🌍 Inside The Middle East — October 7
Plus 200+ new jobs and internships
Hello! Welcome to the launch of a new feature for the newsletter we’ll be calling Inside The Middle East! The region is the most important on the planet, in my opinion, due to its cultural, religious and economic importance to the rest of the world, and is critically underreported relative to its importance, another of my wild opinions. We teased what was to come in last Friday’s Picks of the Week written by Aina de Lapparent, who will be helping me focus on the region every Wednesday.
Today we’ll travel to Saudi Arabia where a group of expats have launched an opposition party on the anniversary of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; to Syria where the country has had to ration its bread as its humanitarian crisis deteriorates further; to Iran who has temporarily released a dual-national academic after she researched the movement of Shia clerics; to Kurdistan where one of the most influential Yazidi spiritual leaders has passed away; to Egypt where reports of police creating fake dating app profiles to identify the LGBTQ community have surfaced; and to Israel and Lebanon who have agreed to historic talks to solve their overlapping maritime borders.
If you missed it on Monday, I relaunched the podcast with an awesome episode with The Wall Street Journal’s Chief News Strategist and Chief Product Technology Officer Louise Story, and we covered everything from how Louise rose through the newsroom, some crucial management concepts she learned at business school, and the emergence and future of strategy within journalism. Yesterday also marked the 10th anniversary of the launch of Instagram, so take a read of this masterpiece by The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino on The Age of Instagram Face. Next week we’ll speak to Michael Hudson, a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists about their latest FinCEN files investigation that uncovered how governments and banks allowed trillions of dirty dollars through the financial system. Right, let’s get to it… ✊
Job Corner
Louise and I also talked about the rise of newsroom strategy jobs, so I’ve listed a selection of relevant postings recently added to the job board…
Full-Time
Internships
And there’s a ton of non-strategy job and internship deadlines coming up, with hundreds more postings on the full job board. Subscribe below for full access. 👇
Data Corner
Below are some of the datasets and indices we referenced in today’s newsletter together…
Human Freedom Index: Human rights by country provided by the Cato Institute
LGBTQ Rights Index: LGBTQ rights by country provided by Asher & Lyric
Syria Crisis: Economic data on how dire Syria’s woes are by Trading Economics
Saudi Expats Launch Opposition Party
On the second anniversary of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death, a group of Saudi expats have launched an opposition party in order to gain support, both inside and outside of the country, for the creation of a representative government. Two years ago a 15-man Saudi group, believed by the UN to have been directed by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, strangled Khashoggi, a vocal critic of the Kingdom’s ruling royal family, in the Saudi consulate in Turkey and then cut his body into pieces. The new National Assembly party will attempt to highlight the country’s human rights abuses and how MBS’ claims that he’s modernizing the country are bogus. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is this week attempting to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council.
Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations
Syria Rations Bread as Crisis Deepens
The Syrian government has introduced limits on the amount of subsidised bread available per person, as many Syrians inch closer to starvation amid the country’s devastating ongoing civil war. According to The Guardian, a household of two can get just one packet of bread a day; a family of four two packets; and a family of six to three packets. But families of seven or more people are limited to four packets, no matter the size of the household. Syria’s average size of household was more than six in 2016, according to REACH. Because of the collapse of the Syrian pound, families must fork out around five times the amount for bread on the black market than for the government-subsidised bread. Elsewhere, the U.S. issued fresh sanctions, this time on six prominent Syrians and 11 entities connected with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with the aim of cutting off sources of government revenue.
Syrian children in Idlib scavenge for food
Like Me, Please
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Iran Releases Dual-National Academic
A French-Iranian academic has been temporarily released from prison in Iran, and is now on house arrest with her family in the capital of Tehran as the focus now turns on making her release permanent. Fariba Adelkhah, a 61-year-old anthropologist and researcher at SciencesPo university in Paris, was detained last year and was serving a six-year sentence for allegedly conspiring against national security and propaganda. Fellow SciencesPo academic and Adelkhah’s partner, Roland Marchal, was arrested at the same time, but has since been released and sent back to France. Adelkhah was researching the movement of Shia clerics between Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, but Iranian authorities don’t recognize citizens with dual nationality, and has arrested dozens of other foreign and dual nationals. Adelkhah has written a number of books, including Being Modern In Iran.
Yazidi Spiritual Leader Dies
A Yazidi spiritual leader has died at the age of 87 in Erbil, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq. Baba Sheikh Khurto Hajji Ismail was known for reconciling conflicting factions within the Yazidi community, as well as welcoming back women who were taken by ISIS and used as slaves. ISIS killed thousands of Yazidi men and kidnapped more than 64,000 women and children, in what the UN described as genocide. The Yazidis are a Kurdish religious minority of which around 750,000 live in northwest Iraq, and have smaller communities in Syria, Turkey and Iran, according to the German Central Council of Yazidis. Yazidism can be traced back around 7,000 years, and its beliefs combine elements Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions.
Egypt Police Use Dating Apps to Find LGBTQ Community
Police and national security officers in Egypt are allegedly using dating apps and social media to create fake profiles in order to find members of the LGBTQ community, in an effort to “clear the streets” and subject them to torture and abuse in jail, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. The Egyptian government has made a concerted effort to crackdown on gay rights since 2017, when Sarah Hegazy allegedly waved a rainbow flag at a Mashrou’ Leila concert in Cairo, a Lebanese rock band whose singer is openly gay. Hegazy took her own life while in exile in Canada, after she was reportedly tortured and sexually harassed in an Egyptian prison. Since the concert, around 70 people have been detained with sentences ranging from six months to six years. Egypt is currently ranked the 20th-worst country for gay rights, according to Asher & Lyric.
Israel and Lebanon to Hold Historic Talks
We finish this week with the news that Israel has agreed to talks with neighbouring Lebanon over the countries’ maritime borders, weeks after Israel signed historic deals to normalize relations with Bahrain and the U.A.E. For Lebanon, the talks offer hope of a much-needed revenue stream — solving overlapping maritime borders will allow both countries to exploit offshore natural gas fields — at a time when its economy and government have both collapsed. Tensions between the two remain high after a long history of war, and the talks could also provide a peaceful path forward. The Eastern Mediterranean is rich in gas reserves and has recently brought Greece and Turkey on the brink of war.
Source: TRT World 👇
That’s it for today. I hope you’ll enjoy the new feature going forward. As ever, email me your feedback and we’ll speak again on Friday for our global Picks of the Week. 👋