Assafir Al-Arabi’s team, in the larger sense of the word - that is, the core team who manages our content and all other essential technicalities, along with our writers who hail from across the Arab world, and the artists who are part and parcel of the production process rather than merely “ornamental” to the content - every member of our extended team carries and imparts profound knowledge of their communities, diligence, and commitment to a certain way of understanding and perceiving. These characteristics have become the “values” we hold dear as our region reaches a total impasse… because we believe our region to be home to ceaseless and hopeful creation, regardless of everything that befalls it. We’ve adopted these concepts and values, which we apply in a committedly critical manner every day, and we hope that they show in everything we choose to publish. (Notably, we often find ourselves having to turn down new writers, sometimes even our own, when submissions appear to be inconsistent with our values).
Few years ago, and with the support of Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, we’ve decided to append a new section to our daily writings, where we publish “folders” on a quarterly basis. Each folder highlights one common theme, which our researchers address with precision and rigour, yet, in a language which is accessible to our general readership, rather than just to the “experts” and academics. This is also a stance that we take: we believe that people – all people – know what is happening to them. What we do is try to express that in a “structured” way, highlighting the commonalities shared by different countries of our region, as well as the particularities of each - and there is no contradiction here.
We are aware, however, of one considerable shortcoming. We’ve failed to advertise ourselves – mainly because this is not how we operate, and we don’t see it as our priority; and otherwise because we lack the resources needed to hire those experts “in the know”. We are also easily put off by hyped up or pretentious forms of publicity. And so we’ve seen it best to make a list of all the “folders” produced since 2018 as well as refer to two other books we’ve published: one that explores “Corruption and Predation in Exercising Power: Algeria and Iraq as Case Studies” (available in Arabic, English, and French) – and another that includes a short story series from Yemen (In Arabic).
By publishing this, we wish to highlight some of what our extended team has created, in the hope that at least some of our readers would find them interesting or useful.
Below you can find an index of all 16 folders, available in Arabic and English.
Those who are interested can go to “folders” (دفاتر) at the website’s header to view previous folders, either in web article pages or in downloadable PDFs. Folders and texts are also published on our website's English page.
Interested readers can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, which contains the articles published in the previous week, by simply filling out the form available on this website.
