Ferghana is the hotspot of Central Asia. It is an ethnic soup with hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz and Tajik living in Uzbek Ferghana and vice-versa. Ethnic tensions, sporadic violence and in 2010 the region erupted in violence when hundreds were killed. Read Here – The Hindu
Thanks to the Obama administration’s woeful disregard for the concerns of its erstwhile allies, the entire future of the Western alliance’s relationship with the Gulf region is now under threat. Read Here – The Telegraph, London
Disquiet in the Gulf over the interim nuclear deal with Iran has added to the anguish about a break in US–Saudi relations. But it is hard to get too worked up about this. In recent years there’s been a lot of anguish about a break. It is true that, unlike most myths of a golden […]
In the end, however, the monarchies may all suffer from such meddling, for these regimes are only as strong as the weakest links in their chain. An especially brittle monarchy succumbing to pressure over Western involvement, Iran, or Israel could easily be the first domino to fall, undoing the illusion of invincibility that the Gulf […]
The Arab Spring has been, in turns, exhilarating and excruciating. It has also been expensive—even for relatively peaceful Middle Eastern countries. Three Gulf countries sent a $12 billion aid package to Egypt in July, the latest in a regional spending spree that has also benefited the troubled countries of Yemen and Tunisia. Read Here – […]
The systemic waste of natural resources in the Gulf is eroding economic resilience to shocks and increasing security risks. The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries now consume more primary energy than the whole of Africa. Yet they have just one-twentieth of that continent’s population. Almost 100% of energy is produced from oil and gas […]
Riyadh was a close ally of Egypt’s former leader Hosni Mubarak, toppled by a popular uprising in 2011 that brought Mursi‘s Muslim Brotherhood to power, and has long feared the spread of the Islamist group’s ideology to the Gulf monarchies. Read Here – Reuters
Underneath all the anger in Egypt lies a basic fact: The country’s economy is in deep trouble. Normally a country in such a bad way would go to the IMF for support. Instead, it has tried to play the fund and Gulf donors off one another to stay afloat. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
The recent rush of regional political activity is very different from Gulf states’ more established soft power initiatives. writes Francis Matthews Read Here – Gulf News
There is an unremarked paradox in the tumult of the contemporary Middle East. Syria is an economically impoverished country of a little more than 20 million people that has been politically stagnant until 23 months ago. Egypt, by contrast, never socially at rest and with its ancient energies newly bestirred, is at 80.5 million people […]
looking beyond borders 