Editors’ Foreword

Dear Readers,

The 2022-2023 editorial team of the Oxford Middle East Review (OMER) is proud to
present the seventh edition of our journal. OMER was founded in 2016 by two students
of Middle Eastern Studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, providing a space for
students and scholars to thoughtfully engage with issues pertaining to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We are proud to still call OMER our institutional
home.

2022-2023 has been a remarkable year for OMER. Our 30-person editorial team is the
largest in OMER’s history. This dedicated group of individuals devoted their time and
efforts to build on the wonderful work of the previous editorial teams, and further
grounded OMER as a student-led academic publication in the area of Middle-Eastern
studies. OMER’s large team involved sub-teams that managed communications, grants, events, and OMER’s blog. OMER’s social media outreach allowed our content to reach even more readers, fostering the journal’s name and expanding the potential of its future editions. This year, OMER’s blog launched a special weekly series on the pertinent events in the MENA region. Thanks to our editorial team and outside contributors, the blog now has over forty articles on OMER’s website, including book reviews, interviews with academics and activists, political commentary, and poetry.

The theme of this year’s issue is “The Afterlives of Revolution”, which invited
contributors to consider the concept “afterlife” not as an end but rather as a continuity amidst turbulence, changes, transformation, and loss. Our stance expands the description of the word “afterlife” from life after death and/or rebirth to “the instance of continued use or influence”, as the Oxford English Dictionary describes it. In this issue, we advocated for the utilization of the concept of “afterlives” to avoid the imaginaries of new beginnings after revolutions, and to illustrate the alternative forms of being following rupture, and the perseverance of human experiences during turbulent times. From the fall of empires to the events of the Arab Spring twelve years ago, the contributors in this issue demonstrate the transforming impact of revolutions on the social, political, economic, and demographic landscapes of the Middle East and North Africa.

From a remarkable range of submissions, our team has chosen seven articles that
explore the theme from various original perspectives. First, Esther Schoorel examines the social and political movements in the aftermath of the 2019 Lebanese uprising through a memory studies approach. Natasha Parnian then looks at Iran to examine the influence of the nationalist corpus of the late Qajar to the Pahlavi era. Tessa Di Vizio’s article focuses on Gulf monarchies’ interventions in Yemen and Syria in favour of anti-regime protesters. Riley Sanborn studies Tunisia’s emerging neo-authoritarian political movements through the influence of electoral coalitions. Sam Lytton Cobbold’s article examines Britain’s impact on Oman’s Sultanism in the aftermath of the Dhofar Revolution. The policy paper written by Achref Chibani and Joshua E. Rigg demonstrates the influence of the “irregular” migration route that spans from Tunisia’s Tataouine governorate to France on Tunisia’s recent history of revolution. Lastly, Helen Murphey investigates the discursive role different political authorities played in the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia.

We are proud to present such a powerful and well-researched array of articles from
contributors around the world. OMER’s success is a testament to the hard work and
dedication of our team, illustrating the salient role student-run initiatives play in
expanding scholarly work on the MENA region. OMER’s editorial team extends their
gratitude to our peer reviewers who generously provided invaluable feedback to the selected authors and our editors. Lastly, thank you, our dear readers, for supporting
our endeavours.

Wesam Hassan, St. Antony’s College
Serra Yedikardeş, St. Antony’s College
Managing Editors 2022-2023

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Journal Leadership and Contributing Editors

Ella Williams (Treasurer), Matthew J. Smith (Director of Communications), Insiya Raja (Co-Chief Blog Editor), Charles Ough (Co-Chief Blog Editor), Mehr Nadeem (Events Manager)

Abid Zaidi, Adam Rouhana, Ana-Diamond Aaba Atach, Angus Kingsley-Anderson, Ashkan Hashemipour, Aurelia Finch, Bushra Shaikh, Cem Gümüşdiş, Ezgi Yazıcı, Farah Al Hadid, Henna Moussavi, Ju Young Han, Katharina Krause, Luise Eder, Luqman Abu El Foul, Miriam Aitken, Reyam Rammahi, Rosa Rahimi, Stephanie Graban, Su Hyeon Cho, Theo Detweiler, Yuran Shi, Ziad Kiblawi

Special thanks to OMER’s senior member, Professor Eugene Rogan.

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Volume VII Articles

For Your Sake We Continue:
Memory and Mobilisation in the Aftermath of the 2019 Lebanese Uprising
Esther G. M. Schoorel

From Cyrus to Hossein:
The Politics of the Ancient Past in Modern Iran
Natasha Parnian

Chaos and Crisis:
Gulf Interference in the Arab Uprisings in Yemen and Syria, 2011-2021
Tessa Di Vizio

Voting for Autocracy:
The Socio-political Demographics and Geography of Electoral Support for the Free Destourian Party (PDL) of Tunisia
Riley Sanborn

Sultanism in Oman:
The Afterlife of the Dhofar Revolution (1964-1976)
Sam Lytton Cobbold

Protest, Migration and Oil:
The Kamour sit-in and the Surreptitious Afterlives of the Tunisian Revolution
Achref Chibani and Joshua E. Rigg

Behind the “Hillary Clinton Spring” 128
Unpacking the Parti Destourien Libre’s Demonisation of the Arab Uprisings
Helen Murphey