The FPA’s Must Reads (September 13-20)

Israeli soldiers carry French diplomat Marion Castaing after removing her from her truck containing emergency aid, in the West Bank herding community of Khirbet al-Makhul, in the Jordan Valley September 20, 2013. Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats, including Castaing, on Friday and seized the truck full of tents and emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to Palestinians whose homes were demolished earlier this week.
REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini

Why is Zambia So Poor?
By Michael Hobbes
Pacific Standard

Zambia doesn’t face the same structural challenges associated with poor states — it has no dictator, no child soldiers, no celebrity adoptions. Yet many of its citizens live on less than a one dollar a day, not to mention 40 percent don’t have access to clean drinking water. Hobbes investigates the cause of Zambia’s poverty and the country’s future prospects, all while humbly avoiding sweeping declarations about how it can pull itself up from the muck.

William Polk on Syria: What Now?
By William Polk
The Atlantic

Polk, who first kicked off his career writing for The Atlantic in the 1950s on Iraq and later served for State Department’s Policy Planning, has already written a long analysis of the choices facing the the U.S. government in Syria. This newest post is the second part of his analysis, organized in a question and answer form.

Was An American College Student Kidnapped By North Korea?
By Leslie Anne Jones
Buzzfeed

In 2004, American student David Sneddon disappeared while hiking in China. Many have assumed he’s dead, but his family has yet to waver in their assumption that he is, in fact, alive and trapped in North Korea. Jones investigates Sneddon’s disappearence, his family’s theory that he was abducted by the North Koreans and the history of abductions by the DPRK.

Syria’s Refugees: The Catastrophe
By Hugh Eakin and Alisa Roth
The New York Review of Books

Since the Syrian conflict started in 2011, the once-22.5 million strong population has withered by at least 10 percent. At least half a million Syrian refugees have fled to Turkey, with even more in Jordan and Lebanon. The crisis isn’t just a humanitarian disaster; as Eakin and Roth point out, the refugee problem has threatened to destabilize already-fragile Arab states, such as Jordan.

Iran Surprises Itself and the World
By Suzanne Maloney
Brookings

From Rosh Hashanah messages to an increasingly hopeful environment for U.S.-Iran negotiations, Iran has, indeed, surprised itself and the world.  Hassan Rouhani has brought a breath of fresh air to a world tired of dealing with the, to say the least, contrarian Ahmadinejad. Maloney, a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, delves into Rouhani’s attempt to revive the Iranian revolution in this interactive article.

Blogs:

Beyond Air and Missile Defense: Modernization of the Polish Armed Forces by Dominik Jankowski
China and the Dangerous Shoal of Reform by David J. Karl
New Deal and the Curse of ‘Community Self-Governance’ by Abukar Arman
Post-Windsor Progress by Marc Gorrie
Tips for Career Changers by Barrett Prinz