LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

This event, as part of the Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was a discussion around Zeynep Kaya's latest book Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism. Since the early twentieth-century, Kurds have challenged the borders and national identities of the states they inhabit. Nowhere is this more evident than in their promotion of the 'Map of Greater Kurdistan', an ideal of a unified Kurdish homeland in an ethnically and geographically complex region. This powerful image is embedded in the consciousness of the Kurdish people, both within the region and, perhaps even more strongly, in the diaspora. Addressing the lack of rigorous research and analysis of Kurdish politics from an international perspective, Kaya focuses on self-determination, territorial identity and international norms to suggest how these imaginations of homelands have been socially, politically and historically constructed (much like the state territories the Kurds inhabit), as opposed to their perception of being natural, perennial or intrinsic. Adopting a non-political approach to notions of nationhood and territoriality, Mapping Kurdistan is a systematic examination of the international processes that have enabled a wide range of actors to imagine and create the cartographic image of greater Kurdistan that is in use today. Zeynep Kaya is Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. Kaya is also an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. She is interested in understanding how communities and political groups perceive, interact with and challenge international processes and dominant norms. Her research looks at the relationship between gender, violence and development in conflict and post-conflict contexts.

This event was a discussion around Marc Owen Jones' latest book Political Repression in Bahrain. Exploring Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, this concise and accessible account spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. Considering several episodes of contention in Bahrain, from tribal resistance to the British reforms of the 1920s, the rise of the Higher Executive Committee in the 1950s, the leftist agitation of the 1970s, the 1990s Intifada and the 2011 Uprising, Marc Owen Jones offers never before seen insights into the British role in Bahrain, as well as the activities of the Al Khalifa Ruling Family. From the plundering of Bahrain's resources, to new information about the torture and murder of Bahrain civilians, this study reveals new facts about Bahrain's troubled political history. Using freedom of information requests, historical documents, interviews, and data from social media, this is a rich and original interdisciplinary history of Bahrain over one hundred years. Marc Owen Jones is Assistant Professor in Middle East Studies and Digital Humanities at Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha. Prior to this, he was a Lecturer in Gulf History at Exeter University, where he remains an Honorary Research Fellow. Before that, Jones won a Teach at Tuebingen award, and wrote and delivered an MA module in Gulf Politics at Tuebingen University’s Institute for Political Science. He recently completed his PhD (funded by the AHRC/ESRC) in 2016 at Durham University, where he wrote an interdisciplinary thesis on the history of political repression in Bahrain. The thesis won the 2016 dissertation prize from the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies. Driven by issues of social justice and a specific area interest in the Gulf, his research spans a number of topics, from historical revisions, postcolonialism, de-democratization and revolutionary cultural production, to policing, digital authoritarianism and human rights. At the moment, Jones is working a number of topics, including propaganda and Twitter bots, mapping sectarian hate speech, and archival work related to Bahrain and land appropriation.

This event was a discussion around Gerasimos Tsourapas' latest book The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt: Strategies for Regime Survival in Autocracies. In this ground-breaking work, Tsourapas examines how migration and political power are inextricably linked, and enhances our understanding of how authoritarian regimes rely on labour emigration across the Middle East and the Global South. Tsourapas identifies how autocracies develop strategies to tie cross-border mobility to their own survival, highlighting domestic political struggles and the shifting regional and international landscape. In Egypt, the ruling elite has long shaped labour emigration policy in accordance with internal and external tactics aimed at regime survival. Tsourapas draws on a wealth of previously-unavailable archival sources in Arabic and English, as well as extensive original interviews with Egyptian elites and policy-makers in order to produce a novel account of authoritarian politics in the Arab world. The book offers a new insight into the evolution and political rationale behind regime strategies towards migration, from Gamal Abdel Nasser's 1952 Revolution to the 2011 Arab Uprisings. Gerasimos Tsourapas is Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Birmingham. He works on the politics of migrants, refugees, and diasporas in the Middle East and the broader Global South. He has also written on the international dimension of authoritarianism. His first book, The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt - Strategies for Regime Survival in Autocracies (Cambridge University Press, 2019), was awarded the 2020 ENMISA Distinguished Book Award by the International Studies Association. Tsourapas has published in International Studies Quarterly, International Migration Review, International Political Science Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and other leading journals. He has held research fellowships at Harvard University (2019–20) and the American University in Cairo (2013–14). Ibrahim Awad is Professor of Practice in Global Affairs and Director, Center for Migration and Refugee Studies, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, at the American University in Cairo. He has worked for the League of Arab States, the United Nations and the International Labour Organization, holding positions of Secretary of the Commission, UN-ESCWA, Director, ILO Sub-regional Office for North Africa and Director, ILO International Migration Programme. He currently is Chair of the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD), hosted by the World Bank, Chair of the Steering Committee of the Euro-Mediterranean Research Network on International Migration (EuroMedMig) and Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEEgypt

Co-organised with Jadaliyya and the Arab Studies Institute, this roundtable focuses on environmental justice, analysing the ways in which approaches to environmental studies—across disciplines ranging from international law to geography and urban planning—have traditionally overlooked and under-emphasised the critical roles of communities directly impacted by environmental injustice. Focusing on environmental justice struggles in locations including Palestine, the Golan Heights, Lebanon, and Iraq, this conversation will explore transnational linkages between efforts and struggles in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere. Speakers will discuss the power of community-driven activism, organising, and resistance to forms of environmental injustice such as water access denial, land dispossession, and forced exposure to toxins. The discussion will address how inclusive cities are a core component of a comprehensive approach to environmental justice, particularly in the wake of the August 2020 Beirut explosion. Speakers will discuss how recognising and understanding the experiences of communities contending with protracted environmental injustice at the local level are critical to fully understanding the implications of international environmental injustice and the climate crisis. How have narrow definitions of environmental justice shaped policies? And how are communities resisting this repression?

This event was a discussion around Wolfram Lacher's latest book Libya's Fragmentation: Structure and Process in Violent Conflict. After the overthrow of the Qadhafi regime in 2011, Libya witnessed a dramatic breakdown of centralized power. Countless local factions carved up the country into a patchwork of spheres of influence. Only the leader of one armed coalition, Khalifa Haftar, managed to overcome competitors and centralize authority over eastern Libya. But his attempt to seize power in the capital Tripoli failed due to tenacious resistance from dozens of armed groups in western Libya, and was ultimately defeated by Turkish intervention. Rarely does internal division and political fragmentation occur as radically as in Libya, where it has been the primary obstacle to the re-establishment of central authority. The book analyzes the forces that have shaped the country's trajectory since 2011. Based on hundreds of interviews with key actors in the conflict, it shows how war transformed pre-existing social structures. The book places the social ties of actors at the centre of analysis and explores the links between violent conflict and social cohesion. Wolfram Lacher is a Senior Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. His research focuses on conflict dynamics in Libya and the Sahel region, and he has done frequent field research in Libya since 2007. Lacher has been published in a range of journals and media outlets, including Survival, Mediterranean Politics, Foreign Affairs and The Washington Post. Sherine El Taraboulsi - McCarthy is an Interim Senior Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London. Her research focuses on humanitarian politics, conflict and security in Africa and the Middle East. She has published widely in academic and policy journals and outlets, and has been featured in a number of media outlets such as al Jazeera, the BBC, RT, Thomson Reuters, the Guardian and others. Sherine holds a doctorate from the Department of International Development and St. Cross College, University of Oxford. Jessica Watkins has been a Research Officer at the Middle East Centre since 2017. She works on the DfID sponsored Conflict Research Programme and her research focuses on regional and domestic drivers of conflict and peace in Iraq and Syria. Jessica has a BA from Cambridge University in Arabic and French, a Masters in International Relations from the War Studies Department, King’s College London, and a PhD on civil policing in Jordan, also from the War Studies Department. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSELibya

Following the signing of the US-brokered "Abraham Accord" between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel in September 2020, this webinar will explore the background and implications of this agreement for the Middle East and Arab-Israeli relations. It will address the reasons for exposing long-clandestine Israeli-Gulf links, the possible impact of this development on Israeli-Palestinian relations, and the likelihood of additional peace agreements between Israel and Arab countries. Ebtesam Al-Ketbi is Founder and President of the Emirates Policy Center, the UAE's leading foreign policy and security think tank. She is a professor of political science at the United Arab Emirates University and a member of the Consultative Commission of the Gulf Cooperation Council. She has served in several capacities, including: as the secretary general of the Gulf Development Forum; as a board member of the Association of Political Sciences; as a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Unity Studies Center; as a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Organization for Transparency; as a consultative board member of the Arab Thought Foundation; as a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Council for Social Sciences; and as a member of the core team behind the 2006 Arab Human Development Report, among others. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. Clive Jones is Professor of Regional Security in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. He moved to the School of Government and International Affairs in February 2013 where he now holds a Chair in Regional Security (Middle East). In 2011, he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society and between 2013-16 was the Chair of the European Association of Israel Studies (EAIS). In 2018, he was awarded a Visiting Research Chair at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Jones' research interests lie in three related areas: International Relations (particularly with regard to foreign and defence policy decision-making), Middle East studies (with a clear emphasis upon Israel and Gulf Security) and security studies (with emphasis upon low intensity conflict and the political and operational use of intelligence as it relates to the Middle East). Elie Podeh is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and the Bamberger and Fuld Professor in the History of the Muslim Peoples in the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He serves as the President of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Association of Israel (MEISAI) and is a board member of Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. His areas of study include Egypt, inter-Arab relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, education and culture in the Middle East, and Israeli foreign policy. From 2004–9 he served as the Head of the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University and from 2000–8 was the editor of Hamizrah Hehadash, the Hebrew journal of MEISAI. He has published and edited twelve books and more than seventy academic articles in English, Hebrew and Arabic. At present, he is writing a book on Israel’s secret diplomatic relations in the Middle East since 1948.

This event will be a discussion around the Omani Union (1952-1965), an overlooked political group that represents a seminal stage in the emergence of the leftist current in Oman. While the Dhofar Revolution has received increasing scholarly attention, comparatively little is known of the Jabal Akhdar (or Green Mountain) Uprising of the 1950s and early 60s, which sought independence for inner Oman under the rule of the Imam of the Ibadi sect. Despite the Imamate’s religious and tribal nature, the Omani Union’s educated and cosmopolitan cadres became closely aligned with it, imbuing its discourse with Arab nationalist, leftist, and Third Worldist ideas. They portrayed the “Omani Revolution” as parallel to those of Palestine and Algeria, forming part of the Pan-Arab awakening led by Nasserist Egypt, and a broader Afro-Asian struggle for independence. Moreover, they sought to transform the Imamate movement into a progressive patriotic front uniting all Omanis in armed struggle against the forces of reaction and colonialism. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its aims, the Omani Union pioneered and popularized ideas subsequently espoused by the better-known Omani leftist movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. Prominent among these ideas were Third Worldist socialism, a common Gulf identity and solidarity (with Oman as the region’s revolutionary center), and a “Greater” or “Natural” Omani homeland extending from Dhofar to the Trucial States. Talal Al-Rashoud is a Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Centre, and an Assistant Professor of Modern Arab history at Kuwait University. He obtained his PhD in history from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and holds master’s degrees in history and government from King’s College London and Georgetown University respectively. Al-Rashoud specialises in the history of modern ideological movements in the Gulf region and their transnational connections. His current research deals with the relationship between Arab nationalism and education in Kuwait (1911-1961), and Arab nationalist activism among Omani exiles in the 1950s and 1960s. Courtney Freer is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEOman

This event is the launch of Dr Jessica Watkins' latest paper Iran in Iraq: The Limits of 'Smart Power' Amidst Public Protest. Post 2003, Iran has shown greater aptitude than Western states for penetrating Iraqi politics and society, producing ‘smart power’ by manipulating the combination of identity politics, patronage networks, and coercion which have become prevalent in both. But Iranian interference has been a major source of grievance for Iraqis since the outbreak of the October 2019 popular protests, undermining the Islamic Republic’s non-coercive influence. This paper situates Iran’s influence-gaining strategies in Iraq within its broader regional foreign policy objectives. Focusing on heritage, religious authority, charitable activities and media broadcasting, the paper draws on Arabic and Farsi language social and traditional media sources to argue that while the Islamic Republic has invested in potential sources of ‘soft power’ to broadly appeal to Iraqis, it has prioritised core support groups whose activities are increasingly unpalatable to the public. The paper reflects on how international actors should respond to current expressions of anti-Iran sentiment in Iraq. Jessica Watkins is a Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre. She works on the DfID sponsored Conflict Research Programme and her research focuses on regional and domestic drivers of conflict and peace in Iraq and Syria. Jessica has a BA from Cambridge University in Arabic and French, a Masters in International Relations from the War Studies Department, King’s College London, and a PhD on civil policing in Jordan, also from the War Studies Department. Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi is Senior Research Fellow at the International Security Studies department at RUSI. Her research is concerned with security and geopolitics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Iraq’s foreign and domestic politics, drivers of radicalisation, and drones proliferation. She has nearly a decade of experience in international relations and security in the Middle East working in academia, think tanks and consultancies, including King’s College London, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Oxford Research Group, and various international consultancy firms. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEIraq

As the threat of further foreign military intervention looms over Libya, this webinar will explore the complicated relationships and tensions that exist amongst European states as well as actors such as Egypt, Turkey and Russia. The panel will also discuss the most important next steps to be taken by domestic and international actors to ensure a meaningful political settlement for Libyans. Jalel Harchaoui is a Research Fellow in the Conflict Research Unit at the Clingendael Institute. His work focuses on Libya, covering aspects such as the country’s security landscape and political economy. Jalel holds a master’s degree in Geopolitics from Paris 8 University. His doctoral research has focused on the international dimension of the Libyan conflict. A frequent commentator on Libya in the international press, he has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, Lawfare, Politique Étrangère, Middle East Eye, and Small Arms Survey. Elham Saudi is the co-founder and Director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya (LFJL). She is a solicitor with expertise in human rights and international humanitarian law. She has advised a number of Libyan, European and international bodies in relation to the Libyan conflict. She is Visiting Professor at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice and a former Associate Fellow in the International Law Programme at Chatham House. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSELibya

This is an online launch for Simon Mabon's latest book Houses Built on Sand: Violence, Sectarianism and Revolution in the Middle East. The events of the Arab Uprisings posed an existential challenge to sovereign power across the Middle East. Whilst popular movements resulted in the toppling of authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, other regimes were able to withstand these pressures. This book questions why some regimes fell whilst others were able to survive. Drawing on the work of political theorists such as Agamben and Arendt, Mabon explores the ways in which sovereign power is contested, resulting in the fragmentation of political projects across the region. Combining an innovative theoretical approach with interviews with people across the region and beyond, Mabon paints a picture of Middle Eastern politics dominated by elites seeking to maintain power and wealth, seemingly at whatever cost. This, for Mabon, is a consequence of the emergence and development of particular visions of political projects that harness or marginalise identities, communities, ideologies and faiths as mechanisms designed to ensure their survival. This book is essential reading for those interested in understanding why the uprisings took place, their geopolitical consequences, and why they are likely to happen again. The book is available to download for free here: https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/view/9781526126474/9781526126474.xml Simon Mabon is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Lancaster University where he is also the Director of the Richardson Institute and the Director of the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-Sectarianization project (SEPAD). He is the author of a range of books and articles on the Middle East and international politics, including Houses Built on Sand: Violence, Sectarianism and Revolution in the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2019), Saudi Arabia and Iran: Power and Rivalry in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2013), The Origins of ISIS: The Collapse of Order and Revolution in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2017), and The Struggle For Supremacy: Saudi Arabia and Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In 2016-7 he served as academic advisor to the House of Lords International Relations Committee. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEMiddleEast