Anyone who hoped that calm and harmony might somehow prevail after the passage of a French bill criminalizing denial of the 1915 genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was mightily disappointed Monday night. Adoption of that …
arab uprisings
Global Briefing, Jan. 23 2012: Syria, Sendai and Sarkozy
Juvenile Injustice — The Guardian examines accusations that Israel’s military justice system mistreats Palestinian children. The special report, based on interviews and affidavits given by minors to an international human …
Global Briefing, Jan. 18, 2012; Intervention, Inaction, Independence, Iran — and Iceland’s Funnyman Mayor
“It’s Time to Think Seriously About Intervening in Syria”— CFR fellow Steven A. Cook argues in the Atlantic the West must reconsider the assumption Bashar al-Assad’s regime will fall on its own. Meanwhile, the Guardian‘s Middle …
Did a Gaddafi Scion Try to Enter Mexico?
TIME’S Dolly Mascareñas reports out of Mexico that Saadi Gaddafi, one of the sons of the late Libyan dictator, attempted to enter Mexico on Sept. 6 under the name Daniel Bejar. The Mexican government said Saadi Gaddafi’s wife and two daughters would have accompanied him. Mexican intelligence sources said they prevented them from using …
Israel on the Islamist Surge in Egypt: Told You So
The stunning showing by Salafist parties in the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections surprised Israeli officials as much as the rest of the world. The estimated 40 percent of the vote that went to the Muslim …
Dispatch from Tahrir: For Egypt’s Liberals, Election Is a Hard Vote to Swallow
It’s been a topsy-turvy few days for the Tahrir Square youths who brought down Egypt’s dictatorship at the height of the Arab Spring. Last week, they returned to the square to save the revolution from being hijacked by the …
As Islamists Dominate Egypt’s Election, the Power Struggle with the Military Begins
The Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt’s political mainstream, and its most significant challengers are the more extreme Islamists of the Salafi movement rather than the secular liberal forces that dominate the Tahrir Square protest movement. That appears to be the not-exactly-surprising verdict of the electorate, according to reports from …
Disappearing Dissent: How Bahrain Buried Its Revolution
Every dictator worth his epaulets knows that the best way to nip a revolution in the bud is to have his opponents “disappear.” No body to mourn, no martyrs raised, and of course the ever-useful plausible deniability. But in Bahrain, with its tightly packed population of 230,000 citizens more than 1,200,000 living on a small sandy …
Why Egypt’s Election is a Game-Changer — At the Expense of Tahrir Square
The message of the historic Egyptian election, which began Monday with huge crowds turning out to vote in the protest-scarred cities of Cairo and Alexandra, is a simple one: Egypt’s immediate political future will not be written in Tahrir Square, or by the revolutionaries who last week lost 40 of their comrades to violence by the …
Hamas Edges Closer to the Mainstream: Agreeing to Nonviolence, Opening the Door to Recognizing Israel
The leaders of the two biggest Palestinian parties met in Cairo on Thanksgiving, and just going by the headlines afterward, you’d have thought nothing had happened. “Palestinians talk unity, no sign of progress,” said Reuters. AP: “Palestinian rivals talk, but fail to resolve rifts.” But read the stories, and it becomes clear that a …
Bahrain’s Rights Report: Power Speaks Truth to Itself
Can the truth heal? That’s what the people of Bahrain are about to find out as they embark on an ambitious, and unprecedented, attempt to move beyond the ravages of an aborted revolution that has sundered the social fabric of this cosmopolitan island kingdom in the Persian Gulf. Five months ago Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa …
Cairo in Turmoil: Obama’s Plan B Stumbles, What’s Plan C?
The reason the Obama Administration has been so reluctant to criticize Egypt’s military junta for its violent handling of the latest round of democracy protests is that the generals have, all along, been Washington’s preferred stewards of post-Mubarak political change. The State Department on Tuesday finally condemned the “excessive …
Five Faulty Foreign Policies from the GOP National Security Debate
As all surely expected from a field of candidates with little genuine foreign policy experience, a lot of silly things were said during last night’s GOP national security debate. Rick Santorum called Africa a “country.” Michelle Bachmann, who, as a sitting member of the House Intelligence Committee should know better, claimed …