Research & Commentary Results

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.

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

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.

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 Marvin G. Weinbaum, Robert S. Ford, Fatima Abo Alasrar, Jean-François Seznec, Michael Sexton and Eliza Campbell.

Amb. Robin Raphel and MEI’s Marvin Weinbaum join guest host Jerry Feierstein to discuss the latest round of negotiations between the US and the Taliban and lay out their competing views on whether there is greater cause for optimism or pessimism as the US seeks to withdraw its troops after nearly twenty years in Afghanistan.

MEI scholar Lawrence Pintak speaks to Sardar Masood Khan, the president of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, about India’s early August annexation of the semi-autonomous territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Randa Slim, Alex Vatanka, and Gonul Tol.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Arif Rafiq, Ibrahim Jalal, Michael Sexton and Eliza Campbell, and Alex Vatanka.

Much has been written about the ongoing direct peace talks between U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad and an Afghan Taliban delegation headed by Mullah Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai in Doha, Qatar. This article takes a closer look at the challenges to negotiating with the Afghan Taliban and lays out six reasons why the prospects for peace in Afghanistan still seem bleak.

The news came eight months after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to the Omani capital for surprise talks with Sultan Qaboos in October 2018, and four months after Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah met with Netanyahu in Poland during the Trump administration’s “Peace and Security in the Middle East” summit.

OPEC+ nations have ended speculation about whether they would continue oil production cuts by agreeing to a nine-month extension. Led by the global petroleum powers Saudi Arabia and Russia, the group agreed on July 2 to extend the current level of cuts until the second quarter of 2020.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region including Imran Khan’s visit to the White House, tensions between President Trump and Congress over Turkey’s new S-400 system, escalation in the Straits of Gibraltar and Hormuz, military restructuring in Iraq, increased collaboration on the region’s power supply, and changes to Egypt’s social safety net, featuring Arif Rafiq, Gonul Tol, Ruba Husari, Robert S. Ford, Dr. Ibrahim Saif, and Mirette F. Mabrouk.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region including Turkey’s confrontation with the U.S. over its S-400 defense system, the latest round of Afghan peace talks, the UAE’s drawdown in Yemen, Turkey’s media signaling on Syria, and the 21st consecutive week of protests in Algeria, featuring W. Robert Pearson, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Ibrahim Jalal, Guney Yildiz, and Robert S. Ford.