Nearly 150 years after its completion, the Suez Canal continues to inspire awe, living up to every cliché ever written about it. The 120-mile waterway is a vital link between Europe and Asia, a strategic asset, and a man-made wonder. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
Pew’s Religious Restrictions Report finds that India scores “high” on government restrictions and “very high” on social hostilities indexes. In addition, a Pew survey of nations with significant Muslim populations excluded India, as local survey houses feared that questions on religious identity and belief could put interviewers’ safety at risk from local authorities or residents. […]
Faced with growing internal tension – from Islamist radicals as well as liberal reformers – the ruling family is determined to defend its interests by whatever means necessary. This is reflected by a new assertiveness on the world stage – seen most vividly in the surprise decision to reject a seat on the UN Security […]
The House of Saud‘s nightmare is amplified by paranoia. After all those warnings by King Abdullah for Washington to cut “the head of the snake” (Iran), as immortalized on WikiLeaks cables; after all those supplications for the US to bomb Syria, install a no-fly zone and/or weaponize the “rebels” to kingdom come, this is what […]
Is the Muslim Brotherhood dying? In Egypt and throughout the Arab world, Brotherhood-affiliated parties are suffering an unprecedented series of setbacks that cast real doubt on the long-term viability of that version of Islamist politics. Read Here – The National, Abu Dhabi
A different map of the Middle East would be a strategic game changer for just about everybody, potentially reconfiguring alliances, security challenges, trade and energy flows for much of the world, too, writes Robin Wright Read Here – The New York Times
Erdogan is now setting one side of Turkey against the other in a bid for greater power, although the AKP was founded on pragmatism and inclusivity. Its initial landslide on 3 November 2002 — with almost two thirds of the seats in parliament (363 out of 550) — included votes from middle-class Turks unemployed after […]
The twin suicide bombings of a church congregation in Peshawar on Sunday have brutally dispelled the naive optimism of Pakistan, a country that believed Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, when he campaigned to “give peace a chance” in May’s general election. Read Here – The National, Abu Dhabi
Turkish-Iranian posturing on Syria, with Ankara arguing for more than limited strikes against the regime and Tehran saying that whoever strikes President Bashar al-Assad must bear the consequences, serves as a harbinger for the birth of a new Middle East order. Read Here – CNN
As the budding blossoms of the Arab Spring of 2011 wither in the fall of 2013, Saudi Arabia’s fragile stability hangs from the shriveled stem of the House of Saud. The threat posed by a region in turmoil to the kingdom’s ruling elite, the strategic interests of the United States, and the health of the […]
looking beyond borders 