Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The West courts Central Asia

Rules of the game

 “ These are not the refugees we are used to…These people are Europeans…These people are intelligent, they are educated people…This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists." The limitations of humanity

“The regime’s endurance is not simply a result of its authoritarianism; its popularity runs much deeper than that. To understand it, we must grasp three major factors that most commentators and opposition politicians refuse to recognize.” On the Turkish elections

Surprise! Surprise! Rejecting apartheid label for economic, security and technological ties Related Keir Starmer’s complicity in oppression at home and abroad تم تخصيص جزءً صغيراً في المقال الآتي للإجابة على سبب تأييد بريطانيا الفصل العنصري

A review of Helen Thompson’s Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century

“Approaching each other with a clear and direct agenda, mostly revolving around the mutual benefits of boosting trade, investment, and business in a win-win situation, was determinant. The power fatigue resulting from following highly contrasting geopolitical and ideological agendas and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the post-2011 era encouraged the conflicting regional players to follow pragmatic behaviour and prioritise the economy, business, trade, and interest-based agendas rather than ideological ones. The regional and international dynamics that have led to this rare moment of de-escalation and reconciliation among the different regional players, in particular, are not constant and subject to sudden changes. Besides Egypt, several Arab countries are severely exposed. If the war is set to prolong, then one should not rule out that a looming food crisis coupled with skyrocketing food prices would trigger uprisings. Despite the very positive regional atmosphere resulting ...

In the discourses of geopolitics the reemergent veil is an emblem of many things, prominent among which is its meaning as the rejection of the West. But when one considers why the veil has this meaning in the late twentieth century, it becomes obvious that, ironically, it was the discourses of the West, and specifically the discourse of colonial domination, that in the first place determined the meaning of the veil in geopolitical discourses and thereby set the terms for its emergence as a symbol of resistance. In other words, the reemergent veil attests, by virtue of its very power as a symbol of resistance, to the uncontested hegemonic diffusion of the discourses of the West in our age. And it attests to the fact that, at least as regards the Islamic world, the discourses of resistance and rejection are inextricably informed by the languages and ideas developed and disseminated by the West to no less a degree than are the languages of those openly advocating emulation of the West or ...

Definition of ‘globalisation’ aside, it is very interesting to follow the arguments of liberals. BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink’s proclamation last week stated that “the Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalisation we have experienced over the last three decades”. As he put it, the war marks “a turning point in the world order of geopolitics, macroeconomic trends, and capital markets”. Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times argues that  “we won’t see a 1930s-style meltdown but rather a new kind of regionalisation that will replace what came before. I’ve been arguing for some time that regional trading blocs are the only way forward given the mercantilist reality of China’s current system, which is simply incompatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization. I think the big question is whether we move towards a bipolar system, with the US and Europe (and whichever OECD nations decide to come along with them) creating some new structures, particularly f...

Saudi-led coalition loses its grip

An excerpt from a new book    Global Middle East - Into the Twenty-First Century

The Syrian Revolution Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death

 Macron’s political extremism

A good framing of the big picture. But like all reformist leftists, no class analysis, no alternative such as nationalising the key sectors of the economy, genuine democracy and transforming the structure of capitalism for the benefits of the majority and the needs of humanity and nature by doing away of the profit motive. May be given the rise of the far right, racism, xenophobia, etc no radical solutions could be envisioned. Only modest ones (!) "In a horrific mind-warp, advanced eonomies suddenly find themselves facing the kinds of dilemma habitually faced by poor countries. We don’t have the tools. In the poor world, the everyday result is that children are stunted and families are impoverished. Millions die for lack of treatment. Covid-19 has delivered a taste of that to the rich world. Whereas one can reasonably say that giant structures such as capitalism and geopolitics stand in the way of addressing the climate crisis, the same is not true of Covid-19. The  cost of v...

"Liberalism has always contained different shades, and its dominant version has varied across countries and periods. In the capitalist world, going back to the eighties, the line of division separating a liberal politics from a politics of the left is their respective attitudes to the existing order of things: does it require structural change or situational adjustment? Between states, the ‘liberal international order’ has for thirty years been the touchstone of geopolitical reason: free markets, free trade, free movement of capital and other human rights, policed by the most powerful nation on earth with help from its allies, in accordance with its rules and its sanctions, its rewards and its retributions. Within states, ‘neoliberalism’: privatization of goods and services, deregulation of industries and of finance, fiscal retrenchment, de-unionization, weakening of labour, strengthening of capital—compensated by recognition of gender and multicultural claims. The first has ...

A couple of days ago someone asked me a mainstream question: "when will the war between Sunnis and Shiite end?" Briefly, — Some Alawite (Shi'a) generals and officers defected from the Syrian army at the beggining of the uprising and joined the Free Syrian Army. — The Sunni bourgeoisie in Damascus is not fightng Assad. — The main force which has been fighting ISIS on the ground is a Kurdish one. The Kurds are Sunnis and ISIS fighters are Sunnis, too. — Many Syrian Sunnis who have been displaced because of the war have fled to "Shiite" areas. They haven't been killing each other. — The rest is geopolitics. Example: The Northern Alliance in Afghanista,  although it included some Shiites, was mainly led by a Sunni-Tajik, Ahmed Shah Masoud. The Aliance was supported by Iran, among others such as Pakistan and the US. Masoud was assassinated by Taliban, a Sunni organisation.

"The Syrians who are fighting their state are indefensible. Too bearded to be trusted, fratricidal on top of that, they are defying the laws of geopolitics in the Middle East, and could very well provoke World War III. Syrians, then, must not be defended. But what can be done faced with the spectacle of indignity streamed almost live from Syria since 2011? This spectacle is unprecedented. Never before in history has a crime against humanity been filmed day by day, turned int o a spectacle with the cooperation of both victims and executioners, broadcast by the big television networks and streamed on social media, intercut with ad breaks, consumed by the general public, and commodified by the art market. At the time of Auschwitz, only God was supposed to see what happened in the showers. It was only after the liberation of the camps that accredited filmmakers could capture evidence of the crimes, which were recognized as such by the legal authorities. Those images, however, were co...

Our men in Tashkent: Murray and Karimov The West and Karimov's Anti-terrorism Charade

"Regardless of whether Erdogan is at its helm, Turkey will continue down its expansionist path, a path that was unlikely to be short-circuited by a haphazard coup led by a motley group of Islamists and nationalists. Turkey is on this course, at this stage in history, because geopolitics wills it. But nobody said it would be a smooth ride... Thus [Turkey's policy]  contradictions will "become more frequent, and  Turkey's actions may appear almost schizophrenic . A Coup as Audacious as Turkey's Future

The Question of Sectarianism in Middle East Politics Over the centuries there have been many variations and mutations in the ‘orthodox’ as well as the sectarian formations, and the divisions only broke into conflicts when they were politicised into struggles for power or resources. For the most part, various Shi`ite sects lived quietly under Sunni rule, and were, mostly, left alone. Like elsewhere in the pre-modern world, communities were, typically, isolated in separate localities, except in the main cities  where they often occupied different quarters. Politicisation came with social conflicts, rebellions and geopolitical confrontations