The Jazira’s Long Shadow over Turkey and Syria
In September of 2019, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for the United Nations to establish a security zone in northern Syria east of the Euphrates. If the line extended south to Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, he suggested, some 3 million Syrian refugees could be resettled not only from
Nation-Making on the “Razor’s Edge” in the Egyptian-Libyan Borderland
In 1908, the British lord and arch-imperialist George Curzon published a short treatise on the unique role of frontiers in modern history. “Frontiers,” he wrote, “are indeed the razor’s edge on which hang suspended the modern issues of war or peace, of life or death of nations.”[1]
Black Markets in Sudan—An Interview with Khalid Mustafa Medani
[su_dropcap style="simple" size="4"]I[/su_dropcap]n September 2022, Khalid Mustafa Medani, a former contributor to Middle East Report, received the Best Book prize from the American Political Science Association’s Middle East and North African Politics section for his 2021 release, BlackIssue 305 (Winter 2022) Masthead
Middle East Report, “Peripheries and Borderlands,” Winter 2022, No. 305, Vol. 51 No. 4 Executive Director Mandy Terc mandyterc@merip.org Executive Editor Katie Natanel katienatanel@merip.org Managing Editor Marya Hannun maryahannun@merip.org Photo Editor Michelle Woodward mwoodward@merip.org Staff Editor Michael Kaplan kaplan_m@gwu.edu
Peripheries and Borderlands of North Africa and the Middle East
A curious thing about so-called peripheries is they tend to encompass the lived experience of most of the people in the world today. It is only through a hegemonic perspective—one emanating from and enacted in “centers” of power by the Lord Curzons of a century ago and the
Simply Sportswashing?—A Perspective on the 2022 World Cup in Qatar
The concept of “sportswashing,” in exposing how states or corporations use sporting events to cleanse their images on international stages, draws our attention to human rights abuses, labor conditions, political repression and the regulation of social behavior. Yet, examining the language around Qat
Constructing Qatari Citizenship in the Shadow of the World Cup
As fans from around the world travel to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, this mega sporting event reveals how processes of division and unification are central to Qatari state power. While the World Cup constructs and fortifies a distinctly Qatari nationalism, the tournament has not erased the underlyi
The Beautiful Game between Algeria and France
Legacies of colonialism and decolonization have long shaped what football means to the large shared population of binational citizens between France and Algeria. One in every ten people in France has a direct familial connection to Algeria, complicating any distinction of national belonging and clou