Ali Kadri

is a Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore and has been a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Head of the Economic Analysis Section at the United Nations regional office for Western Asia. He is author of Arab Development Denied (Anthem Press, 2013), and The Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

The Dye Workers

Development Under the Threat of War in the Arab World

We must understand this crisis as an outcome of the ways this region is woven into the global economy. The oil and war economies, the destruction and waste side of capital accumulation, are the main channels by which the region is articulated with the global market. Waste and militarism are principal elements in an accumulation regime that produces value by consuming not only the value of labor-power, but also the value inherent in human lives.