An eruption of violent unrest across the Middle East is confronting President Barack Obama with the most serious challenge yet to his efforts to keep the Arab Spring from morphing into a new wave of anti-Americanism – and he has few good options to prevent it. Read Here – Reuters
Who lost the Arab Spring? After the murder of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other American diplomats in Libya, President Barack Obama’s performance during the upheaval in the Arab world will inevitably become a highly charged political issue. Read Here – The National, Abu Dhabi
The wave of violent, senseless and deadly assaults on US legations in the region in recent days elicits a deep sense of disappointment, even despair. A decade of attempts by a series of American administrations and a handful of Western countries to combat Islamic extremism and to promote democracy in the region appears to have […]
The tragic assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was the latest in a series of attacks by the country’s increasingly active Salafists. In late August, armed Salafist groups demolished Sufi shrines, mosques and mausoleums in Tripoli, Misrata and Zliten. Earlier this year, Salafists desecrated British World War II graves, attacked the Tunisian consulate over […]
BRUSSELS/ALGIERS: Egypt, Algeria and Morocco on Thursday slammed an anti-Islam film that has sparked protests worldwide, but also denounced attacks on US missions by angry protesters. Egypt’s Islamist President Muhammad Mursi vowed Thursday not to allow attacks on foreign embassies in Cairo, saying the Egyptian people reject such “unlawful acts.” Speaking during a visit to the European […]
The twin acts of violence in Libya and Egypt on the anniversary of 9/11 highlight the difficult road ahead for U.S. relations with these nascent democracies, says Robert M. Danin, a CFR Middle East expert. Read Here – cfr.org
SINCE the wave of Arab uprisings started last year, the theory of “Arab exceptionalism” promoted by many Western governments to justify supporting dictatorships has looked a lot weaker. There was virtually no demand for democracy in rich, pro-Western or strategically valuable Arab countries, it was once breezily argued. Now the buzz phrase is “monarchical exceptionalism”. […]
Africa is no longer the “lost continent” of popular imagination. The region has been growing rapidly for over a decade, the private sector is expanding, and a new class of consumers is wielding considerable spending power. And because of its young and growing population, the sky is the limit for future growth: Between 2010 and […]
looking beyond borders 