Over the past four years, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has tried to transform itself from a faction of the Global Jihad movement into the de facto local military and governing power in north-west (NW) Syria. This shift requires the group to seek sources of funding other than al-Qaeda and its donors; consequently, HTS has undertaken a slow but steady takeover of the economy in NW Syria, from financial services and oil and gas to internet and telecommunications. This paper lays out how that process has taken place and provides a detailed look at the economics of HTS.
It's Now or Never: Lebanon Policy Conference Key Takeaways
Over the course of two weeks in May and June, the Middle East Institute hosted its inaugural Lebanon policy conference in collaboration with the American Task Force on Lebanon (ATFL) and LIFE. This series of events brought together leading diplomats, policymakers, economists, development practitioners, and think tank professionals from the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Lebanon to discuss the urgency and viable paths forward for the country’s political, financial, and humanitarian crises.
The nascent Israeli government: The thread that binds?
There is only one thread holding together the unprecedentedly disparate parties that will establish and support the nascent Israeli government announced on the night of June 2, an hour before the midnight deadline. That thread is, of course, a shared loathing for Benjamin Netanyahu. Whether that thread will even get the new government past its first hurdle, which is a vote of confidence in the Knesset, much less to its theoretical four years, is an open question. Until recently no one could have imagined such a political monstrosity might be conceived, let alone gestated, but there’s a decent chance this government will get off the ground.
In this policy paper, Dr. Karen E. Youngsets out to delineate and compare economic diversification efforts underway in the GCC that might prove useful in the Iraqi context, for the state as a whole, and measures that might be adopted in the context of the Kurdistan region.
مجلس حقوق الإنسان التابع للأمم المتحدة يوافق على لجنة غزة لتقصي الحقائق
“إن استعداد مجلس حقوق الإنسان لإنشاء لجنة دائمة ذات تفويض شامل يشير إلى مدى التغيير في التصورات الدولية للصراع الإسرائيلي الفلسطيني في السنوات القليلة الماضية”.
Pakistan needs to reframe its regional connectivity push
On April 8, the top U.S. diplomat in Pakistan visited the Chinese-operated port of Gwadar — the first such visit by an American official in 15 years. The move appears to be part of a campaign by Pakistan to promote its regional connectivity agenda and simultaneously signal that this effort isn’t solely wedded to China and its Belt and Road Initiative.
Greece and Cyprus can play a modest role in advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace
In March 2021, the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum held its first meeting as a recognized international organization. Delegations from member countries – including Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, and Palestine – gathered in Cairo to organize a regional gas market. The forum is a unique space that offers a platform for dialogue between European and Middle Eastern countries. Furthermore, it is rare that Israeli and Palestinian delegations cooperate on the international stage. Yet, as the inaugural meeting demonstrated, the conflict is never too far away. When the delegates voted on whether to grant the United Arab Emirates observer status in the forum – a privilege given to the United States and European Union – Palestine vetoed, a clear demonstration of Ramallah’s frustration with the normalization process that started a few months ago.
Agricultural technology in the Middle East: Sowing the seeds of the future
Over the last decade, new technology has been developed to address agriculture’s longstanding structural problems related to unproductive farming soils and water shortages. Such initiatives could potentially play a pivotal role in promoting food systems’ resilience across the region. These technologies are designed to increase and improve the outputs of the agricultural sector, while using less energy and more sustainable methods. Responding to the need to promote sustainable agricultural growth, agricultural technology (or “agritech”) today aims to reduce agrarian waste and the use of chemical fertilizers. Looking to the future — while taking cues from the past — may unlock the solutions to the region’s desperate food insecurity.
Israeli repression links the violence in Gaza and Jerusalem
Even as it pays lip service to a two-state solution, the international community—particularly the United States—has largely acquiesced to the Israeli-imposed status quo in Gaza and East Jerusalem by exempting both areas from the political and diplomatic process.
Iranian sanctions evasion and the Gulf’s complex oil trade
Sanctions have had a devastating impact on Iran’s oil production and exports, preventing much-needed investment in the country’s ageing fields and barring it from legally exporting crude oil to global customers. Using a range of evasion tactics, however, Iran has succeeded in circumventing sanctions and maintaining a steady — albeit much lower — level of crude exports. The Gulf’s complex regional oil market has facilitated these tactics, providing the perfect environment for trade in oil that U.S. sanctions designate as illicit.
