Somalia


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Students and Resistance in Palestine


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Exploring the Palestinian Student Movement from an historical and sociological perspective, this book demonstrates how Palestinian national identity has been built in the absence of national institutions, whilst emphasizing the role of higher education as an agent of social change, capable of crystallizing patterns of national identity. Focussing on the political and social activities of Palestinian students in two arenas – the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian diaspora, Students & Resistance covers the period from 1952-2000. The book investigates the commonality of the goal of the respective movements in securing independence and the building of a sovereign Palestinian state, whilst simultaneously comparing their development, social tone and the differing challenges each movement faced. Examining a plethora of sources including; Palestinian student magazines, PLO documents, Palestinian and Arabic news media, and archival records, to demonstrate how the Palestinian Student Movements became a major political player, this book is of interest to scholars and students of Palestinian History, Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.




Somalia in Transition Since 2006


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This book picks up where its predecessor, Somalia between Jihad and Restoration, left off, examining international efforts to stabilize war-torn Somalia. It analyzes major political events in Somalia in the years since 2006, examining opportunities for restoration of the country based on the United Nations-backed plan known as the "Roadmap for the End of the Transition," improved security conditions, and international economics and financial support. The author notes that the time of transition may be over, according to the timetable of the United Nations, but it is clear that the work of transformation is just beginning. In considering whether political and social chaos in Somalia is ending, Shay sees two possible futures. One possibility is the establishment of a reform government that unifies Somali society; another is continued strife that accelerates Somalia's descent into the endless violence of a failed state. Shay believes the international approach to Somalia requires a thorough reassessment. He argues it has been limited to two Western priorities-terrorism and piracy-while largely ignoring domestic issues of critical concern to Somalis. As a result, many Somalis have come to view those participating in the international effort as a foreign occupation.




Armed Groups and the Balance of Power


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This new book provides a framework for understanding the international relations of armed groups, including terrorist organizations, insurgencies and warlords, which play an increasingly important role in the international system. Specifically, the book argues that such groups can be understood as taking part in the balance of power with states and other armed groups, as they are empirically sovereign non-state actors that are motivated by the pursuit of power and exist as part of an anarchic, self-help system. This radically new approach offers a renewed conceptualization of Neorealism, and provides new insights into debates about sovereignty, non-state actors, new wars, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency. The approach is illustrated through case studies on Somali warlords, the security complex between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), Sudan and Uganda, as well as Al Qaeda. The book provides insights into such issues as how non-state actors can be integrated into structural theories of international relations, and also offers pragmatic methodologies for the foreign policy or military practitioner, such as how to best deter terrorists.




The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World


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In The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World, Cyrus Schayegh takes up a fundamental problem historians face: how to make sense of the spatial layeredness of the past. He argues that the modern world’s ultimate socio-spatial feature was not the oft-studied processes of globalization or state formation or urbanization. Rather, it was fast-paced, mutually transformative intertwinements of cities, regions, states, and global circuits, a bundle of processes he calls transpatialization. To make this case, Schayegh’s study pivots around Greater Syria (Bilad al-Sham in Arabic), which is roughly coextensive with present-day Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. From this region, Schayegh looks beyond, to imperial and global connections, diaspora communities, and neighboring Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey. And he peers deeply into Bilad al-Sham: at cities and their ties, and at global economic forces, the Ottoman and European empire-states, and the post-Ottoman nation-states at work within the region. He shows how diverse socio-spatial intertwinements unfolded in tandem during a transformative stretch of time, the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and concludes with a postscript covering the 1940s to 2010s.




The Covert Genocide


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The Covert Genocide is the first comprehensive account of the horrors that befell Ethiopia's Somali region during the reign of Abdi Mohamoud Omar-commonly known as Abdi iley-who ruled over the Somali inhabited parts of Ethiopia between 2010 and 2018. In this book Abdulkadir Ali 'Bureida' offers an incisive assessment of the Abdi iley years. His reign of terror claimed the lives of thousands of Somalis in Ethiopia. It lastingly damaged-physically, mentally and socially-a good part of the community. As the federal government's main pillar of the counter-insurgency against the reel Ogden National Liberation Front (ONLF) Abdi iley acted as a state within the state. On his and his officials' orders countless civilians, political competitors and suspected and real ONLF supporters were arrested, tortured and killed across the region. Drawing over 700 interviews with witnesses and survivors, The Covert Genocide provides the reader with an insider's account of the atrocities, arbitrary violence and terror that were the hallmark of the Abdi iley period. Making use of history, philosophy, psychology and his first-hand observations as a prisoner of conscience in the infamous Jail Ogaden, the author sheds light both on the systematic human rights abuses by Abdi iley's officials and paramilitary 'Liyu' or special police and the broad political context, which enabled it. Equal part historical account, political account, political analysis and human rights reporting, the book offers crucial testimony of the Abdi iley period. A powerful tribute to the victims of state sponsored violence, the Covert Genocide is a reminder that accountability for the many injustices committed continues to be wanting. Some readers will be tempted to discard or downplay the findings of this book as essentially a Somali problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ethiopia' former EPRDF government not only tolerated, but enabled the many atrocities against civilians that took place as part of the governments' counterinsurgency. The ongoing impunity of former and current officials and security forces-including parts of the ONLF-continues to be a major obstacle for reconciliation and healing not only in Somali region, but in Ethiopia altogether. Recent atrocities by warring parties in the Tigray conflict are a spark reminder that Ethiopia has so far failed to address or learn from its recent past. The Covert Genocide is a stark reminder that as long as political elites refuse to acknowledge these past injustices and their victims, they are likely to repeat themselves in the future. Tobias Hagmann, visiting professor, Roskilde University (Denmark) and Senior Programme Officer, Swisspeace (Switzerland).




The Cooperative Movement of Yemen and Issues of Regional Development


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No detailed description available for "The Cooperative Movement of Yemen and Issues of Regional Development".




Brothers Apart


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“Nassar brings to life the artistic prowess, rallying cries, and dashed dreams of the leading Palestinian litterateurs in Israel.” —Shira Robinson, author of Citizen Strangers When the state of Israel was established in 1948, not all Palestinians became refugees: some stayed behind and were soon granted citizenship. Those who remained, however, were relegated to second-class status in this new country, controlled by a military regime that restricted their movement and political expression. For two decades, Palestinian citizens of Israel were cut off from friends and relatives on the other side of the Green Line, as well as from the broader Arab world. Yet they were not passive in the face of this profound isolation. Palestinian intellectuals, party organizers, and cultural producers in Israel turned to the written word. Through writers like Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim, poetry, journalism, fiction, and nonfiction became sites of resistance and connection alike. With this book, Maha Nassar examines their well-known poetry and uncovers prose works that have, until now, been largely overlooked. The writings of Palestinians in Israel played a key role in fostering a shared national consciousness and would become a central means of alerting Arabs in the region to the conditions—and to the defiance—of these isolated Palestinians. Brothers Apart is the first book to reveal how Palestinian intellectuals forged transnational connections through written texts and engaged with contemporaneous decolonization movements throughout the Arab world, challenging both Israeli policies and their own cultural isolation. Maha Nassar’s readings not only deprovincialize the Palestinians of Israel, but write them back into Palestinian, Arab, and global history.




Arab Women and the Media in Changing Landscapes


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This volume explores the dialogue between Arab media and global developments in the information age, looking at the influence of new technologies in Arab societies and the evolving role of Arab women in ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. By gathering together contributions from both Arab and non-Arab scholars alike, a timely and important collection is presented that sheds new light on the growing involvement, role and image of Arab women in the media.




Citizen Strangers


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“A remarkable book . . . a detailed panorama of the many ways in which the Israeli state limited the rights of its Palestinian subjects.” —Orit Bashkin, H-Net Reviews Following the 1948 war and the creation of the state of Israel, Palestinian Arabs comprised just fifteen percent of the population but held a much larger portion of its territory. Offered immediate suffrage rights and, in time, citizenship status, they nonetheless found their movement, employment, and civil rights restricted by a draconian military government put in place to facilitate the colonization of their lands. Citizen Strangers traces how Jewish leaders struggled to advance their historic settler project while forced by new international human rights norms to share political power with the very people they sought to uproot. For the next two decades Palestinians held a paradoxical status in Israel, as citizens of a formally liberal state and subjects of a colonial regime. Neither the state campaign to reduce the size of the Palestinian population nor the formulation of citizenship as a tool of collective exclusion could resolve the government’s fundamental dilemma: how to bind indigenous Arab voters to the state while denying them access to its resources. More confounding was the tension between the opposing aspirations of Palestinian political activists. Was it the end of Jewish privilege they were after, or national independence along with the rest of their compatriots in exile? As Shira Robinson shows, these tensions in the state’s foundation—between privilege and equality, separatism and inclusion—continue to haunt Israeli society today. “An extremely important, highly scholarly work on the conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians.” —G. E. Perry, Choice