Farmers and laborers have waited for hours in a long line outside the polling station in the impoverished village of Kirdasah, on Cairo’s western outskirts, but their spirits are high.
Most are here to vote for the same …
Mubarak
Must-Reads from Around the World, May 21, 2012
Spillover – Lebanon’s Daily Star reports on escalating violence inside the country after soldiers shot dead a prominent anti-Bashar al-Assad Muslim preacher Sunday. “The gravity of the incident… prompted leaders on both sides …
Why the U.S. May Be Secretly Cheering a Muslim Brotherhood Run For Egypt’s Presidency
Liberals and secularists are furious at the decision this week by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to name Khairat al-Shater as its candidate next month’s presidential election. Even many members and leaders of the Brotherhood itself …
Must Reads from Around the World: Jan. 25, 2012
Daring Raid — U.S. Special Forces swooped into Somalia on Wednesday, and rescued two hostages, including an American woman, who had been kidnapped by pirates. The New York Times pieces together the details, noting that it …
Fareed Zakaria: It’s Not the Islamists You Should Worry About
In his column in the latest issue of TIME magazine, Fareed Zakaria points to the specter seemingly hanging over the Middle East — the rise of Islamist political parties in Arab Spring countries like Egypt — and dispels its menace. Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood appear genuine in their commitments to democratic and constitutional …
As U.S. Explores Dialogue with Muslim Brotherhood, Israelis Urge a Tougher Line Against Islamists’ Rise
Unlike its predecessor, the Obama Administration has understood the limits on Washington’s ability to remake the Middle East to its own specifications. The corollary, of course, is that in a rapidly democratizing region, refusal …
Israel Frets as Cairo Smolders and the Sinai Goes Qaeda
Imagine the tribal areas of Pakistan wedged snug against, say, Belgium instead of against Afghanistan. Next imagine that Belgium, usually so good about these sorts of details, hadn’t bothered to erect a border fence to at least try to keep the jihadis in their own yard. This is approximately the situation Israel suddenly faces with …
On Cairo’s Violent Streets, an Untenable Status Quo Meets an Unwritten Future
With reporting by Abigail Hauslohner / Cairo
“Say it, don’t be afraid: the military council has to leave,” chanted some of the tens of thousands of protesters who thronged Cairo’s Tahrir Square Tuesday night. Their slogan was a combative response to the junta’s plan, announced hours earlier in an unprecedented television address …
Israel’s ‘Diplomatic Tsunami’ Has Arrived, As Ambassadors Are Forced to Leave Turkey and Egypt
As a raucous mob of protestors on Friday stormed past passive Egyptian policemen, breaching the wall around Israel’s Cairo embassy and sacking the unsecured parts of the building, Israel turned for help to the Obama Administration. Looking to the U.S. to shield it from international opprobrium has become a familiar pattern for Israel …
A Mideast Game of Thrones Threatens to Provoke a New Israel-Gaza War
Any reader of the George R.R. Martin Songs of Ice and Fire series (whose opening book, Game of Thrones, was turned into riveting television on HBO) might see a familiar pattern in the events that threaten to plunge the Israel-Gaza border into a new escalation of violence.
In Martin’s fantasy geopolitics, as in the real world, …
Egypt’s Mubarak on Trial: Pay Attention to the Men Behind the Curtain
Only a madman would have predicted, even nine months ago, that Egyptian TV’s ramadan special, this year, would be the trial of Hosni Mubarak. It’s a compelling spectacle, to be sure, the erstwhile epitome of the Arab “strongman” now laid low on his sickbed inside a courtroom cage, forced to answer for the violence unleashed by his …
Will Egypt’s Military Hijack its Revolution?
Turkey, with its pluralistic democracy and booming economy under the stewardship of a moderate Islamist party, is hailed as the model for post-Mubarak Egypt by many leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. But the latest initiatives by the 25-man military junta that has ruled since February’s ouster of President Hosni Mubarak suggests that …
Dissent in the Muslim Brotherhood: How Egypt’s ‘Big Tent’ Party Isn’t Big Enough
Most Western observers see the Muslim Brotherhood as a homogenous group of hard-line Islamists, dedicated to overthrowing the secular Egyptian state and imposing a severe interpretation of Shari’a law on its people. In reality, the Islamist group has long been something of a “big tent,” gathering within it representatives of …