The following represents findings from an MEI delegation trip to Egypt that took place between October 5 and 9. The delegation met with government, civil society, youth and business leaders, and heard a variety of views on the country’s challenges. What follows is a presentation of the views we heard, not an MEI assessment.
Only a few authors have works that can be found on both floors of the Oman Library at The Middle East Institute, and fewer still that have a personal connection to both the institute and the history of the region. The late Ambassador Richard B. Parker can claim this status, having served 31 years in the Foreign Service and as the third editor of The Middle East Journal. He was also a longtime MEI scholar-in-residence.
Critics of the July 14 nuclear deal with Iran railed against it on the grounds that it would embolden what they argue is Tehran’s destabilizing behavior in the Middle East. The reasoning goes like this: lifting sanctions gives Iran access to tens of billions of dollars that will flow to fund disruptive activities and lets Iran freely pursue its regional ambitions without fear of reprisals.
A Message to Vienna: Build a Framework, but Leave the Details to Syrians
As Secretary of State John Kerry seeks to launch a new peace effort on Syria, he needs to be careful about the goals he sets and the language he uses. Getting the fundamentals wrong at the outset might scuttle the process or could ensure that whatever deal results will crumble under pressure. It will then lead to more warfare and a worsening of the refugee crisis. Moreover, it would preclude us from securing our strategic goal of mobilizing more Syrians to contain and eventually expel terrorists from Syria.
Dateline Egypt: Roadmaps, Refinancing, and Regional Roles
In the past ten days Egypt held a first round of parliamentary elections, announced renewed loan talks with the IMF, experienced new clashes with militants in the Sinai, and joined multinational talks to end the war in Syria. These headlines provide current glimpses into the country’s complex and challenging political, economic and security trajectories.
President Barack Obama has notoriously disparaged the moderate opposition as “farmers or dentists or maybe some radio reporters who didn’t have a lot of experience fighting.” The key question about the Syrian opposition is not whether it can fight — in fact many of its cadres are former Syrian army soldiers — but whether it can govern.
Since the 1990s, the need for streamlined procedures to facilitate business, trade and investment has grown to crisis proportions in Egypt. But the political will to deliver administrative reform was always lacking, not least because it would involve lay-offs and wage reductions; in other words, direct threats to the livelihoods of some seven million state employees and consequently the regime’s popularity. But with the government wage bill estimated to reach USD30 billion next year, Egypt has finally taken action.
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.
Recent Russian activity in Syria is not about combating the Islamic State, despite Russian claims to the contrary. Though actively fighting ISIS and thus propagating its long-stated goal of keeping Assad in power would seem to be the straightforward explanation for Russia’s recent behavior, the fact that Russian strikes are also hitting U.S.-backed, rebel-held areas demonstrates the hollowness of official discourse.
October 2015 marks the fourteenth month of formal U.S. military engagement in the struggle against the Islamic State (ISIS). The Obama administration was at first reluctant to engage U.S. military power in this struggle but then became more deliberate in its approach. U.S. involvement in the battlegrounds of Iraq and Syria has been evolving especially over the past year. This evolution has been defined and is in many ways limited by a strategy that emphasizes political change in Iraq and a broad coalition of states taking action against ISIS.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is at the United Nations in New York, making another push for Turkey’s long-standing demand for a safe zone in northern Syria, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to have realized that it might be a long shot given recent developments.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made waves leading into the UN General Assembly with new military deployments to Syria and an accord with Iran and the Iraqi government, signaling the formation of something like an alternate coalition combating ISIS. The sudden moves serve as a wakeup call not only for the United States and its allies, but also for Iran. The Russian actions are not enough to lead the Iranians to openly second-guess their support for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, but they are bound to raise tough questions among officials in Tehran.
Addressing Mental Health Needs among Syrian Refugees
Sana managed to escape the violence in Syria by making her way to Lebanon, but now she is alone and suffering from mood swings. She is battling eviction threats from her landlord due to her disruptive and erratic behavior. Mahmoud, another Syrian refugee in Jordan, is experiencing increasing feelings of depression, worried that he can no longer provide for his wife and three children, two of whom have learning disabilities.
The Russian escalation in Syria will create a flurry of diplomatic activity to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis and a fresh attempt to confront ISIS in Syria, but the conditions for success on both fronts are still absent. The intervention is likely to lead to further escalation of the conflict with no resolution of the political or security stalemates.
Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move into Syria is the result of a number of factors and will have far-reaching consequences at the international, regional, and local levels.
More Russian Aid to Assad: Chasing the Impossible Dream
Russia’s recent increase in military aid to the Syrian government is an extension of previous Russian policy on Syria; what is different is not the thrust of Russian policy but the scale of the aid. This ramp-up carries new risks to those hoping for a real political solution to the longstanding Syrian conflict and to those hoping to see the threat of terror groups operating in Syria contained.
