Issue brief author Faysal Itani, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, argues that King Abdullah ought to move forward transforming Jordan’s institutions and reimagining its relationship with its citizens, despite the associated political risks.
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Investigative journalist, Seymour M. Hersh, is writing an alternative history of the war on terror. In this thorough article in the London Review of Books, he argues about Barack Obama's attempt to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August.
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Marwan Muasher is the vice president for studies at Carnegie, where he oversees research in Washington and Beirut on the Middle East. Here he writes another important article on the passage of the fourth year of the Arab Awakening and what to expect in the year ahead.
"How will history judge the uprisings that started in many parts of the Arab world in 2011? The label “Arab Spring” proved too simplistic from the beginning. Transformational processes defy black-and-white expectations, but in the end, will the awakenings be more reminiscent of what happened in Europe in 1848, when several uprisings took place within a few weeks only to be followed by counterrevolutions and renewed authoritarian rule? Or will they more closely resemble the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union, after which some countries swiftly democratized while others remained in thrall to dictatorship?"
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