Gulf and Arabian Peninsula

This article first appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of the Caspian Report.

Introduction

The political crisis in Ukraine and subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia have sent reverberations throughout the Middle East, where Western and Russian influences continue to weave a complex geopolitical web. MEI interviewed four of its scholars to produce this detailed account of the challenges the conflict poses to the region’s political, security, and economic conditions.

This article first appeared on Iran Matters, a publication of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Summary

In the wake of the revolutionary fervor that has swept the Middle East and North Africa since the beginning of 2011, retributive justice has taken precedence over restorative justice approaches as countries seek to address human rights violations.

In early 2011, Yemeni youths took to the street to demand the downfall of the regime and much-needed democratic reforms. This eventually led to the removal of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh from power later the same year. The political turmoil associated with the uprising has resulted in an alarming deterioration of the security situation throughout the country, most notably the seizure of two major cities in the southern governorate of Abyan by Ansar al-Shariah (AAS), an offshoot of al-Qa`ida. Backed by the Yemeni government, the Popular Committees (PCs), local armed resistance groups, pushed AAS out of major cities in Abyan.

Yemen was not immune to the wave of popular uprisings that swept some countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. However, because of the Yemeni state’s fragility, concurrent zones of conflict, and a power struggle that divided the core military and tribal elites, the international community was afraid that the youth uprising that started in January 2011 might lead to a collapse of the state. Given the consequences of such a collapse on the security of the Gulf states, oil production, and the international war on terror, the Gulf Cooperation Council brokered a deal in November 2011—the Gulf initiative—which laid the foundation for a transitional government. The main aim of the initiative was to secure a peace deal that halted Yemen’s slide into chaos. Peace was sought through the brokering of an inclusive National Dialogue Conference (NDC), but peace did not entail changing the regime or its pattern of politics. While transitional justice has been a part of this process of peaceful reconciliation, it raises questions about the sustainability of this peace and provides a showcase of the precarious state of Yemeni affairs.

This report was co-authored by Ömer Taşpınar and was published by the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution on Jan. 22, 2014. Click here to download the full report as a PDF.

Introduction

Fatemeh Aman co-authored this article.

As President Obama met his top Afghanistan commanders in the Oval Office on February 4 to discuss his decision to reduce the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, he received a compliment from an unlikely source. Ali Akbar Velayati, the top foreign policy aid to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, called Obama’s Afghan withdrawal policy “wise.”

Osama bin Laden may be dead, but his ghost was in Riyadh the other day, hovering over Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah as he issued a decree making it a crime for any Saudi citizen to take part in a war outside the kingdom.

The obvious motivator was the civil war in Syria, where hundreds of young Saudis have been spotted in the ranks of the most radical jihadi groups battling both the government and other less extreme rebels. But the roots of the king’s action, and the problem it was designed to address, can be traced to the 1980s war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The de-Ba`thification process in Iraq has fallen profoundly short as a transitional justice mechanism over the past decade. Poorly conceived, badly implemented, and controlled by hard-liners, the process has been so highly politicized that it has eroded the rule of law and intensified the sectarian tensions that are at the heart of the violence haunting Iraq.

Christine Martin served as a co-author on this article.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Tehran January 28 and 29 for his first meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz, and Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci are accompanying him. MEI spoke to Gonul Tol, Director of the Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies, about the meeting.

What is the reason for this high-level visit?

In the Middle East today, diplomatic success and failure are unfolding side by side, often with some of the same players. High-profile attempts are being made to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, to stop the massacre of innocents in Syria, and to bring Iran in from the cold.

America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East, by Hugh Wilford, 2013

A tale of how the CIA set sail into the Middle East with the best intentions, ran aground on its own failings, and was overwhelmed by forces and events it could not control.