Articles inside the category: Arab Spring
On first look, the revolts sweeping across some of the Arab countries appear to be a new chapter of the wave of democratization that emerged in Eastern Europe in 1989. Previously disenfranchised and politically suppressed people are rising up not only against their rulers, but also against the elites and structures through which they were dominated and kept under guard. In 1989, the people of Eastern Europe were rebelling against a system that tightly controlled them and left them in a stagn...
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Friday, 30 Sep, 2011
One of the most memorable images of the protests in Tunisia, which marked the beginning of the Arab spring, is one of a man facing a row of riot control police. He genuflects in a cloud of smoke and tear gas, aiming a baguette at the police as if it were a rifle.
That the imagery of protestors wielding baguettes as weapons was seized upon so readily by the press points to the importance that economic difficulties played in mobilizing the population against Ben Ali. Indeed when M...
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Wednesday, 28 Sep, 2011
The notion that somehow the Arab Spring has defeated Al-Qaeda (AQ) and undermined its ideology is not only simplistic and problematic but also deeply misleading. First, the argumen...
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Sunday, 25 Sep, 2011
As the Arab spring unfolds without loud and explicit calls for the establishment of Islamic states or modern-day Caliphates across the region, commentators and policymakers...
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Saturday, 24 Sep, 2011
What are the reasons that made people in many Arab countries “revolt” against their regimes and call for change? The ultimate answer will not be determined for some time an...
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Tuesday, 20 Sep, 2011
It is not uncommon for foreign pundits to fall short in their understanding of developments in the Arab world. After all, the prism through which an individual views the othe...
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Friday, 16 Sep, 2011
Torn between America’s proclivity for stability and its values, Obama haphazardly wavered between supporting the existing political order and embracing the change on the stre...
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Thursday, 15 Sep, 2011
A Syrian Rap song has been circulating among my friends; it cynically and brilliantly criticizes the Syrian regime’s repression of protesters. Similar to other pictures a...
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Wednesday, 14 Sep, 2011
Within days of Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in Egypt, memorabilia of the popular anti-regime protests that preceded his downfall went on sale in Tahrir Square, the scene of...
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Thursday, 8 Sep, 2011
One of the paradoxes of the Arab revolutions this year is that almost all observers and commentators viewed the regimes in a state of paralysis and their communities, boiling u...
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