Amr Hamzawy appears on NPR's "The Conversation" to discuss the current crisis in the Middle East.
Given the last two weeks in the Middle East — client entities like Hizbollah provoking a conflict, the Saudis and Egyptians speaking without power from the sidelines, Western uncertainty about the role of Syria and Iran — is it possible to draw a new map of the Middle East?
Aggressive acts like the ones Hizballah and Hamas have perpetrated against Israel in recent weeks are rare against a country that has the strongest military in the region and the world's only military superpower as its chief sponsor. The raids are attributable less to U.S. engagement in Iraq, for instance, than to Washington's disengagement in recent years from the Middle East peace process.
This is a dangerous moment for the Middle East, because the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon could easily escalate to involve the broader region. Any strategy to address the present crisis must deal with the realities of the Middle East as they are now, not try to leapfrog over them by seeking to impose a grand new vision. Such a vision would be bound to fail as it did in the case of Iraq.
The regime of Bashar al-Asad is under pressure from Syrian citizens who want a different political system and from the United States, which wants Syria to change its regional policy. As a result, it is impossible to separate completely a domestic process of political reform from the external pressures.
As most Americans were celebrating Independence Day on July 4, the small, ravaged nation of Cambodia celebrated what it hoped would be its independence from one of the most horrific periods in twentieth-century history. In a hall of the royal palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, in front of a Buddhist monk, judges for the upcoming tribunal of the Khmer Rouge were sworn into office.
Has President George W. Bush given up on his liberty doctrine? From Libya to Iran to Azerbaijan, the Bush administration appears to have downgraded the importance of democracy promotion in the last several months. Nowhere, however, has a new indifference to democracy been more striking than in Egypt.
When the polls open in Kuwait on Thursday, Kuwaiti women will be able to cast their votes for national candidates for the first time in the country's history. This election has huge implications for the role of women in Kuwaiti society, the future of Kuwaiti politics and democratic reform in the region at large.