Category: Blogs

EconSource: Egypt reaches first deal to revise gas prices with foreign energy firm

By EconSource

Follow the latest news and developments about the Arab transition countries. 

EconSource: Senate draft bill reduces US aid to Egypt

By EconSource

Follow the latest economic news and developments about the Arab transition countries. 

Seven Important Questions on Iraq

By MENASource

Bilal Y. Saab, senior fellow for Middle East Security with the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, provides his perspective on the US role in the Iraq crisis, what’s at stake for US national security interests, and what it will really take to stabilize the situation.

The Bright Spot in the Egyptian Economy

By Mohsin Khan and Svetlana Milbert

The Egyptian economy has been slumping for the past three years. Since January 2011 economic growth has come down substantially, unemployment has been steadily rising, inflation has remained high, the fiscal deficit has expanded, and the foreign exchange reserves of the country have fallen by more than half. Clearly this is a grim picture that […]

DIRECT TRANSLATION: Meet the Ex-Convicts, Bullies, and Armed Bikers Who Helped Seize Crimea

By Irena Chalupa

Putin Secretly Decorates Russian Volunteers Who Backed Moscow’s Troops in Takeover Russian President Vladimir Putin bestowed state honors in recent months on more than 300 Russians who it declared had done an outstanding job in helping Russia’s seizure from Ukraine of the Crimean peninsula. But the happy news has been kept strangely quiet. The official […]

Storify: #FutureNATO with German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen visited Washington, DC on June 19th and spoke at an Atlantic Council event on how best to secure Europe amid rapid change and turbulence.

Syria and Iraq: The “Skyes-Picot” Issue

By Frederic C. Hof

The violent convulsions gripping Syria and Iraq have given rise to the argument that the “Sykes-Picot” boundaries imposed by France and Britain in the Levant and Mesopotamia after the First World War will have to be redrawn to recognize and reconcile ethnic and sectarian divisions papered over by the Great War’s victorious allies.  As someone […]