A biography for Richard Engelhasn’t been written yet.
“In 2009, Hamas was relatively new to power. It had won elections just three years earlier and was flexing its newfound strength via a war with its old enemy, Israel, which it officially wants destroyed.”
“When students and liberals initially occupied Tahrir Square, it looked like it might be a passing thing.”
“I think it's really important to start thinking about infrastructure as essential national security.”
“Israel is becoming a fortress. Fences along the borders with Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.”
“There was an insurgency under President Hosni Mubarak in the 1990s. Egyptian police and soldiers fought weekly battles with Islamists in the sugarcane fields and thick reeds along the Nile in rural southern villages like Minya, Sohag, Enna and Assiout.”
“The Muslim Brotherhood is a fundamentalist group.”
“In popular Egyptian and regional culture, women are seen as weak, easy victims to temptation in the same way Eve couldn't resist that shiny apple in the Garden of Eden.”
“Unfortunately, the American policy towards Pakistan is just to worry and express concern, and that is not a clear policy at all.”
“Some Iraqi troops aren't willing to fight for their government. But many Shiites appear willing to fight for their religious leaders.”
“The Arab Spring is over. The days of the protesters with laptops and BlackBerrys in Tahrir Square are long gone.”
“Kidnapping is always a threat in this life of reporting on men hurting one another because of religion and politics.”
“Foreigners who speak Arabic in the Middle East are often assumed to be working for the C.I.A. or Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad.”
“The U.S. presence and American missteps made ethnic violence in Iraq far worse than it would have been otherwise after Saddam Saddam Hussein's fall.”