Qifa Nabki
Syria
Al-Qusayr: Salafist Emirate or Frontier of the Future Alawite State?
What exactly is happening in al-Qusayr? I have no idea, but I’m going to tell you what I think anyway, seeing as how the biggest beneficiaries of the media blackout on Syria are the bloggers, tweeters, and other distant readers whose impressionistic musings are based almost entirely on a process of triangulating between other second-hand … Continue reading
Dissertation Prizes, Fake Twitter Followers, and Imad Mughniyyeh
The semester is drawing to a close, and I’m looking forward to a long summer of book research and some more consistent blogging. A couple quick notes: Syria Offed Imad Mughniyeh? Check out this Foreign Policy article about the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh. The author, Mark Perry, promises a big reveal and doesn’t fully deliver but … Continue reading
On Syria, What Separates Assir From Hizbullah & Hariri?
Everyone is wringing their hands over Lebanese Salafist leader Shaykh Ahmad al-Assir’s call to send jihadists to help Syria’s rebels. On Monday, he announced the formation of resistance battalions that were prepared to join the side of the uprising, saying: “There is a religious duty on every Muslim who is able to do so… to … Continue reading
Lebanon: Fair-Weather Model or the Eye of the Storm?
Theodor Hanf famously described Lebanon’s consociational system as a “fair-weather model,” meaning that it sails smoothly under sunny skies but is not built for stormy conditions. I found myself thinking back to this statement as I observed the remarkably smooth accession of Tammam Salam last week to the post of Lebanon’s Prime Minister. Compared with … Continue reading
A Questionable Strategy
It didn’t take long for OTV and al-Akhbar to point out the same inconsistencies that I noticed in Okab Sakr’s testimony last week, and release responses comparing the segments “added” by Sakr to the original clips that they had published. (See here for the OTV clip; al-Akhbar‘s most recent response can be found here.) Even if there is … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…