Middle East

January 2007
Toy Soldiers: The Youth Factor in the War on Terror
by CHERYL BENARD
"Membership in a clandestine terrorist cell; online linkages with glamorous, dangerous individuals; the opportunity to belong to a feared and seemingly heroic movement complete with martyrs—all of this is inherently appealing to young people."

January 2007
Iraq’s Civil War
by AHMED S. HASHIM
"The US and Iraqi governments' reluctance to accept the designation 'civil war' does not alter the reality on the ground."

January 2007
The Middle East Freedom Agenda: An Update
by TAMARA COFMAN WITTES and SARAH E. YERKES
"The major barrier to effective US support for Arab civil society is . . . the hostility of autocratic Arab governments toward any greater independence or activism in the nongovernmental sector."

January 2007
Stalled Reform: The Case of Egypt
by HALA MUSTAFA and AUGUSTUS RICHARD NORTON
"As the US commitment to substantive reform has waned, Egypt's liberal activists find themselves subject to increasing surveillance and intimidation. . . ."

January 2007
What Should Be Done About Iraq?
by MARINA OTTAWAY
What Should Be Done About Iraq?

November 2006
Bringing Iran to the Bargaining Table
by KENNETH M. POLLACK
"If the Iranian people were ever forced to choose between the nuclear program and their country's economic health, they likely would choose the latter."

March 2006
Digital Scheherazades in the Arab World
by FATEMA MERNISSI
The Arab Gulf's previously all-male ruling elite is investing in female brains as the winning card for information-fueled power.

January 2006
The “Victory” Strategy: Grand Bargain or Grand Illusion?
by A. G. HOPKINS
"We are left with the problem of finding an exit that will not create even more chaos in the Middle East and can still be presented as something other than a defeat."

January 2006
A “Shiite Crescent”? The Regional Impact of the Iraq War
by JUAN COLE
"US policies in the Middle East . . . may have helped create the conditions for a second phase of Iran's Islamic Revolution, which is now at long last having a significant impact among Iran's Arab neighbors

January 2006
Democracy in the Rough
by PHEBE MARR
"Do Iraq's various communities have enough in common to remain united as a nation and share a common future, or are the forces of division pushing them in the direction of a breakdown, or even civil war?"

January 2006
Iraq and Democracy: The Lessons Learned
by LARRY DIAMOND
"The United States squandered its extraordinary military victory through a series of gross strategic mistakes, acts of ideological blindness, and a breathtaking failure to prepare militarily and politically for the postwar era."

January 2006
The Middle East’s Corruption Conundrum
by KATE GILLESPIE
"Cleaning up political corruption is urgently imperative. . . . Yet cultural change takes time, and there is an abundance of cynicism to overcome."

January 2006
Stay to Win
by JOHN MCCAIN
"When America toppled Saddam Hussein, it incurred a moral duty not to abandon the Iraqi people to terrorists and killers. If the United States withdraws prematurely . . . it will have done precisely that."

April 2005
The Last Taboo: Israel's Bomb Revisited
by Avner Cohen
"Is it really possible to redesign and buttress the nonproliferation regime, as the Iranian case requires, while leaving Israel's nuclear capacity an untouched taboo? Is it healthy for Israeli democracy or global security to continue with the path of nuclear opacity?"

April 2005
The Persian Dilemma: Will Iran Go Nuclear?
by Sanam Vakil
"The Iranians have continued to take advantage of international disunity. Clearly, they hope to use the uproar over their nuclear aspirations to extract as many concessions as possible."

January 2005
Iraq: From Insurgency to Civil War?
by Ahmed S. Hashim
"After the successful but destructive assault on Falluja, the Sunni Arabs are not merely alienated; they are outraged, and their support for the insurgency has increased. More ominously, a large number of Sunni see no future for their community in the new Iraq."

January 2005
After Arafat
by Glenn E. Robinson
"Arafat's death provides that rare historical opportunity for enormous and generally beneficial change to take place in Palestine. . . . [But] Palestine's comparative weakness, its political economy, and the occupation are not upended so easily. Neither are its fundamental requirements for a comprehensive peace with Israel."

January 2005
Politicide: Ariel Sharon and the Palestinians
by Baruch Kimmerling
"What is Sharon's plan? It is nothing less than the politicide of the Palestinian people: a combined military, political, diplomatic, and psychological process that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution of the Palestinians' existence as a legitimate socially, politically, and economically independent entity."

January 2005
The Limits of Shock and Awe: America in the Middle East
by Augustus Richard Norton and Farhad Kazemi
"Never before has a country committed itself to so fundamental and dramatic a transformation of a major region of the world as the United States has in the Middle East since 2001. . . . It remains to be seen how well the rhetoric of promoting reform will weather the experience of promoting reform."

January 2005
Iran, the Status Quo Power
by Mohsen M. Milani
"Iran appears ready to discuss the future of Iraq as well as other security issues with the United States. It remains uncertain for Tehran whether a 'tactical consensus' on Iraq could . . . lead to a marked improvement in us-Iran relations."