Policy Analysis

As Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi traveled by plane to New York City to attend the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, sporadic demonstrations erupted in several Egyptian cities calling for Sisi’s ouster and denouncing what they called “military rule.” While limited in scope, the demonstrations marked the first

The September first round of presidential elections in Tunisia have revealed two major developments in Tunisian politics. The results show both that voters will no longer tolerate the mismanagement and indecisiveness of previous policy makers, and that there is a belief that disruption, through unconventional candidates, can bring new life

The legacy of the last 28 years of Kurdish self-governance has been marked by a broken political and economic region—with youth stripped of Kurdish patriotism. The Kurdistan Region’s rentier economy has led its policymakers to think in terms of short-term political gains, fed into a patron-client system already deeply entrenched

Now a two year standoff, the Gulf Crisis between the “Quartet States”—Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt—and Qatar have continued to shape Gulf foreign policy. In the wake of the declaration of a wide-scale boycott against Doha, the Quartet States have since attempted to impose land and sea “hoops”

In Algeria, a recent crackdown by Algeria’s transitional government has caused a number of prominent senior officials from the Bouteflika era to face charges from the Sidi M'hamed central court in Algiers, mostly related to corruption. While systemic corruption was one of the issues that fueled Algeria’s recent protest movement

From September 2015, Russia’s military intervention into the Syrian civil war succeeded in turning the conflict’s momentum from the opposition back to the Syrian government. However, in the past few years Russia has simultaneously undertaken a quieter intervention in the Syrian conflict through humanitarian institutions. While there has been a

For Muslims, the month of Ramadan marks one of the most expensive periods of the year. Many families will spend up to twice their normal expenditures during the month of Ramadan. The end of the holiday requires further spending in order to purchase clothes and other holiday items for Eid

On the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of the Arab Maghreb Union, one cannot help but wonder about the lessons learned from the failure of this project of Maghreb integration. The union was a coherent, fully-fledged geographic and regional block that included more than a hundred million people from the

With eighty-two-year-old president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s announcement and subsequent retraction of the claim that he will run for a fifth term, Algerians have become increasingly concerned about the future of their country. This is especially true among the country’s youths, who have translated these fears into protest movements across several Algerian

During the nine-month campaign to wrest the Nineveh Governorate and its capital Mosul from Islamic State (IS) completed in 2017, much of Mosul’s infrastructure was destroyed. Although life has returned more or less to normal in the eastern part of the city, scenes of destruction remain prevalent in the city’s

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s recent visit to Baghdad has pushed the American project to counter Iranian influence in Iraq back to square one. The visit came just after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s tour in Baghdad and several other Middle Eastern capitals, through which he sought to

With protests originally sparking in July 2018, Basra continues to experience sporadic demonstrations. While many protesters initially emphasized the continuing lack of infrastructure in southern Iraq, slogans against Iran, and attacks against the Iranian consulate have emphasized frustration at Iran’s influence in the region as well. Iran’s influence is directly

In November, Secretary-general Haba El-Okb gave a speech on behalf of the Algerian President acknowledging Algeria’s widespread issue of corruption at a provincial governors’ conference held in Algiers. Through his proxy, Bouteflika warned that “bribery, nepotism, suffering, and iniquitous bureaucratic maneuvering—these ills have festered in the body of our society

Safiya, 30, wakes up to the sound of her mother yelling, "Get up now or the car will leave without you." A new morning brings with it the same misery: Safiya is one of thousands of migrant workers in rural Egypt who, driven by poverty to pick grapes during the

More than a year after the quartet blockade of Qatar, it appears that the collective American establishments of the State and Defense Departments have minimized the strong early statements of President Donald Trump on the issue. Despite implied U.S. support for the blockade last year, regional observers have noted a

On the early days of October, the Libyan National Army (LNA) raided a residential property in the city of Derna, successfully capturing fugitive Egyptian militant Hisham al-Ashmawy, who has operated as a tactical leader for both Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and its offshoot Al-Mourabitoun. Almost immediately after the news of the

With the choice of the economist Adil Abdul-Mahdi as the new Iraqi Prime Minister, he faces the daunting task of guiding the government through necessary economic reform, service quality improvement, and reconstruction. Economic issues represent one of the most major challenges in Iraq today, and in order to truly effect

Protesters in the Algerian province of Ouargla took unprecedented action late last month and boycotted a concert on July 27 by holding communal evening prayers at the concert venue. The protesters hoisted placards condemning the marginalization, exclusion, and discrimination practiced against them for decades. These developed into calls for broader

Of all the bilateral ties between Arab states, the Jordanian-Syrian relationship has been among the most intense. Various gradations of reciprocal unfriendliness and even open animosity have characterized the two countries’ ties since the 1970s, reflecting the rise of the Ba’ath party and Hafez al-Assad. However, recent economic instabilities pushed

Russia is challenging the West, including through its current efforts to gain a foothold in Syria and in a number of countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The situation in Syria serves as a clear example of Russian meddling, but the actual challenge does not stop there. To