Posts Tagged ‘Middle East’

Homs, Syria after five years of war

Drone video footage shows there’s no life left in Syria’s third largest city

My pick for travel in 2016 is Iran

As I write in Travel + Leisure, for the traveler the nuclear accord makes Iran newly accessible

On the attacks in Paris

Le Ca Rillon and Le Petit Cambodge, both hit by Islamic State, were two of my favorites in Paris


Charles de Gaulle campaign poster

After the attacks by Islamic State in Paris the old slogan “With You, For You” is fitting

The late Omar Sharif in a magazine called Alive

I remember Omar Sharif best for a 1997 interview in a forgotten magazine in Cairo

Syrian-American composer who plays for peace

A symphony for Syria reminds me of Sarajevo and the hope that cosmopolitan tolerance will survive


My family in central Turkey, 1948

A nothing moment on their travels that seems to capture a life now lost

Bashar al-Assad stonewalls Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose gets in a theater of the absurd debate with Assad and loses

Activists in Raqqa exposing the Islamic State

We owe a great debt to the people documenting the devastation around them


The cultural destruction of war in the Middle East

My beloved Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo may not be a total loss but much is elsewhere

The amazing marginalia of In Search of Fatima

A reader hostile to everything lets her feelings be known

Were the Turks behind the sarin gas attacks in Syria?

Obama publicly blamed Assad but Seymour Hersh contends Erdoğan was trying to force an attack


Sisi builds his regime

Joshua Stacher explains the violence and repression in Egypt

My favorite museum in Cairo damaged by a car bomb

Terror attack on Egyptian police HQ badly damages the Museum of Islamic Art, an overlooked marvel

98.1% of Egyptians vote for the Sisi constitution

By comparison, Mubarak only claimed 88.6% of Egyptians voted for him in his last election in 2005


Two constitutions, one triumph

Tunisia got it right with their new constitution while Egypt reverted to old authoritarian habits

Dead, but right, in Beirut

Hezbollah can’t kill everyone in Lebanon who believes it should give up its weapons

Interview with History by Oriana Fallaci, 1976

Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci lost the plot at the end but she was a wonder in her prime


Prayer of Fear by Mosireen

The media collective Mosireen perfectly captures the current moment in Egypt

Robin Wright carves up the Middle East

Wright is wrong and her analysis risks looking prescriptive rather than descriptive

Was the coup in Egypt even necessary?

Morsi might have been forced from power anyway, but the military short circuited that


Draft articles of impeachment for Morsi now

Even elected leaders can lose their legitimacy; Egypt needs a legal statement to that effect

Video drones over Taksim Square in Istanbul

When the police control the streets, video drones can see what they are up to

Egypt Independent is strangled in its crib

Independent journalism is a bad business everywhere but in Egypt politics makes it worse