Volume 15 - Number 4 June – July 2019 £8 (special issue) Final Issue Volume 15 - Number 4 June – July 2019 £8 (special issue) Final Issue Monir Farmanfarmaian, Untitled (Octagon), 2016. Mirror and reverse glass painting on About the London Middle East Institute (LMEI) plexiglass, 32 cm in diameter. Courtesy of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian family and The The London Middle East Institute (LMEI) draws upon the resources of London and SOAS to provide Third Line, Dubai teaching, training, research, publication, consultancy, outreach and other services related to the Middle East. It serves as a neutral forum for Middle East studies broadly defined and helps to create links between Volume 15 – Number 4 individuals and institutions with academic, commercial, diplomatic, media or other specialisations. June–July 2019 With its own professional staff of Middle East experts, the LMEI is further strengthened by its academic membership – the largest concentration of Middle East expertise in any institution in Europe. The LMEI also Editorial Board has access to the SOAS Library, which houses over 150,000 volumes dealing with all aspects of the Middle East. LMEI’s Advisory Council is the driving force behind the Institute’s fundraising programme, for which Dr Orkideh Behrouzan SOAS it takes primary responsibility. It seeks support for the LMEI generally and for specific components of its Dr Hadi Enayat programme of activities. AKU LMEI is a Registered Charity in the UK wholly owned by SOAS, University of London (Charity Ms Narguess Farzad SOAS Registration Number: 1103017). Mrs Nevsal Hughes Association of European Journalists Professor George Joffé Mission Statement: Cambridge University Dr Ceyda Karamursel SOAS The aim of the LMEI, through education and research, is to promote knowledge of all aspects of the Middle Mrs Margaret Obank East including its complexities, problems, achievements and assets, both among the general public and with Banipal Publishing those who have a special interest in the region. In this task it builds on two essential assets. First, it is based in Ms Janet Rady London, a city which has unrivalled contemporary and historical connections and communications with the Janet Rady Fine Art Middle East including political, social, cultural, commercial and educational aspects. Secondly, the LMEI is Mr Barnaby Rogerson at SOAS, the only tertiary educational institution in the world whose explicit purpose is to provide education Dr Sarah Stewart SOAS and scholarship on the whole Middle East from prehistory until today. 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ISSN 1743-7598 Contents 6 20 EDITORIAL Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates: New 7 regional alliances and the My time as editor Palestinian struggle Megan Wang Adam Hanieh 8 22 LMEI Board of Trustees INSIGHT Egypt is failing its people Baroness Valerie Amos (Chair) Economic sanctions debunked Robert Springborg Director, SOAS Hassan Hakimian Dr Orkideh Behrouzan, SOAS 24 Professor Stephen Hopgood, SOAS 10 From bystander to stakeholder? Dr Lina Khatib, Chatham House Dr Dina Matar, SOAS IN MEMORIAM China’s participation in Middle Dr Hanan Morsy Monir Shahroudy East security affairs African Development Bank Degang Sun Professor Scott Redford, SOAS Farmanfarmaian Mr James Watt, CBRL (1922-2019) 26 2019 Postcard from Iran 11 Thomas Helm Prose: the modern chronicle of LMEI Advisory Council the Arabs 2017 Hartmut Fähndrich 29 Lady Barbara Judge (Chair) Nascent Kurdish cinema Professor Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem 13 H E Khalid Al-Duwaisan GVCO Mizgin Mujde Arslan Ambassador, Embassy of the State of Kuwait Asghar Farhadi’s cinema: a Mrs Haifa Al Kaylani Arab International Women’s Forum family torn apart 30 Dr Khalid Bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Asal Bagheri The main challenge to Yemen’s President, University College of Bahrain Professor Tony Allan future: war or water scarcity? King’s College and SOAS 15 Helen Lackner Dr Alanoud Alsharekh Senior Fellow for Regional Politics, IISS Eight days on the (Wild?) West Mr Farad Azima Bank 32 NetScientific Plc Dr Noel Brehony Mike Scott-Baumann Mena youth and the need for a MENAS Associates Ltd. political economy approach Professor Magdy Ishak Hanna British Egyptian Society 2018 Maria Cristina Paciello and HE Mr Rami Mortada 18 Daniela Pioppi Ambassador, Embassy of Lebanon Tunisia: seven years later George Joffé 34 Turkey’s journalists in a battle for survival Firdevs Robinson June – July 2019 The Middle East in London 3 Contents continued 36 54 The persistent challenge of Activism and ‘liberal’ ‘Islamic exceptionalism’ authoritarianism Hadi Enayat Karima Laachir 2016 56 39 Nimrud reduced to rubble My cultural connections John Curtis Barnaby Rogerson 58 41 Losing our language diversity Still singing: female singers in Mandana Seyfeddinipur contemporary Iran Parmis Mozafari 2014 61 43 The coup and Iran’s literary Air pollution and public health tradition in Iran Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak Hamid M. Pouran 63 45 Palestinian refugees and the Kicking away the migration politics of return ladder? Ruba Salih Hassan Hakimian 64 47 Islam in Turkey Gender, power and violence Andrew Mango Nadje Al-Ali 66 2015 Nostalgia and the oil city 50 Rasmus Christian Elling The visual language of dissent Megan Wang 68 The draw of certainty: Salafism 52 and young women in London Water resources in the Anabel Inge Middle East: scarce, emotional, politicised and 2013 misunderstood 71 Tony Allan Kirkuk: the symbolic power of a contested city Nelida Fuccaro 4 The Middle East in London June – July 2019 Contents continued 88 72 The role of art in protest Iranian journalism and ‘the Ionis Thompson in discussion with land of freedom’ Charles Tripp Hossein Shahidi 2011 74 91 In the shadow of revolutions Flowers of Persian song and Madawi Al-Rasheed music: digitising the Golha archive 76 Jane Lewisohn Religious minorities in the Middle East 93 Sami Zubaida Manhattan comes to Makkah Samar Al-Sayed 78 A loaf of bread, a jug of wine 94 and rhyme: images of food in Libya: tribal war or popular Persian poetry revolution? Narguess Farzad Igor Cherstich 2012 95 81 Unrest in the Levant Mapping Iraqi art in London Dina Matar talks to Gilbert Janet Rady Achcar 83 97 Norouz around the world The non-Arabic languages of Baqer Moin southern Arabia Janet Watson 85 Bringing Palestine and the world together; in poetry and prose Atef Alshaer 87 ‘Born of the wind’: the Arabian horse and equestrianism at the London Olympics Ionis Thompson June – July 2019 The Middle East in London 5 EDITORIAL Volume 15 - Number 2 February – March 2019 Volume 15 - Number 1 £4 £4 December 2018 – January 2019 Volume 15 - Number 3 April – May 2019 £4 THIS ISSUE● The Arabic: IRANIAN novel CINEMA ● Indian camera, Iranian THISheart ● TheISSUE UNRWA : literary and dramatic roots of the Iranian New Wave ● Dystopic Tehran in ‘Film Farsi’ popular● The Joint List PALESTINE ● Eight days on the (Wild?) West Bank ● Prose:cinema the modern ● Parviz chronicle Sayyad: ofsocio-political● theThe commentator dressed as village fool ● The noir world ● ● The environmental ethics of● and failing infrastructure in EastOn the Jerusalem dignity of ●teachers Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ : The Novel in the Arab ofWorld Masud Kimiai ● The resurgence of Iranian ‘Sacred Defence’ Cinema ● Asghar Farhadi’s ● ● The prize-winningcinema ● New Arabic diasporic novel visions of Iran ● PLUS Reviews and events in LondonPLUS ● Keeping national consciousness alive THIS ISSUE ● Photo competition results Reviews and events in London ● My short return to Gaza ● Understanding ● The novel is the number one Arab literary genre ● The ‘next’ Palestinian writers are already here ● The Iraqi novel emerges from the womb of disaster ● Arabs ● Season of migration● Arabic to novels the novel in translation Housing, rubbish, walls the Libyan novel Arabic novel in the Digital Age Reviews and events in London PLUS Dear Reader Hassan Hakimian, Director, London Middle East Institute his is our magazine’s last editorial opportunity to assess the Institute’s future companions onboard – past and present. note and it comes to you with a and consider the option of bringing it The Editorial Board, who gave their combined sense of sadness and inhouse to mirror SOAS’s other regional wisdom and experience both widened Tpride. Sadness because – like all good institutes. After casting it with a new the span and scope of the magazine things – it is coming to an end, and pride remit and scope, a new head of LMEI will and made light of a foreboding task for because it comes with a strong sense take over. The future of the magazine can me as the Director of the Institute with of achievement for a small, specialist be hopefully revisited at that stage with limited resources dedicated to keeping magazine that has endured so long and the priorities and constraints facing the the magazine afloat; writers and issue fulfilled so much over its impressive new Institute in mind.