The double whammy of the economic fallout of COVID-19 and a lack of sufficient support from international donors is putting enormous pressure on PM Hamdok’s government.
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Dara Conduit, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Mark Heller, Syed Mohammad Ali, Gonul Tol, and Guled Ahmed.
Late on June 25, the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service carried out an operation against Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-backed militia, in the suburbs of Baghdad, detaining militiamen, confiscating mobile Katyusha rocket launchers, and accusing the group of plotting another round of rocket attacks targeting the Green Zone and Baghdad International Airport.
Despite the mixed signals from Israeli and U.S. officials, some form of annexation in the coming weeks or months may be inevitable.
The state is teetering on the brink of collapse as salaries to the public sector dwindle into insignificance.
The digitization of business in the Middle East has enormous implications for the future of regional economies, as well as for education, employment, and beyond. The way this digital transition shapes the region will be influenced by the degree to which policymakers consider this shift in its context and with an eye toward the future, as the opening session of the MEI Cyber Program’s recent conference explored.
Leaders of Arab Gulf regimes now decry the attempt to implement the vision of the Israeli Right, which aims to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. But it is exactly the policies of the Arab Gulf regimes, through their normalization of ties with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, that directly contributed to the rise of the Israeli Right and made this annexation more likely.
Today marks almost three months of a global shutdown to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Middle East and North Africa region faces a double whammy from the resulting economic fallout and the sharp decline in oil prices this spring. While Egypt is rightly focused on its short-term response to the crisis, it should take advantage of the international and regional shock caused by the pandemic to change its growth model for the longer term and implement much-needed structural reforms on a variety of fronts.
While the regime and its allies have cast the current crisis as the result of Western sanctions, Syria’s economic troubles are largely due to the regime’s “Assad or we burn the country” policies.
The lockdown conditions have meant that demand for the services of informal market laborers has declined, leaving them with no means of making a living and no form of insurance or savings to fall back on.
As MbS approaches three years as Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and, in the eyes of many, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, he remains an enigmatic figure on the world stage.
Turkish support for the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) in the Libyan civil war has added a new dimension to relations between Turkey and Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. But what impact have the growing geopolitical divides and diplomatic disagreements had on Turkish-Emirati and Turkish-Saudi economic relations?
With an economy already on the brink of collapse and a shocking devaluation of the Syrian pound — hitting 3,175 pounds to the dollar earlier this month — the COVID-19 pandemic has come at an exceptionally dangerous time in Syria.
By letting people vent in the streets, Hezbollah seeks to shift the blame away from its inability to offer the help its constituency expects of it.
The administration hopes additional economic pressure will compel Damascus to take a series of political gestures, including releasing political prisoners and establishing an accountability process for the atrocities its forces committed.