Nr 101/102 • Veebruar 2012
The Leaving of an East-European Ideologue
The disappearance of politicians like Ví¡clav Havel points to the beginning of the end of the era of visionaries.
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What Next for Syria after Assad?
Anyone who studies human rights abuses in modern dictatorships is susceptible to one of two ailments: atrocity fatigue or a disconcerting level of anger and resentment. Anna Politkovskaya writes somewhere in her memoirs that she could understand why she hated Vladimir Putin but she had trouble figuring out why she hated him so much.
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Finland’s New President
The Finnish 2012 presidential elections told a story about major changes in society.
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The Soft Partition of Iraq into Three States?
Problems were expected to occur when the American troops left Iraq before Christmas last year. Just the next day after that the concealed tensions surfaced when Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi left Baghdad and travelled to the Kurdish Autonomous Region in North Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claims that al-Hashimi is responsible for political assassinations and he must be put to trial. Al-Maliki demands that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) deliver Vice President al-Hashimi to Baghdad, but Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani say that al-Hashimi is a guest of the Kurds and that he can stay in the Kurdish capital Erbil. What is this issue all about?
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The Islamist Spring in Egypt
When it comes to political forecasting, the catalogue of shocking historical failures is endless: from the Iranian Revolution in 1979 through the disintegration of the USSR Empire in 1989–91 to the eruption of the democratic Arab Spring in 2011. On January 25, 2011, the day of the Egyptian Revolution, Israeli Mossad Chief Meir Dagan said the Mubarak regime was stable. Similar announcements came from senior American officials.
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Summary
This issue of Diplomaatia focuses on the follow-up of the ‘Arab spring’, now more often called the ‘Arab Winter’, as roughly a year has passed since the beginning of the initially unexpected revolutionary developments in the region. Offering overviews of the region as a whole and analyses of the current situation in some particular countries of the region, our authors investigate the extent to which the region has changed by now and whether or not the emergence of genuine democracy in the Arab states has become feasible in the near future.
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