Current Analysis Two Resolutions, a Draft Constitution and Late Developments On April 14, three weeks into the Saudi-led air campaign called Operation Decisive Storm, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 2216 [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/14/world/middleeast/document-draft-resolution-on-yemen.html]. This legally binding resolution, put forward by Jordan, Sheila Carapico • 8 min read
Current Analysis "You Can Watch the Circus from Your Couch" Wael Eskandar [https://twitter.com/weskandar] is an independent journalist and blogger [http://blog.notesfromtheunderground.net/] based in Cairo. He writes for al-Ahram Online, al-Monitor [http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/egypt-sisi-sabbahi-president-messiah.html], Jadaliyya [http:/ Sheila Carapico • 7 min read
Current Analysis Seven Questions for Ammar Basha Ammar Basha is a Yemeni filmmaker. His documentary films include Breaking the Silence [http://womensvoicesnow.org/watchfilm/breaking_the_silence1], about the discrimination faced by working women of African descent in Yemen, and a series called Days in the Heart of the Revolution, about the 2011 Yem Sheila Carapico • 6 min read
Current Analysis Patronizing Women President Barack Obama capped his visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Saturday by presenting [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/world/middleeast/obama-saudi-arabia.html] the International Women of Courage award to Maha al-Muneef, a pediatrician and executive director of the anti-domestic violenc Sheila Carapico • 2 min read
Current Analysis Romancing the Throne President Barack Obama plans an overnight stay in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on March 28-29 for a rendezvous with King ‘Abdallah. The enduring but always strange bedfellows [http://merip.org/mer/mer220/decline-not-fall-us-hegemony-middle-east] have been quarreling of late over Saudi Arabia’s bellig Sheila Carapico • 4 min read
Current Analysis Saudi Bullying of Qatar Just ahead of a planned state visit [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-plans-visit-to-saudi-arabia/2014/02/03/bd0463ec-8d03-11e3-95dd-36ff657a4dae_story.html] from President Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia is brandishing the threat [http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/saudi-arabi Sheila Carapico • 2 min read
Current Analysis "Journalists Are the Eyes of the World" on Guantánamo Lisa Hajjar’s spring lecture tour, entitled “Let’s Go to Guantánamo! An On-the-Ground Perspective on the Military Commissions,” explores secret renditions, black sites, torture, suppression of evidence, clandestineness and what it means to provide “legal counsel” to detainees in the post-September 1 Sheila Carapico • 2 min read
Current Analysis The Laryngitic Dog Senate hearings to confirm John Brennan as the Obama administration’s appointment to be director of the CIA brought to light [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/06/cia-using-saudi-base-drone-yemen] a heretofore clandestine American military facility in Saudi Arabia near the kingdom’s border wi Sheila Carapico • 4 min read
Current Analysis Condi-ist Manifesto In one of the most nonsensical sentences published in the Washington Post since the US invasion of Iraq, and perhaps ever, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice writes in a November 23 op-ed [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/condoleezza-rice-syria-is-central-to-holding-together-the-middle Sheila Carapico • 2 min read
Current Analysis Meanwhile, in Yemen... War is breaking out between the Yemeni military and a group called “Ansar al-Shari‘a” in the southern province of Abyan -- and it is in danger of spreading. Somewhere between 100 and 200 soldiers are being buried after battles [http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jVSJakuO6RiI-f26iNrwp Sheila Carapico • 2 min read
Current Analysis Ask Katy Perry Will he stay or will he go? Yemenis and Yemen watchers have been wondering for nearly a year, since the mass uprising against President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih began, whether he would entrench or decamp. Sheila Carapico • 2 min read
Current Analysis No Exit A venal dictatorship three decades old, mutinous army officers, dissident tribal sheikhs, a parliamentary opposition coalition, youthful pro-democracy activists, gray-haired Socialists, gun-toting cowboys, veiled women protesters, northern carpetbaggers, Shi‘i insurgents, tear gas canisters, leaked Sheila Carapico • 14 min read