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"If you could name one thing that would really change your life, what would it be?" I ask. I’m expecting him to say a better house, or more food, or a doctor, or education for his kids. I’m expecting him to mention one of the things relief money often provides for.But Lebrun grins broadly at me, revealing a missing tooth, and says, "What would help me most? A land registry."

What Lebrun needs is security – security he can build a future on. And he needs agencies to safeguard that security. What Lebrun needs is bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy is also the system that organises everything into procedures that are the same for everybody. It’s what holds societies together. It’s not excessive; it’s indispensable.

The bread riots are symptoms of a crisis tracing back to last November, when the International Monetary Fund approved a loan of $12 billion to Sisi’s regime. The loan agreement requires Egypt to fix its chronic budget deficit through substantial cuts in subsidies and other forms of public spending. The agreement also necessitates steps to encourage the private sector to boost job creation and growth.

the Egyptian army has used the agreement to punish the lower classes while maximizing its commercial gains. The military establishment, which fully controls the economic reform plan, has selectively implemented the loan’s conditions. While it enthusiastically reduces subsidies to impoverished civilians, it has expanded its domination of many economic sectors and reaped huge profits at the expense of the private sector.

generals in uniform manage monopolistic conglomerates of unaudited, untaxed enterprises, such as commercial farms, food packaging mills, construction companies, pharmaceutical plants, gas stations, fisheries, and cement and steel factories

"If I wasn't a leftist Christian, I would've joined the Brotherhood,"

I pressed Sultan on what, then, separated Freedom and Justice from the Salafis on one side and liberals on the other. "Our party wants to give Egypt a confined freedom within the religion, with respect for Egyptian culture and tradition," he said. Salafis such as those in the Nour Party lack the political experience to be effective in parliament, he argued, while "liberals want to give Egypt a foreign freedom that is adopted from the West, a freedom that is disrespectful for the culture and traditions, and it doesn't really work well with the religion."

"There are still family mafias that are controlling everything. They're influential, own land, hand out favors; it's not necessarily about fear," Abeid said. "Only religious movements are challenging the families. They believe no one is above God, but they're doing it in a very backwards way." The men said Christians were feeling isolated by post-revolution sectarian violence that culminated on Oct. 9 in a bloody Army crackdown on a protest in Cairo at the state television building, known as Maspero, leaving 28 people dead. Minya governorate itself is no stranger to sectarian tension. In the town of Samalout in January -- before the revolution -- an off-duty policeman boarded a train and shot dead one Copt while wounding five others. When Coptic protesters gathered the same day at the Christian hospital where the victims were being treated, police fired tear gas, some of which landed inside the building. In August, Labib said, a church that had been built across the street from a mosque was "surrounded by Salafis" who demanded it be moved. They complained that prayers from both houses of worship were drowning each other out, despite the fact that Christians and Muslims observe different holy days. The crisis was resolved when a Christian agreed to allow the church to use his property if he could live on the church's old grounds, Labib said. He said he wanted to keep his Muslim friends and normal life as long as he could. "A lot of Copts are trying to leave to other countries as refugees," he said, and concerned friends were calling him regularly while he attended his second job as a shopkeeper, warning him not to stay out late. "There's no safety [and] a bad economy. Someone was kidnapped three days ago in Minya, and I don't feel like the country is very secure."

Tunisia’s military is widely perceived as having successfully maintained its historically non-political role in Tunisian society throughout the country’s 2011 revolution. In a region where national armies and political struggles have made for not-so-strange bedfellows, this nonpartisan mindset makes the Tunisian military something of an anomaly.

Arab and international news sources reported that it was the refusal of General Ammar, Chief of Staff of the Tunisian Armed Forces, to fire on civilians that led to the final exit of Tunisia’s former President Ben Ali. Although such reports remain unconfirmed, most local and international analysts affirm that the Tunisian Armed Forces served as a pivotal force supporting the country during its fragile transition.

the army continues to enjoy popular credibility

Maadi is one of dozens of military-owned companies that have flourished since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former armed forces chief, became president in 2014, a year after leading the military in ousting Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

In interviews conducted over the course of a year, the chairmen of nine military-owned firms described how their businesses are expanding and discussed their plans for future growth. Figures from the Ministry of Military Production - one of three main bodies that oversee military firms - show that revenues at its firms are rising sharply. The ministry’s figures and the chairmen’s accounts give rare insight into the way the military is growing in economic influence.

Some Egyptian businessmen and foreign investors say they are unsettled by the military’s push into civilian activities and complain about tax and other advantages granted to military-owned firms

Despite Tunisia’s history of worker militancy under the more than 70-year-old Tunisian General Labor Union, Interior Ministry laws from prerevolution Tunisia read that police and other internal security services—which fall under the authority of the Interior Ministry—are not allowed to form professional unions, nor to strike. So as the post-Ben Ali era witnessed a blossoming of civil society, the creation of countless nongovernmental organizations, and the spread of public debate, internal security employees took advantage of the newfound opening to create unions

“The regimes [prior to and after the revolution] used us. They want to put all the blame for abuses on us,” he said. “Before, it was oppression. Anyone of us could be fired for any reason. The station chief could say, ‘Hand me your badge and pistol and get out.’ So we demanded union rights, and we demanded that our colleagues who’d been dismissed for technical reasons—of course not those who stole or kidnapped—are brought back.”

Many Tunisians, from ordinary citizens to politicians to human rights workers, say that the security unions often protect the interests of the security state embodied in the Interior Ministry and protect their members from accountability for past and ongoing abuses, including murder. The portrait that emerges is of a security sector that has managed to precisely use Tunisia’s newfound liberal freedoms to entrench its own authoritarian power—to turn the power of the Tunisian revolution against itself.

Until recently, there was little practical knowledge about what it meant for an academic to analyze the military activities of the Gulf states because there wasn’t much to study, other than some symbolic joint training exercises, sociological inquiry about the composition of the region’s armed forces, and limited Emirati participation in non-combat operations in places like Kosovo. The bulk of scholarship examined the Gulf in the context of petrodollar recycling (the exchange of the Gulf’s surplus oil capital for expensive Western military equipment) or the Gulf as the object of military intervention, but never as its agent.

Academic research is not espionage—but many parties (notably US and European governments) are implicated in the process that has allowed them to be conflated

The history of the United States and European states undermining regional governments—including its only democratically-elected ones—using covert agents posing as scholars, bureaucrats and businessmen is well-documented. Its legacy is clear in the region’s contemporary politics, where authoritarians and reactionary nationalists frequently paint democratic opposition forces as foreign agents and provocateurs. It’s also visible in the political staying power of religious conservatives, who were actively supported by the US and its allies in order to undermine leftist forces that threatened to nationalize oil fields and expropriate Western corporate property.

Iran has a complicated, and at times paranoid, government. Elected parliamentarians give a veneer of democracy but power ultimately resides with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s most powerful security force, answers directly to him. Rival arms of the state, including the security forces, jostle for influence. And the rules are unclear.

I had gone to report on the impact of American-imposed sanctions. Some news stories were claiming that Tehran was on the brink of collapse, but I saw few signs of it. There was no panic buying. The city looked cleaner and more modern than on my visit three years before. It has the best underground in the Middle East, with locally made trains. Parks and museums were abundant and well-tended, pavements were scrubbed and the city’s many flower-beds immaculately maintained.

My captors wore no identifying uniforms, but on the second day the doctor told me that he was an officer in the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guards. Iran’s security agencies are many tentacled. In 1979 the new Islamic Republic retained much of the existing state apparatus, including the army and a good part of the bureaucracy, but it added another tier to keep existing institutions in check, and the parallel systems have competed ever since. The government’s own intelligence ministry would be unlikely to detain a Western journalist whose entry it had approved. My accusers were from its more powerful rival.

Due to the lockdown and curfew implemented since March 25, most businesses in Saudi Arabia are either suspended or have reduced their activities. As a result, employees have become a heavy burden for companies, as most cannot afford to pay them wages while they stay home. Several companies announced the closure of their branches, entirely, including Taiba Investments, Saudi Airlines Catering, and Al-Andalus Property Company SJSC.

The Saudi government announced the consequences of coronavirus as a force majeure. And, on April 3, the government issued a royal decree allocating $2.4 billion to compensate Saudi citizens who work in the private sector in facilities affected by the pandemic. However, such bounteous support might only reduce the problem, not solve it.

the question is how long this generous support from the Saudi government will continue. Oil prices are still lower than what the Saudis need to support Vision 2030, which is expected to have a budget of no less than $54 billion. Oil prices are currently affected because of the decline in demand due to the pandemic and the oil war with Russia, which ended on April 12, after OPEC agreed to an output cut of 9.7 million barrels per day.

Six years after the coup that ousted President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi and his government, the Houthi movement, otherwise known as Ansarallah, has strengthened its grip on northern Yemen. It currently rules over approximately 70% of the country’s population, and in 2020 mounted new military offensives in Al Jawf, Marib and Hodeidah

A pervasive security apparatus, built on the ashes of Ali Abdullah Saleh-era intelligence bodies (UN Panel of Experts, 27 January 2020: 9), has focused on protecting the Houthi regime and monitoring the movements of suspected enemies, including humanitarian organizations.

From the failed uprising incited by former president and erstwhile Houthi ally Ali Abdullah Saleh to sporadic tribal rebellions and infighting within Houthi ranks, localized resistance to Houthi rule has turned violent in several provinces.

The authoritarian normalization that continues to mark relations between Turkey’s political and military echelons since the 2016 failed coup is now affecting the policymaking process in the country's defense industry. The industry is the new favorite of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as the bruising financial crisis heavily hit his former favorite sector, construction.

Four major reasons are behind Erdogan's piqued interest in the defense industry: First, Erdogan's popular support drastically increased after Turkey’s Oct. 9 incursion into Syria, known as Operation Peace Spring. Second, the defense industry is a good tool for producing success stories to divert public attention at a time of economic crisis. Third, success in the defense realm offers political gains in foreign policy. And finally, it creates profitable export opportunities to several countries including Qatar, Pakistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and some African nations.

In December 2017, Erdogan issued a decree placing TSKGV under his auspices. Since then, however, Erdogan hasn’t quite managed to establish full control over the institution, which mainly remains under the influence of the retired generals.

A trove of emails, documents and legal filings reviewed by Bloomberg News, as well as interviews with former insiders, reveal the extent of the services Rowland and his private bank provided to one of its biggest customers, Mohammed bin Zayed, better known as MBZ, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. Some of the work went beyond financial advice. It included scouting for deals in Zimbabwe, setting up a company to buy the image rights of players on the Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City Football Club and helping place the bank’s chairman at the time on the board of Human Rights Watch after it published reports critical of the Persian Gulf country.

a 2017 plan devised by the bank for an assault on the financial markets of Qatar, a country that had just been blockaded by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain for allegedly sponsoring terrorism

a coordinated attack to deplete Qatar’s foreign-exchange reserves and pauperize its government

Hours before his death, the tribesman had posted a YouTube video predicting just such a demise. It would be a setup, he explained in his video, punishment for protesting the government’s efforts to forcibly displace the Huwaitat tribe to make way for the futuristic Saudi city of Neom.

some 20,000 people are set to be pushed out to make room for Neom

In 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced his vision for a $500 billion high-tech dream city to be populated by global vacationers, technology start-ups, and rich investors. The planned 10,230-square-mile city—33 times the size of New York City—is a cornerstone of the crown prince’s Vision 2030 plan to diversify the Saudi economy away from reliance on oil revenues. Officials promised the city would have more robots than humans, with mass facial recognition and surveillance to eliminate crime, drone-operated air taxis instead of roads, and a seaside luxury resort, cruise, and entertainment complex. Neom would be a miniature country with its own laws. The Huwaitat tribe would never fit into this glamorous cosmopolitan hub. And so the government would pay them for their land and nudge them out.

Power-sharing arrangements have been adopted to bridge the divisions in the two societies. The Good Friday Agreement and the Lebanese Constitution aim to provide a form of democracy that protects the minority community from the majority — or, in the case of Lebanon, any of the 18 religious groups from one another.

Lebanon has been without a government for almost a year since the devastating port blast in August 2020 and is facing an economic collapse. In Northern Ireland, a government was finally constituted last year after a three-year hiatus. The period covered almost the entirety of the Brexit negotiations, which will have a seismic effect on the future of the region.

Despite almost 25 years of a supposedly cross-community political system, Northern Ireland remains divided along Catholic nationalist and Protestant unionist lines

Adel Abdullah cultivates a subsistence living off of six acres of peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and pomegranates. He is one of millions of smallholder farmers working in the Delta. He walks barefoot in his farm as a show of reverence to the land. The soil is pale and thin, almost as sandy as the beach, and choked by mounting concentrations of salt, left behind by periodic coastal flooding and pushed into underground aquifers by the rising sea.“This is the first place to be affected by climate change,” Abdullah says. “The barriers help a bit with flooding, but the salty soil is still really killing us.”

he takes irrigation water from the nearby Kitchener Drain, one of the largest and most polluted canals in Egypt that aggregates wastewater from the farms, businesses, and households of an estimated 11 million people in the Delta. By the time water reaches Abdullah’s farm, it may have been reused half a dozen times since entering Egypt in the Nile, each time accumulating more salts and pollutants and losing beneficial nutrients.

Abdullah is forced to douse the farm in fertilizers, pesticides, and salt-suppressing chemicals, all of which further degrade the soil. Those inputs, on top of the rising costs of irrigation systems and machinery, eat up any potential income Abdullah might earn

since the early 2000s, when Bashar al-Assad came to power and loosened the country’s restrictions on private schools and colleges, educational institutions run or influenced by the Qubaysiyat have become ubiquitous in Syria

franchises across the Middle East and even as far afield as Europe and the Americas

family members who have watched wives, mothers, sisters or daughters burrow deeper into the organization do occasionally complain openly about the group’s peculiar ideas and practices