Category: Blogs

Disarm Russia’s Gas Weapon: Call Russia’s Bluff and Stem Ukraine’s Corruption

By Matthew J. Bryza

Europe Should Demand That Russia Sell Its Gas at One Basic Price for All EU States In a moment of friendly candor, one of Russia’s most senior diplomats once told me privately, “We Russian diplomats negotiate hard because we know we are weak.  When we have an issue on which we know we are strong, […]

Iraq: The Hard Questions

By Bilal Y. Saab

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.

Egypt’s Protest Law: An Ongoing Battle

By Khaled Dawoud

Several political parties and youth movements said on Tuesday they would renew a campaign aimed at amending Egypt’s repressive protest law. The decision comes in the wake of a Cairo court issuing a surprisingly harsh fifteen-year sentence in absentia against activist and blogger, Alaa Abdel-Fattah, and twenty-four others for protesting in November against the military […]

EconSource: Egypt’s natural gas exports fell by 81 percent Y-o-Y in April

By EconSource

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

German Defense Minister: ‘Russia Has Destroyed a Massive Amount of Trust’

SPIEGEL: So is the Ukraine crisis a case for defense policy?

Meet Egypt’s New Cabinet Under Sisi

By EgyptSource

The first cabinet under Egypt’s new President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi was sworn in on Tuesday morning, headed by Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab. The new government is made up of thirty-four ministers. Twenty-one ministers are holdovers from the previous cabinet under the interim government, one of whom has been reassigned to a different ministry. Only thirteen new […]

Jamal Benomar and the Fine Art of Making Peace in Yemen

By Tik Root and Peter Salisbury

Jamal Benomar, the UN special adviser on Yemen who in April started his fourth year on the job, isn’t keen on talking about himself. He “hates” being profiled by the press, a colleague says. He seems far happier talking about the minutiae of the political transition he is overseeing. Yet with the departure of his […]