The age of the Arab dictator is over. The current wave of unrest sweeping the Middle East has deposed two dictators, spilt much blood and fundamentally shaken the status quo. Already, the movement that began with a few street demonstrations in Tunis has led to a regime change in Egypt and threatens to overthrow the monarchy in Bahrain, a military regime in Libya, a dictatorship in Yemen and many other governments throughout the region. What coul...
Illustration by Amalia Rinehart Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine By Candace Lukasik: Among the Arab revolutions of the last year, there is one struggle for justice that has endured since 1948: The occupation of Palestine. The Arab Spring offers new hope for a shift in the Palestinian condition of dispossession, discrimination, and death. The Arab revolutions grew out of a sustained hope for freedom. Grassroots mass mobilization was th...
Illustration by Liz Lee Offset against grey skies and the black uniform of an average Istanbulite bundled against the cold, the bright yellow and turquoise banners of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) bring a hint of the Arab Spring to Taksim Square. Occupying the symbolic heart of a vibrant, modern Turkey, Kurdish demonstrators have gathered to protest a move to ban 12 of their candidates from the Turkish general election – a ripple in an oc...
...ation of another set of shocking photos. In May 2004, the BBC reported that photos showing two Iraqi women, both wearing traditional black robes and being raped at gunpoint by men wearing US army uniforms, were circulating on Arabic-language websites. The BBC said, “These pictures do not seem genuine: the uniforms do not seem right … But the damage has been done.” The photos may have come from the hardcore porn site IraqBabes, which offered...
Obama alluded to shortly after the announcement. It is rather a sign of the shifting order of the Middle East. In fact, this points to a somewhat surprising interpretation of events: the real potential and beauty of the Arab Spring do not lie in excising the vicious heads of these dictatorial states; dictatorship, as proved by the tumultuous history of the Middle East and other regions, lurks in the shadows, ever waiting to return in a crisis or...
...ian National Council will be funding and arming the FSA, all seem to point to a civil war into which the country is precariously perched to descend, if it has not already. The most recent development was the withdrawal of the Arab League monitors due to the non-cooperation of the regime and the referral of the conflict to the United Nations Security Council. Now of course, the Syrian regime’s most important supporter in the region is Iran. The co...
...ar and occupation of Gaza. The Israeli position now is not as secure as it once was four years ago. The Middle East of 2008 is not the Middle East of 2012, and the Hamas of 2008 is not the Hamas of 2012. In 2008, the pre-Arab Spring political order was very much alive and well. The priority of the many secular autocratic rulers in the region was the preservation of the status quo, and popular demand was marginalized. The dominant United States ha...
...d; on the other hand – and perhaps more important – Africans have to confront the violence that the colonial legacy has wreaked upon the psyche and ultimately transcend it. The Libyan conflict has marred the image of the Arab Spring and has undermined the movement’s call for democracy and dignity. But its promise can still be fulfilled. Removing longstanding dictators is a necessary yet insufficient step toward crafting a new and just future. The...
...ing the values of the revolution. As long as Egypt’s political situation remains fragile and dirty, Americans will be tempted to deem the revolution a failure. But this entirely misses the point of the revolution, of the Arab Spring as a whole. In The Invisible Arab, an agonizingly opinionated but important and honest book on the Arab Spring, Al-Jazeera journalist Marwan Bishara makes a powerful statement that we often take for granted. “The Arab...
...government. Yet that “18.8%” was taken from a poll in June 2009—nearly three and a half years ago. And the “67%” was taken from a March 2011 poll—nearly two years ago, and at a time when the forces from the start of the Arab Spring had not yet fully emerged, ones that have since favored Hamas’s position. He cites a Washington Post article written on November 30 that says the spike in support for Hamas was beginning to fade at that time. Well, a...
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