Eid al Adha began on Monday in most of the Muslim world. (In some places it began on Sunday or on Tuesday). Hope everyone is having a wonderful celebration. The National has a journalist, Rym Ghazal, performing hajj maintaining a blog on their website – she discusses Eid briefly in this entry.
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, professor of comparative literature and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, died on December 2. She made significant contributions to the study of women in the Middle East, communicating their humanity to Western audiences in her ethnographies, the most famous of which is probably Guests of the Sheikh. She […]
New Orleans, an old colonial city known for jazz and southern hospitality, seemed like an unlikely place for Tsarist treasures. That is, until I came across an exhibition of Faberge antiques at the NoMA last weekend. I must have seen Faberge eggs in the Hermitage as a kid, but didn't remember them well. Unfortunately, there […]
The Foreign Policy Association has published a lengthy piece that I have been working on for quite a while, “Never Again,” Again: The Darfur Crisis. It is also available in .pdf, with footnotes, here. The opening paragraph: The pattern is relentless, bleak, frustrating, and odiously predictable. The leadership of Sudan and its murderous minions engage […]
If it is true that the Congress of the People (COPE) already has 40,000 members before it has even gotten off the ground (with the caveat being that these numbers come from COPE's own people) , the ANC might need to start worrying at least a little bit. The ANC has name recognition, serious historical […]
My predecessor Bonnie Boyd completed a 2007 Central Asia Year in Review which you can find to your right and here. She made predictions regarding the CA region for 2008 and since that year is nearly come to pass, how bout we go over them? No, you don't want to? Well, too bad, I’m gonna […]
The calls for Robert Mugabe's ouster are increasing in both frequency and intensity. The European Union, the Western media (for example The Washington Post), and Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga have all recently made it clear that it is time for Mugabe to go, preferably voluntarily, but increasingly there are calls for the use of […]
Provisional results from the elections in Ghana are trickling in slowly, and the presidential race in particular appears to be incredibly close. In the early accounting, the opposition candidate, John Evans Atta-Mills of the National Democratic Party, has a slight lead on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and its candidate, Dr. Nana Akufo-Addo. Let us […]
In an interesting development this weekend, five Blackwater guards involved in the September 2007 shooting that killed 17 Iraqi civilians are facing charges. BBC News reports that the men are expected to surrender in Utah, the home state for one guard. Iraqi officials are happy with the news, and one Iraqi man who lost his […]
I left Beirut around 9 in the morning. At 10 am Ali Abou Hassan, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP] political office promised to wait for me at the entrance of Ain el Hilwe camp in Saida. Ain el Hilwe is famous for being the most dangerous Palestinian camp. It […]
I have been little by little discussing an extensive review of the Afghanistan conflict by the Bush Administration and it finally looks like bits of the actual report have begun to surface. The review was headed by War czar Lt. Gen Douglas Lute and included many expert voices from inside and outside government and was […]
A couple of days ago I wrote about the ongoing problem of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and implied that attacking passenger liners would be a sure way to grab international attention by drawing the label of “terrorism.” this was not meant to imply, however, that such piracy actually qualifies as terrorism. I think […]
Give Robert Mugabe credit for chutzpah if nothing else. Zimbabwe's President-by-declaration has announced that new elections will be called if a power-sharing agreement is not reached in the next two years. This generous, indeed absurd, timetable will of course allow talks to languish and thus will keep Mugabe right where he insists that he belongs, […]
Ghanaians are preparing to go to the polls this weekend in what should be a closely contested and vitally important election. The African Studies Centre at Leiden has a useful dossier providing an overview of the election and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) has put together election guides for both the presidential and parliamentary […]
The much-maligned Scorpions have uncovered what should prove to be pretty explosive details on the corruption surrounding the arms deals. Now that Pandora's Box is open, one wonders just how damaging this could be to the ANC. Is this another Muldergate? Worse? Under ordinary circumstances the ANC would seem likely, as the only game in […]