POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

Wolfram Lacher talks about his new book, Libya's Fragmentation: Structure and Process in Violent Conflict, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. "The book really started with the observation that what has marked Libya's political and military landscape since 2011 is localism," said Lacher. "What I very quickly saw when I looked at this phenomenon of local forces was that we're not really talking about city states or tribes that are united in their political position. Actually, at the local level, we have competing political factions and competing military factions within these local constituencies. So you're really talking about an extremely fragmented political scene. And that has been the main obstacle to forming stable coalitions at the central government level— both after the fall of the regime in 2011, and after the second civil war in 2014-2015." "The objective of the book really is to explain this extreme fragmentation and why nobody including Haftar has been able to overcome it...my answer in a nutshell is that it has a lot to do with the way the conflict dynamics with the way violence has transformed Libyan society," said Lacher. Wolfram Lacher is Senior Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). His research focuses on conflict dynamics in Libya and the Sahel region, and relies on frequent fieldwork. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Yael Zeira talks about her new book The Revolution Within State Institutions and Unarmed Resistance in Palestine with Marc Lynch. Her book examines who engages in resistance activities through an in-depth study of unarmed resistance against Israeli rule in the Palestinian Territories over more than a decade. "The main question that inspired me to write this book is: 'Why do some people participate in risky anti regime resistance while other often pretty similar people abstain?' And this is both a classic question about collective action— and at the same time, a very human question about why ordinary people do extraordinary things." Zeira is the Croft Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Mississippi. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Empirical Studies of Conflict Program and the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

On this week's podcast, Jonathan Fulton talks about his book China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies with Marc Lynch. "It's interesting because a lot of the narrative about China-Gulf relations seemed to be stuck in this oil-for-trade narrative— that China is buying a lot of oil and selling a lot of stuff— and that's kind of the extent of the relationship. And from what I've seen here in Abu Dhabi, there's just so much more going on. And it really felt like like there had to be something that looked at it from an IR perspective and gave a fuller picture of the relationships," said Fulton. Fulton explains what and how China's policy towards Gulf monarchies changed in regards to foreign and domestic policies, in the past and now. Fulton is an assistant professor of political science in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where he researches China – Middle East relations, Chinese foreign policy, the global strategic implications of the Belt and Road Initiative, and international relations of the Gulf region. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Simon Mabon speaks about his new book, Houses Built on Sand: Violence, Sectarianism and Revolution in the Middle East, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. "I was trying to understand one way the Arab uprisings played out— in particular, the ways across the region," said Mabon. "What I've done instead is to look at how the relationship between 'rulers and ruled' has evolved across the region across the 20th and 21st centuries. And those particular relationships have created conditions that sometimes allowed for the possibility of dissent and political protest, while at other times prohibited it from taking place, as a consequence of the types of structures, forces and against coercive capacities of particular regimes— which meant that people can take to the streets or not." Mabon is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Richardson Institute at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

This week's podcast is a conversation with Aaron Y. Zelin who discusses his new book, Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia's Missionaries of Jihad. In the book, Zelin explains how Tunisia became one of the largest sources of foreign fighters for the Islamic State— even though the country stands out as a democratic bright spot of the Arab uprisings and despite the fact that it had very little history of terrorist violence within its borders prior to 2011. Zelin is the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a visiting research scholar in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University. He is the founder of the website Jihadology.net, a primary source archive of global jihadi materials. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

On this week's POMEPS podcast, May Darwich discusses her new book, Threats and Alliances in the Middle East: Saudi and Syrian Policies in a Turbulent Region, with Marc Lynch. "The book focuses on how threat perceptions for some states led to particular alliance decisions," said Darwich. "It looks at some historical cases ,but also some more recent cases." "In particular, it's looking at how identity and power into plays in shaping threat perception." "So over time the book also gives an idea of how these processes of identity change. They are very they are very slow in that change, but over time we could see that this interaction between material and identity— it's shaping both how the identity is developing over time, but also the alliance choices made based on threats to identity also shapes how actors evolve and how their roles evolve in the region." Darwich is an assistant professor in International Relations of the Middle East in the School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) at Durham University. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Launching our new season of the POMEPS Conversations podcast, Narges Bajoghli discusses her book, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic.  In this book, Bajoghli provides an inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the debates around the future of the Islamic Republic. Dr. Narges Bajoghli is an award-winning anthropologist, filmmaker, and writer. Her work focuses on the intersections of power and media. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Shiraz Maher speaks with Marc Lynch about his new book, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea. In the book, he explores the intellectual trajectory of Salafi-Jihadism from its origins in the mountains of the Hindu Kush to the jihadist insurgencies of the 1990s and the 9/11 wars. “I wanted to chart the intellectual migration of this movement with reference to Islamic theology and to try to bring that into the Western discourse to show people here is ISIS or al-Qaeda and here is how they are rationalizing, justifying, or explaining what they're doing,” Maher explains. “I regard all these as being constructions of Islam. And that for me I think is an interesting part of the debate to look at how they're building these ideas and ideology.” Dr. Shiraz Maher is Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) and a member of the War Studies Department at King’s College London. Maher is a recognized expert on jihadist movements. The BBC has described him as “one of the world’s leading experts on radicalization,” and the Washington Post has called him “a respected specialist on Islamic State.” His book, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford University Press; and Hurst & Co.) has been widely acknowledged as a ground-breaking exploration of the political philosophy behind contemporary jihadist movements. Maher is also an adjunct lecturer at Johns Hopkins University (where he currently teaches separate courses on radicalization and political Islam), and was a visiting lecturer at Washington College during the Spring Semester of 2012 (where he taught Middle East politics). Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Ariel I. Ahram speaks with Marc Lynch about his new book, Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Reshaping of the Middle East. In Break all the Borders, Ariel I. Ahram examines the separatist movements that aimed to remake the borders of the Arab world and create new independent states. With detailed studies of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the federalists in eastern Libya, the southern resistance in Yemen, and Kurdish nationalist parties, Ahram explains how separatists captured territory and handled the tasks of rebel governance, including managing oil exports, electricity grids, and irrigation networks."I think an assumption about the way the Middle East worked— especially after 2011— everyone talked about state failure, but no one had any idea what the real forces were that were emerging from state failure," says Ahram. "The presumption about the region was that if the states were broken, they would break into a million little pieces. In fact, I found that there were only certain actors and certain countries that were really pushing to redraw borders. Most of the political contestation in the region was focused on trying to take power in the center not to break away. What I wanted to do them with the book was to focus on the actors who were really pushing to address territorial issues within the state."Ahram is Associate Professor in the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs in Alexandria, Virginia, and non-resident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He earned a Ph.D. in government and M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis. He writes widely on security issues in the Middle East and North Africa. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. and has spoken and lectured at the World Bank, Marine Corps University, and the German Institute for Global Affairs. In 2015, he testified before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Islamic State’s abuses of women and children. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili talk about their new book, Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors. "The inspiration for the book goes back to the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon— or Israel and Hezbollah," said Peralman. "Boaz and I both had postdoc fellowships at Harvard and we met in the aftermath of that... We're both quite intrigued by one aspect of that war, which was Israel's targeting of Lebanon as a state. Why would Israel target a weak host state— and demand it to stop non-state actors?" "We find is that in earlier years [of this policy], it's basically a trial and error kind of process. Israel has tried many different things— defensive measures, targeting civilians, etc.— and among them was what we call 'trial coercion.' So trying to target the forces of the state the military or police of the state and using that as a way to coerce the state to try to rein in the non-state actors. And when we get to the 1990s, that's where we see a shift where Israel basically adopt this policy more wholesale— and without considering whether it's working or not working," said Atzili. "Our argument there is that attractive coercion can only succeed against a host state that is strong. The host state needs a minimum amount of political cohesion and institutional capacity to even meet the demands of the coercer. When this type of strategy is used against a weak host state— even if it is predisposed to be cooperative with Israel, even if it shares Israel's opposition to the non-state actor—it simply doesn't have the internal cohesion or institutional capacity to actually act against a non-state actor," said Pearlman. Wendy Pearlman is an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University, where she also holds the Martin and Patricia Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Professorship and is a faculty fellow at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies. Boaz Atzili is an associate professor and the Director of Doctoral Studies at the School of International Service (SIS) in American University, Washington DC. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.