Sirocco
The Mediterranean wind whipped up in the Sahara and blown across the Maghreb region. In North Africa, it is known by its Arabic name, qibli. ‘Sirocco’ provides a blow-by-blow account of events occurring in the Arabic-speaking countries west of Egypt.
on :
Friday, 17 May, 2013
The two most populous Arab states after Egypt, Algeria and Iraq have been without a president: Algeria for a few weeks, and Iraq a few months. The two countries rank among the richest in terms of natural resources, and both have the Arab world's bloodiest recent past.
Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika is said to have been in poor health since 2005. Rumors about his death are frequent on Twitter. He has been taken abroad on many occasions to receive medical treatment, but last month ...
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on :
Thursday, 2 May, 2013
Some 400 years ago, the sultan of Morocco, Ahmad Al-Mansour, became increasingly aware of Spanish control and influence over the Mediterranean. He decided to launch a bold expedition southwards to conquer the Songhai Empire in what is now northern Mali, a land renowned for its riches and its resources. Al-Mansour’s venture was, more importantly, a way of reasserting Moroccan influence on the other side of the Sahara, and of controlling the historic trade routes that had made Morocco’s fortun...
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on :
Wednesday, 24 Apr, 2013
More good news than normal has come out of Libya these past two weeks. On April 10, the General National Congress (GNC) agreed to amend the constitutional declaration to elect a si...
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on :
Thursday, 11 Apr, 2013
Last February, Libya’s defense ministry detained four Christians—an American, an Egyptian, a South Korean and a South African—for allegedly distributing Christian materials a...
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A nineteen-year-old woman should be free to publish topless photos of herself, and death threats against her need to be investigated. Tunisia is, after all, a vibrant democracy...
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on :
Saturday, 23 Mar, 2013
The Libyan flag flaps madly in the wind at the embassy on Hyde Park Corner. A short line of women stand under the latticework façade, clasping their handmade placards. Hilal M...
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on :
Wednesday, 6 Mar, 2013
The media scene was monolithic under Tunisia’s old government, while the public arena was characterized by the absence of politics. A news booth in Tunisia three years ago looked...
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on :
Friday, 22 Feb, 2013
Recently, the world was surprised by yet another nasty consequence of the Arab Spring: instability in the Sahel. The price for overnight regime change was chaos. Gaddafi’s former...
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on :
Tuesday, 12 Feb, 2013
Since the March 2012 military coup that toppled former president Amadou Toumani Touré, Mali has been in the throes of its worst political crisis. The West African country, which o...
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on :
Saturday, 9 Feb, 2013
A second revolution, so they say. The second in a two-year span. The killing of the opposition figure and leftist leader Chokri Belaid was, however, the first targeted politic...
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