From the First Gulf War to the present upheaval in Syria, the Kurdish question has been a crucial issue within the Middle East region and in international politics. Spread across several countries, the Kurds constitute the largest stateless nation in the world. In this context, a striking question arises: how are Kurdish identity and the idea of the homeland - both as a symbol and as territorial space - constructed in writings from Turkish Kurdistan and its diaspora? Through a comparative analysis of Kurdish writing, Ozlem Galip here provides the first comprehensive look at modern Kurdish...

Over the last three decades Afghanistan has been plagued by crisis - from Soviet invasion in 1979 and Taliban rule to US invasion following the events of 9/11. Here the top specialists on Afghanistan, including Olivier Roy, Ahmad Rashid and Jonathan Goodhand, provide a unique overview of the evolution, causes and future of the Afghan crisis. Covering political and military events and examining the role of ethnic groups, religious and ideological factors and the role of the leaders and war chiefs of the period - from the anti-Soviet resistance to the presidency of Hamid Karzai - this book will...

Kiryat Shmona, located on the Israeli-Lebanese border, often makes the news whenever there is an outbreak of violence between the two countries. Israel's northernmost city, its residents are mostly Mizrahi descent, that is, Jews from Arab and Muslim lands. Cathrine Furberg Moe uses the dynamics at play along this border to develop wider conclusions about the nature of nationalism, identity, ethnicity and xenophobia in Israel, and the ways in which these shift over time and are manipulated in different ways for various ends. She explores the idea of being on the 'periphery' of nationhood:...

Water is a key issue on the agenda of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours. The circumstances in which Gaza gained its autonomy leaves it in a disadvantageous position with respect to water, and a deal on the hotly contested issue of the West Bank aquifers will be a protracted process.
This book brings together the work of individuals involved directly in the negotiations and experts from various disciplines who have devoted their professional lives to the study of water and its management in the Jordan Basin. It looks at the issue from many different perspectives, offers new...

The protests that spread across the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010 and early 2011 took media commentators, academics and the ruling classes of these countries by surprise.

Lebanese society is famously, and even notoriously, fragmented, along both class and sectarian lines. Here, Nabil Dajani looks at how this societal division impacts on the nature of the mass media in Lebanon.

The Arab Spring, which swept across the Middle East between 2010 and 2012, demonstrated the extent to which military structure and decision-making determine whether peaceful uprisings lead to democratisation, renewed authoritarianism, collapse or civil war.

The April 6th Youth Movement began as a Facebook page that sought to mobilize young Egyptians' support for striking industrial workers.