Arab Digest podcasts

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Sudanese political analyst and broadcaster Kholood Khair. Sudan's civil war has been ongoing since April as two generals battle to see who will prevail in a brutal struggle that has shown no regard for the people of Sudan. Their peaceful revolution of 2018-19 that threw a dictator out has been usurped by two men driven by greed and a lust for power contesting between them to see who will become the country's next dictator. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

On 27 September we podcast Helen's Lackner's insightful analysis of Yemen as the now almost nine year conflict continues to ravage the Yemeni people. Helen, a regular AD newsletter contributor is one of the world's foremost Yemen experts and the author of several books on a country she has worked in over several decades. Her most recent book published by Routledge is Yemen: Poverty and Conflict. We are proud to select her podcast for the Arab Digest Editor's Choice 2023. 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 is joined by the Brooking Institute's Aslı Aydıntaşbaş for a look back at a tumultuous and violent 2023. It was a year that has seen the Middle East and North Africa riven by multiple wars that challenge not only the region but the world's security. Aydıntaşbaş concludes our year-ender with her predictions for 2024. 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 Washington-based CEO of Gulf State Analytics, Giorgio Cafiero. When Joe Biden arrived in Tel Aviv on 12 July this year he said "you don't need to be a Jew to be a Zionist." The podcast examines the president's unwavering support for Israel in the face of the IDF's continuing onslaught on the people of Gaza and considers other critical US policy failures in the Middle East and North Africa in 2023. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

While the war in Gaza rages on, little thought is being given to the impact it is having on refugees across the Middle East and North Africa. Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the European Council on Foreign Relations Kelly Petillo. She discusses efforts by extremists in the Netanyahu government to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, examines the impact of the war on refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon and considers efforts by Europe to buy its way out of the migrant crisis. 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 is joined by the historian Avi Shlaim to talk about his latest book Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew. Professor Shlaim was just five when he and his family left a comfortable middle-class life in Baghdad for the newly emerging state of Israel. It was a country, he argues, that was dominated then, as it is now, by the politics and Zionist ideology of European Jewry. The opportunity to use Arab-Jews as a bridge between two peoples was never taken up with decades long and terrible consequences that today are being played out in the violent destruction of Gaza. 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 North Africa analyst Tarek Megerisi. While the world has been focussed on the Gaza war competing kleptocrats in Libya have gotten on with plundering the country while Europe and the rest of the international community look away and the UN fumbles opportunities to move the country and its people toward security and peace. We begin, however, with Tarek’s thoughts on Gaza. 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 is joined by regular AD newsletter and podcast contributor Maged Mandour. His book Egypt under El-Sisi: a Nation on the Edge will be published by I.B. Tauris 25 January and is the subject of today's conversation. Maged tracks Sisi's trajectory since orchestrating the 2013 coup that overthrew Mohammed Morsi and he argues that the Egyptian president is a dictator unlike any that have come before him. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Lina Khatib the director of the Middle East Institute at London's SOAS joins Arab Digest editor William Law to discuss how the Gaza war is impacting Lebanon. With its economy in ruins and the government paralysed the last thing Lebanon needs is for the war to spill over. But with Iran-backed Hezbollah the dominant force and Israel continuing its strikes into the country the threat remains high that a regional war that begins in Lebanon could engulf the region with far reaching and disastrous consequences.

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Turkish analyst and writer Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC. Their conversation focusses on the efforts that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made to position himself as a leading voice in resolving the Gaza war, efforts that have thus far backfired badly for him. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.