Middle East Today

This book argues that the modern state, from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period, has consistently been used as a means to measure civilizational engagement and attainment. This volume historicizes this dynamic, examining how it impacted state-making in Lebanon and Syria. By putting social, political, and economic pressure on the Ottoman Empire to replicate the modern state in Europe, the book examines processes of racialization, nationalist development, continued imperial expansion, and resistance that became embedded in the state as it was assembled. By historicizing post-imperial and post-colonial state formation in Lebanon and Syria, it is possible to engage in a conceptual separation from the modern state, abandoning the ongoing reproduction of the state as a standard, or benchmark, of civilization and progress.

This book explores the political economy of Palestine through critical, interdisciplinary, and decolonial perspectives, underscoring that an approach to economics that does not consider the political—a de-politicized economics—is inadequate to understanding the situation in occupied Palestine. A critical interdisciplinary approach to political economy challenges prevailing neoliberal logics and structures that reproduce racial capitalism, and explores how the political economy of occupied Palestine is shaped by processes of accumulation by exploitation and dispossession from both Israel and global business, as well as from Palestinian elites. A decolonial approach to Palestinian political economy foregrounds struggles against neoliberal and settler colonial policies and institutions, and aids in the de-fragmentation of Palestinian life, land, and political economy that the Oslo Accords perpetuated, but whose histories of de-development over all of Palestine can be traced back for over a century. The chapters in this book offer an in-depth contextualization of the Palestinian political economy, analyze the political economy of integration, fragmentation, and inequality, and explore and  problematize multiple sectors and themes of political economy in the absence of sovereignty.

This book states that one calamitous result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq (2003) was the dismantling of the state and the destruction of all the structures and processes of government. The invading powers, the USA and UK, were obsessed with the removal of the regime of Saddam Hussein, which they regarded a clear danger and a serious threat to their strategies designs and in the region. To justify their atrocity, they trumped up a number of falsehoods and charges, such as the issue of WMD.

Before that and over a period of 13 years, they had imposed unprecedented, fierce and relentless sanctions on the country. These sanctions not only impoverished and aggrieved the people of Iraq, but also instilled and deeply etched a sense of pessimistic impassivity among many Iraqis in that they felt no longer cared whatever the future might hold for them. The regime’s totalitarian nature also helped in creating this attitude.  To add insult to injury, the provisional US-installed administration passed many resolutions which have had catastrophic consequences, such as the total dissolution of the security and armed forces and the de-baathification law. The hurriedly contrived new constitution confounded the situation even further and negatively impacted the integrity of the state. Exploiting the inconclusiveness and ambiguities contained in it, the Iraqi Kurdish Region became a de facto independent entity. In time, the central government became weaker than the regions. The hardest hit in this chaotic state of affairs was national unity. The sectarian and ethnic quota-based policies followed by the occupying forces and the expatriate Iraqis who came along with them dealt successive blows to the laws and institutions of the land which further disintegrated the Iraqi state. Iraq now is in dire need of national reconciliation programme aimed at re-uniting the people and the country. 

This book unravels the secrets behind the Algerian regime’s survival and the pillars of its longevity. How did authoritarian consolidation happen, and why is it likely to continue despite Bouteflika’s departure and the emergence of a new actor: the popular movement, Hirak. The author sheds light on the pillars behind the durability of Algeria’s regime. The latter has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to perpetuate itself through an array of mechanisms. It identifies Algeria’s authoritarianism as a distinctly competitive and adaptable kind, which has better allowed the regime to persist in the face of all manner of change. The book analyzes Algeria’s situation and the regime persistence far from the premise of a trend towards democratization. The project also contributes to a broader area of study concerned with “competitive authoritarianism,” regimes that face domestic resistance, the question of what and how compels such regimes to change, the nature of their political institutions, and more.

This book explores how ordinary Arab-speaking social media users have reacted to propaganda from the Islamic State, rather than how IS propaganda has targeted ordinary users, thus providing a change in perspective in the literature. The authors provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the Arabic discourse on IS, encompassing all phases of the Caliphate’s political evolution, from the apogee of the Islamic State in October 2014 to the loss of its unofficial capital of Raqqa in September 2017. Taking into account key events, the book also considers the most recurrent topics for IS and its opponents who engage in the Twitter conversation. The analysis is based on around 29 million tweets written in the Arabic language, representing a random sample of around one-third of all Arabic tweets referring to IS over the 2014-2017 timeframe.

This book covers over a century of history, from the emergence of Kurdish nationalism in the interwar period to the 2010s when, for the first time in modern history, Kurdish forces controlled two autonomous political entities in Iraq and Syria, as well as over a hundred municipalities in south-eastern Turkey. In these years of momentous advance for Kurdish forces across the region, Kurdish politics remains deeply divided into competing movements pursuing irreconcilable projects for the future of the nation. The author investigates the origins of the present divide in the history of Kurdish nationalism. The book turns the historical sociology to study nationalism as embedded in social conflicts through a comparative analysis of the history of the Kurdish movement in Iraq and Turkey, by reassessing the literature on Kurdish politics and filling its gaps with numerous interviews with witnesses and scholars. 

This book reveals the reasons for and ways in which the Islamic Republic of Iran challenged the world powers, through the pursuit of material and ideational goals, to advance a strong nuclear program in the past decade. The book explores Iran’s interactions with the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Republic of India, in the period before (2011-2012), during (2013-2016) and after (2017-2021) the finalization of the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. Iran’s narratives and actions to build middle power status are examined at length against the backdrop of its attempts to reshape global politics, the Middle East region, and the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

This book focuses on Arab youth marginalization along intersectional lines of gender, ethnicity and social class in four cities: Jerusalem, Amman, Cairo, and Tunis. The author explores how the political and economic climates in each city influence the life prospects of youth and uncovers their narratives around their aspirations, disappointments and life choices. Providing an interdisciplinary approach, the project will interest a wide range of audiences including graduate students, scholars, and policy makers in the fields of the Middle Eastern studies, political science, urban studies, and education. 

The book dives into the socio-historical roots of the current ‘disintegration’ of the Yemeni state, proposing that it is the result of a long process of devaluation of the Yemeni economy through imperialistic means, in the historical era of Advanced American imperialism—starting in the 1970s—that is facing the rise of China since the 1980s. As the United States feels threatened by the blossoming of Chinese influence on the Red Sea and the strategic maritime straits of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb, it is of utmost importance to understand the centrality of the war on Yemen. The disintegration of the Yemeni state since 2015, involving the disintegration of Yemeni sovereignty (in part through the fragmentation of the country), is a means of creating political chaos in a strategic country. The goal is to limit the growth of Chinese influence in the region of the Arab world, which threatens the financial superstructure of the global economic system based on the US dollar.