Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, the Egyptian constitution: the militarized state.
For the citizens of Lebanon and Beirut, the human cost of the attacks is tragic. The complex web of trans-regional motivations and alliances which provides the backdrop to this latest attack also reveals a number of disturbing truths about the region today.
Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Egypt's most powerful man tries to tame the media.
If Saddam Hussein and Hafez Assad had worked towards unlearning the new reality which Sykes-Picot aimed to create in the Arab World, the current deadlock in the Syrian-Iraqi situation would never have happened.
Lebanon has deep-rooted institutional issues that must be addressed in order to strengthen the state. But should it be scared of a descent into Iraqi-style chaos?
Despite some grandstanding by high-ranking politicians stating that Lebanese women should have full citizenship rights, these promises, needless to say, have so far come to nothing.
Talks foundered because the US insisted that Iran must not have uranium enrichment facilities on its own soil in any circumstances, and the EU3 bowed to this diktat from Washington. This time, we must do better.
Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Doha debate reveals gulf between locals, its elite and expatriates
Today a large proportion of individuals within Lebanon feel that the instabilities playing out are neither their responsibility nor fight. In contrast to the civil war, there is no incentive to stay.
Two out of three Lebanese believe that the conflict in Syria could lead to a new civil war in Lebanon. For many, the question is not if there is going to be a war or not, but when it is going to break out.
Politically, the country is a melting pot of regional and highly localised concerns, playing out along axes of political opportunism, religion and economic necessity, with various religious groups operating as local militias.
