Photo by Ali Meizels ’23
To give an update on the current affairs of the Middle East region, Professors Hashmi, Czitrom, Khory, Dahi, and Ringer spoke on a panel.
BY SOPHIE SOLOWAY ’23
The conflict in Middle East lies in the very nature of its geographical position, resources and political system. The assassination of Iranian military official Qassim Suleimani on Jan. 3 brought much global attention to the Middle East and the region’s varying conflicts, crises and uprisings.
“President Trump cannot be relied on to not be a warmonger, he is a conflicted man,” Mount Holyoke International Relations Professor Sohail Hashmi said. “He has backed down from conflict with Iran before, because much of his base would not approve of further Iranian intervention.”
While these conversations have felt pertinent in the face of increasing tensions, both Hashmi and Mount Holyoke History Professor Daniel Czitrom concurred that foreign policy has not played a large part in domestic discussions, such as the ongoing electoral debates.
Professor Czitrom noted that, while the Democratic debates have had “emphasis on domestic issues and beating President Trump, [with an] avoidance of discussing foreign policy issues.” He predicts a shift in this pattern when it comes to the general debate.
While U.S. leaders are largely able to overlook these tensions, many Middle Eastern nations must come to terms with the region’s continued struggles. Several of these countries have seen ongoing protests throughout the past months. In Lebanon, for instance, the movement sparked by an October governmental taxation of WhatsApp — a widely used communication app — continues to surge today, according to Al Jazeera. In February, protesters came together in Tripoli, the nation’s poorest city, to publicly demand an end to governmental corruption and the country’s wide wealth disparity.
Similar protests spread in Iraq, calling for a realignment of the country’s leadership in response to U.S. interventionism and widespread corruption, according to the BBC. These protesters effectively ousted then Prime Minister Adel Mahdi after months of violent government reactions to citizen movements. However, the new Prime Minister, Mohammed Allawi, has not ended these demonstrations; demands for new leadership and electoral laws continue to motivate the country’s activists.
According to Omar Dahi, an economics professor at Hampshire College, the Syrian anti-government protests that took place eight years ago, in March of 2011, continue to act as an ideological deterrent for demonstrators in the region. Almost a decade later, the resulting civil war continues to take the lives of Syrian civilians.
According to a U.K. monitoring group, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, there have been approximately 367,965 casualties between 2011 and 2018. This figure does not include 192,035 missing individuals. Several outside nations, including Russia, Iran and Turkey, have deployed troops and launched air strikes to aid the opposing sides of the civil war. Dahi noted that this continued chaos is often weaponized and used to threaten protesters with similar claims into not continuing their activism.