Issue 305

Articles from Winter 2022


Rebuilding Douma—Syria's Reconstruction from Below

Before the war, Douma was a city on the rise. A district seat in the Governorate of the Damascus Countryside (Muhafizat Rif Dimashq) and a market town, it served as a bridge, of sorts, between the agricultural areas of Ghouta and Damascus and was famous for its grape production. In
Najib Hourani, Safa Rawashdeh 13 min read

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 Turkey
Samuel Dolbee 14 min read

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] Curzon
Matthew Ellis 10 min read

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 President
The Editors of Issue #305 5 min read