This article was first published in The New York Times.
President Obama made the right decision to boost military aid to moderate Syrian rebels last year, but today America’s approach to attacking Islamic State fighters risks undermining the moderate opposition and alienating support among the Syrian public.
In his speech on September 10 President Obama characterized the Islamic State (ISIS) as a terrorist group.[1] There were clear political benefits to using this label, not the least of which was to facilitate the formation of a broad-based military coalition against the organization.
This article was first published on LobeLog.
Alongside the wave of Syrian Kurdish refugees into Turkey this month is an equally unsettling story: alarming gains by the Islamic State in an offensive against a potential ally. Syria’s Kurds carved out their own regional bastion extending west from their main base in the extreme northeast corner of Syria. For two years they have fiercely defended their lands against the Islamic State and other extremists, employing many thousands of veteran Kurdish fighters.
Hala Shukrallah, president of Egypt’s Al Dostour (Constitution) Party, spoke with MEI about the party’s preparations for upcoming parliamentary elections, its legislative agenda, and the challenges it will face in Parliament. See more of her comments at this year’s Egypt Conference.
Q: How has the Dostour party been preparing for the upcoming parliamentary elections?
This article was first published on CNN.
Turkey, a key U.S. ally and a NATO member that borders the territory captured by ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq, could play a critical role in the U.S.-led military assault against the jihadist group.
The following is the written testimony prepared and delivered by Amb (ret) Robert S. Ford for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing held on September 17, 2014. Click here to watch video of the full hearing (Amb. Ford’s testimony begins at the 3 hours and 26 minutes mark).
One way to grasp the immense difficulty facing President Obama as he tries to forge an effective international coalition to oppose the Islamic State is to examine the difference between this effort and the last time the United States led a diverse group of countries to take on a conflict in the Middle East: Operation Desert Storm, in 1991.
Most of Egypt’s newly created secular political parties have complained bitterly about the Parliament Election Law, which former Interim President Adly Mansour rushed to approve in his last day in office, before handing over power to newly-elected President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.
This op-ed was first published in the New York Daily News.
The United States might not have had a strategy for battling ISIS last week, but it does now. The NATO summit in Wales produced one. It reflects President Obama’s instincts and his ability to corral fractious allies.
It also says nothing about the use of force by the United States.
In the last three years, Egypt’s economic position has deteriorated dramatically. Domestic and external deficits have increased, causing public debt to grow sharply, external reserves to fall, investment to shrink, and inflation to increase. In the process, growth decelerated, unemployment rose, income distribution worsened, and the medium term economic outlook became clouded.
Three and a half years into the Syrian civil war, it is clear that any hopes that the overall insurgency against the Assad regime might develop in a more “mainstream” and “moderate” direction have dissipated.[1]
Although power cuts are hardly new in Egypt, no Egyptian government has tackled the problem seriously and transparently. After the January 25, 2011 uprising, Egyptians had less patience with the failures of state services and demanded change.
On August 9, 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt began another chapter in its besieged political life. The highest administrative court in Egypt, the Supreme Administrative Court, dissolved the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Court also liquidated all of the FJP’s assets in an effort to quash any further political ambitions and activities that the Brotherhood might have in Egypt. The ruling—a calculated move conducted prior to upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for later this year—was an attempt
