REPORTS

 
 

 

Mixed Messages and Open Friction:
The Arab League Summit in Damascus, 2008

By   Sami Moubayed

The latest Arab Summit in Damascus was preceded and accompanied by intense diplomatic wrangling and threats of a boycott, all geared to pressure the Syrian hosts to change their position towards the political crisis in Lebanon. Yet, the Syrians scored a partial success by holding the meeting on time and by demonstrating that they will not easily yield to pressure, argues Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed. According to Moubayed, the confrontation over the summit and Lebanon should be seen as part of a larger and complex regional power game, played out in several interconnected theaters between the US and its Arab allies on one side and Iran and Syria on the other. Read...

 
 

 

Sami Moubayed teaches at the Faculty of International Relations at al-Kalamoun University and authored numerous books on Syria, including the latest “Steel & Silk: Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000” (Cune Press, 2005). He is also editor-in-chief of Forward, Syria’s leading English monthly and a biographer of former Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli..

 
 
 

 MAIN PAGE


 
 
 
 

OTHER VOICES

 Mahmood MamdaniOn Blasphemy, Bigotry and the Politics of Culture Talk

More readings available from the hbf translation project
Other Voices

UPCOMING

Power, Governmentality, Resistance and State of Exception in the Arab World
Beirut, August 29-30, 2008

 

Emerging Powers and the Middle East

Beirut, October 24-25, 2008 

DOSSIER

Iraqi Refugee Crisis

 

Climate Change and the Middle East

 

War in Darfur

NEW PUBLICATIONS

Cities of the South: Citizenship and Exclusion in the 21st Century

Edited volume published in cooperation with the Institute Français du Proche Orient (IFPO) by Saqi Books