Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Philip Carl Salzman
After modest initiatives in recent days by the Lebanese government to restrict the independent operations of Hezbollah, fighters of Hezbollah and Amal flooded into the streets of west Beirut, attacked and dispersed government fighters, set up road blocks, and occupied government and media offices. The Druze and Christian militias did not act, […]

Read Full Post »

From Philip Carl Salzman
“He must be a spy,” said the visiting Baluch, bearded, turbaned, and baggy in long shirt and trousers. My fellow camp mates of the Dadolzai shrugged. They had accepted me and were past wondering exactly how I got there. “Sure,” I replied; “the government”—whether Iranian or American was left unspecified, “they […]

Read Full Post »

From Andrew Exum
Be sure to read the speech given on Monday by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Association of American Universities in Washington.
Since 9/11, the U.S. and its allies have been involved in two prolonged counter-insurgency campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are low-tech conflicts in which anthropological skills and language […]

Read Full Post »

From MESH Admin
The Internet and Democracy Project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School, has just published a new study, Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. The image below is the resulting map of the Iranian blogosphere (click on the image for a larger view). From […]

Read Full Post »

From Philip Carl Salzman
“America’s current policies represent a fundamental departure from [America’s] centuries-old tradition,” concludes Michael B. Oren in a recent op-ed. In previous interventions in the Middle East, “American military action was seen as an ancillary to—rather than as a substitute for—diplomacy. And in no case did U.S. troops remain on Middle Eastern […]

Read Full Post »

MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Philip Carl Salzman is professor of anthropology at McGill University and a member of MESH. His new book is Culture and Conflict in the Middle East.

Read Full Post »

From Philip Carl Salzman
I would like to take up and elaborate somewhat Adam Garfinkle’s point (in a comment on an earlier post) about “a theologicalization of Islamic societies, defined as the process whereby the status of religion as a legitimate carrier of the public weal grows and the status of politics of a legitimate carrier […]

Read Full Post »