 1990s, Egyptian progressives now have to carve out the space to construct a credible alternative under the shield of the new transitional process, and simultaneously challenge the military’s human rights
Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, What Algeria 1992 can, and cannot, teach us about Egypt 2013
While there are too many differences between the two historical contexts for us to panic, the parallels are too numerous to ignore. An excerpt from the longer version of this article – for which, see here.
Fundamentalist mass murder of Algerian people of letters in the 1990s was an intellectocide, in the tradition of totalitarian culture wars. Today, official limits on expression benefit fundamentalist ideas. This is the second death of Algerian intellectuals, says Mustapha Benfodil
L'assassinat massif des intellectuels algériens par les intégristes dans les années 1990 est un veritable intellectocide. Aujourd’hui, des formes de censure culturel officiel sont à l'œuvre, laissant le champ libre aux idées les plus rétrogrades. C'est la deuxième mort des intellectuels Algériens
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the Algerian jihadists war on culture. Those who waged the intellectual struggle against fundamentalism in Algeria throughout the 1990s received little support internationally. Karima Bennoune pays tribute to those who fell in the culturicide, and warns
Cette année marque le vingtième anniversaire de la guerre menée par des djihadistes algériens contre la culture. Karima Bennoune rend hommage à ceux qui sont tombés dans ce culturicide et appelle à l’urgente la nécessité de ne pas les oublier.
Awareness has not necessarily translated into more investment in good governance or poverty-reduction programmes. Instead, the US has supported training of local special forces units in counter-terrorism.
