There is a tendency to equate the metaphor of travel and mobility with emancipation and the ability to move freely between cultures or continents. This work examines the implications of gender segregation in Ultra Orthodox communities of Jerusalem, by looking more closely at women’s experiences of the journeys made (both actual and allegorical) between the public and private spheres.
The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was a costly and, ultimately, pointless war. However, exactly why the Red Army wound up in direct military conflict, embroiled in a bitter and complicated civil war—some 3,000 kilometres away from Moscow—is a point of historiographical uncertainty. Little known and appreciated for its significance, the Soviet-Afghan War was one of the turning points of the late Cold War.
India and Pakistan have come no closer to resolving their disagreements than what was attempted in 1949 because they are firmly grounded in a solution that is zero-sum, state centric and plagued by internal domestic political pressure.
The Middle East is one of the most water-short regions in the world: almost all countries in the region (with the arguable exceptions of Iran and Turkey) have less (in most cases, significantly less) water available – through rainfall and other sources – than the 1,000 cubic metres per person, per year, which is traditionally taken to be a minimum human requirement.
The issue of Palestinian refugees is both an important and highly emotional matter in Middle-Eastern politics, representing one of the most divisive and enduring problems of 20th and 21st century Middle-Eastern affairs.
Eyal Weizman’s comprehensive account of the techniques of expansion and oppression deployed by the Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories provides a thorough and graphic exposé of a whole range of colonizing methods. In this essay I attempt to highlight a selection of Weizman’s observations and relate them to the arguments of Yiftachel and an updated understanding of Foucauldian population geography by Legg.
In order to guide democracy development efforts in the Middle East, Western policymakers must be guided by a realistic and nuanced view of the region. Militancy and terrorism, especially, have traditionally been viewed in terms of simple dichotomies and broad generalizations. This paper attempts to address this issue by offering a framework for the evaluation of Islamist political parties and their participation in democratic systems.
Following a provision of the Doha agreement, signed by Lebanese political leaders to put an end to the May 2008 crisis, the Lebanese parliament discussed the country’s Parliamentary Electoral Draft Law and voted for reform on September 29th, 2008. But many of the proposals made by the National Commission were rejected, leading Minister of the Interior Ziyad Baroud to qualify it as “a cup half full”. But is this too optimistic?
Liberal fire-brand William Gladstone launched his election campaign to become British Prime Minister in 1880 during what was being described by contemporaries as the ‘Great Depression’. The ‘People’s William’ was elected primarily on the back of his promise to reverse the Conservative Party’s jingoistic, imperialist foreign policy under Benjamin Disraeli’s tenure.
Analysing the record of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq since 2003 has often been an exercise in reconciling seemingly contradictory interpretations and dynamics. The key point on which such interpretations implicitly or explicitly diverge is on the role of the state in Iraqi history, particularly its strength and weakness in the exercise of political authority.
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