Middle East

Military Trials for Civilians: Justice Denied

By Mai El-Sadany

With discussions up to the last minute, the fifty-member Constituent Assembly, tasked with re-writing Egypt’s Constitution, has made a final decision on one of the body’s most contentious issues: military trials for civilians.  On November 20, the Assembly voted in favor of maintaining military trials for civilians, despite the significant implications that such a decision […]

Anxiety in the House of Saud

By Rajan Menon

You’d think that Saudi Arabia‘s ruling monarchy would have a lot to be happy about — and you’d be right, in part. The Saudi Kingdom has, barring some exceptions, been remarkably stable. It was left unscathed by the revolutionary wave that demolished longstanding authoritarian regimes from Tunisia to Egypt. The Saudi political system — being consensus-based and […]

Point/Counterpoint: Is the Polisario a Legitimate Broker in Western Sahara?

By Mehrunisa Qayyum & Nabil Ouchagour

On the eve of Moroccan King Mohamed VI’s visit to the United States, observers of Moroccan-US relations are keeping a close eye on the first high-level visit between the two countries’ leaders since US President Barack Obama took office.

Rouhani’s First One Hundred Days: Cautious Domestic Reforms as Nuclear Crisis Continues

By Yasmin Alem and Barbara Slavin

After eight turbulent years during which conservatives monopolized Iranian politics, the election of centrist cleric Hassan Rouhani on June 14, 2013, marked a new, yet in some ways familiar chapter in post-revolutionary Iranian politics. It was new in the sense that his sweeping victory demonstrated unprecedented popular desire for change and elite recognition of the […]

Looking Back on Hassan Rouhani’s First Hundred Days

Hassan Rouhani’s election as president of Iran in June led to an upsurge of speculation that Iranian policies, particularly in foreign policy, would begin to change The Iran Task Force of the South Asia Center on Nov. 20 presented a paper on Rouhani’s first hundred days by senior fellows Yasmin Alem and Barbara Slavin. They […]

Jordan: A Model for Reform or a Black Hole?

By Amani Al-Khatahtbeh

Jordanians affectionately refer to their country as “the black hole of the Middle East” for a reason. For any native, underneath all the presumptuous assertions that “I don’t fear the mukhabarat! I’m not afraid to speak my mind in this country,” and “We have freedom of speech—the government wouldn’t do anything to harm us,” there […]

No Final Decision on US Plans to Train Libyan Military

By New York Times, Reuters, and AP

From Thom Shanker, New York Times:  The United States military is considering a mission to train Libyan security personnel with the goal of creating a force of 5,000 to 7,000 conventional soldiers and a separate, smaller unit for specialized counterterrorism missions

Lina Attalah on the Sisi Mania in Egypt

By MENASource

The hypernationalism that has taken hold in Egypt centers around the oft-touted Nasser-like saviour of a nation, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. One can hardly to walk the streets of Cairo without catching some glimpse of homage paid to the General in the form of chocolates, posters, or even provactive internet videos.

Happy Birthday, General

By Lina Attalah

“Where else have you seen Sisi today?” This is the question around which Sisi Fetish, a new contribution to Egypt’s thriving landscape of political satire, was born. The blog sheds light on how the popularity of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, commander in chief of Egypt’s Armed Forces, is expressing itself these days in a variety of quotidian […]

Libya: Enough is Enough

By Karim Mezran

The horrible carnage that ravaged Tripoli over the weekend was the latest in a series of escalating violence. Assassinations, abductions, and other crimes have plagued Libya’s cities over the last two years since the country’s liberation from dictatorship.