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MENASource

Apr 4, 2017

Winning Yemen, but at What Price?

By Tarek Radwan

The Hudayda (also spelled Hodeida) port receives about 70 percent of all imports and humanitarian assistance shipments to the poorest country in the Middle East, wracked by decades of on-and-off conflict and standing at the precipice of famine thanks to the most recent conflict between the rebels and those backing President Abdrabbo Mansour Hadi, including the […]

Yemen

MENASource

Apr 4, 2017

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Transform into an Expeditionary Force

By Ali Alfoneh

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) intervention in Syria’s war changed the outcome of the war and has, at least in the short term, secured the Assad regime in the face of a popular revolution and armed rebellion. The war is also changing the IRGC. Previously tasked with protecting Iran from a foreign invasion and […]

Iran Syria

MENASource

Mar 31, 2017

The Failed Serraj Experiment of Libya

By Wolfgang Pusztai

On March 30, 2016, Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj and a few other members of Libya’s Presidency Council (PC) and Government of National Accord (GNA), the two government bodies that the UN-brokered Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) established, arrived to Tripoli’s Abu Sita navy base after having operated in Tunisia for three months. While the international media […]

Libya

MENASource

Mar 30, 2017

What to Expect from Sisi’s White House Visit

By Elissa Miller

On April 3, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will visit the White House to meet with US President Donald Trump. Sisi’s first visit to the White House is important for US-Egypt relations. Both leaders have repeatedly expressed admiration for one another, and Cairo appears eager to push for a stronger bilateral relationship that it perceives […]

North Africa

MENASource

Mar 29, 2017

ISIS Drags out the Battle for Mosul

By Feras Hanoush

The battle to liberate Mosul in northern Iraq from the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) has gone on for four months, reflecting the organization’s stamina and the fact that it has a sophisticated plan for arming, supplying, and defending itself. A combination of Iraqi army and security forces, Shia Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Kurdish […]

Iraq

MENASource

Mar 28, 2017

The Shifting Strategies of ISIS

By Mona Alami

The battle for Mosul — the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) bastion in Iraq — is entering its sixth month with Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition controlling about three quarters of the city. While fighting is focused on capturing the symbolic Nuri mosque in the Old City, where the organization leader Abu Bakr […]

Iraq

MENASource

Mar 23, 2017

Sixth Anniversary of the US-Libya Intervention: A Model for the Future

By Nedal M. Swehli

Six years ago on March 19, 2011, the United States started its military intervention in Libya. In 2009, President Obama, in his inauguration speech, addressed the world’s dictators asking them to “unclench their fist” and said  that “America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace […]

Libya

MENASource

Mar 22, 2017

Russian Policy toward Libya: The Egyptian Factor

By Mark N. Katz

A great deal of media attention to Russian involvement in Libya arose as a result of a March 14 Reuters report that Moscow “appears to have deployed special forces to an airbase in western Egypt near the border with Libya.” These forces, reportedly consisting of a 22-man unit, deployed to support General Khalifa Haftar, who […]

Libya North Africa

MENASource

Mar 20, 2017

Turkey Is in a Bind as Syria’s War Approaches its Final Chapter

By Aaron Stein

Russian and American action in Syria is fundamentally at odds with Turkish interests. The two international actors have both backed the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), in ways that harm Turkish interests. The PYD is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an insurgent […]

Syria Turkey

MENASource

Mar 20, 2017

Libya, The Time to Avoid Escalation is Now

By Karim Mezran and Mattia Toaldo

Libya risks a new escalation and a deepening of the division between the eastern region under General Khalifa Haftar and the rest of the country nominally under the control of an ever-weaker UN-backed government headed by Fayez Serraj. On March 3, fighting started in the Oil Crescent, the part of Libya’s central coast where 60 […]

Libya