Order From Ashes

A Tale of Two Border Towns

The effort to secure Iraq’s borders after the defeat of ISIS has created other, new sources of instability, as conflict supply chains adapt to new circumstances.

A close look at two border towns in Iraq’s western desert illustrates the law of unintended consequences. The Iraqi government, bordering countries, and the international community moved to more tightly control official border crossings in order to defeat ISIS. As a result, however, militias and smugglers have moved a great deal of commerce, legal and illicit, to other crossing points. In the meantime, people along once-prosperous trade routes suffer privation and violence, driving new conflicts.

Researchers Renad Mansour and Hayder Al-Shakeri tell the tale of trade, smuggling, and conflict across Iraq’s borders. The trajectory of trade route towns Rutba and Qaim help explain the mechanics of conflict supply chains and the unintended consequences of efforts to secure parts of the border without thinking of the spinoff effects.

Participants:

• Haydar Al-Shakeri, research associate, MENA Program, Chatham House
• Renad Mansour, director, Iraq Initiative, Chatham House
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: Quitting the Brotherhood

Members have fled the Muslim Brotherhood in droves since its ouster from power in Egypt in 2013, frustrated that the organization can’t take care of them, or provide meaning for their lives. Will the Brotherhood learn the lessons of its failures before its next, inevitable, comeback?

In this final episode of Broken Bonds, Amr ElAfifi explores the Brotherhood’s crisis of membership and the implications for policy. 

Some have left the Brotherhood because they’ve lost trust in the leadership; others, because they say the organization “is not being brotherhood enough.” The Brotherhood’s fractious trajectory after the Rabaa massacre of 2013 makes clear that there is no single Brotherhood path during a period of unprecedented violent repression. 

The Brotherhood’s scattered grassroots have followed divergent paths, some embracing militancy, some withdrawing to the private sphere, and others abandoning faith altogether. 

The Brotherhood tried to claim the mantle of Islamist politics, but found itself beset by contradictions and crises. “Islamism,” like the Brotherhood, is not a clearly defined or monolithic movement. 

Broken Bonds is a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Noha Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses, and staying power. In the third episode, Khaled dissected the identity crisis that has defined the Brotherhood since its establishment. In the fourth episode, Ayyash sketched the leadership vacuum and power struggles that have hobbled the Brotherhood since 2013.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Amr ElAfifi, PhD candidate at Syracuse University; research manager, Freedom Initiative
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: Leaders without Legitimacy

The Muslim Brotherhood is a hierarchical organization suffering a debilitating leadership vacuum. Now, the organization has to reinvent itself while most of its top cadres are in exile, dead, or in jail.

Years after being forced to become a transnational organization because of its leadership’s expulsion from Egypt, the Brotherhood is now at an even more complex crossroads. Its old strategies for managing its relationship with the Egyptian state, and maintaining a quasi-clandestine presence in Egypt, are no longer relevant. 

Abdelrahman Ayyash explains the power struggles and inchoate efforts to create a coherent strategy among the Brotherhood’s fragmented leadership after the 2013 coup and subsequent crackdown. The Brotherhood has been riven by power struggles and fundamental debates over resources, its international orientation, and the use of violence. This leadership crisis has hobbled the Brotherhood.

This is the fourth episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Noha Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses and its staying power. In the third episode, Khaled dissected the identity crisis that has defined the Brotherhood since its establishment. The fifth and final episode of Broken Bonds explores the crisis of membership and the implications for policy.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International 
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: No Identity

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is suffering from an identity crisis, made worse by ongoing, violent state repression. Nearly a century since its founding, the Brotherhood hasn’t reconciled its social and political aims.

Noha Khaled plumbs the first of three crises besetting the Brotherhood: its internal identity conflict over what kind of organization it aspires to be. 

Throughout its history, the Brotherhood has struggled to accommodate its mission as a religious and social service network, alongside its ambitions for political power. That ambivalence, or contradiction, forms the cornerstone of the Brotherhood’s ongoing triple crisis.

This is the third episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses and its staying power. The remaining episodes of Broken Bonds go deeper into the crises of legitimacy and membership, and the implications for policy.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Noha Khaled, writer and researcher
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: Existential Crises

The Muslim Brotherhood tries to project an image of grassroots power and disciplined leadership. A trio of researchers takes a different view, describing a once-formidable organization that is under strain and out of touch.

The Brotherhood, they argue, is experiencing multiple crises—of identity, legitimacy, and membership—which accelerated after Egypt’s military coup in July 2013. 

Based on unprecedented access to Brotherhood leaders, rank-and-file members, and internal dissenters, the three researchers—Abdelrahman Ayyash, Amr ElAfifi, and Noha Khaled—take a new granular view of the organization. 

The Brotherhood and its detractors alike have misunderstood it as a mass ideological organization, missing its evolution into an elite membership organization disconnected from its constituents. 

This is the second episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. Remaining episodes of Broken Bonds go deeper into each of the three crises facing the Brotherhood and the implications for policy.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International 
• Amr ElAfifi, PhD candidate at Syracuse University; research manager, Freedom Initiative
• Noha Khaled, writer and researcher
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: My Life as a Muslim Brother

What’s it like to come of age in a Muslim Brotherhood family in Egypt’s Nile Delta? Abdelrahman Ayyash recounts his childhood, political awakening, and disenchantment.

Ayyash recounts his early history cocooned in a Brotherhood community that took care of its members’ schooling, moral training, social life, and career counseling. And he recalls with stark frankness his shock, as a young blogger and political activist, at the political rigidity of the movement in which he’d been raised.

Ayyash’s personal journey from a young movement standout to dissident, critical researcher opens Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The remaining episodes of Broken Bonds explore the triple crises facing the Brotherhood, the organization’s likely resurgence, and how observers and policymakers mischaracterize the Brotherhood and its significance.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International 
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

The Earthquake, Cholera, and Borders

The catastrophic earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 had particularly dire consequences for the millions of displaced Syrians living near the epicenter. Many of them have moved multiple times to flee violence. Since September, an outbreak of cholera has rapidly spread across Syria and entered Lebanon. And to make matters worse, international humanitarian aid is only allowed to enter northern Syria through a single border crossing, which is closed because of earthquake damage.

On this episode of the Order from Ashes podcast from Century International, Aron Lund discusses Syria’s unending catastrophe, its origins in bad governance, and what donor nations can do to help.

Years of war, drought, and climate change have ravaged Syria’s water supply and infrastructure, forcing half of the population to drink unsafe water. Now, the earthquake has compounded the damage to Syria’s built environment, exacerbating Syria’s already dire humanitarian situation.

Read more about the human and environmental origins of Syria’s deadly cholera outbreak in Aron’s Century International report “Cholera in the Time of Assad.”

Participants:

• Aron Lund, fellow, Century International 
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Iraq’s Heist of the Century

This fall, news broke that a web of thieves—including high-level officials—had stolen $2.5 billion in Iraqi government cash. The scam is only the most recent example of systemic corruption perpetrated by Iraq’s elites since 2003. The country’s new government has its work cut out for itself. 

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Sajad Jiyad talks about the sordid theft and the way forward to fight corruption.

Sajad shares more about the origins of Iraq’s consociational system of power sharing, and public graft, in his report “Corruption Is Strangling Iraq.”

Participants:

• Sajad Jiyad, fellow, Century International 
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Progressive Policy: Shrinking America’s Military Footprint

America maintains an enormous military infrastructure on the Arabian peninsula and in the Persian Gulf. How should the United States shrink this enormous footprint while continuing to protect its interests and those of its sometimes difficult partners in the region?

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Becca Wasser considers some of the practical ways in which a progressive-minded United States could shift away from its overinvestment in military bases.

Despite the war in Ukraine and rising tensions with China, the United States retains a massive and problematic military footprint in the Middle East, which creates moral hazard and often locks Washington into military solutions ill-suited for complex policy problems.

Figuring out how to get the balance right in the Middle East can help the United States strike a more healthy, and less militarized, balance throughout the world.

This episode of Order from Ashes is part of a regular series on progressive foreign policy in the United States. We’re looking to start a constructive conversation about the specifics of a progressive foreign policy that remains invested and engaged in the world, while moving away from reflexive militarism and toward a framework based on rights and values.

Participants:

• Becca Wasser, senior fellow, Center for a New American Security
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Progressive Policy: Replacing the War on Terror

Progressives have done a good job articulating the problems with bad policies, especially the Global War on Terror, which worsened the problems it was supposed to solve.

But what is the better, progressive alternative?

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, New America fellow Alex Stark outlines some of the specific ingredients of a policy that tries to promote genuine stability. 

Sound, progressive counterterrorism would build on a complex and sustainable vision of stability, rooted in rights and better governance. Instead of seeking to eliminate violent groups, it has designated as terrorists, a progressive counterterrorism policy would invest in accountability and development, along with military operations, to marginalize violent groups. 

This episode of Order from Ashes is the first in a regular series on progressive foreign policy in the United States. We’re looking to start a constructive conversation about the specifics of a progressive foreign policy that remains invested and engaged in the world, while moving away from reflexive militarism and toward a framework based on rights and values.

Participants:

• Alex Stark, fellow, New America
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International