Sara Sadek

As fighting rages across the last opposition-held province of Idlib, the war in Syria has reached its brutal endgame. The Syrian army’s offensive, launched in early May, will not be quick, but rather marks the start of what will likely be a prolonged, violent, and ultimately costly campaign. If the first few weeks of the operation are anything to go by, resistance will be fierce — fiercer than initially expected — and as the world’s attention shifts toward Idlib, the stakes are now higher than ever.

Our current Arab World is suffering from a “future deficit,” in that ambitious dreams for an alternative and profoundly better future have been shoved aside in favor of the short-term goals of maintaining stability and security, and avoiding civil war or state collapse—all worthy, but not transformative long-term objectives in themselves.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, contributors Nabil Fahmy, Guney Yildiz, Paul Scham, and Elizabeth Dent provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the state of US-Iran tensions, Turkish-Russian disagreement on Idlib, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apparent inability to meet the deadline to form a government, and Iraq’s proposal to take custody of captured ISIS fighters awaiting trial.

Political and economic transitions are seldom, if ever, compartmentalized processes, insulated from regional and global influences. On the contrary, they are often informed and shaped by exogenous forces and the policies of external actors, including states and international organizations. How can external actors develop interventions that are more likely to be well received and thus support transitions to democracy?

MEI’s Randa Slim and Paul Salem join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the Institute’s conflict resolution program and how Track II diplomacy—or unofficial meetings between adversarial groups—has supplemented state-to-state diplomacy and become a transformative experience for many of its participants.

Over the past few months, an awkward courtship has been going on between Iraq and its two most polarizing neighbors, as Tehran and Riyadh attempt to convince Baghdad of the merits of their respective orbits. While both sides make compelling points, the fact is that Iraq is exceedingly happy to occupy the middle ground, geopolitically and economically, between the two regional powers.

Approximately 10,000-20,000 Afghan men, mostly from the Hazara ethnic group, have fought in Syria in support of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Organized by Iran and led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other affiliated groups, they have gathered under the banner of the so-called “Fatemiyoun” Division. This is the story of one of those men, Mohammed Jalil Dinsta, told through selections from his writings, alongside relevant analysis.

As Turkey aims to expand its influence throughout the Sunni Muslim world, President Erdoğan is playing up the historic ties and strategic partnership between Turkey and Pakistan. It remains to be seen, however, if this alliance will evolve beyond mere symbolism.

Muammar Gaddafi controlled all power in Libya for 42 years before the 2011 uprising. Since then, Libyans have been unable to rebuild national institutions and restore stability. Despite General Khalifa Hifter’s ongoing attempt in 2019 to conquer Tripoli by military force, Libya’s best chance for progress remains a unified international approach built on near complete alignment among international actors, supporting Libyans convening as a whole to address political, security, and economic issues at the same time.

Conditions in Iraq since the defeat of ISIS’s territorial “caliphate” justify both optimism and concern at the same time. One issue where there has been much hand wringing but few practical suggestions for what to do is that of the popular mobilization forces (PMF). As the main campaign against ISIS drew to a close, many of the PMF’s leaders sought to translate their fighters’ battlefield sacrifices into political and economic gains.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Randa Slim, Gerald Feierstein, Zubair Iqbal, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Mirette F. Mabrouk, Robert S. Ford, and Rauf Mammadov provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the escalating tensions between the United States and Iran with Iraq caught in between, Jared Kushner’s economic development plan for Palestinians, the IMF’s bailout deal with Pakistan, political turmoil ahead of the Afghan presidential election, developments in the Egyptian media landscape following recent constitutional amendments, debate over how to approach elections in Algeria, and the impact of US-Iran tensions on the oil market.

In 2014, a professor and former U.S. diplomat approached The Middle East Institute (MEI) with a remarkable offer: he would donate to MEI’s Oman Library nearly 20,000 meticulously annotated Kodachrome slides of photographs he had taken throughout the Middle East over half a century.