Pomeps Conversations

On this week's podcast, Alexander Thurston speaks about Boko Haram and its origins and growth. Thurston is an Assistant Professor of Teaching for African Studies Program at Georgetown University and a Fellow at the Wilson Center. His new book is Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement. "This is my attempt at a documentary history of Boko Haram. To try to draw on especially diverse written sources to reconstruct the trajectory of the movement from the time when the founders were growing up in Nigeria in the 1970s up to close to the present as it was possible to get," said Thurston. "These groups are just very hard to completely eradicate. A proto-state that they carve out can be destroyed. It may take several years, as in the case of ISIS or it may take a very short time, as in the case of Boko Haram. But then after that, you get this long term spate of terrorist attacks. And that's a lot harder to stamp out."

On this week's podcast, Laurence Louër speaks with Marc Lynch Shia Islamic movements in the Middle East. She speaks about Bahrain's situation. "It is really a case of what I call the domestication of Shia politics because Al-Wefaq was born in 2001 as a project to unify all the different strands of Shia political Islam in Bahrain. Ali Salman, who was the head of that, wanted to reconcile the Shirazi activists and the pro-Iranian activists because the two were really rivals." Louër is a research fellow at SciencePo and author of Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf.

Marc Lynch speaks with Susanne Dahlgren about Yemen. Dahlgren is the author of Contesting Realities: The Public Sphere and Morality in Southern Yemen, and is a Visiting Research Associate Professor at National University of Singapore as well as a Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. Dahlgren speaks about the history of southern Yemen and its union to become present-day Yemen in 1990. "In the beginning it was a happy union, but very soon it turned out to be very ugly politics from the perspective of the Southerners. Things went really bad in 1993– or the three years after the unity— and that led to the first inter-Yemeni war. The current war, which started in 2015 is considered by southern Yemenis as the inter-Yemeni war." "They think that the the Houthi's movement—together with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh— want to conquer South Yemen militarily. They have taken up arms in order to resist and they are working in cooperation with with the Saudi war coalition" said Dahlgren. "In Y

This week's podcast explores Palestinian refugees today, with guest Nadya S. Hajj, author of Protection Amid Chaos: The Creation of Property Rights in Palestinian Refugee Camps. "I started visiting [Palestinian refugee] camps in 2004. The camps looked really different than these impermanent types of places— and people were doing much more than surviving. They were actually thriving. Physically you could see this: over time, their homes had become more permanent structures. There were businesses. There were paved roads. There was a real estate market. There was a lot of entrepreneurship going on. And institutional literature and economics literature didn't really explain why would people do that if they knew they were in a refugee camp. Why would someone invest in the world around them?" said Hajj, assistant professor of political science at Wellesley College. "I started to think that property rights were one key tool for creating order. They served more than just an economic purpose," said Hajj. "It wasn't

On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Toby Matthiesen about sectarianism in the Gulf, particularly looking at Saudi Arabia and Iran. "What I'm going to try to do in my new project is to look at the impact of the Iranian revolution on Shia movements— and on the regional more broadly— but also the reaction towards Iran," said Matthiesen. "I think we are living in a new era. More spaces have opened up for confrontations, and there's a stronger I 'internationalization' of particular, local conflicts— and a connection to each other, and a correction of that to the broader kind of Saudi-Iranian or Iranian-versus-a-lot-of-others rivalry, which was there to a certain extent before, but the Syrian war has just opened up." Matthiesen is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Relations of the Middle East at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He is the author of several recent books including The Other Saudis: Shi’ism, Dissent and Sectarianism recently published by Cambr

Kevan Harris speaks about his new book, A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran. Harris is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "In the book, I lay out the main social welfare organizations— both that preceded the 1979 revolution and the ones that germinated afterwards. And then I asked the question, 'How can we explain the expansion of both social policy organizations and access to these organizations by the majority of the population because expansion of social policy and access to social welfare has grown since 1979," said Harris. "Very few scholars have looked at the institutions themselves, and historically trace the development of them. So I ask why, and how, did a particular social welfare organizations in Iran grow— and continue to be created?" "Iran is not Lebanon. Iran has a population of 80 million. You can't explain mass politics in Iran through single anecdotal stories of clientelism. We get surprises on a regular basis in Iranian p

"There are market forces that explain why jihadists succeed in civil wars— when so many other types of groups look like they should have traction on the ground— don't," says Aisha Ahmad. "In order for your movement to succeed, and you have enough money to buy the bullets and feed your foot soldiers. And so there is a logic that's taking place behind the scenes that explains why these seemingly illogical movements rise to power." "Where jihadists do well is in a vacuum in the political chaos of a failed state," says Ahmad. Ahamd is the author of Jihad & Co.: Black Markets and Islamist Power, which looks at financing through two sets of case studies: the Afghanistan/Pakistan cluster and Somalia. "When we look at these sorts of war economies, we need to have a holistic understanding of the kind of businesses that take place— which span both licit and illicit activities," says Ahmad. Ahmad is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, a senior fellow at Massey College, and the co-director of the Isl

Wendy Pearlman speaks on our podcast this week about her new book, We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria. "Ultimately, I was asking people, 'Tell me about your story.'" said Pearlman. "And the people I interviewed told me anything they wanted to tell me." "The book has a trajectory and has an arc. It begins with a sense of fear, intimidation, and silence— a sense of futility under authoritarianism. Then it moves through the euphoria of people participating in protest. Then it becomes increasingly dark, increasingly fragmented— and by the end there are stories of despair." Pearlman's book is structured in different sections outlining Syrians' experiences through its modern history (you can watch Pearlman's book talk at GW here). "I thought, 'What what does a reader need to know to understand Syria? What are the kinds of questions that occur to most readers about what does this regime all about?'" Pearlman said. "All the kinds of things that I thought readers might want to know— and the ki

This week's guest is Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, who is the author of a new book, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons. Braut-Hegghammer is an associate professor of political science at the University of Oslo. "The main ambition [of my book] is really to tell a history of these nuclear weapons programs and set them in the context of these regimes. One of my frustrations has been that many have discounted and suggested that the program wasn't successful— and that more broadly that authoritarian leaders will inevitably fail in their efforts to pursue nuclear weapons. Now, with North Korea, we can we can see that that doesn't seem right." "The Iraqi program was actually on the threshold of success in 1991, when the Gulf War interrupted the program. Whereas the Libyan program dwindled down until 2003, without ever coming close to any kind of success and breakthrough," Braut-Hegghammer says. "These are very different outcomes even though neither country ended up with nuclear weapon

Carter Malkasian speaks about the recent history of conflict in Iraq and how it it laid the foundation for the Islamic State to flourish. His new book is Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State. "The question confronting every tribal leader in Anbar was: 'How do I stand up against the Islamic state if that means siding with the government— and siding against Islam?'" Malkasian also speaks about the way the military action has changed— and what lessons we should take from Iraq. "I think if you talk to generals in the military today, you would get a much greater degree of skepticism about what one can attain. There is more worry about, 'If we're doing here is going to last? Can there be success?' I think you have much more skepticism of, 'You can have complete victory.'" "I think this should give us pause for thinking about future interventions. So we're going into an intervention. We should be thinking, 'Well, if we're going to be putting troops there, we're going to have

"The fact that Qatar is, after all, a tiny state— but clearly with a lot of leverage that can amplify their message." Kristian Coates Ulrichsen speaks about the crisis within the GCC with Marc Lynch in our first POMEPS podcast in the launch of our fall season. Ulrichsen is a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. His latest book is The United Arab Emirates: Power, Politics and Policy-Making. Ulrichsen explains this summer's diplomatic showdown in historical context. "We've been here before. Like many other people, I was taken quite by surprise when this whole crisis erupted again. I had thought that the Qatari decision in September 2015 to send a thousand troops to Yemen signified the return of Qatar to the GCC fold."

Caitlin Talmadge talks about her her book 'The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes.' Her book works to explain why authoritarian militaries sometimes fight very well―and the opposite. Talmadge is an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. "In my book, I present a different argument noting that we really have to look— not only at regimes military capabilities an external threats that it faces— but we have to look at the internal threats that may be facing a particular regime. In particular, in situations where authoritarian regimes consider their own military perhaps to be a liability because the military actually has the ability to overthrow the regime in a coup." In the podcast, Talmadge goes into detail on the dynamics of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and what it says about each country's governments.

Neil Ketchley speaks about his new book Egypt in a Time of Revolution: Contentious Politics and the Arab Spring. Ketchley is a Lecturer in Middle East Politics, King's College London. "The book really tries to make a contribution by drawing on a range of new and unique data sources and methods— from analyzing video footage of crowd dynamics at Tahrir, police radio transcripts from the formative early days of the mobilization, to event data from Arabic-language newspapers. In terms of the kind of a conceptual contribution, the argument is really geared around an assumption and belief: that the dynamics of street level mobilization— and contentious politics more generally— are really formative in their own right. The book argues that the ways in which Egyptians banded together and ousted Mubarak were not some kind of manifestations of cheering grievances, but also powerfully constituted the postman-Mubarak process." "And if you want to understand the kind of key questions and episodes, you really have to take

How did the idea of a unified global Muslim community come about? That's the question Cemil Aydin and Marc Lynch tackle in this week's podcast. Aydin's new book explores the how the world's 1.5 billion Muslims have become seen as a single religious/political bloc. "In many ways, I wanted to engage with the contemporary discussions of Muslim unity, Muslim solidarity or Muslim exceptionalism by going back to the last 200 years to try to understand the genealogy and the roots of the idea of Muslims constituting a global community and a shared political project," says Aydin, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his book, Aydin makes the argument that up until the 19th century, there really was no Muslim world. "That doesn't mean there were many different Muslims in different parts of the world. They have always had different global or regional imaginations— but it doesn't match with our current conceptions of a Muslim world extending from Senegal or Morocco to

Protest, Democracy, & Violence in the New Middle East: Conversation with Steven Cook (S. 5, Ep. 37) by Marc Lynch

Iran holds presidential elections later this week, and Marc Lynch talks with M. Ali Kadivar about what to expect. Kadivar is a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute. "Ahmadinejad's era was significant for several reasons, but one reason was that the process started to replace the old guard of the Islamic Republic with a new set of elites," said Kadivar. "I think Rouhani represents the different strands: one is the old guard again, being back and exerting control. The other is the social support that Rouhani has. A lot of the reformist people who ruled for democratic change now see Rouhani as the most viable candidate that can push forward their agenda." "An interesting thing about the conservative candidates is that you see the conservative discourse is very weak in their electoral platforms. They don't talk about Islamic values or the Western invasion the culture of Iran. Most of what they're talking is the economic promises," said Kadivar. "In a way, I can see this election as kind of

On this week's POMEPS podcast, Marc Lynch talks with Peter Krause, an assistant professor at Boston College. Krause's new book, Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win, focuses on the internal balance of power among nationalist groups, who cooperate with each other to establish a new state while simultaneously competing to lead it. "The book itself answers several questions to people who study national movements, nationalism, or political violence. The first question is why some nations get states and others don't," said Krause. "These groups simultaneously have, what I call, organizational goals— which is, they want to have power. They want to have power and notoriety. They want to survive. They want to increase their membership. At the same time they have these strategic goals of statehood or independence. From the work I've done, it's clear to me that groups and individuals in them care about both of these objectives," said Krause. "My argument is simply that: most of the time you ne

Nadia Marzouki explores how the topic of Islam has become so contentious in America. Marzouki says her research showed her that controversies around Muslims living in America don't just express Islamophobia. "They betray and express a deeper discomfort and unease with an understanding of law, an understanding of rights, and an understanding of equal democracy. This is really what's at stake in the conversations among the disputes around mosques, Sharia law, and also— in a more minor way— the headscarf... or various forms of religious rituals related to the Islamic communities." As an observer from Europe, Marzouki says, "It was really surprising to see how similar all the rhetorical tropes animating anti-Muslim movements were similar in Europe and the United States. This was all the more surprising because all the sociologies of Islam in Europe and United States. You don't have the same Muslim communities. They don't come from the same ethnic backgrounds. They don't have the same socio-economic level. They

Lisel Hintz speaks about what lead to and the significance of this weekend's constitutional referendum in Turkey. "The question: is how long will [Erdogan] stay in power? Right now, this could leave him in power up until 2029— possibly even longer, depending on some certain circumstances. We suspect that he's probably grooming you know his son-in-law, who's currently a minister, to to take his place. Will he be willing to give up those reins? We've seen successive purges of his own party from those who don't agree with him. It is important to go back and understand the AKP's trajectory, which was that not everyone agreed with Erdogan," said Hintz. "It's going to be fascinating to see— both from institutional and from a personal perspective— how Erdogan plans to continue this, particularly given that Turkey— from an economic standpoint— is in a very fragile state." "From an identity politics perspective— and also just sort of an institutional party politics perspective as well— not a whole lot has changed."

"One of the most interesting puzzles to emerge out of contentious Islamist movements is the fact that these movements are not united," says Mohammed M. Hafez on this week's POMEPS Conversations podcast. "The common finding today is that— in civil wars, insurgencies, and civil conflicts in general— these movements are fragmented, they're competitive, and sometimes they're fratricidal. Hafez talks about these fratricidal movements globally and throughout the Middle East region. Hafez is an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Hafez focuses on Islamic fundamentalism, radicalization and counter-radicalization.