In the West, media coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan is framed by military and political concerns, resulting in a simplistic picture of ageless barbarity, terrorist safe havens, and peoples in need of either punishment or salvation. Under the Drones looks beyond this limiting view to investigate real people on the ground, and to analyze the political, social, and economic forces that shape their lives. Understanding the complexity of life along the 1,600-mile border between Afg...

In Afghanistan under Taliban rule, women were forbidden to work or go to school, they could not leave their homes without a male chaperone, and they could not be seen without a head-to-toe covering called the burqa. A woman’s slightest infractions were met with brutal public beatings. That is why it is both appropriate and incredible that the sole effective civil resistance to Taliban rule was made by women. Veiled Courage reveals the remarkable bravery and spirit of the ...

The Middle East in the 21st century has witnessed a game-changing rollercoaster ride that has transformed relationships across the boards. Turkey underwent the most dramatic changes of its democratic history, propelling it into the role of major regional actor. The "Arab Spring" cast the region into political and social turmoil. US-led wars devastated the lands and peoples of several countries with widespread, rippling repercussions. And the balance of global power shifted dramatically, br...

In this provocative and timely book, Middle East expert Lee Smith overturns long-held Western myths and assumptions about the Arab world, offering advice for America’s future success in the region.Seeking the motivation behind the September 11 attacks, Smith moved to Cairo, where he discovered that the standard explanation—a clash of East and West—was simply not the case. Middle East conflicts have little to do with Israel, the United States, or the West in general, but are endemic...

One of the most important developments in the modern history of the Middle East, the so-called Arab Spring began in Tunisia in December 2010, bringing down dictators, sparking a civil war in Libya, and igniting a bloody uprising in Syria. Its long-term repercussions in Egypt and elsewhere remain unclear. Now one of the world's leading Islamic thinkers examines and explains it, in this searching, provocative, and necessary book.Time Magazine named Tariq Ramadan one of the most important inn...

Since Pakistan was founded in 1947, its army has dominated the state. The military establishment has locked the country in an enduring rivalry with India, with the primary aim of wresting Kashmir from it. To that end, Pakistan initiated three wars over Kashmir-in 1947, 1965, and 1999-and failed to win any of them. Today, the army continues to prosecute this dangerous policy by employing non-state actors under the security of its ever-expanding nuclear umbrella. It has sustained a proxy war...

After the 9/11 Commission concluded in 2004 that the U.S. was engaged in a war with terrorists and never realized it, they reasoned that “a failure of imagination” had prevented us from seeing terrorism coming. In effect, Americans were simply unable, or in fact disabled, to fathom that there were people who hated and opposed our democracy with such ferocity. But after billions of dollars and almost a decade fighting a war in the Middle East, will we miss the threat again?With pene...

In The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power , Professor As`ad AbuKhalil confronts the contradictory nature of Saudi Arabia—questions that both the Saudi government, long shrouded in mystery, and the United States government, ever protective of its own interests, seem unwilling to answer.In this unsparing probe into the history and power structure of the kingdom, Professor AbuKhalil, author of Bin Laden, Islam, and America’s New "War on Terrorism", affor...

This pioneering explanation of the Arab Spring will define a new era of thinking about the Middle East.In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings that have engulfed multiple countries and political climes from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen, were driven by a 'Delayed Defiance' - a point of rebellion against domestic tyranny and globalized disempowerment alike - that signifies no less than the end of Postcolonialism. Sketching a new geograp...

US conservatives have long trumpeted a hard line--and even US military action--against Syria. Yet the current unrest and the regime's apparent lack of concern about international opinion after its brutal crackdown on Dera'a show that Syria's immediate neighbors support the dictatorial Baath regime as a better alternative than the uncertainties of a democracy that might well be dominated by Islamic parties.Will Syria emerge as a democracy? And, if the strict bands of the security st...

As popular uprisings spread across the Middle East, popular wisdom often held that the Gulf States would remain beyond the fray. In Sectarian Gulf, Toby Matthiesen paints a very different picture, offering the first assessment of the Arab Spring across the region. With first-hand accounts of events in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, Matthiesen tells the story of the early protests, and illuminates how the regimes quickly suppressed these movements.Pitting citizen agains...

The Middle East has long been fraught with tension and volatility. However, the recent Arab uprisings have intensified instability, turning this 'hot-spot' into a veritable tinderbox whose potential for implosion has far-reaching regional and global consequences.In this short book, leading Middle East scholar Mohammed Ayoob argues that the Arab Spring has both changed and charged some of the region’s thorniest problems - from the rise of political Islam to Iran’s nuclear ambitions,...