Tag Archives: Iraq

Mohamed-Ali Adraoui, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) Ten years after people rose up against their leaders in country after country around the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunisia to Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain, what can we say about how society, politics and religion have changed in the region? To put it mildly, the social, cultural, religious, political …

Flag of Kurdistan on military uniform. Bumble Dee/Shutterstock.com John Broich, Case Western Reserve University Since U.S. troops left their region, roughly 180,000 Kurds of northeastern Syria have been displaced, and over 200 have been killed. Those Kurds, soldiers who’d battled the Islamic State and families, had hoped to secure a future Kurdistan state in areas now targeted by Turkish warplanes …

Popartic/Shutterstock Mohamad Moustafa Alabsi, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) From independence until the advent of the Arab Spring, Middle Eastern states have suffered due to their constituting principle, a notion that can be traced back to the motivations and arrangements of former colonial powers. Independence may have satisfied the demands of the region’s inhabitants for autonomy, Arabness and …

The Investiture of Zimri Lim Fresco from the palace of Mari gives us an image of royal ideology in the ancient Middle East. Louvre Museum, CC BY-SA Javier Alvarez-Mon, Macquarie University and Yasmina Wicks, Macquarie University Inhabitants of the ancient city-states of the Middle East enjoyed a vibrant social and economic life centred on palace and temple institutions, supported by …

Shutterstock / Minghong Xia Andrea Betti, Universidad Pontificia Comillas Han pasado 20 años desde los atentados contra las Torres Gemelas y el Pentágono. Algunas de las preguntas principales de analistas y observadores en estos días son de qué manera ha cambiado el sistema internacional en las últimas dos décadas y cómo se ha visto afectada la política exterior de Estados …

Tony Walker, La Trobe University The 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington carries with it two punctuation marks. The first are the attacks themselves on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. These shocked a country that was both psychologically and physically unprepared for such a brazen assault on American soil. The second …

Mourners at the funeral for Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani burn Israeli and U.S. flags. Hamid Vakili/NurPhoto via Getty Images Bear F. Braumoeller, The Ohio State University Despite the claims of optimists, the odds that an international conflict will snowball into a bloody war haven’t gone down significantly since the end of World War II. Trump administration officials’ confidence that the …

Jacqueline L. Hazelton, US Naval War College How do you feel about drone strikes? Chances are you have an opinion – or at least a gut reaction. Years of debate on the issue show that many Americans have reservations. People are concerned that drone strikes devalue non-American lives, dangerously expand executive power, and drive terrorism and anti-Americanism. Yet do we …

 Artist’s evidence-based depiction of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas. Allen West and Jennifer Rice, CC BY-ND Christopher R. Moore, University of South Carolina As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space …

Heading for the exit. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Neta C. Crawford, Boston University The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 to destroy al-Qaida, remove the Taliban from power and remake the nation. On Aug. 30, 2021, the U.S. completed a pullout of troops from Afghanistan, providing an uncertain punctuation mark to two decades of conflict. For the past 11 …