Governments typically make big bets either when they are overly confident or increasingly worried. Saudi Arabia’s oil strategy doesn’t reflect confidence. With the frail health of King Abdullah, possible succession rivalries, domestic pressures for change, conflict in neighboring Yemen, and the many challenges posed by ISIS, Riyadh may be in for more than it bargained for. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
On Saturday, 9 August 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt entered another phase in its beleaguered political life. The highest administrative court in Egypt, the Supreme Administrative Court, dissolved the political party of the Brotherhood in Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The Court also liquidated all of the FJP’s assets in an attempt […]
The oil boom of the second half of the twentieth century brought modern technology to Saudi Arabia, but the aesthetic refinement of classical Islamic architecture began to disappear. Starting in the mid-seventies, the old houses were replaced with drab towers. Modern Mecca feels as if it were built by a people without history or tradition—a […]
The map of the modern Middle East, a political and economic pivot in the international order, is in tatters. Syria’s ruinous war is the turning point. But the centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and ethnicities — empowered by unintended consequences of the Arab Spring — are also pulling apart a region defined by European […]
Iraq is really three separate geographical regions, now contested by Kurds and Arabs ethnically, Arabic and Kurdish speakers linguistically, and Sunni and Shiite Muslims religiously. Ethnically Iraqis are approximately 75 percent Arabs, 20 percent Kurds, and 5 percent Turkmen and Assyrians. Religiously they are 65 percent Shiite Muslims, 30 percent Sunni Muslims, and 5 percent […]
Pakistan’s military-to-military cooperation with Saudi Arabia goes back five decades. Between the 1960s and 1980s, tens of thousands of Pakistani troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia, working under Saudi command. Pakistani fighter pilots trained their first Saudi counterparts, and in 1969 flew jets that successfully repulsed incursions by Yemeni forces. Pakistani engineers built Saudi fortifications along its […]
America’s Gulf allies are unhappy with what they see as a milquetoast response to ongoing Iranian aggression and a betrayal of a commitment to remove Iran’s strongest ally—Bashar al Assad. Gulf leaders see a declining US military presence in the Gulf and feel there is a vacuum developing. These perceptions are incorrect, writes DB Des Roches Read […]
When considering the next steps with Iran, we should think less about Nazi Germany or North Korea and more about the China of Chairman Mao. Read Here – The Atlantic
The past 33 months comprise the darkest chapter in Syria’s long history. Since protests in March 2010 turned into an armed conflict against the government of President Bashar Al Assad, Read Here – Gulf News
After decades when the core components of US and Saudi strategic policies were more or less in sync, the United States is suddenly not playing by the Saudi playbook. It won’t give the Syrian resistance a blank check; it is daring to consider softening its stance towards Iran; it has dared to criticise, however mildly, […]
looking beyond borders 