The only Arab country where protests started from rural areas might find itself facing an internationally funded reconstruction which will award money to urban centres, thus abandoning the very roots of the current crisis. The only solution is to build economic awareness. Starting from now.
The Syrian social movement has to be conscious of the necessity of establishing a just economy. Strong checks need to be built against the post-war government so that all Syrians understand the conditions of aid and consequences of reconstruction plans on their lives and the lives of their childre
Film: A short film documenting Beirut's dwindling public spaces.
Heightened security has so far managed to contain the Sheikh’s roving and provocative marches.
Lebanon's plans to harnass the vast oil and gas reserves off its shores already reveal familiar echoes of past internal divisions and external conflicts. But is this finally a chance for Lebanon to remake its future?
It was only a matter of time before Hezbollah would also join in the fight out of loyalty to a regime dubbed by David Hirst its “midwife”, as well as in an effort to protect its supply routes.
Fawaz Gerges and Rosemary Hollis with Robin Yassin-Kassab at the openDemocracy conference Syria's peace: what, how, when?, discussing the regional proxy war, class dynamics in Syria, intervention and the costs of not negotiating with Assad.
The series of conflicts that besieged Beirut during the Lebanese civil war have radically reconfigured the social and spatial environment of the city we know today.
Rather than fly to nearby Cyprus to tie the knot, Nidal Darwiche and Khouloud Sukkarieh, supported by lawyer Talal Husseini, have attempted to force through the first civil marriage carried out on Lebanese soil.
Islamic Resistance is normally understood as military activism: armed actors using the same ideology and undertaking distinct political aims sometimes using force. But in Dahiyye, 'Resistance' can also be conceived of as a social ethic, one that engages multiple and diverse ethnic and religious id
To really make schools safe, we’d have to turn them into fortified enclaves, with perimeters of concrete, sandbags at the entrance, and a well trained team of alert, heavily-armed, and strongly-defended infantry.
The proliferating use of armed drones is but part of a wider and dangerous shift in the nature of 21st-century warfare.
