Staff and Experts

Staff Profile: Issandr El Amrani

Recent Commentary

• Egypt: out of control?
  04 Feb 13
• Navigating Egypt's political crisis
  11 Dec 12
• What Europe should tell Mohammed Morsi
  13 Sep 12
• Morsi goes to Tehran, and Egypt gets its mojo back
  10 Sep 12

Recent Blogs

recent press

• The Global Dispatches
  20 Feb 13
• Hindustan Times
  18 Dec 12
• Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten
  17 Dec 12
• Times of Oman
  17 Dec 12

Read More >

Issandr El Amrani is a freelance journalist and commentator and founder of The Arabist blog. An editor of the now defunct Cairo Times and founder of Cairo magazines, he has lived in Cairo since 2000, writing about Egypt and the Middle East for a wide range of UK and US publications.

Today Issandr spends his time between Cairo and Rabat, where he was born. After a stint as the International Crisis Group's North Africa analyst in 2007-2009 he has returned to journalism and political consulting. He was the Cairo correspondent for Middle East International and writes for the Economist, the Financial Times, the London Review of Books, Foreign Policy, The National, Bidoun and other publications.

He also writes a fortnightly column at Egypt's best-selling private newspaper, al-Masri al-Youm, and the Abu Dhabi-based The National.

Issandr also regularly appears as a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs on television, notably on al-Jazeera English, and conducts private consulting on the politics of the Middle East. He has contributed to several books on politics and culture in the Middle East.