Carnegie Middle East Center
For almost a decade, Libya has been riven by increasingly internationalized conflicts. Foreign missteps and the failures of Libyan elites to produce political unity and workable institutions have opened the field for an escalating proxy war.
Turkey’s misguided economic policies and slide toward autocracy have exacerbated the country’s relationship with the West. Meanwhile, Ankara’s bipolar foreign policy largely escapes Western leaders and analysts.
Women are increasingly joining the male-dominated world of smuggling. Could this be the start of a cultural revolution that challenges long-held gender norms?
Following the August Beirut port explosion, the Lebanese Armed Forces must rebuild trust with the civilian population. The LAF can serve as a critical pillar in Lebanese government efforts to strengthen national security and identity in the midst of the crisis, in light of security sector assistance from the United States and other Western partners.
Along the border between Tunisia and Libya, informal trade agreements led to a tight-knit border economy. But political changes in both Libya and Tunisia have fundamentally altered the economic and security landscape.
Egypt’s recent security and macro-economic stabilization has been built on weak foundations and Covid-19 has further exposed this fragility.
The loss of the Arab world’s commitment to an end of Israel’s occupation as a precondition for Middle East peace will spell the death knell for a negotiated political solution.
The current parliament is the most fractured in Tunisia’s history, with no party holding even one-quarter of the seats.
The blasts that ripped through Beirut’s historic port could hardly have come at a worse time, as the city struggles with the coronavirus pandemic and an economic crisis. As the smoke clears, the catastrophe has laid bare festering structural weaknesses that are damaging Lebanon’s plural society.
The seismic event felt like an earthquake and an air raid wrapped into one. None of us in Lebanon have ever experienced anything like it.
In Egypt, coronavirus response efforts were led by the prime minister and other technocrats. What does this change mean for Egypt—and how long will it last?
Establishing a credible National Wealth Fund would help to alleviate the country’s multiple crises.
In southern Syria, the regime, opposition, foreign powers, and local groups navigate a contentious zone of conflict. Any shift in this delicate balance could mean yet another escalation.
Iraq’s military responses to the coronavirus pandemic are diverse: creating more tension in Shia civil-military relations, buildingtrust in Sunni civil-military relations, and pushing the government to emphasize sovereignty over externally fueled partisanship.
Applying Israeli law to much of the West Bank would mean the irreversible end of the Palestinian statehood project, making Netanyahu the prime minister who not only buried the two-state solution but annexed choice West Bank real estate.
Washington should press Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to cease his escalating crackdown on peaceful opponents, including journalists, activists, and members of American citizens’ families residing in Egypt.
Nearly a decade after the revolution in Tunisia, much of the crucial legislation designed to protect women exists on paper alone, with significant work remaining to implement the laws.
The religious sphere in Rural Damascus Governorate is poised to become a political battleground as both the regime and the exiled opposition seek to court a new rising group of religious leaders.
Along the Egypt-Sudan border, tensions have been rising for several decades despite limited efforts at cooperation. Both countries need to reexamine their border policies to prevent further escalation.
Having lost the cushion of Gulf support, many Arab states are looking for external financing from international financial institutions and other donors such as China (particularly in North Africa) and the United States.