Format: 270 x 200 mm
Page: 40
Language: English
Publisher: MEI Publications Ltd, Nicosia
Year: 2009
ISSN: 0047-7249
Issues: 25 Issues/12 Months
The world rediscovers Yemen
Viewpoint
Yemen: Saleh isn't the solution, From Brian Whitaker
Ahead of the international conference on Yemen to be held in London next week, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi has been lobbying to restrict its agenda. The discussions should focus on counterterrorism and economic aid, he says, but should not...
News Analysis
Yemen
Tomorrow's war, yesterday's means?, From Graham Usher in New York
Americans spent the first weeks of the new decade like they spent much of the old: afraid. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s botched effort to bring down an airliner on Christmas Day re-inscribed ‘terror’ at the core of the American psyche. It also...
Fixing Yemen in two hours, From Philip McCrum
The hastily convened international conference on Yemen in London on 27 January has set itself lofty goals. But at MEI press-time there were few signs that the gathering would achieve them. In the statement announcing the event, released by the...
Faint hope for peace and stability, From Abigail Fielding-Smith
After the tumult of the past few weeks, during which swarms of journalists arrived in this previously obscure corner of the Arabian peninsula in anticipation of dramatic developments in the struggle between the US, al-Qa’ida and the Yemeni...
Targeted assinations: not the ultimate answer, From James Dorsey
Yemen’s US-assisted targeted assassination campaign is dealing significant blows to al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The government said AQAP had suffered its biggest loss on 15 and 18 January with the killing of several of its leaders...
Sudan
Bashir set to fend off challengers, From Julie Flint
Eleven weeks before the first multi-party elections in Sudan in 24 years, President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) has moved to tighten its control in key areas by removing, without explanation, seven of the 15 governors in...
Iran
Mysterious murder, murky circumstances, From Paul Sampson
It could be the opening of a spy thriller: an Iranian nuclear physicist is killed in broad daylight when a remote-controlled bomb strapped to a motorcycle explodes outside his home in northern Tehran. The Iranian authorities, still smarting from the...
Iraq
Rising sectarian tension, From Jim Muir
After the months of delays and wrangling over the election law before the final announcement of the 7 March date for the poll, one might have thought that the campaign could finally get under way without further complications. But this is Iraq, and...
Three decades behind the times, From Jim Muir
Driving around Baghdad these days is a depressing experience. True, there is a spirited bustle in the streets. Traffic jams are commonplace, pavements crowded with people and displays of foodstuffs and goods. But look at the backdrop to this show of...
Jordan
Breaches of security, From Naseem Tarawnah in Amman
Initially, the news passed almost unnoticed in Jordan. A suicide bomber had infiltrated a US base in Khost, Afghanistan, on New Year’s Eve, killing seven CIA operatives. The death was also reported of a Jordanian officer, Sharif Ali Bin-Zeid...
Saddam Street: What's in a name?, From Naseem Tarawnah
Saddam Hussein may be gone but his memory, good or bad (depending on where you stand), is not fading. Certainly not in Jordan. When a local council in al-Mazar decided to name one of its streets after the late Iraqi dictator, outrage rained down on...
Israel
A comedy of honour upheld, From Peretz Kidron
It was an opportunity too good to be missed. Exultant journalists homed in on their prey, talons bared, with a rich blend of expletives and scorn: “grotesque”, “satire”, “deplorable”, “burlesque” – and much more. It was a comic...
Bibi's instinct for survival, From Haim Baram
When Binyamin Netanyahu seemingly retired from politics in July 1999, most Israelis heaved a sigh of relief, perhaps mingled with some scepticism. Even then, some pundits would not take his word for it and demanded proof that his departure was not...
Turning a new page -- for now, From Nicole Pope
Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak paid a brief one-day visit to Ankara on 17 January to try to repair frayed ties between Israel and Turkey after the televised humiliation of Ankara’s ambassador in Tel Aviv. This was only the latest of...
United States
Washington lobbies' Israel-Turkey reality check, From Ian Williams
It might not be a change of the tide, but the ham-fisted Israeli foreign ministerial team has certainly revealed the shift in the currents of regional and international politics. The petty triumph of calling in Ambassador Oğuz Çelikkol for a...
Israel
'Reimbursement', not justice, From Ian Williams
Israel has confirmed to the United Nations that it is agreeing to pay $10.5 million for the 15 January 2009 destruction of UN premises in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Most of the payment goes to UNRWA, with a few hundred thousand dollars for the...
Palestine
Escalation in Gaza, From Wafa Amr in Ramallah
A marked escalation of Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip, and of rocket firings by Palestinian factions against Israel, has heightened fears that Israel may be preparing for another major assault, one year after the conclusion of Operation...
Washington’s Hamas myopia, From Oliver McTernan
In June 2009, Barack Obama declared to the Arab world from the podium at Cairo University that the US would be even-handed in its efforts to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since then we have witnessed a lot of shuttle diplomacy...
European Union
Ashton faces Arab-Israel peace challenge, From Shada Islam in Brussels
The European Union has joined the US in pushing for an early relaunch of negotiations between Israel and Palestinians, following talks in Brussels last week between George Mitchell, Washington’s envoy for the Middle East and Catherine Ashton, the...
Egypt-Israel
All walled in, From Issandr el Amrani
Another wall is going up on the Sinai frontier, only weeks after Egypt began building a controversial barrier on its 14-kilometre border with Gaza. But this time, it is Israel that is doing the building. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu...
Egypt
Upper Egypt ‘massacre’ revives sectarian fears, From Issandr el Amrani in Cairo
Christmas Day for the Coptic Orthodox Church fell, as usual, on 7 January, and in the Upper Egyptian town of Naga Hammadi, Bishop Kirollos was leading late mass on the eve of the feast. After the service, as he and his assistants stepped out of his...
Syria
Back to pole position, From Rime Allaf
A Syrian president’s visit to a Saudi king would not have triggered much interest a few years ago, but the meeting between Bashar al-Asad and King Abdallah in Riyadh on 13 January was headline news in the Arab media. It marked a major step on the...
Features
Southern Sudan: ill-prepared for elections, From Julie Flint
In the first days of 2010, fighting between pastoralist tribes in just one of Southern Sudan’s 10 states left approximately 150 people dead, almost double the number of violent deaths registered in the whole of Darfur in most months last year. As...
The Afghan vortex, From Graham Usher
On New Year’s Eve, a Jordanian doctor of Palestinian descent, Humam al-Bal’awi, entered a CIA base in Afghanistan’s Khost province near the Pakistan border. Wired with explosives, he killed himself, five CIA agents, two American mercenaries...
The Arab world's new politics of protest, From Omayma Abdel-Latif
Hardly a day goes by without a strike or sit-in somewhere in Egypt. The country has witnessed an unprecedented upsurge in grassroots protest actions over the past few years. Some 650 were reported in the first half of last year alone, of which 267...
Reviews
An enduring legacy, From Caelum Moffatt
Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East, by Rashid Khalidi Beacon Press. $25.95 ISBN: 9780807003107 From the Truman Doctrine to Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, the Middle East has figured prominently in the...
Playing by other people's rules, From James Dorsey
The Arabs: A History, by Eugene Rogan Allen Lane, London 2009, £25 ISBN: 9780713999037 Prominent Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir asserted shortly before a 2005 car bomb in Beirut put an abrupt end to his life that “it’s not pleasant being...
Turkey’s 'Islamist' success story
From Michael Jansen
Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey, by M Hakan Yavuz Cambridge University Press, 2009, £17.99 ISBN: 9780521717328 This book is an important contribution to the debate over whether ‘Islamist’ movements can democratise, join in...
Letter From
Letter from Alexandria, From Linda S Heard
Egypt’s second-largest city is where I hang my collection of caps these days. Following centuries of foreign conquest, during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th Alexandria emerged as a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city that was barely...
