The FPA’s Must Reads (December 21 – January 3)

Bashar Al Assad: An Intimate Profile of a Mass Murder
The New Republic
By Anna Ciezadlo

Ciezadlo tells the story of how an awkward teen craving his father’s attention grew into the murderous dictator holding on to power against all odds today.

Qatar Chronicles
SB Nation
By David Roth

In this five part series David Roth travels to Qatar, host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, to understand how this tiny oil rich monarchy plagued by tremendous inequality has prepared for its moment in the global limelight.

How Britain exported next-generation surveillance
Medium
By James Bridle

James Bridle explores how the U.K., a leader for decades both in the scope and quality of its domestic surveillance operations, pioneered the surveillance technologies would become ubiquitous throughout the world.

A Deadly Mix in Benghazi
The New York Times
By David D. Kirkpatrick

In this exhaustive report, Kirkpatrick reexamines every critical moment and every key character in the Benghazi attack in an attempt to understand what it has meant for Libya and Libyan American relations.

A Mission Gone Wrong
The New Yorker
By Mattathias Schwarz

Mattathias Schwarz’s account of cocaine smuggling from Honduras expresses an increasingly vocal consensus: The American “war on drugs” is a failure.

Blogs:

Uniting Food Security and Economic Growth in Africa
Southeast Asia 2013 Review: A Region Deprived of Leaders and Hope
Iran’s Citizens’ Rights Charter and the Religious Minorities
Canadian and Russian Claims to the Arctic: The Allure of the North Pole
Where the Ikhwan Goes So Shall Egypt
Do Palestinians Accept the Two State Solution?