Current Analysis Preservation or Plunder? The ISIS Files and a History of Heritage Removal in Iraq The removal of the ISIS files from Iraq is only the latest episode in a long history of seizures of Iraqi archives and artifacts by Europeans and Americans. Rather than dismiss Iraqi critics as unreasonable, everyone with a stake in the study of Iraq—including all journalists, historians, and archiv Arbella Bet-Shlimon • 18 min read
Current Analysis Running as Resistance in Occupied Palestine The Palestine Marathon, like its counterparts elsewhere, is meant to be a feel-good event. But it also has a political point: to highlight restrictions on movement for all Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Joshua Stacher • 5 min read
Current Analysis The Southern Transitional Council and the War in Yemen In late January this year, an armed conflict erupted in Aden between troops under command of President ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and those loyal to the Southern Transitional Council (STC), both in principle on the same side of the Yemeni war. The fighting left more than 40 people dead and several woun Susanne Dahlgren • 9 min read
Current Analysis Radix Malorum est Cupiditas The last three years have been a time of outright misery for most Yemenis as War, Pestilence, Famine and Death have stalked what used to be known as Arabia Felix. Thousands are recorded as having been killed; tens of thousands more are known to have died. Millions are starved by a siege, and—weakene James Spencer • 5 min read
Current Analysis Sisi’s Plebiscitary Election From day one of his July 3 coup, al-Sisi has directed a relentless campaign to depoliticize and incapacitate the population, riveting the old relations of deference and subordination between those who rule and those coerced to obey. But plebiscitary elections are part of a different type of autocrat Mona El-Ghobashy • 15 min read
MER Article Pennock, The Rise of the Arab American Left Pamela Pennock positions her new book, The Rise of the Arab American Left, as a corrective to what she characterizes as a near omission of Arab American activism in histories of the left in the United States. Jennifer Kelly • 5 min read
Current Analysis The Story Behind the Rise of Turkey’s Ulema The AKP, in pushing the expansion of the Diyanet for political purposes, also has enhanced the capacity of the institution to pursue its own agenda. Indeed, the unprecedented expansion of the Diyanet in recent years demonstrates its ability to seize opportunities arising from its common cause with A Ceren Lord • 19 min read
Current Analysis Yemen Dispatch The eruption of fighting by rival factions in Yemen’s southern city of Aden on January 28 provides distressing additional evidence that Yemen’s war is best understood as a series of mini-wars reflecting the intersection of diverse domestic drivers of conflict and Gulf regional fragmentation. Stacey Philbrick Yadav • 7 min read
Current Analysis How the Houthis Became “Shi‘a” It is wrong to code what is happening in Yemen as a Sunni-Shi‘i conflict. The Houthis are not an Iranian proxy but a predominantly local political movement founded in long-standing, Yemen-centric grievances and power struggles. The cynical use of sectarian language casts the conflict in Yemen as par Anna Gordon, Sarah Parkinson • 10 min read
Current Analysis A “Blue” Generation and Protests in Iran The protests reveal a widespread disaffection with all existing political factions. New slogans calling for the “death” of “the dictator” and for a “referendum” alternated with those in favor of the Pahlavi monarchist regime that ruled Iran before the 1979 revolution. This public enunciation of an a Aghil Daghagheleh • 9 min read
Current Analysis Onwards and Upwards with Women in the Gulf An examination of women’s struggles to gain the right to vote in Kuwait, and ongoing efforts to promote women’s football in Qatar, provide useful in-depth case studies. They cannot predict the future course of change in Saudi Arabia, but they illustrate the need for ongoing political engagement and Charlotte Lysa, Andrew Leber • 16 min read
Current Analysis Justice and/or Development Ash al shaab! Ash! Ash! [Long Live the People!] Ash! Ash! Maghariba mashi “awbash!” [We Moroccans are not “trash!”] Ra’s al-mal?! [Where’s our capital?!] -Hirak protest chants in Fez, June 2017 What began in late October 2016 with protests over the horrific death of Mohcine Fikri, a fish Emilio Spadola • 10 min read
