Arab Digest podcasts

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the ECFR MENA specialist Tarek Megerisi. With Sudan sliding towards civil war as two generals vie for power, the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar winning Western backing and Kais Saied the president of Tunisia tightening his grip on power as he restores one-man rule in Tunisia Tarek argues that the West's support for dictators will only serve to further instability and heighten insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

While the world looks elsewhere, three countries are hosting at a conservative estimate 5.4 million Syrian refugees. Arab Digest editor William Law 's guest this week is Kelly Petillo, a Middle East and North Africa specialist with the European Council on Foreign Relations. The European hard right is scapegoating Syrian refugees while at the same time Syrians in Türkiye, Lebanon and Jordan are facing increasing hostility as those countries struggle with weak economies and political insecurity. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

William Law's guest on the podcast is the Palestinian academic Dalal Iriqat. This week marks the first 100 days of the latest Netanyahu government, the most extreme in Israel's history. Acting with impunity, a Fascist coterie of his ministers has stepped up a vicious campaign aimed at removing whatever rights Palestinians might still have while using violence to provoke violence in order to justify apartheid. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Saudi human rights activist Areej al-Sadhan. Her brother Abdulrahman is one of many held in Saudi Arabia's labyrinthine prison system whose only crime was to criticise the regime of Mohammed bin Salman. The crown prince spends billions to promote an image of reform in the kingdom but behind the expensive PR and his lavish giga-projects lies a brutally repressive dictatorship. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Arab Digest regular contributor Francis Ghilès joins editor William Law in a wide ranging conversation about the economic and political outlook emerging from the constitutional coup being carried out by Tunisian President Kais Saied. Francis notes the support that Saied is receiving from powerful MENA allies, chief among them gas-rich Algeria. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Andreas Krieg joins Arab Digest editor William Law for a conversation about his just released book Subversion. Andreas looks at how weaponised narratives have been used in the Middle East to sabotage and subvert the Arab Spring and efforts to empower civil society. Key players in the game are the United Arab Emirates and Israel who share a common goal: to subvert democratic engagement and governance in the Middle East and North Africa. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Chatham House Iraq expert Renad Mansour joins Arab Digest editor William Law to discuss the impact of America and the UK's 2003 decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Faulty assumptions, false claims and the decision to dismantle the armed forces and the civil service coupled with the imposition of a sectarian governance structure led to chaos, corruption and violence that scars Iraq to this day. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Zoe Robbin, an Amman-based analyst on climate change and water issues joins Arab Digest editor William Law on today's podcast. Their conversation is about water and how it is a little-reported on but extremely powerful weapon. While cutting Palestine out of climate change talks, Israel is using water to further settlement plans in the West Bank while using Jordan's increasingly desperate water needs to push the kingdom into a corner. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

One year on from the launch of Putin's 'special military operation' Arab Digest editor William Law invites the New Lines Institute's Caroline Rose back to discuss how the war is impacting the Middle East diplomatically and politically and what a frontline attritional stalemate will mean for America's relations in the region. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

The 21 year old Tunisian writer Tharwa Boulifi joins Arab Digest editor William Law for a conversation about the young Tunisians who came of age a decade after the revolution only to find the country slipping back into dictatorship under President Kais Saied, a man many of the Gen Zs initially thought they could trust to keep the dream of revolution alive. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.