Browsing by Subject "Persian Gulf"

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The Arab street : a photographic exploration
(2009-12) Cheney, Clifford Sidney; Darling, Dennis Carlyle; Reed, Ellis
Journalists use the term Arab Street to describe what they often imply is a volatile Arabic public opinion. This photo story travels through four Arab areas or Jordan, Qatar, Israel/Palestine and Egypt in order to show the diversity and complexity of each. The media’s tendency to lump all Arabs into one political block is detrimental to a true sense of cultural understanding that is required for peace.
From trucial states to nation state : decolonization and the formation of the United Arab Emirates, 1952-1971
(2011-08) Barnwell, Kristi Nichole; Louis, William Roger, 1936-; Hopkins, Antony G.; Henry, Clement; Marcus, Abraham; Aghaie, Kamran S.
Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister, announced in January 1968 that the British government would withdraw from the Persian Gulf by the end of 1971. For Britain, the decision indicated a re-prioritization of British global defense obligations. For the rulers of the Arab emirates of the Persian Gulf, Wilson‘s announcement signaled an end of British military protection, and the beginning of a process of negotiations that culminated in the establishment of the United Arab Emirates on December 3, 1971. An examination of the process by which the individual Persian Gulf states became a sovereign federation presents an opportunity to examine the roles of nationalism and anti-imperialism played in the establishment of the Union. This work demonstrates that Arab rulers in the Persian Gulf strove to establish their new state with close ties to Great Britain, which provided technical, military, and administrative assistance to the emirates, while also publicly embracing the popular ideologies of anti-imperialism and Arab socialism, which dominated the political discourse in the Arab world through most of the twentieth century. viii This dissertation draws on primary source materials from British and American government archives, speeches and government publications from the Arab Emirates, memoirs and a wide variety of secondary sources. These materials provide the basis for understanding the state-building process of the United Arab Emirates in the areas of pre-withdrawal development, the decision to withdraw, the problems of establishing a federal constitution, and the problems posed by the need for security in the post-withdrawal Persian Gulf.
A harbor in the tempest: megaprojects, identity, and the politics of place in Gwadar, Pakistan
(2014-05) Jamali, Hafeez Ahmed; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-
This dissertation seeks to understand the ways in which Pakistani government’s attempts to initiate large-scale infrastructure development projects in Balochistan Province have transformed its social and political landscape. Ethnographically, the study focuses on Gwadar, a small coastal town in Pakistan’s western Balochistan Province to show how colonial and postcolonial projects of progress and development suppress or subsume other kinds of lived geographies and imaginations of place. Keeping in mind the centrality of everyday experiences in generating social forms, this dissertation describes how development, transnationalism, and ethnic identity are (re)configured. It is based on ethnographic encounters that foreground the lived experiences and imaginations of fishermen from Med kinship and occupational group who occupy a subaltern position within the local status hierarchy in Gwadar. On the one hand, the promise of becoming modern citizens of the future mega city incites new desires and longings among those fishermen that facilitate their incorporation into emergent regimes of labor and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, Pakistani security forces have tightened their control over the local population by establishing a cordon sanitaire around Gwadar Port and the town. These mechanisms of control have disrupted local fishermen`s experiences of place and intimate sociality and introduced elements of exclusion, fear, and paranoia. By interrupting the fishermen`s expectations of their rightful place in the city, it compels them to think of alternate ways to confront the state’s development agenda, including peaceful protest and armed struggle. The dissertation concludes, tentatively, that the imposition of political violence by state authorities that accompanies the structural violence of mega infrastructure projects tends to create a mirror effect whereby the victims of development adopt a language of violence and a different idiom of identity.
Letter to H.B. Stenzel from N.T. Langham on 1943-10-28
(1943-10-28) Langham, N.T.
Oil for Atoms: The 1970s Energy Crisis and Nuclear Proliferation in the Persian Gulf (Summer 2022)
(Texas National Security Review, 2022) Auffant, Marino
The 1970s energy crisis, which rocked global markets and caused oil prices to skyrocket, had a number of far-reaching and unexpected consequences, many of which have become the focus of academic study in recent years. However, one topic that has eluded scholarly attention is the connection between the energy crisis and nuclear proliferation in the Gulf region. The French government responded to the energy crisis by looking for bilateral trade opportunities with OPEC countries in order to avert a recession. After the shah of Iran offered to sell oil to France in exchange for nuclear reactors, the French government realized that it could trade oil for nuclear technologies with other countries in the Persian Gulf — arousing the interest of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. This generated strong opposition from the U.S. government, which was worried about nuclear proliferation in the region. But while the United States succeeded in preventing Saudi Arabia from acquiring nuclear reactors, it was unsuccessful when it came to Iraq. The 1970s energy crisis thus had an enduring impact on nuclear proliferation in the Gulf.
Religious rhetoric from the center to the periphery of public discourse in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain since 2011
(2020-05-05) Alrafaei, Dabya N.; Barany, Zoltan D.
Because religious rhetoric is so central to social and political commentary in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, no one expected to witness Ayedh al-Qarni, a central figure in the Saudi religious establishment, renounce and apologize for the Sahwa movement, which shaped the lived experience of Saudi and Bahraini society for decades. His apology in 2019 may have embodied the mainstream Saudi religious elites’ choice to accept co-optation and complacency in Mohammed bin Salman’s kingdom, but it also sprang from a broader shift in religion’s place within public discourse that began in the 2010s. This thesis traces and analyzes recent transformations in the religio-social sphere by mapping the shifting position of religious rhetoric from the center to the periphery of Saudi and Bahraini public discourse, and by situating this shift within the broader political and social transformations of the 2010s.
True citizens of Bahrain : discourse on Bahraini identity since the Arab Spring
(2014-05) Stoller, Amy Katherine; Aghaie, Kamran Scot
When Bahrain's uprising began in February 2011, the opposition presented united front. By the time of the national dialogue a year later, however, it had fractured both along and within sectarian lines. The government’s inconsistent response to the uprising also demonstrated tensions within Bahrain’s royal family. An analysis of discourse on the national dialogue, terrorism and violence, expatriates, and the Gulf Union plan revealed that Bahrain's political factions were divided by their conceptions of Bahraini identity and citizenship. Bahrain was a young nation and questions of identity were still very much under debate. This work drew on newspaper opinion pieces, official statements published by political groups, and posters and videos they posted on social media to explain the questions of identity that developed around these political debates. I also examined how these debates continued to divide Sunni and Shi’i groups within the opposition as well as the moderate and conservative factions within the royal family. Finally, I considered how these groups used their varying conceptions of Bahraini citizenship to justify their tactics in pursuing or attempting to quash the uprising. Even as each group demanded rights for citizens, they disagreed on what citizenship meant. Similarly, denying that their opponents were “true citizens,” allowed each group to delegitimize views they disagreed with.