The Gateway - A Podcast from the Middle East Al Bawaba News

The extent of civilian casualties from UK airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere is kept hidden by the British government. Our guest this week, Joe Dyke, the lead investigator at Airwars, is part of a team working to uncover the cost of wars waged from the skies.

This week we hear from Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS, who discusses his latest book, The New Cold War: The US, Russia and China from Kosovo to Ukraine, published by Saqi in February 2023.

In the book, Gilbert argues that, despite the rhetoric of a new Cold War following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, there has, in fact, been an ongoing New Cold War since the late 1990s.

This week we have a little treat for fans of radical political philosophy. Mohamed Abdou, Global Racial Justice Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University, joins us to talk about his new book Anarchy and Islam: Relationships and Rensonances, published by Pluto in 2022.

Constructing a decolonial, non-authoritarian and non-capitalist Islamic anarchism, Mohamed philosophically and theologically challenges the classist, sexist, racist, ageist, queerphobic and ableist inequalities in both post- and neo-colonial societies like Egypt, and settler-colonial societies such as Canada and the USA.

This week we are joined by Tine Gade, a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

Tine talks about her new book, Sunni City: Tripoli from Islamist Utopia to the Lebanese ‘Revolution', published by Cambridge University Press in November 2022.

In the book, Tine looks beyond typical understandings of Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli, that have focused on the city as an Islamist or even Jihadi political centre. Instead, she argues, the city has a much deeper history of resistance and collaboration with the state and wider region.

This week we are joined by Natalie Koch, Professor in the Geography and Environment Department at Syracuse University.


Natalie is the author of a new book, Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia, published by Verso in January.


In the book, Natalie looks at the connections between deserts in the U.S. and the Arabian Penninsula, teaching us to see deserts anew, not as mythic sites of romance or empty wastelands but as an "arid empire," a crucial political space where imperial dreams coalesce.