Intissar Fakir is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, where she researches the politics and geopolitics of North Africa and the Sahel. Her work explores how changing notions of sovereignty, legitimacy, and state resilience are reshaping domestic governance and international engagement across the region. She examines the implications of these shifts for regional security, democratic backsliding, conflict, migration, food and energy security, great-power competition, and U.S. foreign policy, with a particular focus on how North African states are navigating an increasingly fluid international order.
Prior to joining MEI, Fakir was a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and editor-in-chief of Sada. Earlier in her career she worked on democracy, governance, and socioeconomic reform across the Middle East and North Africa. Originally from Morocco, she holds an M.A. from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and is a frequent commentator in international media.
A coup or not? What happened in Tunisia and what comes next?
The debate over what Saied did, while important because of the legal and political implications, obscures the way in which his actions are themselves an indication of how Tunisian democracy has not been working for Tunisians. And what Saied did is, in the short term, unlikely to yield the results Tunisia needs.
