In The News

Driving Campaign for Saudi Women Challenges Custom

Mohammed Jamjoom June 21, 2011
An Arab Spring may be coming to Saudi Arabia on wheels. Saudi women take to the streets, not for political protests but the right to drive. “Though there are no traffic laws that make it illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia, religious edicts are often interpreted as a ban against female drivers,” reports Mohammed Jamjoom for CNN. In May, one female driver was detained for a week and had to...

Groomed for Suicide: How Taliban Recruits Children for Mass Murder

Jon Boone May 23, 2011
Severe poverty, shortcomings in education, restraints on women appearing in public, religious extremism and ongoing war all combine to limit opportunities for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan – and all pose new dangers. Struggling to recruit adults as suicide bombers, the Taliban increasingly turn to desperate teenagers and younger children, reports Jon Boone for the Guardian. Taliban...

The West Likes Democracy for Some Arabs, But Not Others

Dilip Hiro April 22, 2011
The US has reasons for hurrying some Arab authoritarian leaders to the exit and not others. Syria and Bahrain are cases in point, explains author Dilip Hiro. Citizens of both nations resist leaders from minority sects and ongoing discrimination. Syria is 68 percent Sunni, run by a president, an Alawi, which is a Shia sub-sect; Bahrain is 70 percent Shia with a Sunni king. Syria has long defied...

Ex-Mujahedeen Help Lead Libyan Rebels

Charles Levinson April 5, 2011
Libya’s rebels receive assistance in the form of a no-fly zone from NATO and training from former Afghan Mujahedeen, reports Charles Levinson for the Wall Street Journal. One is a Libyan militant who was detained by Pakistani forces after the US invasion of Afghanistan and spent six years in the US Guantanamo military prison. Analysts question if such participants on the Libyan battlefronts...

Religion May Not Dominate Post-Revolutionary Middle East

Endy M. Bayuni March 11, 2011
Arabs throughout the Middle East and North Africa long for the basic freedoms taken for granted in the West. With governments overthrown in Tunisia and Egypt and unrest raging elsewhere in the region, analysts worry about religious motivations and how these might influence governance. Such a narrow focus is misdirected, explains Endy M. Bayuni, visiting fellow with the East-West Center. The...

Foreign Islamists Get Little Support in Egypt

Farnaz Fassihi, Matt Bradley February 10, 2011
Iranian and Hezbollah clerics have tried to co-opt the Egyptian opposition movement, suggesting that their brand of Islamic fundamentalism and 1979 revolution were influences. But the suggestion is outlandish, considering Iran’s brutal crackdown on its own young protesters seeking political and economic reforms more recently in 2009. The Muslim Brotherhood and Sunni clerics swiftly rejected the...

The Arab Rising – Part III

Barry Rubin February 7, 2011
Trust is frayed in the Middle East, between nations and within, as revealed by two weeks of massive protests and fearful reactions to calls for Egypt’s president to step down. Leaders of Egypt, Yemen and Jordan scramble to offer reforms, and the international community grapples with the fact that transition in Arab governments could come sooner than they wish. Governance in these nations could go...