Democracy & Reform

But kicking out the Islamic State and keeping the peace are two very different things, so longer-term coalition support will be needed.

As their sons and 'temporary husbands' are ripped from them to fight a proxy war in Syria, grieving mothers and brides are compensated with empty promises, poverty, and threats, heightening communal frustrations to the point of explosion.

Politics has become a life-or-death struggle for several of America's important partners in the Middle East, says Eric Trager, and their leaders increasingly perceive even mild U.S. encouragement on human rights issues as support for domestic enemies. The next president will face a decision about how to prioritize America's strategic

A bipartisan team of distinguished former officials share their insights from a recent tour of key regional capitals.

In Arab Fall, Eric Trager examines the Muslim Brotherhood's decisionmaking throughout the eventful period that commenced with the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and ended with Mohamed Morsi's overthrow. He explains the Brotherhood's reason for joining the anti-Mubarak uprising, running for a majority of the seats in the 2011-12 parliamentary elections

This paper, the eighth in a series of essays exploring prospects for reform throughout the Middle East, explains the near absence of a political center within Egypt by examining the failure of non-Islamist reformists to assert themselves as a meaningful political force following Mubarak's overthrow.

The group's use of children as suicide bombers highlights its broader indoctrination practices, which mirror many of the mundane techniques used in normal educational curricula.

If the adversaries in the Mideast have found ways to deal with each other, why not campuses in the Midwest?

The three countries that comprise the Maghreb region -- Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia -- are bound by important cultural, linguistic, and economic ties, and by a shared history of French occupation. Even after Africa's official decolonization, the Maghreb has remained a close and intense sphere of European, and especially French, influence