Maria Luisa Fantappie, Contributor
Maria Fantappie is the Iraq senior advisor at the International Crisis Group and served as a senior advisor on security sector reform for the European Union mission to Iraq.
Michael Wahid Hanna, Century International Board of Advisors
Michael Wahid Hanna is director of the U.S. program at International Crisis Group. He was a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and co-director of TCF’s foreign policy program until 2021. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. Hanna works on issues of international security, international law, and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia.
Thanassis Cambanis, Senior Fellow and Director of Century International
Thanassis Cambanis is an author, journalist, and director of Century International. His work focuses on U.S. foreign policy, Arab politics, and social movements in the Middle East.
Arab Uprisings Grip Iraq and Egypt—Again
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, authorities struck the protesters with surprising levels of violence. In Egypt, the surprise was that protests took place at all, given the historic levels of authoritarian repression.
What do the protests reveal about state failure—and what kind of pressure do they exert on governments to change? Iraq and Egypt, like many governments in the region, have rigid systems that appear incapable of serious changes in policy or governance. What can we learn from the latest round of revolts?
Participants include: