Order From Ashes

No matter how big they are, protests alone do not create political change. They must be nurtured into something more enduring: a movement. Movements are neither protests nor organizations. Ivan Marovic cut his teeth as a student activist in Serbia in the 1990s and as a leader of the Optor movement that brought down Slobodan Milosevic. Since then, he has worked with dissidents and movements all ove...

For the last decade and more, popular outrage at police brutality has driven mass protests in both the Middle East and the West. Opposition to police excesses—from crackdowns on protests in Egypt and Iraq to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020—has highlighted the need for change.  In this episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of Order from Ashes— anthropolog...

From Poland to the studios of Fox News, reactionaries have recast progressive ideas about gender as a militant “gender ideology” that threatens society and its values. These politicians and pundits stoke this and other “moral panics”—mass frenzies of fear about practices, ideas, or identities that supposedly threaten a country’s innocence or moral character.  Moral panics are an increasingly promi...

Pundits, policymakers, and even academics often treat the Middle East as “exceptional”—a region of primordial violence and war, stuck in premodern social dynamics. But such conflict is not unique to the region—the United States and Europe have, of course, fought in multiple wars, though often not on their own soil. It is because of these assumptions that news coverage of the war in Ukraine is view...

A cursory survey of contemporary media, policy, and academic landscapes suggests that we live in an age of militias, in which they are increasingly prevalent actors and a growing political challenge in armed conflicts. But are there really more militias now than ever before? Or is there just more attention given to them?  In this episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of O...

Discussions of self-styled Islamist armed groups, such as the Islamic State, tend to heavily focus on gender and religion. Yet these elements are almost always never considered in analyses of white supremacist groups. What accounts for this difference and why does it matter? In this episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of Order from Ashes—we speak with scholar Amanda Rog...

A worldwide crisis in citizenship and rights has made it clear that no country’s struggle is entirely exceptional. Today’s episode of Order from Ashes kicks off a new season of the podcast: Transnational Trends in Citizenship. Today, Naira Antoun, director of Century International’s Transnational Trends in Citizenship project, talks with Century International director Thanassis Cambanis about the...

Even while Ukraine is experiencing tremendous suffering and dislocation since the Russian invasion, spillover effects are being felt all over the world. Syria is especially vulnerable, after ten years of war, with Russia as a major player in the Syrian conflict. On this episode of Order from Ashes, Century International fellows Sam Heller and Aron Lund assess some of the most immediate humanitaria...

A year and a half ago, the historic Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries—but did little for stability or democracy in the region, much less for Israeli–Palestinian peace. On this episode of Order from Ashes, Century International fellow Dahlia Scheindlin assesses the possibility of salvaging progressive foreign policy goals from the problematic agreements.  A...

Millions of Syrians depend on international aid that comes through a single border crossing—aid that depends on an agreement with Russia. Every year, and sometimes more frequently, the UN Security Council fiercely debates its tenuous agreement to keep open aid crossings into Syria. The number of open crossings has steadily diminished, and today, only a single access point remains, at Bab al-Hawa....

Syria faces an unprecedented food security crisis. Almost 60 percent of the country is now food-insecure, and more than a million Syrians cannot survive without food aid. The crisis has many causes, chief among them the country’s economic collapse and the depreciation of its currency. But disruptions to key imports such as wheat and fuel have also harmed food security. Western sanctions have exace...

Regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia have a hand in nearly every hot spot around the Middle East. The two rivals don’t control what happens, but they can play a major role in destabilizing battleground states—or calming tensions. There are many spots ripe for diplomacy: the war in Yemen, the simmering instability in Iraq and Syria, the political crisis in Lebanon. On this episode of Order from As...

  Tensions between Egypt and Turkey have run high for nearly a decade. Turkey has hosted Egyptian dissidents and opposition parties since the Egyptian coup in 2013; and the two countries support opposite sides in the Libyan War and have very nearly come into direct military conflict. Both are major U.S. partners, at least on paper: Turkey is a formal treaty ally in NATO, and Egypt is a top recipie...

Soon after taking office, President Biden announced that the United States would stop contributing offensive weapons to the war in Yemen. “ This war has to end ,” the president said. But the complex conflict in Yemen appears, to the contrary, to be heading for a new round of intense fighting, this time around the city of Marib.    On this episode of Order from Ashes, we talk to two analysts who kn...

On this episode of Order from Ashes, we talk with Dahlia Dassa Kaye, the lead author of a new RAND Corporation study that advocates a major overhaul of U.S. strategy in the Middle East. Washington can and should jettison legacy arrangements that no longer make sense. Multi-billion dollar military assistance deals with Israel, Egypt, and Jordan were conceived nearly fifty years ago. Big-ticket weap...

Ten years ago, the uprising in Tahrir Square toppled Egypt’s dictator and raised hopes for political reform across the Middle East. Great setbacks followed in Egypt, which now suffers under an even more repressive autocracy than the one it overthrew in 2011.  On this episode of Order from Ashes, close observers of Egyptian political life explore the still unfolding legacy of the unsuccessful revol...

Critics of hyper-militarized foreign policy argue that the abuses of America’s war on terror led in a direct line to the January 6 attempt to overturn the presidential election. On this episode of Order from Ashes, two advocates from the grassroots organization Win Without War dissect the connections between unaccountable foreign policy and surging authoritarianism. Democracy is threatened in the...

The challenge to American democracy has called into question some of the country’s deepest assumptions about exceptionalism. Fellows at The Century Foundation have been studying fragile democracy, authoritarianism, and militia rule in the Middle East for decades.  We apply some of the lessons learned from studying authoritarian relapse around the world—from the importance of calling a coup attempt...

A fearsome array of climate and environmental woes is straining the Middle East, worsening the existing crisis of poor governance and weak states in the region. On this episode of “Order From Ashes,” we speak to climate researcher Peter Schwartzstein about some of the specific environmental emergencies in the Middle East, and some of the possible solutions. The United States has many opportunities...

The United States always had difficulty squaring its record on the ground in the Middle East  with its efforts to promote rights and democracy. It’s even harder after the Trump presidency and a contested election, which featured the sitting president and many Republicans questioning the integrity of the electoral process without any basis in fact.   The Middle East’s long authoritarian relapse inc...

Egypt’s 2013 military coup and crackdown left the Muslim Brotherhood more adrift than ever before in its ninety-two-year history.   With tens of thousands of members surviving in exile in Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood is undergoing new strains. Youth in the diaspora have experimented with new, liberal approaches to life, politics, and religion, pitting them against a rigid and aging Brotherhood l...

Washington, D.C. has been the most generous donor in the world to humanitarian aid efforts for Syrian civilians. But United States policy has also been bent on overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.   On this episode of “Order from Ashes,” we talk with Syria-watchers Daphne McCurdy and Sam Heller about ways the United States can provide meaningful assistance to Syrian people , without endo...

Mohammed Bin Salman quickly shook up the old sleepy way of doing business in Saudi Arabia when he effectively took power in 2015. He took on the Saudi establishment, sidelining the clergy and other royals. He also quickly spent the international goodwill invested in him with a series of destabilizing moves, including a destructive war in Yemen and the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.   No...

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, displaced populations and conflict zones were considered especially vulnerable, driving early fears that the Middle East would be especially hard hit. The first wave of the pandemic shook Iraq and Iran, but the worst fears did not materialize, at least not initially.  Now, however, cases are increasing across the region. The pandemic is straining areas alread...

Lebanon has served for decades as one of the world’s leading experiments in extreme libertarianism, illustrating what happens to a society with little to no government regulation or social protection.  The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the weaknesses of a health system suffering from corruption and gaping inequalities between public and private hospitals. What role have neoliberal internationa...