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
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.
Since the departure of U.S. ground forces from Iraq in 2011 in the wake of failed negotiations to extend the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, the security situation in Iraq has steadily declined. To many, the situation was predictable, as the absence of a residual U.S. force to mature the Iraqi security forces and moderate long-standing political tensions among the sects led to a security vacuum filled by extremists and terrorists. To others, 10 years of investment and over 4,000 troops lost was enough, and it was time for the Iraqis to resolve their own internal conflicts.
The following is an excerpt from “Iraq’s Tangled Foreign Interests and Relations,” written by MEI Vice President Paul Salem and published by the Carnegie Middle East Center on December 24, 2013. Click here to view the full report.
Earlier today, double explosions near the Iranian embassy in Beirut killed at least 23, including an Iranian diplomat. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, an Islamist group with links to al-Qa`ida, took responsibility for the attack. MEI sat down with its Vice President for Policy and Research, Paul Salem, to discuss the significance of the bombings in Lebanon as well as their regional and global implications.
Tell us about the bombing and the group that claimed responsibility for it.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in Washington this week for meetings with Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and President Barack Obama. We sat down with MEI’s Vice President for Policy and Research, Paul Salem, to discuss the topics on the table, what each side hopes to accomplish, and how the United States should approach Iraq.
What is Maliki looking to accomplish?
Whether Saudi Arabia takes a seat on the United Nations Security Council or not, the initial snub is aimed primarily at the United States. In particular, U.S.-Saudi relations are in for an exceptionally difficult period—perhaps a return to the policies of King Faisal bin Abdulaziz. It appears that Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf now share the view of Sir Charles Johnston, a British diplomat in the 1960s, who offered the following assessment of U.S.
An Iraq of Its Regions, edited by Reidar Vissar and Gareth Stansfield, 2008
Last week, MEI scholars Allen Keiswetter, a retired Foreign Service officer, David Newton, former ambassador to Yemen, and Roby Barrett, author of Yemen: A Different Political Paradigm in Context (2011), gathered for an informal discussion about Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (NDC), which began in March.
The openly difficult relationship between Saudi Arabia and Muslim Brotherhood chapters across the region has become a salient feature of Middle East politics since the advent of the “Arab Spring.” This mutual mistrust has increased in the wake of the Kingdom’s recent support for the military takeover in Cairo and the generals’ subsequent repression of the Brotherhood there. But how is the Islamist organization affected by this dynamic in Syria, where the Muslim Brothers and the Saudis both battle against Bashar al-Assad?
This article first appeared on Lobe Log.
Whenever a Saudi Arabian king or senior prince publicly criticizes U.S. policy, they inevitably touch off speculation about how the Saudis may be rethinking their security alliance with the United States.
Like pieces fitting together in a jigsaw puzzle, Arab governments – presumably from the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council – offered to finance a U.S. military strike on Syria, according to comments made by Secretary of State John Kerry during testimony September 4 with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In an exchange with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) on the potential cost of U.S. military action in Syria, Kerry said,
