North Africa

In mid-June, just before Ramadan, the pre-dawn calm of downtown Cairo was shattered by the sound of heavy machinery. The municipality had decided to repair the battered sidewalks, a fairly regular occurrence since shoddy concrete tiles are typically used for the job. Truckloads of sand were deposited at intervals along the main boulevards to be spread as a bed for the new tiles, while much of the rubble from the old ones was left piled by the curbs. To avoid the rough new terrain pedestrians took to the streets with the cars.

When a moral controversy arises in Morocco, the two main actors of the official political stage carefully play their specific role. On one side, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD), the party that leads the Moroccan government and as such is accountable to the electorate, reliably endorses the Moroccan majority’s socially conservative attitudes in order to fulfill its electoral mandate. On the other side, the king fully exploits his wider room for maneuver by adopting, according to circumstances, either a progressive stance or a conservative one. While the rhythm of moral controversies sets the tempo of the official political game and shows that Moroccan society is still very much conservative, the largest Islamist opposition group, the Justice and Charity Association, seeks to escape its marginalization within the civil society sphere.

Italian energy company Eni announced on August 30 that it had discovered a deep-water gas field 93 miles north of Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.[1] The field, named Zohr, holds an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet (cft)[2] of natural gas (NG) reserves, potentially making it the twentieth largest in the world and the largest in the Mediterranean.

This paper spotlights women’s rights organizations as key players in civil society in Tunisia and Morocco, with a comparative glance at the Philippines and South Korea, two Asian participants in democracy’s third wave. Applying the existing literature on women, gender, and democratic transitions, we draw attention to the role of women’s rights organizations in civil society and as agents of democratization; examine the organizations’ role and influence during protests and transitions; and analyze the gendered outcomes in terms of laws and policies affecting women’s rights.

Under the threat of an increasingly influential Communist Soviet Union, in the mid-twentieth century the United States became more and more involved in Middle Eastern affairs. Struggling to reconcile its goals of containment, access to oil, and Israeli security, the U.S. government implemented a historic doctrine that pledged increased economic and military aid to the region in exchange for political allegiance.

MEI spoke with Reida El Oakley, Libya’s minister of health, about the state of health care in the country and how Libya could receive the funding it desperately needs.

The 1,667-strong contingent of U.S. and international forces that make up the Multinational Force of Observers (MFO) in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is in a tough spot. The ongoing failure of the Egyptian government’s war against the ISIS-led rebellion there has shredded the MFO’s mandate to monitor Egyptian and Israeli adherence to their peace treaty. Sinai’s descent into anarchy also puts outnumbered and outgunned U.S. troops in the only location other than Iraq that confronts ISIS in an active theater of war.

In October 2014 the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior launched an enhanced effort to combat threats of terrorism through a strategy called Operation Hadar.

Egyptian diplomats rarely have a good word to say about U.S. policies these days. In contrast, they are enthusiastic in their praise of the close relations between Cairo and Jerusalem—centered on counterterror security and intelligence cooperation in Sinai—and effusive in their acknowledgement of Israel’s response to the bloody insurgency there, led by Egypt’s ISIS affiliate in the “Sinai Province,” Ansar Beit al-Maqdis.

“Relations with Israel are great,” observed an Egyptian official recently.[1]

For decades, most refugee crises followed a pattern: A war erupted, usually in a poor country, and beleaguered civilians staggered across the nearest border. The United Nations organized a response, rich nations footed the bill, and aid groups sent in workers to tend to the needy. Even in extreme cases, such as the mass exodus from Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, the crisis was largely confined to the country at war and a few immediate neighbors.

For Egypt’s low-income majority, weddings are the prime source of group entertainment, celebrated like block parties in cramped streets decorated with arabesque tapestries and drenched in colored lights and sound. You won’t hear romantic crooning at these gatherings; in Cairo’s densely-inhabited popular quarters, wedding parties are more akin to raves. The music is raw synthetic beat embroidered with syncopated tabla (Egyptian drum) samples and queasy electronic loops.

For many, an interest in the natural resources of the Middle East begins and ends with oil. However, in a region where systems of agriculture and manufacturing are threatened by increasing desertification and pervasive aridity, the amount, distribution, and control of water is drawing increased international attention.