The demise of secular autocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa has heralded a renaissance for Islamist parties in the region, igniting a rivalry for the hearts and minds of the Sunni world between the Gulf powers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Although neither country is a bastion of democracy at home, Qatar has proven much more amenable than Saudi Arabia to bolstering democratic Islamist movements abroad.
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is a convicted conman. He knows almost nothing about Islam and even less about filmmaking. And yet, thanks to the power of the Internet and the tense relationship between the West and Islam, Nakoula has generated a major international scandal with Innocence of Muslims, his lowbrow, low-budget movie.
The Obama administration’s “Pacific pivot” gives a prominent place for India, which came as a surprise to many observers. In his maiden visit to India in the first week of May, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta piled on, calling defense cooperation with India “a linchpin in U.S. strategy” in Asia. But while India has largely opened its arms, Indian leaders are wary about being drawn into a Cold War with China.
Freedom Sailors is the story of the birth of the ships-to-Gaza movement with the successful defiance of the Israeli blockade on Gaza in 2008, led by the small boats Liberty and Free Gaza. Within a few short years the effort would focus world attention upon the blockade and compel shifts in government policies as a result of the massacre on the Mavi Marmara.
It seems bizarre that right-wing pundits would be so desperate to use the recent anti-American protests in the Middle East—in most cases numbering only a few hundred people and in no cases numbering more than two or three thousand—as somehow indicative of why the United States should oppose greater democracy in the Middle East.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s bold initiatives on the world stage indicate that the Muslim Brotherhood leader is attempting to pursue a more independent approach to international affairs. By visiting China and Iran before the United States, forcing several high-ranking leaders of Egypt’s U.S.-backed military to retire, and deploying forces within the Sinai, Morsi is boldly challenging the Washington-Tel Aviv-Riyadh axis of power that has defined the Middle East’s order for decades.
Here’s a milestone of sorts. For the first time since 1998, the House of Representatives voted in July to maintain the current military budget rather than increase Pentagon spending. It’s the first step toward bringing the budget down.
Although the war in Afghanistan—with its tally of U.S. combat deaths now exceeding 2,000—has largely faded from the news, it is useful to consider why the conflict is so intractable. Why has a campaign that initially seemed so hopeful resulted in a country that is politically fractured and increasingly deadly for Afghans and foreign militaries alike?
Although the prospects for an independent state in Syrian Kurdistan remain dim, unprecedented Kurdish autonomy will likely result from the conflict. The implications extend beyond Syria’s borders as various governments and non-state actors have strong, and often conflicting, interests in the political fate of Syria’s Kurds and the territorial integrity of the Syrian state.
Nations trying to come to terms with violence from their recent pasts have a difficult road ahead, and the Andean country of Peru is no exception. The country is grappling with a host of issues stemming from its violent struggle against insurgent movements in the 1980s and 1990s.