Research & Commentary Results

The political culture in Oman seems to foster a pluralist intermeshing of national and sub-national identities that other diverse Arab states like Syria and Iraq were at pains to eliminate. This essay examines the Omani case to explore whether there are any lessons to be learned about sectarianism and how it can be confronted in the wider Middle East.

This article first appeared on Huffington Post.

This article first appeared on NPR’s Parallels blog.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan lowered the flag and boxed up their gear at the end of last year as President Obama declared the formal end to 13 years of U.S. combat operations.

This article was first published on Foreign Policy’s South Asia Channel.

This article was first published on Foreign Policy‘s South Asia Channel.

Oman’s government has declined to participate in the current Saudi-led military effort in Yemen. Instead, the country’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos, has called for “non-interference.” This position is an argument for internal political compromise that will eliminate the perceived need for Arab military intervention. To that end, Oman is offering a venue for talks with the hope of moving the political discussion forward.

Soon after Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah formed a unity government in Afghanistan in September 2014, there were signs of rapprochement between Kabul and Islamabad. When President Ghani visited Pakistan in November, he went to the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi and laid a wreath at the monument to the country’s fallen soldiers—an indication that the Kabul government had come to an understanding with the Pakistani army, which controls the country’s Afghan policy.

This article was co-written by Sigurd Neubauer. Read the full article on Foreign Affairs.

This article was first published on Foreign Policy‘s South Asia Channel.

April 23, 2015 – Marvin Weinbaum, director of the Center for Pakistan Studies at The Middle East Institute, explains Pakistan’s decision not to provide military aid for Saudi Arabia’s operation in Yemen, and how Prime Minister Sharif is working to repair relations with Riyadh.

This article was first published on Foreign Policy’s South Asia Channel.

This article was first published by Foreign Policy.

This article, co-written by James P. Farwell, was first published by The National Interest.

Shot in both legs, Shahruh Khan survived the Taliban attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan. “The man with big boots,” Al Jazeera quoted Khan as saying, “kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies.”

In both general and more informed discussions in Pakistan and beyond, sectarian violence in Pakistan between Sunni and Shi‘i groups is almost without exception referred to simply as Sunni-Shi‘i violence. But such a characterization is a misnomer. Two of Pakistan’s three major Sunni subsects, the Ahl-e-Hadis, and to a lesser extent, the Barelvis, may have antipathy toward the Shi‘a, but rarely express such sentiments through violent activity.

This paper is part of an MEI scholar series, titled “Obama’s Legacy in the Middle East: Passing the Baton in 2017.” Click here to view the full project, or navigate using the table of contents to the right.