Research & Commentary Results

Nate Rosenblatt, a fellow with New America’s International Security program, and Aaron Y. Zelin, the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, join host Alistair Taylor to discuss Tunisia’s struggles with extremism and the factors that led it to become a major source of recruits for ISIS.

Eight years after the revolution, Tunisians seem to be swinging between disenchantment and anti-establishment backlash.

Tonight will be the first of three nights of televised debates among election lists for next Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Tunisia. The first round of presidential elections on Sept. 15 garnered greater international media attention, but the constitution gives the prime minister, who must gain backing from a parliamentary majority, control over domestic policies. Thus, the Oct. 6 election is crucial to Tunisia’s future.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Ruba Husari, Paul Salem, Gerald Feierstein, Amal Kandeel, Grace Wermenbol, Robert S. Ford, Charles Lister, and Gonul Tol.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Robert S. Ford, Fatima Abo Alasrar, Jean-François Seznec, Michael Sexton and Eliza Campbell.

On September 15, Tunisia will hold a presidential election brought forward two months by the unexpected death of patriarchal President Beji Caid Essebsi. Much of the election analysis so far has been flawed, sometimes because of Western, Middle Eastern, ideological, or wishful analytical filters disconnected from Tunisian realities. Here are seven keys to understanding the elections that address core mischaracterizations and misperceptions.

Tunisia is an important security partner for Germany, and a key part of the Federal Republic’s enhanced security involvement in the MENA region. Germany is due to release a new strategy for working on security sector assistance and reform abroad, which will give direction to work in Tunisia and elsewhere. Examining how Germany has performed according its own stated principles in Tunisia highlights policy points for this new strategy, covering greater commitment to governance, gendered security and transparency. With German security spending on the rise, there is a lot to play for.

Laudatory statements and obituaries are pouring in for Béji Caïd Essebsi, who died last Thursday, July 25, in Tunis, and have emphasized his singular landmark accomplishment: serving as Tunisia’s first democratically elected president. While Essebsi’s legacy as president will be mixed, and he may not have been the greatest promoter of democratic praxis, he did emerge as Tunisian democracy’s greatest defender. What he leaves Tunisia and the world is a brilliant incomplete experiment, and, despite the growing resilience of Tunisians tested at the borders and in unruly borderlands, still a fragile experiment.

A reliable supply of freshwater is a prerequisite for sustainable socioeconomic development, as well as for sociopolitical stability and human prosperity, especially in semi-arid and arid regions of the world. The Middle East and North Africa’s freshwater resources are under immense pressures and are facing significant risks to their sustainability due to overexploitation, climate change, and interstate competition over their use that extends beyond the region’s boundaries.

It is easy to overlook the fact that food security could be an issue of concern in the Gulf Cooperation Council. After all, its member states have some of the world’s highest per capita income levels. Food supplies in the Gulf are normally abundant and stable. Were they to be disrupted, however, it could lead to food security challenges and a chain of adverse consequences for human security throughout the region.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Alex Vatanka, Gonul Tol, Gerald Feierstein, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Rauf Mammadov, and Robert S. Ford provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including Iran’s announcement that it has exceeded its enriched uranium limit, Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400s missile defense system over American objections, an Emirati announcement that it will downsize military involvement in Yemen, the resumption of intra-Afghan peace talks, Russia’s continuing embrace of OPEC+ oil production cuts, and the emergence of potential threats to Tunisia’s democracy.

With elections set for the fall, Tunisian voters are searching for leaders to emerge who can tackle issues of political fragmentation, long standing economic problems, growing protests, and a volatile regional environment with civil war in Libya on one side and political upheaval in Algeria on the other. Sarah Yerkes, a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East program, and Sharan Grewal, postdoctoral fellow at the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, join host Alistair Taylor to discuss.

Scholar Charles Tilly does not believe that social capital can, by itself, build democracy. In fact, according to Tilly, citizens lacking favorable environmental and historical conditions — even if highly engaged — cannot establish a democracy. If establishing democratic institutions is such an arduous task for citizens living under dictatorship, what political leverage do those living in the diaspora possess? This article explores how the Tunisian diasporas in Italy and France have sought to help implement the transition to democracy.

The alliance between Morocco and Saudi Arabia has historically been strong, bolstered by shared concerns about regional turmoil in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring protests, but recent tensions have brought bilateral relations to an all-time low. Last month, frictions between Rabat and Riyadh came to the fore when Morocco recalled its ambassador from Saudi Arabia.

Observers of political affairs in the Arab world are keeping a close eye on the upcoming Arab League summit, set to be held at the end of March in Tunis. Although Syria will not participate in the meeting, the question of when, or how, to bring Damascus in from the cold after an eight-year suspension from the body will be the most important issue on the agenda.