MEI’s Senior Vice President Kate Seelye speaks with award-winning theater director and writer Amir Nizar Zuabi – Artistic Director of the ‘Amal Walks Across America’ tour. They discuss the upcoming U.S. tour of Little Amal, an internationally celebrated 12-foot-tall puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl traveling across the world carrying a message of hope and compassion for displaced people everywhere.
Making sense of the Taliban’s counterterrorism assurances
Two years on from the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, Afghanistan’s neighbors are increasingly concerned that their return to power has emboldened terrorist groups and networks, which are using the hospitable environment to regroup, rearm, and recruit substantially. The main question now for Afghanistan’s neighbors in the region, and the international community more broadly, is just how reliable the Taliban’s counterterrorism assurances to other states really are.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation, a new exhibition of works by artists from across the Middle East and North Africa that opened recently at Christie’s in London, bears the name of the Arabic word for constellation. Fittingly, it shines a light on the region’s mid-century moment when art was often part of a process of post-colonial nation building. The exhibition is a star-studded journey through the region’s 20th century histories and aesthetics, showcasing lesser-known artists along with the greats.
Two decades on, Iraq’s ongoing, if fragile, cultural revival
Although it has fallen off the international news cycle, Baghdad is booming, high on rising oil prices and full, once again, of neo-Abbasid, petroleum-fueled aspirations. Thanks to new anti-money laundering legislation, funds are being funneled not only into hotels and real estate but also into new cultural enterprises. So what does culture in Iraq look like in 2023?
As the clock ticks down on the repatriation of IS foreign fighters from Syria, a recent development has added a new sense of urgency to the situation. On June 11, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), announced its intention to prosecute 2,000 IS foreign fighters. How-ever, the lack of international recognition for the AANES and its courts renders these trials illegiti-mate, further complicating future international legal efforts to prosecute these combatants.
الحجاج والأرباح: الأردن يتطلع إلى موقع المعمودية المقدس لتعزيز السياحة الدينية
سعت الحكومة الأردنية إلى تطوير موقع المعمودية في بيت عنيا عبر الأردن في محاولة لتعزيز قطاع السياحة والاقتصاد بشكل عام. لكن تحقيق التوازن الصحيح بين الاعتبارات الاقتصادية والدينية والسياسية والبيئية لن يكون أمراً سهلاً.
Jenin’s Freedom Theatre rises from the ashes once again
The Freedom Theatre, headquartered in the Jenin Refugee Camp that was invaded once again by the Israel Defense Forces last week, is nothing if not a crucible for the Palestinian experience. Up against grinding poverty, occupation, religious extremism, and, more recently, aerial bombardment, the theater miraculously survives.
The Risk of Violent Inter-Communal Spillover in West Africa: Realities and Prescriptions
The Sahel region of West Africa suffers from escalating cycles of inter-communal violence that have resulted in countless deaths of innocent people. As this worsening situation continues to spread, it has come to be one of the most prominent threats to security and socio-political stability in the region.
Art in Dialogue with Nature: An Exploration of Saudi Arabia’s New Valley of the Arts
Wadi AlFann (‘Valley of the Arts’) is a new global cultural destination in Saudi Arabia, where monumental contemporary artworks are being commissioned for AlUla’s majestic desert landscape.
Curator Iwona Blazwick and participating Saudi artist Manal Al Dowayan speak with MEI’s Senior Vice President Kate Seelye about Wadi Al Fann’s permanent art commissions and the impact of the Kingdom’s investment in the arts as part of Saudi Vision 2030 on local communities and the international art scene.
The U.S. administration is tacitly contributing to growing acceptance and re-normalization of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the 21st century’s most notorious war criminal, putting in jeopardy the continuation of our counter-terrorism mission in Syria. Assad is toasting his survival on the ashes of his victims — but within the small community of optimistic actors in Syria, ISIS is sitting pretty comfortably too.
It has been an accepted fact that ISIS ceased being a territory-controlling entity in Syria after its March 2019 defeat in the town of Baghouz. Yet it is perhaps time to reevaluate this perspective on the group and its insurgent trajectory in the country. While recent massacres of civilians in central Syria have refocused some international attention on the desert region, known as the Badia, the renewed widespread battles between militants and regime security forces that have occurred in parallel to these attacks have gone unnoticed.
Composing this bricolage of most frequented places is to identify with the environment. Each of the works in this exhibition strives to enliven such connections by looking anew and afresh. Whether considering the lives lived in the temporal or spatial shadows cast by unrest, migration, and industry, or taking a long view of history or an attentive approach to an immediate setting, new relations are found.
On Food and Sustainability: A Conversation with Moza Al Matrooshi and Christian Sleiman
Lyne Sneige, Director of the Arts & Culture Program at the Middle East Institute, speaks with artists Moza Al Matrooshi and Christian Sleiman about their works that are featured in MEI’s current exhibition, Perceptible Rhythms/Alternative Temporalities. The conversation provides greater detail on the relationship between each artist’s works and the themes of food and sustainability.
