“ستتزايد المواجهات في الأسابيع والأشهر المُقبلة عندما تضطر الحكومة إلى رفع الدعم، أو تقنينه عن سلع أساسية مثل الوقود”
“ثمة اعتراف عميق من قِبَل البعض في النظام الحاكم نفسه بأن هناك حاجة إلى فحص ذاتي جذري لسياسات النظام”.
On December 18, Yemeni President Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi announced a new cabinet as part of his efforts to implement the political annex of the Riyadh Agreement (RA) signed on November 5, 2019 between the Republic of Yemen Government (ROYG) and the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC). The agreement included several political, security and economic provisions such as: the formation of a new government that includes the STC; the disarmament and integration of militias and military formations under the auspices of the ministries of defense and interior; support of the Yemeni economy; and the demilitarization of Aden.
In the 1950s, at the onset of the Cold War, Pakistan and Turkey were part of the Central Treaty Organization or CENTO, a pro-Western bloc of Muslim-majority states. Today, the two countries — both with troubled relations with the United States — are Muslim middle powers with a growing entente in a multipolar Eurasia. In recent years, cooperation between Pakistan and Turkey has strengthened not just in the defense, diplomatic, and economic realms, but also in the cultural space, causing geopolitical ripple effects in the Himalayas, the Arabian Peninsula, and the South Caucasus.
Georgia’s Western future became a central part of U.S. foreign policy last week. During his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated that Georgia should join NATO as soon as it meets the criteria. Blinken’s remarks are timely. Georgia faces increasing Russian political pressure and military presence, exacerbated by the recent second Nagorno Karabakh war. At the same time, and following a decade of stalemate, there have been significant breakthroughs in the cases brought by Georgia against Russia in front of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). With Georgia’s Western path resurfacing on the international agenda, Eastern European countries will be watching to see if the Biden Administration’s foreign policy can make a difference to regional security.
Saturday marks the 100th day since Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri secured a razor-thin majority nomination to form a new cabinet — his fourth in 11 years. In October 2019, street protests had forced his “national unity” government to resign. His comeback a year later was a cause for disillusionment among protesters and a signal that politics as usual, in its collusive and inefficient nature, was there to stay. The absurdity of the Lebanese debacle lies in how easy and acceptable it was — and still is — for the established political class to shy away from crucial and courageous decisions when the country needed them most.
This report discusses the results of the 2020 Syrian parliamentary elections to illuminate shifts in the al-Assad regime’s strategy to restore and maintain control over the country. Using evidence gathered from a range of sources, it sheds light on recent changes in the ethnic, religious, political, commercial, and military networks through which Syria’s dictatorship is sustained, and the future directions these shifts imply.
MEI’s Paul Salem and Ross Harrison join host Alistair Taylor to discuss what the Biden Administration can do to reduce regional tensions and proxy conflicts in the Middle East.
آراء من واشنطن: حلقة 3
الواقع في العراق وسياسة تويتر لحظر الحسابات
يناقش إبراهيم الأصيل رأيين لرندا سليم ومايك سيكستون، عن الواقع في العراق وسياسة تويتر لحظر حسابات السياسيين. شاركونا بآرائكم!
To get Washington’s Gulf partners on board, Biden needs an actual strategy for protecting them and ways to make them contribute to it.
In Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, coverage of negotiations around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has tended to consistently be in the news over the past few years. The events of the last few weeks, however, have easily pushed GERD talks to the side. On Nov. 4, 2020, Ethiopian federal government forces started pounding the Tigray region, one of 10 semiautonomous regions in the country, after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of attacking a federal base. Relations had been disintegrating after Abiy cancelled elections, due to COVID, that would have marked the end of his term. While most of Ethiopia’s ethnic minorities took umbrage, the TPLF went a step further by holding their own elections, the results of which were declared null and void by the federal government.
From the U.S. and the U.K. to Iraq and Syria, the way countries are handling the repatriation and prosecution of accused ISIS members echoes the policies that drove their citizens to seek a utopian Islamic State in the first place. Not only are the policies that pushed people to start joining the group in 2013 continuing, but in many cases they have increased in both scale and scope. While the current repatriation and prosecution policies are arguably counterproductive, they may also be fueling future terrorist activity and support for radical anti-government groups. To reduce the chances of such negative consequences, foreign governments must switch gears and adopt an entirely different approach before it is too late.
