Islam and democracy after the Arab Spring
The authoritarian backlash in the Middle East, with the Arab Winter following the Arab Spring, is part of the… Read more »
Category: Middle East/North Africa
Hacking Team penalized for Regeni murder
The Italian government has stripped controversial cyber security company Hacking Team of its licence to export outside the EU amid growing scrutiny of its sales of surveillance software to… Read more »
‘Surge of ideas’ can counter violent extremism
The government of Saudi Arabia paid “insufficient attention” to money that was being funneled into terror groups and fueled the rise of Al Qaeda, says President Barack Obama’s deputy national… Read more »
Egypt’s hollowed-out civil society
Authoritarian regimes are, in general, averse to a strong civil society. Egypt is no exception, notes Gamal Eid (left), an Egyptian lawyer and the director of the Arabic Network for… Read more »
Recognizing and countering authoritarian resurgence
A new book is warning of an authoritarian surge around the world led by China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, who are using sophisticated methods to silence dissent and… Read more »
Tunisia can ‘save’ Arab democracy. Really?
To have a good foreign policy, policymakers need to have good assumptions about the way the world works, notes Council on Foreign Relations analyst Steven A. Cook, who writes that… Read more »
How to halt Tunisia’s descent
Although the revolution upgraded Tunisia’s regime hardware from an authoritarian to a democratic government, its operating system — its state institutions, laws, bureaucracies, courts and police — remained largely… Read more »
Dictators don’t stabilize the Middle East
A number of American politicians have suggested that the Arab Spring was a disaster and that the region needs strongmen to stabilize it, but while working on Middle East policy at the… Read more »
What’s next for Iraq?
Iraq is facing a looming economic crisis, with a displaced population of 3.3m people, according to the UN, and renewed sectarian bloodshed which could fuel the very resentments that helped… Read more »
Young Arabs reject ISIS, favor stability over democracy
Overwhelming majorities of Arab teens and young adults now strongly oppose the Islamic State terrorist group, a new survey suggests, with nearly 80 percent ruling out any possibility of supporting… Read more »