Vortrag am 2.11.2011: The Elephant in the Room: How Outsiders Undermine Yemen's Future

Der vierte Vortrag in unserer Reihe widmet sich einer Mikroperspektive: Dr. Isa Blumi wird sich mit den Akteuren der Protest- und Freiheitsbewegung im Yemen auseinandersetzen. Er wird die Aussagen des Regimes in Sanaa beleuchten, die Opposition wäre von al-Qaeda oder dem Iran unterwandert und setze die Zukunft des Landes aufs Spiel. Da diese Vorwürfe auch in der westlichen - akademischen wie medialen - Sphäre allzuoft wiederholt werden, lohnt sich hier eine genauere Betrachtung.

Zusammenfassung/Abstract

It is in the context of terrible socio-economic and environmental indicators and decades of ineffective government that the entire southern Arabia and Red Sea region threatens to fall into chaos. Crucially, since 2009, two distinct regional conflicts have commanded the attention of the United States as well as regional powers like Saudi Arabia. As a consequence, the regime of ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih has attempted to slander its domestic rivals by associating them with Iran and/or “al-Qaida.” Unfortunately, these claims of Iranian or al-Qaida involvement, reiterated in western circles, often distort the nature of instability in the country. Because of a failure of intelligence that the Salih regime exploits, the broader context of the US and Saudi Arabia’s strategic concerns in the larger Red Sea region needs to inform how we study the events in Yemen. By recognizing the “Elephants in the Room” we can avoid repeating the analytical shortcomings of the academic and media mainstream and successfully find a long-term solution to Yemen’s problems.

Akademischer Werdegang/Academic Profile

2006-Present Georgia State University (GSU), Atlanta, GA

• Assistant Professor, History Department/Middle East Institute

2005-2006 American University of Sharjah (AUS), United Arab Emirates

• Assistant Professor, History/International Studies

1996-2005 New York University, New York, NY

• Joint program in the Departments of Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies and History

• Dissertation: "The Consequences of Empire in the Balkans and Red Sea: Reading Possibilities in the Transformations of the Modern World." (Defended April 20, 2005).

• Committee: Zachary Lockman (Chair), Frederick Cooper, Khaled Fahmy, and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University, and Maria Todorova, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

1997-1998 San'a' University, San'a', Yemen

• Directed Study under Sayyid Mustafa Salim

1993-1995 New School for Social Research, New York, NY

• M.A. in Political Science and Historical Studies. January, 1995.

• Master's Thesis: "The Politics of Culture and Power in Albania's Postwar State."

• Advisors: Charles Tilly, Aristide Zolberg and Eric Hobsbawm.

1990-1991 Sorbonne, Paris IV. Paris, France.

• Première et deuxième années de DEUG

• Histoire Contemporaine de l'Afrique du Nord et du Proche Orient.

• Advisor: Claude-André Julien.

1988-1993 New School for Social Research, New York, NY

• B.A. Political Science, June, 1993.

• Advisors: Talal Asad and Aldo-Lauria Santiago

Forschungsschwerpunkte/Main Areas of Research

Isa is currently embarking on two new projects while a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Area Studies: The first challenges the representations of events over the past year in the larger “Middle East” as extensions of lingering Euro-America power; and the other investigates the interactive dynamics in the nineteenth century South China Sea, Latin America, and Arabia through the prism of Ottoman identity claims.

Publikationen (Auswahl)/Publications (selection)

• Reinstating the Ottomans: Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800-1912/(Palgrave, May 2011)

• Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State/(Routledge, July 2011)

• Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire: A Comparative Social and Political History of Albania and Yemen, 1878-1918/ (Republished with Gorgias Press, 2010)

• Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism/ (Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies series, 2010)

• "Religion and Politics among Albanians of Southeastern Europe," /East European Politics and Societies/ [Forthcoming].

• "Entangled Trajectories: The Interweaving Interests of the Local and the Evolution of Modern Imperialism in the Balkans," /Balkanistica/ 24 [2011]: 25-58.

• "The Frontier as a Measure of Imperial Power: Local Limits to Empire in Yemen, 1872 to 1914," /Proceedings of the British Academy/ 156 [2009]: 289-304.

• "Unique Authoritarianism: Shifting Fortunes and the Malleability of the Salih Regime in Yemen, 1990-Present," /EUI Working Papers, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies: Mediterranean Programme/ RSCAS 2009/10 (Florence, 2009).

• "Not our Kind," Silberman, Till and Ward (eds.) /Walls, Borders, Boundaries: Strategies of Surveillance and Survival/ (Berghahn Books, forthcoming).

• "Neither Eastern nor Welcome: The Confused Lives of Berlin's Balkan Migrants, 1950-2000," Silberman, Till and Ward (eds.) /After the Fall: Berlin in Germany and Europe/ (Palgrave-Macmillian, 2011): 183-207.

• "Adding New Scales of History to the Eastern Mediterranean: Illicit Trade and the Albanian," Meltem Toksoz and Biray Kirli (eds.), /Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day/ [London: I.B.Tauris, 2010]: 116-138.

• "Translating Imperial Failures into Smugglers' Gold: The Boundaries of State in Ottoman Albania and Yemen, 1872-1908," I. William Zartman (ed.) /Boundaries in Depth and in Motion/ [Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010]: 73-100.

• "The Frontier as a Measure of Imperial Power: Local Limits to Empire in Yemen, 1872 to 1914," AGC Peacock (ed.) /Ottoman Frontiers: Political History of Territorial Limits/ [Oxford University Press, 2009]: 289-304.