Research & Commentary Results

The U.S. and World Bank sponsored talks last week between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, over the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – the latest developments in a regional soap opera that’s been running since 2010, when Ethiopia first announced the construction of the dam.

Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, has been paralyzed in recent days by supporters of Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), a well-entrenched Islamist party. The protestors are seeking the resignation of the military-backed Prime Minister Imran Khan and fresh elections, and the demonstration has emerged as an existential problem for Khan.

On Oct. 23-24, Russian President Vladimir Putin co-chaired the Russia-Africa Economic Forum in Sochi with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi. At the conclusion of the summit, which brought 43 African heads of state to the Black Sea resort town, Sisi emphasized the importance of strengthening Egypt’s partnership with Russia, and Putin described Egypt as a “pillar for security and stability in the Middle East and Africa.”

While there is probably zero chance Prime Minister Khan will step down, efforts will persist in trying to delegitimize those in power because this is what Pakistan’s opposition parties seem best programmed to do.

Egypt and Ethiopia remain at odds over the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Currently almost 70 percent complete, the giant upstream dam, which can hold the entire annual rainfall of the Nile, has the capacity to essentially turn the taps off on Egypt, depriving the country of the river water that supplies a mind-numbing 90 percent of its fresh water.

In a move that surprised no one, on Oct. 19 the Afghan election commission said it was unable to announce the preliminary results of the Sept. 28 presidential election as planned, due to delays in processing biometric data. Held amid political uncertainty, terrorist violence, and general skepticism, the September election was the fourth presidential contest in Afghanistan since 2001, when the brutal Taliban regime was toppled in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

Reports of a secret war being waged by Hamas against Salafi-jihadist groups in the Gaza Strip are indicative of increasing challenges to the former’s security control within the enclave. Hamas’ current approach to violent Salafist cells in Gaza is equally demonstrative of an ongoing warming of relations between Cairo and Hamas, and one that has afforded Hamas international legitimacy and an ease in border restrictions.

For all of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s reputational gains abroad, it is Pakistan’s economy that will determine his political future.

With an estimated $1 trillion in natural resources and sitting astride an international crossroads of increasingly critical importance, Balochistan is becoming a stage on which the world’s powers are playing out their ambitions. China, the U.S., and India have all formulated Balochistan policies in the past few years, hoping to utilize the region to achieve wider international goals — and the three countries across which Balochistan is divided, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, have been eager to use it as a bargaining chip for their own purposes.

A question as to the value of a U.S.-Egypt Free Trade Agreement (FTA) misses the point. The question should not be whether an FTA would be in the interest of both parties since there is abundant evidence that it would. The question is what kind of FTA would best suit the needs, both short and long term, of the two parties: shallow integration or deep integration? This report argues that notwithstanding several hurdles, it is in the interest of both countries to move swiftly and decisively toward a deep FTA.

Preliminary results from the Sept. 28 Afghan presidential election will not be announced for at least another week. Yet events are shaping up that could drive Afghanistan into a political impasse similar to what the country faced in its last presidential election.

The weekend of the 23rd saw small demonstrations in approximately five governorates that had the twitterverse in an uproar and rekindled mostly moribund international interest in democracy in Egypt.

In the end, it all fell apart rather quickly. Instead of a long-awaited announcement about the details of a U.S.-Afghan Taliban peace deal, on Sept. 7 President Donald Trump tweeted that the talks were off, adding shortly afterwards that the Afghan peace process was “dead.” Only days earlier, Washington’s special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, had announced a draft agreement had been reached after nine rounds of gruelling negotiations.

The Sept. 14 attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing plant has put Pakistan in a place it never wanted to be: possibly forced to choose between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Gerald Feierstein, Alex Vatanka, Eran Etzion, Gonul Tol, Amal Kandeel, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Michael Sexton and Eliza Campbell.