Middle East Policy articles from March 22 2009

Middle East Policy archives from March 22 2009

Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader, A Story of True Jihad.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader, A Story of True Jihad, by John W. Kiser. Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2008. 361 pages. $28.95. A 19th century Arab who has a town in rural Iowa named after him; a man...

Syria: Chess Match at the Borders.(Movie review)
March 22, 2009... Syria: Chess Match at the Borders, A Film by Amal Hamelin des Essarts, Icarus Films, 2008, $390 (http://icarusfilms.com/new2008/syr.html). While voiced largely in French (with good English subtitles), this film offers a superb panorama of...

Culture and Conflict in the Middle East.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2009... Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, by Philip Carl Salzman. Humanity Books, 2008. 224 pages. $34.95. In his new book, Philip Carl Salzman, a professor of anthropology at McGill University, builds on and extends his previous work on...

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, by Hooman Majd. Doubleday, 2008. 272 pages. $24.95, hardcover. At first glance, Hooman Majd, the former executive vice president of Island Records, would appear to have more...

The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower, by Robert Baer. Crown Publishers, 2008. 268 pages, plus index. $17.13, hardcover. In The Devil We Know, Robert Baer, an ex-CIA operative, attempts to demonstrate how U.S....

The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at Last.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at Last, by Bernard Avishai. Harcourt, 2008. 290 pages. $26.00, hardcover. How can Israel remain Jewish and democratic when its occupation of the West...

The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel.(Book review)
March 22, 2009... The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, by Stephen J. Sniegoski. Light in the Darkness Publications, 2008. 440 pages, including notes and index. $24.95, hardcover. In...

Kurds in Iraq: the struggle between Baghdad and Erbil.
March 22, 2009... For those interested in ensuring Iraq's stability and territorial integrity, the relationship between Arabs and Kurds is now of paramount importance. Indeed, it is a difficult task to identify any single problem over the forthcoming year that...

Iran's nuclear program and the future of U.S.-Iranian relations.
March 22, 2009... Due to its geopolitical prominence, Iran has been the focus of great-power policies during the entire course of modern history. The Russian-British rivalry over Iran that began in the mid-1800's lasted a century. With the end of World War II,...

Saudi-Russian relations since the Abdullah-Putin Summit.(Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah)
March 22, 2009... In February 2007, then Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Saudi Arabia, the very first visit by a top Russian leader to the kingdom. The Russian press expressed confidence that Saudi-Russian cooperation was about to increase dramatically....

Turkish democracy and political Islam.
March 22, 2009... In a global trend toward democratization, the Middle East has for many years proved to be the exception. Nevertheless, very recently this region has started to come out of its stubborn resistance to democratic change, resulting in the...

Talking with a region: lessons from Iran, Turkey and Pakistan.
March 22, 2009... The headline-grabbing foreign-policy initiative of Obama's election campaign was that his administration would talk to Tehran "without preconditions." The idea that American diplomacy in the Middle East needs renewal is evident, and the Obama...

Negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough.
March 22, 2009... During more than four decades of occupation, Israeli-Palestinian relations have been replete with intense violence, mutual recrimination and revenge, bringing the two sides on more than one occasion close to the brink of all-out war. Oddly...

Gaza, Israel, Hamas and the lost calm of operation cast lead.
March 22, 2009... A shadow has fallen over the new years of 1430 and 2009 from Israel's air assault and ground invasion of Gaza, Operation Cast Lead. Not that any aspect of the Palestinian experience has been easy or well communicated to the global public, but...

The Arab peace initiative: an assessment.
March 22, 2009... In the second half of the 2000s, several unprecedented developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict have highlighted the potential of a dramatic alteration of the Middle East's strategic landscape. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has sponsored a...

Can the two-state solution be salvaged?(Symposium: Can the Two-State Solution be Salvaged?)
March 22, 2009... The following is an edited transcript of the fifty-fifth in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council The meeting was held on Friday, January 16, 2009, with Chas. W. Freeman, Jr., presiding. CHAS W....