Arab Spring

By Robert Kubinec, University of South Carolina (The Conversation) – The fall of Bashar Assad’s dictatorship in December 2024 has ushered in a nerve-wracking time of hope and fear for Syrians concerning future governance in the long-war-torn country. While it’s unclear what exact political path Syria will take, the dilemmas the country faces are similar […]

Arab Spring

14 Years after the Arab Spring Youth Revolution in Egypt, the Problems that provoked it are Even Worse

Marc Martorell Junyent

Rusha Latif, author of Tahrir’s Youth: “The problems and grievances that drove the 2011 Egyptian revolution remain and are much worse today” Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) — Born in the United States to Egyptian parents, Rusha Latif is an independent researcher based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also the […]

Algeria

The Middle East Ranks at the Bottom of Gallup’s Happiness Index, except for Rich Oil States; is the US to Blame?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The annual Gallup report on happiness by country came out this week. It is based on a three-year average of polling. What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in […]

Arab Spring

Why, Despite the Arab Spring and Mass Protests of the 2010s, People Got the Opposite of What they Wanted

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – At the end of 2019, there was no shortage of articles looking retrospectively at the events that had shaped the decade of the 2010s. One of them was aptly titled “A […]

Algeria

A Final Burial for the Arab Spring: Arab League Readmits Syria under al-Assad, as Tensions with Iran Subside

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The foreign ministers of the Arab League states, meeting in Cairo on Sunday, approved the end of Syria’s suspension from membership in that body. Syria was suspended in November 2011 as the Syrian Arab Army was deployed to massacre civilian protesters. The decision was a recognition that the Baath government […]

Arab Spring

The ‘I am Sudan’ Motto and the elusive Transition to Democracy

Middle East Monitor

Dr Mustafa Fetouri MFetouri ( Middle East Monitor ) – On a banner displayed on one of the Sudanese Armed Forces’ Khartoum buildings, a phrase inscribe in red colour, reads “I am Sudan”, summing up the whole recent history of the country and explains much of the current bloody power struggle. This short sentence says […]

Arab Spring

Egypt has 60,000 prisoners like jailed dying Arab Spring Dissident Alaa Abdelfattah

Middle East Monitor

By Osama Gaweesh | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Egyptian activist and blogger Alaa Abdelfattah wrote a book with the title You have not been defeated yet. He is being held in prison by the Egyptian regime for sharing a post on Facebook documenting the death of another political detainee in Egypt. As […]

Arab Spring

Digital Media and Sudan’s Revolution

Middle East Monitor

By Shafie Khader Saeed | – Industrial revolutions are defined as new scientific and technological breakthroughs and innovative ways of seeing and dealing with the world around us. They lead to a profound change in the economic and social dimensions in favour of improving human life, in addition to developing philosophical concepts and generalisations. It […]

Arab Spring

Ukraine: What the Libya War tells us about Why we Really don’t want a NATO No-Fly Zone

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tracy Wilkinson at the Los Angeles Times writes about the no-fly zone proposed by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the flat refusal of the Pentagon to go in that direction. The clamor for a no-fly zone among some in Congress and in US civil society, however, displays a remarkable […]