This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Paul Salem, Michael Sexton, Alex Vatanka, and Gerald Feierstein.
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Meliha Benli Altunışık, and Robert S. Ford.
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Charles Lister, Randa Slim, Jonathan M. Winer, Alex Vatanka, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Robert S. Ford, Mirette F. Mabrouk, and Syed Mohammad Ali.
Tunisia seems to have avoided the worst of the first phase of the global coronavirus crisis. And yet whatever the final tally of the pandemic might be, its consequences will only add to a host of existing problems that have beset the North African country in recent years, including political instability, a stalled economy, security threats, and financial woes.
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Mirette F. Mabrouk, Robert S. Ford, Nazila Fathi, and Marvin G. Weinbaum provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including rising tensions in Libya, economic turmoil and anti-regime protests in Iran, and the Jordanian high court’s decision to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood.
One Square Meter Berber is a Dutch-Moroccan project with a dual mission: to protect the dying craft of traditional Berber carpet weaving and to fight the exploitation of the skilled craftswomen who keep the iconic industry from coming apart at the seams.https://www.onesquaremeterberber.com
The nascent research on political Salafism suggests that it can often be much more pragmatic, flexible, and malleable than both the quietist and the jihadist Salafist strand and can sometimes show a certain openness to other political actors and ideologies. The case of the Tunisian al-Karama Coalition (Dignity Coalition) indicates that the new (tactical) openness of some politicized Salafists can also extend to populism. In this article, the authors locate the rise of al-Karama within the context of Tunisia’s successful but still incomplete and “bumpy democratic transition.”
For LGBTI+ individuals in Tunisia, the internet and social media have played a critical role in the development of a community and activist network. Simultaneously, however, these technologies have been used by legal authorities to suppress and harass the queer community.
Governments and citizens throughout North Africa are gearing up for a huge increase in coronavirus infections expected in late March, April, and May. Just next door, Italy and Spain are two of the five worst afflicted countries on the planet.
No part of the world will emerge unscathed from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Just because China and Italy were the first to be severely hit, does not imply, that when all is said and done, that they will have sustained the brunt of the damage. North Africa is a region dependent on global commodities prices, tourism, and political and monetary support from Europe and the Gulf, where regime brittleness, youth unemployment, and Islamic radicalism all intersect.
From Morocco to Afghanistan, the scholars and experts at MEI take a closer look at how the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is affecting the Middle East.
The UK’s impending exit from the EU will present a new chapter for British interests in and posture toward the region. If the UK is to find a trade-off for loss of diplomatic and economic heft, it will need to re-prioritize its engagement efforts. Policy continuity toward Morocco and Tunisia appears inevitable; Algeria, in contrast, promises great opportunity for an evolving relationship.
Tunisia’s elections in October swept away many of the dominant political forces, but the Islamist Ennahda retains the largest share of seats in the new parliament. Its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, was elected president of the parliament on Nov. 13. The Islamist party then announced on Nov. 15 that Habib Jemli, the former junior agriculture minister, should try to form the next government. Jemli, who served under Ennahda prime ministers from 2011 to 2014, has a 30-day period, renewable once, to present a cabinet able to secure a majority vote in the 217-member parliament.
Philanthropists Othman & Leila Benjelloun received the 2019 Middle East Institute Visionary Award at MEI’s 73rd Annual Awards Gala on November 12 in Washington, DC.
The Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (IRES), charged by the Government of Morocco with analyzing and monitoring the country’s external relations, turned its attention to the U.S.-Morocco relationship at a conference conducted at its Rabat headquarters on Oct. 29. Taking note of the long history of the bilateral relationship — Morocco was one of the first countries in the world to recognize the new American republic in 1777 — panelists reviewed the current state of political, economic, and cultural engagement between the two nations.