Free Syria exists along Syria’s borders with Turkey and Iraq. The Free Syrian Army, somewhat to my surprise, is beginning to take and hold territory, acting more like a conventional army than like a guerrilla movement. Admittedly, the territory is in the boondocks. But these boondocks are crucial because they control border areas and roads […]
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Middle East
Top Ten Implications of the Damascus Bombing
The bombing of the Security Headquarters of the Baath government of Syria on Wednesday killed the Minister of Defense, the deputy Minister of Defense, and the Assistant to the vice-president and head of crisis management office Gen Hassan Turkomani. It wounded the Minister of the Interior (i.e. head of the secret police) and a member […]
Street Art in Honor of 100 Years of LaMarsa, Tunisia (Photo)
Photo by Juan Cole, LaMarsa, Tunisia, May 2012 (Note that if you are viewing with an internet browser, you can enlarge the photo by pressing Control and the plus sign.) In May, the upscale neighborhood of LaMarsa in the northeast of Tunis commemorated the hundredth anniversary of its founding. A street was blocked off, with […]
Kairouan, Tunisia
Kairouan, Tunisia, May 2012, from a rooftop. Photo by Juan Cole For more on this UNESCO Heritage City, see this link.
Ghoul’s Glossary: From Atrocity (Syria) to CEO (Romney)
Atrocity: What a mass murder is called when the world is too blind or timid or divided to prosecute it as a war crime. Synonym (mainly Syr.): Treimseh. CEO sabbatical: The practice of chief executive officers of a company to absent themselves for several years from actually making decisions, even while they are the only […]
Morsi and Brotherhood isolated vs. Military, Courts, Secularists
The reaction to Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi’s call to reinstate the dissolved parliament was largely negative on Monday and Tuesday morning, except among supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and among small leftist youth groups. Given that the Carter Center and other bodies concerned with human rights had denounced the dissolution of parliament roundly, I am […]
Morsi provokes Constitutional Crisis in Egypt by recalling Parliament
Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi tried to steal third base on Sunday, announcing that he was calling back into session the dissolved Egyptian parliament. It would continue to meet, he said, until new parliamentary elections, to be held within 60 days of the completion of the new constitution. He thus took on both the Supreme Court […]
Hajizadeh: If Israel attacks Iran, it will be Destroyed
On Sunday, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force gave a speech about Iran’s ballistic missile capability. At the very end of it, he said that if Israel attacked Iran (as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have repeatedly threatened to do), Iran would […]
Top Five Things Morsi has to Do if Egypt is to Succeed
For understandable reasons, analysis of the political changes in Egypt has focused on personalities (new president Muhammad Morsi is not charismatic); on ideology (how far can he depart from his sectarian commitments as a hard line Muslim fundamentalist truly to be president of all Egyptians?); and on military-civilian relations. But those questions are not the […]