This post is written by Kelley Calkins, a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. Here she offers her assessment of the Jordanian leadership’s calculations concerning domestic reform amidst the Arab uprisings. 

Protests last weekend that resulted in the arrest of twelve protesters in Jordan serve as a reminder that the Hashemite Kingdom continues to face domestic challenges inspired by the Arab uprisings. Indeed, since January 2011, Jordan has seen numerous protests and calls for economic and political reform. King Abdullah has responded to these demonstrations by promising political change and sacking two of his prime ministers. However, meaningful movement toward real reform has been minimal so far. Given the regional instability surrounding the Hashemite Kingdom during this period of great upheaval, it seems the Jordanian regime has calculated that too much reform is risky, dangerous, and perhaps unnecessary. Read more »

Today marks thirty years since the start of President Hafez al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on the city of Hama in Syria. I asked Ella Lipin, a Fulbright grantee last year in Cairo who lived and worked in Yemen in 2007, to offer her thoughts on the Hama massacre and any parallels that may exist between President Hafez al-Assad and his son, current president Bashar al-Assad.
Read more »

Today’s post features a guest blog by Nervana Mahmoud, a British-Egyptian anesthesiologist and blogger known to many through her commentary on Twitter as @Nervana_1. She recently returned to Egypt and reports on what she found.

The Egypt I knew and grew up in was a laid-back country, almost resigned to its fate. Earlier this month, I came back to visit after some years abroad only to see a nation on the edge, anxious and confused. Egypt today is trying to come to terms with its past and present, and struggling to define its vision for the future. Rather than drawing a single unified conclusion about what Egypt is today, I left with a mélange of disparate impressions. Here are four: Read more »