ARAB REFORM BULLETIN

I hadn’t been aware of it until today but The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace publishes an Arab Reform Bulletin with various scholars, journalists, government officials and NGO types contributing roughly blog post length vignettes on the MENA region. Better quality stuff than what’s usually in the MSM but some of the authors are coming to the table with more of an agenda than others. The Bulletin is also published in an Arabic version.

Also up at Carnegie is a commentary on Arab ” transformation” by Amr Hamzawy, who judging from his use of a passive voice ” the collapse of the Baath regime in Iraq” ( collapse hell, the U.S. military came in and bulldozed the Iraqi state until it disintegrated) is loath to credit the Bush administration even with removing Saddam. Hamzawy nonetheless has some useful observations to make in surveying democratization and reform.