U.S. President Barack Obama leads a briefing on the current situation in Libya, with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon (L) aboard Air Force One, during a secure conference call on the flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Santiago, Chile on March 21, 2011 (Ho New/Courtesy Reuters)
A Kingdom of Libya flag is seen during a demonstration in support of the Bahraini people in Baghdad's Sadr city (Stringer Iraq/Courtesy Reuters)
Hi folks,
Below is an excerpt from my piece on TheAtlantic.com that appeared today. To read the full text, click here.
A couple of days before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was finally forced from office, it rained in Cairo. When the storm passed and the sun re-appeared, one of the protesters pointed out on Twitter that a rainbow had appeared over downtown — a sign, she believed, of the freedom and prosperity that was to come. Caught up in the romance of the barricades, it was hard for demonstrators and democracy activists, in Egypt and beyond, not to think that way. It seemed that Middle East was on the verge of a democratic breakthrough. It was one thing for Tunisians to force a tin-pot dictator like Zine Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Jeddah, it was quite another for Egyptians to dump the Pharaoh. That’s not supposed to happen. And as Tunisians inspired Egyptians, what the revolutionaries in Cairo accomplished gave impetus to Pearl Square, where Bahrain’s own protesters have gathered, and to Benghazi, the base of Libya’s rebellion against Muammar Qaddafi. Yet the successes of Tahrir or November 7 squares have not easily translated to these other places. It seems entirely possible that the Arab spring could end on the banks of the Nile. What went wrong?
An Egyptian man prepares kunafa, a traditional Middle Eastern dessert in Cairo (Nasser Nuri/Courtesy Reuters)
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (Benoit Tessier/Courtesy Reuters)
Egyptians cast their vote during a national referendum at a polling station in Cairo on March 19, 2011 (Amr Dalsh/Courtesy Reuters).
Egyptian men walk past a banner that reads "Not for a referendum March 19" during a rally to demonstrate the unity between Muslims and Christians at Tahrir Square in Cairo on March 11, 2011 (Amr Dalsh/Courtesy Reuters)
Hillary Clinton met with Hosni Mubarak in Washington in August 2009 (Kevin Lamarque/Courtesy Reuters)
Hi folks,
Below is my take on how America should respond to Egypt’s revolution. It appeared on Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel yesterday.
The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building in McLean, Virginia (Larry Downing/Courtesy Reuters)
On From the Potomac to the Euphrates, Cook provides a lens for viewing how debates about Mideast policy in Washington connect to the region, with a special focus on Egypt and Turkey.
This article originally appeared here on ForeignPolicy.com on Wednesday, June 13, 2012. I hope you find it interesting and look…
My friend, Karim Mezran, weighs in with a guest post today on an under-reported meeting between a prominent Libyan Islamist…
Yesterday there were two interesting Syria pieces in the Sunday papers. The Washington Post ran a story by Liz Sly—who, by…
Before there was Mohamed Bouazizi there was Khaled Said. The official “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page that helped instigate the…
Bad Behavior has blocked 1772 access attempts in the last 7 days.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn