Qifa Nabki
Arab Politics
Justice in the Bazaar
The Syrian-Saudi negotiations over the fate of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) are a persistent topic in the Arab press these days. According to an interview with Saad al-Hariri which will appear tomorrow in al-Hayat, an agreement about how to mitigate the STL’s repercussions has already been reached, and is just waiting implementation on … Continue reading
Syrians and Saudis on the Same Page?
Beirut will host a rare summit of regional leaders this weekend–all the more remarkable for having been organized on very short notice. There are reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will be joined by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Erdogan and Ahmadinejad are apparently planning visits as … Continue reading
Syrian-Israeli Peace: A Conversation With Joshua Landis
Moving right along in our series of interviews with various experts and friends of the blog, I’m pleased to bring you this conversation with Dr. Joshua Landis, Associate Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and author of the widely-read Syrian affairs blog, Syria Comment. Josh and I sat down over a … Continue reading
Axis(tential) Questions
A couple of days ago, I sat in on a lecture about Nasser’s foreign policy in the 1950′s-60′s, and the importance of regional axes in the Cold War world. It left me wondering about the extent to which we still live in such a world today, at least as far as Middle East politics are … Continue reading
Twelve months
I love how seriously the QN readership is taking my challenge to come up with the most important developments of 2009 in Lebanon (favorite so far: “my cousin’s wedding in Chekka”). In the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote for The National this week about the Middle East in 2009. (If you’re going out to … Continue reading
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And the people say...