COCA-COLA is banned in Syria. The country's ruling Baath party justifies this prohibition on the grounds that the Coca-Cola Company markets its beverages in Israel. Hence, when I toured all of Syria's 14 provinces recently, I found all sorts of cola, but no Coke--that is until I stopped at the…

AMERICAN EFFORTS towards a democratic Iraq seem to have created some strange bedfellows in the Middle East. The Sunnis of the region--from Baathist loyalists in Iraq and hardcore Wahhabi zealots in Saudi Arabia to secular-minded elites in Amman, Cairo, and elsewhere--are now united around a common…