Editor’s Note

Among the offerings in this spring issue of the Journal are: an assessment of the possible role of Arab journalists in a new “Arab Awakening;” a case study of a major jihadist group in Algeria and its evolution; an examination of the geopolitics of Azerbaijan’s foreign policy since independence; a history of the Shari‘a Court system in Israel; and a look at the Ford Foundation’s experiences in 1950s Iran; as well as an examination of new books on democracy promotion and reform. I hope you will find it an issue that provokes thought and increases our understanding of developments in the region.

Are Arab journalists, in this era of new media that transcend traditional national boundaries, “border guards of the imagined watan, responsible for a reawakening of a pan-Arab national identity?” That’s the argument made by Lawrence Pintak, Director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at The American University in Cairo, basing his analysis on the first surveys of Arab journalists. If the author’s name sounds familiar, it is because Larry Pintak was a longtime CBS foreign correspondent based in the Middle East.

The study of radical Islamist movements has been intense in recent years, as the different nuances influencing various strands of radical jihadi groups become more important in understanding the challenge that they pose. Jean-Pierre Filiu of Sciences-Po in Paris (which has been a pioneer in such studies) offers an analysis of al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghrib, the former Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Filiu assesses the shifting balances between the ideology of global jihadism and local requirements in a careful case study.

Given the growing importance of Caspian oil and the geopolitical pipeline politics involved, not to mention the lingering territorial challenges left by the breakup of the Soviet Union and subsequent war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan has faced a great many challenges since independence. Pinar Ipek of Bilkent University analyzes Azerbaijan’s calculations in developing its pro-Western foreign policy and navigating the difficult regional political and military challenges, balancing among Russia and its other neighbors while cultivating ties with the US and Turkey.

Reconciling the role of Islamic Shari‘a with a civil court system is an issue in many countries, but a particular challenge arises when the Shari‘a courts apply to a Muslim minority in a predominantly non-Muslim state. An intriguing case study is Israel, and Alisa Rubin Peled uses declassified archival material and court decisions to trace the history from statehood to the present, emphasizing the emergence of a tacit “agreement on how to disagree” rather than conflict between the state and its Muslim minority.

At a time when US-Iranian relations are again extremely newsworthy, it is always useful to revisit aspects of the history of that relationship. Between 1954 and 1964 the Ford Foundation operated a rural development program in Iran. Victor Nemchenok, a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia, has had access to the Foundation’s archives and offers a study of its experiences there, arguing that it eventually failed because of a divergence of aims between the Foundation’s efforts and US foreign policy, which emphasized Iran’s stability in the Cold War era.

Our book review article this time is by Steven A. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations, examining three recent works on the questions of democracy promotion and political reform in the Middle East, finding each of the books essential reading. The rest of the book review section and the Chronology are of course here as well.

In other Journal-related news, your Editor has been blogging since January at the Middle East Institute Editor’s Blog, available at http://mideasti.blogspot.com , and through our website at http://www.mei.edu . I seek to offer both commentary and background information for informed assessment of events in the region. Opinions expressed there are my own and do not represent the views of the Journal or of the Middle East Institute, which do not take policy positions on Middle Eastern issues.