Radio Intifada by SWANA (South and West Asia and North Africa) Region Radio

SWANA collective member and guest co-host Richard Ohanian interview our guest, Richard Giragosian. Their vital conversation discusses the consequences of the six week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia. This show is a continuation of the important coverage of the Armenia-Azerbaijan war that SWANA has been providing since October. Richard Giragosian is...

SWANA collective members discuss Armenia and Algeria. The Armenia-Azerbaijan war has ended with Russian mediation and a one-sided deal was reached that supports the Azeri position. Some call it a capitulation of Armenia and argue that Armenians are against it even if the government is not, since the deal in 1994 negotiations led by the MINSK group failed. What are the chances that this one-sided d...

The entire SWANA collective considers how the US  elections impact the SWANA region. We discuss how this change in administration could reverberate  through Artsakh, Turkey, Palestine, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan.

SWANA collective member sits down to discuss The Empty Room with Author Sadia Abbas. Set in Pakistan from 1969  to about 1979, the novel tells the story of Tahira, a woman who is a  painter but finds herself trapped in an unhappy marriage facing hostile  in-laws. Her story coincides with a crucial period in Pakistani history,  the uprising in Bangladesh that would lead both to brutal repression by...

SWANA collective members focus on the Nagorno-Karabakh war and its repercussions in the region. They discuss the alliances, such as India’s support of Armenia in this conflict, and Pakistan's and Israel's support of Azerbaijan and aiding and siding with  Turkey. They are joined by guest Mihran Toumajan, Western Region Director of Armenian Assembly of America. Founded in 1972 and headquarte...

To shed light on the causes and likely outcomes of the recent rise in sectarian antagonism in Pakistan, SWANA collective members speak with Dr. Sadia Abbas, Professor of English and of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, Newark. She is the author of At Freedom’s Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament (Fordham University Press, 2014), which won the modern Language Association’s...

SWANA collective members discuss news from the region. How  are academicians and civil society in the SWANA region addressing  normalization with Israel? They also review the reasons for the  recent visits of African Command (AFRICOM) leadership to Tunisia and  Algeria. Finally, they discuss the recent U.S. sanctions against  Iran, and exchange ideas of where the US is  taking us with these sancti...

SWANA collective members speak to Yeghia Tashjian, Manal Kahale and Elizabeth Boulous. Tashjian speaks with us about the aftermath of the explosion in Lebanon, the international aid response, and the role of corruption and the political system that culminated in this disaster. Kahale and Boulous tells us about Light for Lebanon , partnered with Light Reach Network , that is providing important sol...

SWANA members dig deeper into Turkey’s and France’s strategies in the Eastern part of  the Mediterranean and how they impact regional stability in Northern  Africa. What impact might this latest conflict have on France’s designs  for Mali, for Libya, for Niger and Chad? We will also be looking at  Turkey’s new imperial design in Libya. 

Join SWANA collective members in a conversation with Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, Founding Director of  the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University. A couple of weeks ago, SWANA Region Radio covered Israel’s recent “deal” with the United Arab Emirates and its actually ongoing project of annexation by way of housing demolitions, settlement and infrastruct...

Join SWANA collective members as they speak with Raed Jarrar, on Israel’s much trumpeted “peace deal” with the United Arab Emirates, its actual ongoing annexation of the West Bank and the modes of persisting Palestinian resistance.

We sit down with Professor Jeff Sacks and Poet Fady Joudah to speak about famous Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Fady Joudah has published three poetry collection and four of poetry in translation. He has received the Yale Series, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Griffin Poetry Prize for his work. Textu is his most recent poetry collection and A Map of Signs and Scents, the selected poems of Amjad N...

Join SWANA collective members as they discuss recent developments in Libya and the repercussions they could have in the SWANA region.

Join SWANA Region Radio collective members and guest author Janet Biehl, to talk about Murray Bookchin, Democratic Confederalism, Abdullah Öcalan, and what this means in the Kurdish region and beyond.

We sit down with award winning author and professor Andrew Ross to discuss his recent book Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel from Verso: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2926-stone-men . “They demolish our houses while we build theirs.” This is how a Palestinian stonemason, in line at a checkpoint outside  a Jerusalem suburb, described his life to Andrew Ross. Palestinian  “stone men,”...

Nasser Hussain wrote extensively on colonial law and the state of emergency and on the history of counter-insurgency. Two years before his untimely death in November 2015 from a tragic illness, Nasser had published a brilliant and prescient article on drone warfare in the Boston Review: http://www.bostonreview.net/world/hussain-drone-phenomenology. Today, five years after the original interview, h...