From the New York Times Magazine, a special issue in how the Arab world came apart. Andrea Pin (Padua): The Arab Road to Dignity: The Goal of the “Arab Spring”. John Chalcraft (LSE): The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective. After the Arab Spring, the ruining of Egypt: Repression and the incompetence of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi are stoking the next uprising. Mohamed Abdelaal (Alexandria): The Paradox of Freedom of Religion in Post-Revolutionary Egypt. Yasmine El Rashidi on Egypt, forty-one months later. The torture of a foreign student has become the synecdoche for uncounted thousands of people now in Egyptian prisons or graves. Sean Yom on how Middle Eastern monarchies survived the Arab Spring. Marc Lynch on how Arab authoritarian regimes learned to defeat popular protests. Lauren Kosa on how dictators don’t stabilize the Middle East — they just create more terrorists.
Is the U.S. military strategy doing more harm or good in the Middle East? Cyrus Malik on Washington’s Sunni myth and the civil wars in Syria and Iraq (and part 2). Syria’s paradox: Max Fisher on why the war only ever seems to get worse. The stolen war: Ken Silverstein on how corruption and fraud created a failed state in Iraq — and led directly to the rise of ISIS. What do ordinary citizens in the Arab world really think about the Islamic State? The hell after ISIS: Even as the militant group loses ground in Iraq, many Sunnis say they have no hope for peace — one family’s story shows why. ISIS targets Egypt: Oren Kessler and Max Peck on why the group set its sights on the Sinai. Bassel F. Salloukh on how to break the Middle East’s sectarian spiral.
