Suchergebnisse

Introduction: Imagined Empires, Real Rebels --. - Ottomans, Plague, and Revolt (1500-1800) --. - French, Plague Encore, and Jihad (1798-1801) --. - The Pasha's Settlers, Bulls, and Bandits (1805-1848) --. - A "Communist" Revolution (1848-1882) --. - Rebellion in the Time of Cholera (1882-1950) --. - Epilogue: America : Last Imagined Empire?

Under a pseudonym in December 2011, I published an article titled "al-Jaysh wa-l-Iqtisad fi Barr Misr" (The Army and the Economy in Egypt) in Jadaliyya. I wrote it after months of participating in numerous protests in Cairo against the government of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), which took power upon President Hosni Mubarak's abdication in February 2011, and of searching fervidly for the political sources that had allowed the military to prevail over civilian forces. In addition to the tanks and fighter jets, I found some of these sources hidden in a gigantic business empire that the military had clandestinely developed for years. In early 2012 the editor of an online edition of a widely read Egyptian newspaper, a revolutionary female journalist who would later be arrested and detained, invited me to write a series of articles on this business empire, this time using my real name. The first work in decades to be published on this taboo topic, this became the foundation for my later book-length study. As a scholar, this was my humble contribution to an ongoing revolution.

Every Ramadan, when Egyptian TV shows enjoy their prime season, at least one series about Upper Egypt is produced and millions of viewers across the country get hooked on it. Those popular dramas usually include a southern hero who is a good-hearted yet poor young man, and his reluctant turn to crime to stand up against corruption and oppression. With romantic depictions of dark and handsome outlaws, the protagonists of these shows always win the deep sympathy of their fans as they rebel against unfortunate conditions and resist local officials, rich elites, and/or corrupt police officers. One of the most iconic and memorable shows, which came out in 1992, was titled Dhiʾab al-Jabal (Wolves of the Mountain, Fig. 1). It narrated the story of Badri, a young man from Qena province, who faced police injustice and escaped to the mountains on the west bank of the Nile River to hide, and then joined a gang of bandits. The honest and kind mountain fugitives aided him until he proved his innocence, reunited with his lost sister, and married his sweetheart. For many viewers across the country, Badri and other lawless idols embody the only glimpse of resistance they experience in their repressed lives—albeit virtually on a TV screen.

Egypt's defense industry is the oldest and largest in the Arab world. However, most of its military factories have converted into manufacturing consumer goods to the civilian market for profit. Meanwhile, they continue to produce traditional weapon systems that mostly do not respond to urgent needs to combat terrorism in asymmetric warfare. In addition, Egypt is largely dependent on U.S. firms for procurement and co-production. After a political crisis in 2013, the Ministry of Military Production (MoMP) has attempted to revive defense production through new co-production initiatives with international arms firms. The country also attempts to reduce its dependence on the U.S. by seeking procurement from other states such as France, Russia, and Germany. Such efforts remain noticeably limited, because the Egyptian military still focuses on its civilian business enterprises.

Informed by postcolonial critique, this article presents an alternative approach to the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt from 1798 to 1801. Focusing on Upper Egypt, it argues that military misfortunes were not the reason behind the rapid failure of the colonizer. Rather, a crisis of images was at work. French experts on the Orient imagined oppressed natives awaiting their liberation and imagined themselves as competent liberators and managers of resources. In reality, the French faced manipulative natives and a holy war, and they had to reinstall the very ancient régime they came to depose. The French brought environmental destruction to Upper Egypt with a massive wave of plague.

The Egyptian army decided to intervene and take down existing regimes three times in the post-colonial state: once in 1952, and again more recently in 2011 and 2013. In old and new cases of intervention, the military institution deployed the same nationalist rhetoric about its duty as the "guardian" of the nation and the protector of national security and unity. However, the new army of the last three years is not the same institution that existed sixty years ago. This book argues that a new military institution was born in Egypt in the 1980s, after the country fought its last war with its traditional enemy and signed a peace treaty. It is an army of "neo-liberal officers," who run vast business enterprises, enjoy financial autonomy beyond public scrutiny, and intervene in politics with heavy leverage for reasons different than those of the old army--albeit by using the same nationalist rhetoric. Under such militarism, the country's existing economic crisis is growing acutely worse. The Egyptian pound has been drastically devalued, prices of basic goods have skyrocketed, unemployment rates have further increased, and foreign investors have not arrived to the country yet. As Abul-Magd explores the deep historical roots of the country's current fragile state, she also offers proscriptions for demilitarizing the nation, including divesting the Egyptian military of its business enterprises by curbing the financial support it receives from Arab Gulf states and other powers

AbstractIn this paper we wish to explore the legal notion of the family in contemporary legal codes and fatwa literature, and how it differs from legal stipulations regarding the nature and purpose of the marriage contract in the pre-modern Sunni fiqh. We are pursuing this brief comparative study by focusing on the issue of tahlil marriage as a legal construct that all of the four classical Sunni madhahib (law schools) did embrace, even though at least one of them tried to restrict its validity. By contrast, its role in the modern family codes is that of an awkward relic of the past, and some modern muftis in their fatwas even attempt to get away from it altogether.

Introduction : political economy of the military and non-state armed groups in the Middle East and North Africa / by Elke Grawert --. - Egypt's adaptable officers : business, nationalism, and discontent / by Zeinab Abul-Magd --. - Businessmen in boots : Pakistan's entrepreneurial military / by Ayesha Siddiqa --. - The conglomerate of the Turkish military (OYAK) and the dynamics of Turkish capitalism / by Smet Aka --. - All the Sepah's men : Iran's revolutionary guards in theory and practice / by Kevan Harris --. - Jordan's military-industrial sector : maintaining institutional prestige in the era of neoliberalism / by Shana Marshall --. - Civil-military relations in Sudan : negotiating political transition in a turbulent economy / by Atta El-Battahani --. - Patronage politics in transition : political and economic interests of the Yemeni armed forces / by Adam C. Seitz --. - Libya's tentative state rebuilding : militias' "moral economy," violence, and financing (in)security / by Philippe Droz-Vincent --. - Syria's army, militias, and non-state armed groups : ideology, funding, and shifting landscape / by Sherifa Zuhur --. - Conclusion and outlook / by Elke Grawert

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- Introduction -- Part 1. Categories of Analysis -- 1 Landed Property, Capital Accumulation, and Polymorphous Capitalism: Egypt and the Levant -- 2 State, Market, and Class: Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia -- 3 Ten Propositions on Oil -- 4 Regional Militaries and the Global Military-Industrial Complex -- Part 2. Country/Regional Studies -- 5 Rethinking Class and State in the Gulf Cooperation Council -- 6 Capitalism in Egypt, Not Egyptian Capitalism -- 7 State, Oil, and War in the Formation of Iraq -- 8 Colonial Capitalism and Imperial Myth in French North Africa -- 9 Lebanon Beyond Exceptionalism -- Chapter 10 The US-Israeli Alliance -- 11 Repercussions of Colonialism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories -- Notes -- Selected Readings -- Index