AS EVERY monarch in the Gulf knows, even geysers of oil cannot keep all your subjects happy all of the time. Still, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia may have been surprised that his recent appointment of 30 women to the kingdom’s 150-person shura council should provoke a public protest. The all-appointed body, a sort of proto-parliament, has […]
America’s Middle East policy has been enthusiastically endorsed. Not at the UN or Arab League, however, but by the powerbrokers of Hollywood. At the Golden Globes, there were gongs for a heroically bearded CIA spook saving hostages and American face in Iran (Argo); a heroically struggling agent tracking down Bin Laden (Zero Dark Thirty) and […]
Because of its strategic location between the two twentieth-century centers of Arab power, Egypt and Iraq, Syria has been for many decades a bellwether of Arab politics, viewed widely in the region as the heartland of Arab nationalism. The fact that the first major pan-Arab nationalist party, the Baath, was established in Syria and the […]
A salient feature of Iran’s foreign policy is its ability to build influence where least expected. With the ascent to power of Sunni Islamists throughout the region, and Iran‘s support of the military campaign in Syria, many have argued that Iran’s regional standing is in decline. But the opposite assessment needs to be taken seriously. […]
It is coming up to two years since President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi of Yemen was sworn in, in February 2011. After a thirty-year rule by the brutal, corrupt and dictatorial regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen needs several years to reinvent itself as a modern pluralistic society. No one should expect miracles. But nothing […]
Two years after he set himself on fire, Mohamed Bouazizi remains history’s most famous fruit vendor. Like many enterprising Tunisians, Bouazizi, 26, was subject to constant fines of as much as 10 times his daily earnings as he tried to make a living on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. After his scale and cart were […]
On December 25, while many Americans were eating turkey or Chinese meals and otherwise distracted from the rest of the world, leaders of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf met in Manama, the capital of the island state of Bahrain, for their annual summit. The meeting was scarcely noticed by American newspapers and other […]
The Arab Spring is not an outcome, it is a process. For those countries at the forefront of regional transformation, the fundamental question is can democracy become institutionalised? Though progress has been uneven and the outcomes of many state-society struggles have yet to be resolved, the answer is a cautious yes. In at least a […]
Since 2003, the Anbar province of Iraq has shown itself to be home to powerful and formative forces that have altered the country’s direction of political developments at key moments. It was the change in position of key tribes and groups in Anbar in 2005 that led to the formation of the Anbar Awakening that […]
A little less than two years ago, the non-Islamist opposition in Egypt saw two momentous events. The first, of course, was the beginning of the 25th of January revolution. The second was the constitutional referendum in March 2011. Arguably, the latter event was more important than the former, although the opposition has yet to learn […]
