Current Analysis "Libya Is Not Safe for You If You Want to Speak Your Mind" Hassan al-Amin [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/23/libya-original-freedom-fighter] is a long-time activist for human rights in Libya. He left Libya in 1983 under duress from the regime of Col. Muammar Qaddafi. In his London exile, al-Amin founded the dissident website Libya al-Mustaqbal [h Anjali Kamat • 10 min read
Current Analysis Another Benghazi “We didn’t want another Benghazi.” Oh no, is that really why the Obama administration decided to bomb Iraq [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/world/middleeast/fear-of-another-benghazi-drove-white-house-to-airstrikes-in-iraq.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=a-lede-package-r Chris Toensing • 5 min read
MER Article The China-Africa Axis in Relation to Other Regional Axes China and Africa grosso modo are often seen as standing at two ends of the spectrum of developing countries, the former having acquired enormous industrial capacity in short order, and the latter not. In this view, a great potential for exchange exists between the two: manufactures and infrastructur Engseng Ho • 11 min read
Current Analysis North African Commonalities (part one) Bill Lawrence is director of the North Africa Project for the International Crisis Group. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer (Morocco), Fulbright scholar (Tunisia), development consultant (Egypt), State Department official, Arabic translator and filmmaker (Marrakech Inshallah, Moroccans in Boston) David McMurray • 9 min read
Current Analysis The “Matrix” Comes to Libya Within days of the deadly assault on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the skies over Libya began buzzing [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/benghazi-and-arab-spring-rear-up-in-us-campaign.html?_r=0] with American s Steve Niva • 4 min read
Current Analysis Libya's Restive Revolutionaries Beneath a golden canopy lined with frilly red tassels and vaulted with chandeliers, hundreds of militiamen from across Libya gathered at a security base in Benghazi, the launch pad of their anti-Qaddafi revolution, at the end of April and called for another uprising. After a lunch of mutton and maca Nicolas Pelham • 16 min read
MER Article Jewish Property Claims and Post-Qaddafi Libya As Libya looks to its future, one chapter from its past already has reared its head, one that could touch on everything from finances to future relations, if any, with Israel: the fate of the country’s former Jewish population. The highly publicized return to his native land made by Michael R. Fischbach • 8 min read
Current Analysis Libya's Lessons Libya is commonly counted as a success story among the ongoing Arab uprisings. NATO bombing, the story goes, saved thousands of lives and allowed Libyans to overthrow the absurd and murderous Muammar Qaddafi. The intervention proves that the West has aligned its interests in the Arab world with its Chris Toensing • 2 min read
MER Article New Insights into Libyan History Anna Baldinetti, The Origins of the Libyan Nation: Colonial Legacy, Exile and the Emergence of a New Nation-State (Oxford: Routledge, 2010). With the fall of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011, his paranoid and largely successful attempts to close off contemporary Libyan history to academic inquiry ha Jason Pack • 7 min read
MER Article Was the Libya Intervention Necessary? The death of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi has become one of the most contested moments of Libya’s eight-month war. The exact circumstances of the colonel’s demise on October 20 are unclear, but evidence is mounting that Libya’s former ruler was killed -- extra-judicially executed -- by the band of young Claudia Gazzini • 20 min read
Current Analysis The Middle Powers Amid the Arab Revolts The UN Security Council has been a key arbiter of international action regarding the upheavals in the Arab world in 2011. In late February, the Council issued Resolution 1970 calling for an “immediate end to the violence” in Libya, imposing sanctions and an arms embargo, and asking the International Imad Mansour • 13 min read
Current Analysis Libya, the Colonel's Yoke Lifted Half an hour’s drive east of Tripoli, a solitary interim government soldier peers through binoculars, scouring Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s hunting ranch -- known as the farms -- for signs of life. Detritus of war litters the savannah, the remains of recent fighting as Qaddafi’s forces fled east from the Nicolas Pelham • 16 min read
