Podcasts by Order From Ashes

Sistani’s Historic Legacy from 2023-12-12T11:47:42

During decades of turmoil, war, and regime change in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has played a critical, often overlooked role—steering Iraq away from sectarian conflict, promoting civic...

How Is the Gaza War Affecting the Middle East? from 2023-11-29T16:26:57

The Middle East has faced growing instability, violence, and the risk of a wider war ever since October 7. 

Most attention is understandably focused on Israel, where 1,200 people...

Aid That Backfires from 2023-11-07T16:29:04

Foreign donors are propping up Lebanon’s public institutions and services with the kind of aid they ordinarily provide to failed states. Will this aid create more problems than it solves for Leb...

Shia Power: Sectarian Prejudice from 2023-10-23T03:14:38

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Ali Al-Mawlawi traces the long history of anti-Shia prejudice in Iraq. That prejudice, he argues, distorts contemporary debates over whether Shia...

Shia Power: Iraq’s Nationalist Revolutionaries from 2023-10-10T02:53:48

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast “Shia Power” series, Taif Alkhudary explains how the October 2019 protests formed a popular response to years of thwarted democratization. 

Shia Power: Do Clerics Still Have Authority? from 2023-10-01T23:03:09

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Marsin Alshamary explains why, despite some setbacks, Shia clerics in Iraq still wield a great deal of authority. 

Protest moveme...

Shia Power: What’s an Islamist? from 2023-09-25T00:21:15

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Sajad Jiyad plumbs the complex evolution of Shia Islamism during two decades at the center of Iraqi power.

This episode of Order ...

Facing Iraq’s Climate Catastrophe from 2023-07-11T01:37:07

In a miserable twist for the people who live there, Iraq has become a front-line test lab for the extreme effects of climate change. A combination of forces, accelerated by bad human decisions, ...

Lebanon’s Botched Economic Rescue from 2023-06-12T22:48:08

Lebanon’s ruling elites have sabotaged talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which offered the last hope for reforms that could save the country’s economy and improve life for millio...

Power and Power in Lebanon from 2023-05-09T11:22:58

The scramble for electricity has produced new interest groups that will shape the evolution of Lebanon’s decaying power sector, and the country’s future. Lebanese people endure erratic and expen...

A Tale of Two Border Towns from 2023-04-04T10:20:35

The effort to secure Iraq’s borders after the defeat of ISIS has created other, new sources of instability, as conflict supply chains adapt to new circumstances.

A close look at two borde...

Broken Bonds: Quitting the Brotherhood from 2023-03-07T14:14:10

Members have fled the Muslim Brotherhood in droves since its ouster from power in Egypt in 2013, frustrated that the organization can’t take care of them, or provide meaning for their lives. Wil...

Broken Bonds: Leaders without Legitimacy from 2023-03-02T16:04:04

The Muslim Brotherhood is a hierarchical organization suffering a debilitating leadership vacuum. Now, the organization has to reinvent itself while most of its top cadres are in exile, dead, or...

Broken Bonds: No Identity from 2023-02-28T16:11:19

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is suffering from an identity crisis, made worse by ongoing, violent state repression. Nearly a century since its founding, the Brotherhood hasn’t reconciled its socia...

Broken Bonds: Existential Crises from 2023-02-23T12:21:34

The Muslim Brotherhood tries to project an image of grassroots power and disciplined leadership. A trio of researchers takes a different view, describing a once-formidable organization that is u...

Broken Bonds: My Life as a Muslim Brother from 2023-02-21T10:14:40

What’s it like to come of age in a Muslim Brotherhood family in Egypt’s Nile Delta? Abdelrahman Ayyash recounts his childhood, political awakening, and disenchantment.

Ayyash recounts his...

The Earthquake, Cholera, and Borders from 2023-02-08T15:48:45

The catastrophic earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 had particularly dire consequences for the millions of displaced Syrians living near the epicenter. Many of them have moved...

Iraq’s Heist of the Century from 2023-01-10T11:31:18

This fall, news broke that a web of thieves—including high-level officials—had stolen $2.5 billion in Iraqi government cash. The scam is only the most recent example of systemic corruption perpe...

Progressive Policy: Shrinking America’s Military Footprint from 2022-12-19T16:54:51

America maintains an enormous military infrastructure on the Arabian peninsula and in the Persian Gulf. How should the United States shrink this enormous footprint while continuing to protect it...

Progressive Policy: Replacing the War on Terror from 2022-12-13T17:35:45

Progressives have done a good job articulating the problems with bad policies, especially the Global War on Terror, which worsened the problems it was supposed to solve.

But what is the b...

Citizenship Finale: Learning, from Protests to Movements from 2022-05-25T23:37:54

The United States and Lebanon are, in some ways, very different political contexts, and yet organizers face strikingly similar dilemmas and pitfalls in both countries. Both Nicole Carty and Jean...

Citizenship: Skill-Building, from Protests to Movements from 2022-05-23T16:18:16

No matter how big they are, protests alone do not create political change. They must be nurtured into something more enduring: a movement. Movements are neither protests nor organizations.

Citizenship: Police Reform Is a Global Industry from 2022-05-16T16:55:18

For the last decade and more, popular outrage at police brutality has driven mass protests in both the Middle East and the West. Opposition to police excesses—from crackdowns on protests in Egyp...

Citizenship: Who’s Afraid of Gender? from 2022-05-11T12:57:53

From Poland to the studios of Fox News, reactionaries have recast progressive ideas about gender as a militant “gender ideology” that threatens society and its values. These politicians and pund...

Citizenship: Beyond Exceptionalism—the “Middle East,” Gender, and Sexuality from 2022-05-09T19:14:18

Pundits, policymakers, and even academics often treat the Middle East as “exceptional”—a region of primordial violence and war, stuck in premodern social dynamics. But such conflict is not uniqu...

Citizenship: Are We Really in an Age of Militias? from 2022-05-03T16:53:22

A cursory survey of contemporary media, policy, and academic landscapes suggests that we live in an age of militias, in which they are increasingly prevalent actors and a growing political chall...

Citizenship: Gender, Religion, and Militias from 2022-05-02T19:31:14

Discussions of self-styled Islamist armed groups, such as the Islamic State, tend to heavily focus on gender and religion. Yet these elements are almost always never considered in analyses of wh...

Citizenship Introduction: A Global Crisis in Citizenship from 2022-04-25T01:18:37

A worldwide crisis in citizenship and rights has made it clear that no country’s struggle is entirely exceptional. Today’s episode of Order from Ashes kicks off a new season of the podcast: Tran...

War in Ukraine, Pain in Syria from 2022-04-12T09:08:54

Even while Ukraine is experiencing tremendous suffering and dislocation since the Russian invasion, spillover effects are being felt all over the world. Syria is especially vulnerable, after ten...

Making Lemonade from the Abraham Accords from 2022-03-02T08:25:13

A year and a half ago, the historic Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries—but did little for stability or democracy in the region, much less for Israeli–Pal...

Closing Syria’s Border to Aid from 2021-07-02T13:01:48

Millions of Syrians depend on international aid that comes through a single border crossing—aid that depends on an agreement with Russia. Every year, and sometimes more frequently, the UN Securi...

Syrians Are Going Hungry from 2021-06-07T23:06:05

Syria faces an unprecedented food security crisis. Almost 60 percent of the country is now food-insecure, and more than a million Syrians cannot survive without food aid. The crisis has many cau...

Iran and Saudi Start to Talk from 2021-05-18T10:36:44

Regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia have a hand in nearly every hot spot around the Middle East. The two rivals don’t control what happens, but they can play a major role in destabilizing batt...

Thaw Between Turkey and Egypt from 2021-03-30T11:39:04

Tensions between Egypt and Turkey have run high for nearly a decade. Turkey has hosted Egyptian dissidents and opposition parties since the Egyptian coup in 2013; and the two countries ...

Yemen’s Wars at a Turning Point from 2021-03-09T11:55:39

Soon after taking office, President Biden announced that the United States would stop contributing offensive weapons to the war in Yemen. “a new RAND Corporation study that a...

Egypt’s Revolution at 10 from 2021-02-09T08:44:59

Ten years ago, the uprising in Tahrir Square toppled Egypt’s dictator and raised hopes for political reform across the Middle East. Great setbacks followed in Egypt, which now suffers under an e...

War Comes Homes from 2021-01-26T10:11:05

Critics of hyper-militarized foreign policy argue that the abuses of America’s war on terror led in a direct line to the January 6 attempt to overturn the presidential election. On this episode ...

America’s Attempted Coup from 2021-01-19T12:14:20

The challenge to American democracy has called into question some of the country’s deepest assumptions about exceptionalism. Fellows at The Century Foundation have been studying fragile democrac...

Nature and National Security in the Middle East from 2020-12-17T08:53:41

A fearsome array of climate and environmental woes is straining the Middle East, worsening the existing crisis of poor governance and weak states in the region. On this episode of “Order From As...

Promoting America’s Devalued Democracy from 2020-12-01T13:49:42

The United States always had difficulty squaring its record on the ground in the Middle East  with its efforts to promote rights and democracy. It’s even harder after the Trump presidency and a ...

What’s Next for the Muslim Brotherhood? from 2020-09-23T09:16

Egypt’s 2013 military coup and crackdown left the Muslim Brotherhood more adrift than ever before in its ninety-two-year history.

With tens of thousands of members surviving in e...

Can the U.S. Help Syria Without Helping Assad? from 2020-08-03T07:43:21

Washington, D.C. has been the most generous donor in the world to humanitarian aid efforts for Syrian civilians. But United States policy has also been bent on overthrowing Syrian President Bash...

Saudi Arabia’s Disruptor King from 2020-06-23T09:38:54

Mohammed Bin Salman quickly shook up the old sleepy way of doing business in Saudi Arabia when he effectively took power in 2015. He took on the Saudi establishment, sidelining the clergy and ot...

COVID-19 Gathers Force in Middle East from 2020-06-09T07:24:53

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, displaced populations and conflict zones were considered especially vulnerable, driving early fears that the Middle East would be especially hard hit. The ...

Lebanon, Neoliberalism's Proving Ground from 2020-04-28T09:41:58

Lebanon has served for decades as one of the world’s leading experiments in extreme libertarianism, illustrating what happens to a society with little to no government regulation or social prote...

Lessons from the European Union in Crisis from 2020-04-06T14:03:25

The European Union is the world’s most successful experiment in shared sovereignty, and its biggest, wealthiest social welfare state. It also has struggled with nationalism and fragmentation in ...

A New World Order after the Pandemic? from 2020-03-23T16:37:15

The global crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic will prompt a period of reflection and, potentially, a once-in-a-generation chance for sweeping policy change and reform. But the United Stat...

Virus and Oil Price Shocks Buffet the Gulf from 2020-03-18T10:45:17

The COVID-19 epidemic hit Iran and its neighboring countries early, and has tested health systems and governments across the region. A second crisis hit the region in early March, when oil price...

What’s the Price of Giving Up on Human Rights and International Law? from 2020-02-11T10:04:14

During the Cold War, the United States promoted international law and human rights as a way to constrain its global rivals. Since the 1990s, however, Washington has more and more often dispensed...

Rupture in the Iraq–America partnership from 2020-01-28T11:04:42

Years of tension and slights between the governments of Iraq and the United States came to a head after the United States breached the terms of its partnership with Iraq with the assassination o...

Dubai Ports World and a New Form of Imperialism from 2019-12-09T17:20:42

A new report out today from TCF report examines Gulf expansionism through a case study of the Emirates-based company Dubai Ports World (DP World). This multinational is one of the world’s leadin...

A Better Explanation for Powerful Armed Groups: Hybridity from 2019-11-25T15:33:52

From Libya to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyo...

How Is Iraq Managing Its Oil? from 2019-11-05T10:59:12

Iraq is the second-largest OPEC oil producer, believed to have huge unexploited reserves that will make the country increasingly rich as it modernizes its decrepit energy infrastructure.    Iraq ho...

Popular Protest Redux in Iraq and Egypt from 2019-10-14T11:44:38

Nearly a decade after the Arab uprisings gripped the region, large-scale protests have broken out in Iraq and Egypt. In Iraq, arguably one of the most open political systems in the Arab world, a...

Reviving the United Nations from 2019-09-30T10:07:28

This podcast is part of an ongoing TCF series that explores progressive policy proposals for America’s most pressing international priorities.

The United States is by far the most signifi...

Rethinking Israel–Palestine’s Stifling Status Quo from 2019-09-03T11:12:26

This podcast is part of an ongoing TCF series that explores progressive policy proposals for America’s most pressing international priorities.

On this podcast, we learn about the shifting...

Downgrading America’s Commitments in the Middle East from 2019-08-13T10:06:12

This podcast is part of an ongoing TCF series that explores progressive policy proposals for America’s most pressing international priorities.

America has had an inflated military presenc...

A Smarter Iran Policy from 2019-07-18T14:39:13

This podcast is part of an ongoing TCF series that explores progressive policy proposals for America’s most pressing international priorities.

As part of our running series exploring in d...

Defining a Progressive Middle East Policy from 2019-06-17T15:43:14

Progressives still have to figure out how to translate into policy widely shared concerns with global inequality, authoritarianism, climate change, and reflexive militarism. In this episode, Tha...

America’s Blind Spot on Palestine from 2019-05-28T10:40:37

For years, the United States has invested significant political capital in attempting to broker a peaceful resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. However, these attempts have l...

Contesting Sectarian Identity in Iraq from 2019-05-08T16:37:45

Although it’s still widely used by analysts and policymakers, the term “sectarianism” has distorted efforts to explain political dynamics in Iraq. Since 2003, Iraqi society has undergone signifi...

[Arabic] LGBTQ Rights in Egypt from 2019-05-02T10:13:27

This podcast is in Arabic.

From the Queen Boat incident in 2001 to the waves of arrests following Mashrou’ Leila’s concert in Cairo in 2017, Egypt’s LGBTQ community has always endured a p...

Kurdish Nationalism at an Impasse from 2019-04-29T12:12:53

Despite enjoying more autonomy than other parts of Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan is losing its position as the center of gravity for Kurdish nationalism. The unwillingness of Kurdish elites to reli...

[Arabic] Universal and Minority Rights in the Middle East from 2019-04-17T14:34:59

This podcast is in Arabic.

The question of universal rights in the Middle East is a delicate one. As pluralism and rights come under threat from communal violence, authoritarianism, and r...

Universal and Minority Rights in the Middle East from 2019-04-09T13:23:14

The question of universal rights in the Middle East is a delicate one. As pluralism and rights come under threat from communal violence, authoritarianism, and religious identity politics, the ca...

The Caliphate’s Last Stand from 2019-03-26T16:54:17

At the end of March, the last die-hard supporters of the Islamic State were driven out of the final remnant of a once-sprawling territorial caliphate encompassing vast swathes of Iraq and Syria....

Israel’s Global Security Industry from 2019-03-12T14:22:14

Technologies and methods of controlling civilian life developed and tested in the Middle East often migrate to the United States and other world markets, where they’re used on some of the most m...

Syrian Voices from 2019-02-21T14:04:09

In a conflict as polarizing as Syria’s, journalists often struggle to decide how best to bring to their audiences the voices of their sources and subjects. In this episode, two journalists who h...

A New Progressive International? from 2019-01-25T13:04:36

There’s been an increasingly vigorous debate in the United States of America about what a progressive foreign policy would look like. There has been far less talk, however, about how much Americ...

Iran after the Broken Deal from 2019-01-08T13:09:15

Last year, the much-vaunted Iran nuclear deal fell apart when President Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement, imposed new sanctions, and pressured American allies to stop doing bu...

The Difficulty of Reporting from Assad’s Syria from 2018-12-18T17:51:14

It’s always been a challenge to conduct independent research and journalism in Syria, where the government’s network of secret police and informants tightly monitor all conversations. Since the ...

The Challenges of Defending Human Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy from 2018-12-04T17:14:04

Whenever policymakers have tried to place human rights at the center of American foreign policy, they frequently find themselves trading them away for other strategic goals—or facing accusation...

The Overlapping Wars in Yemen—and U.S. Complicity in Catastrophe from 2018-11-15T15:30:50

The Saudi-led coalition has led a brutal air campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen since 2015. The result has been a tremendous humanitarian catastrophe, with 50,000 dead, millions on the brin...

Iraq’s New Government, and Rebuilding Syria from 2018-10-16T13:58:43

Iraq is finally forming a new government after its elections in May, and faces a daunting crisis of governance and corruption. A frustrated electorate has high, perhaps unrealistic, expectations...

Basra Protests Shake Iraqi Status Quo from 2018-09-25T13:28:16

September’s mass protests in Basra shook Iraq’s government all the way to the top—and perhaps mark a new phase in Iraq’s popular politics. In a brief wave of demonstrations, residents of Basra a...

How Germany Is Integrating One Million Syrian Refugees from 2018-09-11T16:56:25

Germany is more than three years into a massive human and policy experiment, figuring out how best to integrate mor- e than one million Syrian asylum seekers. Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed S...

New thinking about American liberal foreign policy from 2018-08-21T16:47:57

Liberal internationalists (from all over the American political spectrum) have responded with horror to President Trump’s broadsides against the very idea of alliances and international cooperat...

How to Research Lebanon’s Youth Problem (and Other Questions) from 2018-07-23T17:31:10

Aya Fatima Chamseddine has been exploring the ways that Lebanese youth get indoctrinated into armed militant groups—or trapped in dead-end jobs that encourage them to join dead-end sectarian pol...

Recruiting militants: Greed or grievance? from 2018-06-20T10:16:27

The growing power of armed groups in the Middle East has raised an old question: how do militants recruit new constituents? Researchers have long debated the relative merits of ideology versus s...

Iran in Iraq from 2018-06-08T14:56:59

As tensions flare between Iran and the United States, TCF takes a look at Iran’s record in Iraq. Some critics of American policy say that Washington “lost Iraq,” and paint Tehran as a master pup...

Do Elections Help or Hurt Middle-East Democracy? from 2018-04-19T16:28:56

Another season of elections is upon the Middle East. Egypt’s presidential election appeared anything but free, as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi renewed his authoritarian mandate and squelched e...

Bridging the Middle East’s Security Gulf from 2018-04-06T11:00:14

There seem to be fewer and fewer opportunities to build relationships between adversarial governments in the Middle East region. Even the faint promise that briefly flared during the negotiation...

Honor Killings and Women’s Rights from 2018-03-07T12:22

Women’s rights advocate AlAnoud AlSharekh is a leader in the fight to end violence against women and promote women’s political participation in the Middle East. She has worked in Kuwait and thro...

Iraq’s Militia Problem and A Dangerous Point in Syria from 2018-03-06T23:46:35

Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units played a pivotal role in defeating the Islamic State and are positioned to reap a greater share of power in the upcoming May elections. Fanar Haddad argues that...

Why We Shouldn’t Expect an Arab NATO from 2018-01-31T11:08:32

There have been repeated, failed efforts over the decades to assemble some kind of Middle Eastern regional security force, something like an “Arab NATO.” Brian Katulis, a senior fellow ...

Dealing with Iran and Rebalancing American Interests from 2018-01-24T10:09

From America’s vantage point, Iran is a primary source of destabilizing intervention across the Middle East. But Iran, like other states, much of the time is pursuing its own interests and tryin...

Security Architecture in the Middle East from 2018-01-16T13:42

Why does the Middle East lag behind every other region in the world in security architecture? What is security architecture?

The Century Foundation has launched the results of a multi-yea...

Who Cares About A Faraway Siege? from 2017-12-21T10:38

It’s been a year since the dramatic siege and fall of Aleppo, and another part of Syria suffers under blockade: Eastern Ghouta, on the flank of Damascus, where an estimated 400,000 civilians lan...

A Post-American World from 2017-12-08T12:16

Donald Trump's presidency has brought into stark relief questions about America's role and standing in the world. Author Suzy Hansen has spent a decade investigating America's complicated relations...

Talking with Syrian Exiles from 2017-11-30T00:15

More than five million Syrians, over one-fifth of the country’s prewar population, have left their homeland since the uprisings began in 2011. As President Bashar al-Assad claims victory and rec...

Iraq after the Kurdish referendum from 2017-11-09T10:57

The Kurdish drive for independence has foundered and Iraq has reestablished control over disputed areas. Ethnic strains remain, and political divisions are flaring within Iraq’s major communities. ...

Syria's Next Phase from 2017-10-20T12:05

As Syria’s conflict settles decisively into a new phase, much of the fight has moved to diplomatic salons. Reconstruction and normalization are the biggest questions of the day. If Syria is to be r...

Press Freedom in Egypt from 2017-10-20T12:04

Egypt is enduring the harshest crackdown on civil liberties and political freedom in its modern history. As media outlets, civic institutions, and political parties buckle or vanish under inordinat...

Hezbollah and Iran's Road from 2017-10-12T13:23

Has Iran secured a path to the Mediterranean, as some analysts and politicians claim? What is Hezbollah doing these days inside Syria? The Century Foundation’s foreign policy team considers some of...

Demythologize ISIS from 2017-10-12T10:42

In TCF World’s inaugural podcast episode, Century Foundation fellows Thanassis Cambanis, Michael Wahid Hanna, Aron Lund, and Sam Heller try to put to rest some of the mythology and exaggerations th...