Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the Kurdish American journalist Sirwan Kajjo. A recent parliamentary election in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq featured a high turnout and a strong showing by a new party, both indications that the grip of the two families that have controlled the region for decades is beginning to slip. Meantime Iraqi Kurdistan continues a delicate balancing act as the war in the Levant between Israel and Iran's proxies burns on. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free ...
Oct 30, 2024•27 min
Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the Sudanese political analyst Kholood Khair. Their conversation focusses on a war that has gone on for 18 months and has caused the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. Sudan's people are the victims of two generals vying for dominance backed by outside players who like the generals have no concern for them. Nor judging by its silence does the rest of the world. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily...
Oct 24, 2024•35 min
Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Quincy Institute's Annelle Sheline who quit the US State Department in protest at her government's Gaza policy. She argues that rather than restraining Israel the Biden administration is backing Netanyahu's efforts to provoke a major war with Iran in order to redraw the map of the Middle East. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Oct 17, 2024•35 min
Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the head of the Middle East programme at London's Chatham House Sanam Vakil. Their conversation focusses on Iran and Israel as the confrontation between the two edges ever closer to a hot war. Also on the agenda are Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the efforts they are making to avoid such a war. What too should the UK be doing to champion diplomacy rather than weaponry in the search for regional security and peace? Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org fo...
Oct 09, 2024•29 min
Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the security and defence analyst Andreas Krieg. As the intensity of Israeli attacks increases Dr Krieg - who has written a groundbreaking book on the weaponisation of narratives by state and non-state actors - details how such narratives are driving the Middle East toward all out war and he offers proposals about what the UK and the Starmer government could do right now to help avert a looming catastrophe. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join...
Oct 01, 2024•33 min
With tensions rising daily in the region, Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes the Cato Institute's Jon Hoffman to the podcast. As Israel pounds Lebanon and Hezbollah fires rockets back the slide into a full scale war looms but Washington's response is the same as it ever was: call for restraint while backing Israel to the hilt. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Sep 26, 2024•29 min
Arab Digest editor William Law speaks with Hasan Ramadan. Before the 7 October war Hasan was a teacher at a school in North Gaza where he lived with his wife and three sons. Now he and his family are among the nearly 2 million IDPs in Gaza. After several attempts we were able to reach him at an IDP camp in the south of Gaza. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Sep 25, 2024•18 min
Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Beirut-based author and commentator Amal Ghandour. Their conversation explores the impact of the Gaza war on the Levant and beyond and looks at how young Arabs have been galvanised by Israel's genocidal conduct into a new sense of themselves and the role they will play in securing what Amal calls a "rewrite" of the Middle East narrative. The podcast was recorded before pager attacks occurred across Lebanon leaving 12 dead and nearly 3000 wo...
Sep 18, 2024•35 min
Arab Digest editor William Law kicks off a new season with the editor of a new book titled The Queer Arab Glossary, the graphic designer, artist and writer Marwan Kaabour. Art book, Arab gay slang glossary and essay collection from a diverse and distinguished group of Arab artists, writers and activists The Queer Arab Glossary is both a provocative statement of independence and a declaration of resistance. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily news...
Sep 11, 2024•37 min
Summary: the IDF’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank have revived popular support in Arab states for Palestine, forcing MENA governments to back away from further normalisation with Israel. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Sep 04, 2024•30 min
Summary: Israel with the support of its Western backers consistently violates international law and the rules-based order on which democracies are founded to impose its violent military will on Palestine and the Palestinians. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Sep 02, 2024•31 min
Summary: a book published last year explores the way in which the UAE and Israel have weaponised narratives to undermine and sabotage civil society efforts in the Arab world that are aimed at challenging authoritarian rule. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Aug 27, 2024•42 min
Summary: Saudi Arabia and the UAE have developed a strategy of promoting a version of Islam branded moderate as a soft power tool designed to reassure Western allies while advancing their regional interests and continuing domestic repression. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Aug 21, 2024•30 min
Summary: a prescient podcast that detailed the failures of US foreign policy in the Middle East under the Biden administration and correctly foresaw how unqualified military support for Netanyahu and the region’s authoritarian regimes was leading to consequences that would prove disastrous. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Aug 19, 2024•35 min
Summary: backed by Western democracies, Arab Gulf states and a steady flow of weapons dictatorships and warlords are flourishing in MENA and creating new and dangerous levels of instability in an already deeply unstable region. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Aug 14, 2024•41 min
Summary: a recent book by a leading Gulf analyst argues that the Gulf monarchies have successfully ridden out threats posed by the Arab Spring to their autocratic rule with an adept use of multipolar alliances and effective governance. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Aug 12, 2024•40 min
Summary: a new book by Maged Mandour details the ways in which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has used hyper nationalism and the military to create a new form of dictatorship, hitherto unseen in Egypt. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Aug 07, 2024•33 min
Summary: Iraqi Kurdistan remains at odds with the central government in Baghdad over oil revenues and within KRG two families tussle for power and divide the spoils between them with ordinary citizens continuing to be denied their rights as corruption runs rife. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Aug 05, 2024•30 min
This Arab Life: Author and blogger Amal Ghandour joins editor William Law as his guest on the Arab Digest podcast. Their conversation about Lebanon, Jordan and the wider Arab world takes as its point of departure Amal's latest book This Arab Life which is both an intensely personal memoir and a ruthlessly honest assessment of the past, the present and the near future of a region riven by social, political and economic crises. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start rece...
Jul 31, 2024•34 min
Editor William Law is joined by Arab Digest's resident energy analyst Alastair Newton. Their conversation drills down on the current state of the oil market and where it is headed in the second half of 2024 ranging across peak oil, grey rhinos, net zero, the looming possibility of a war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Biden decision to stand down, the state of the Gulf's national oil companies, China. And yes Alastair is standing by his call of $70 a barrel at year's end. Sign up NOW at ArabDi...
Jul 24, 2024•31 min
Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is Annelle Sheline. She quit the US State Department in protest at the Biden adminstration's unqualified support for the Israeli government's ongoing war of genocide in Gaza and she tells Arab Digest that the road on which America is embarked could spark a wider catastrophic war in the Middle East. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.
Jul 17, 2024•32 min
Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the North Africa energy and political analyst Francis Ghilès. Their conversation looks at the Maghreb states of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya and explores how each one is delivering on the economic opportunities the current global geopolitical landscape is offering up. Morocco is proving both adept and resilient in seizing those opportunities while the other Maghreb countries lag far behind. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join ...
Jul 10, 2024•32 min
Arab Digest editor William Law is joined from Washington by the Middle East analyst and writer Aslı Aydıntaşbaş. The focus is on Türkiye's President Erdoğan and how he has positioned himself in the Gaza war and in his relations with Middle East states. In a US election year when the signs are growing of a Trump return to the White House Aslı Aydıntaşbaş reflects on what that will mean for the Middle East and for President Erdoğan. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start...
Jul 03, 2024•36 min
Defence and security analyst Andreas Krieg is Arab Digest editor Willliam Law's guest this week. The Gaza war has laid bare a regional security and stability crisis, one that impacts Middle East states as much as it does Israel. It is a crisis that the Biden administration has allowed to burgeon as state and non-state actors vie for ascendancy in the vacuum caused by a collapsing US hegemon and Israel's blind pursuit of a war it has already lost. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join th...
Jun 26, 2024•37 min
Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the New Lines Institute's Caroline Rose. The trade in the illicit synthetic drug Captagon continues to boom and much of it is run by Syria's Assad family. The Assads have built up a manufacturing and distribution network that brings them more than $2 billion a year. Despite Bashar al-Assad's promise to curtail the trade in return for being allowed back into the fold of the Arab states, captagon remains king as the Middle East's drug of choice. ...
Jun 20, 2024•30 min
Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the Egyptian journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy. Their conversation traverses the relationship between Egypt and Israel from the point of the signing of the 1979 peace deal to the present Gaza war. With each passing decade Egypt's influence has waned to the point that, as the Gaza genocide continues, Cairo is forced to bow to Israel while playing second fiddle to tiny Qatar in peace talk negotiations. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to jo...
Jun 12, 2024•34 min
Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes Gulf analyst and author Kristian Coates Ulrichsen back to the podcast. Their conversation is a preview of Kristian's latest, soon to be released book The Kingdom of Football. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has used the purchase of Newcastle United FC and the stocking of the Saudi premier league with expensive foreign talent to refurbish an image badly tarnished by systematic human rights abuse and the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Sign up NOW...
Jun 05, 2024•34 min
The broadcaster, journalist and filmmaker Zeinab Badawi joins Arab Digest editor William Law to talk about her new book An African History of Africa which charts the history of Africa from the very beginnings of human life on earth to the present. In a wide-ranging conversation with a focus on North Africa and Sudan Zeinab Badawi explores the history of the continent from an African perspective embued with her own deep knowledge. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start ...
May 29, 2024•34 min
Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics. The Washington-based geopolitical analyst considers how America's enemies are strengthening their presence in the Middle East even as President Biden weakens his bid for re-election by continuing to back Israel as voters who would otherwise support him turn away angered that he is allowing and arming a genocide in Palestine. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving...
May 23, 2024•35 min
Arab Digest editor Wiliam Law's guest this week is the Kurdish American journalist Sirwan Kajjo. Their conversation focusses on the Kurds in three countries - Syria, Iraq and Iran - as they explore the impact of the Gaza war and the ongoing pressures Kurdish people are experiencing from both outside forces and in the case of Iraq and Iran the governments that rule over them controlling so many aspects of their lives while delivering so little to them. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to jo...
May 15, 2024•31 min
