The announcement of the China-brokered Iran-KSA normalization plan triggered pearl-clutching around the globe. Some headlines even implied that Israel’s PM Netanyahu was surprised by the news, even though the negotiations have been ongoing since early in the Biden administration’s tenure. Indeed, there are signs that the Beijing-backed phase of the talks that began in Iraq […]
Being a small – by land mass – nation on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula, news about Qatar may not be at the tip of the tongue of global citizens. The population has reached nearly 2.6 million, with only 200,000 being Qatari and much of the balance is composed of migrant workers. However, […]
The political transformation in the Horn of Africa is arguably the most counterintuitive development in the 21st century so far. Ethiopia has steered away from implosion and, for the first time in its history, appointed an Oromo Prime Minister with an Islamic name and heritage, ending the 20-year-long conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nonetheless, Abiy […]
While the diplomatic tension between Saudi Arabia and Qatar existed since the Arab Spring, the break up caught foreign policy experts by surprise.
Forcing your country’s migrant workers to partake in a marathon probably isn’t the best way to show the international community you’re serious about labor reform. That’s a lesson that Qatar might have to learn the hard way.
Over the past fifty years, art in the Gulf has witnessed an artistic revolution, starting in Kuwait.
For years, oil has been powered our increasingly technologically dependent world. Oil alternatives are becoming increasingly popular, and coupled with the Persian Gulf’s limited supply, many governments have tried to stay ahead of the market, which forecasts a world that’s not dependent on the Arabian Peninsula’s oil.
With the appearance of oil in the mid-20th century, the structure of the average Arabian family began to change. So, too, did women’s participation in the economy and their societal status.
Physical mobility is one of the greatest challenges of market accessibility facing citizens in the Gulf region; however, new technologies flattened time and distance, offering unprecedented opportunities.
The region’s challenge on the status of women derives from a mixture of political history and society’s contemporary interaction with globalization.
Qatar’s financial habits have been the subject of a lot of media coverage lately due to the successes of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and the setbacks the Syrian opposition actors the Gulf states were pinning their hopes on have suffered at the hands of ISIS. Kuwait, through its relative openness, plays a […]
Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney, activist, educator, and an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East. She is an Assistant Professor at George Mason University, teaching international human rights law in the Middle East. She is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya, an online magazine focused on the Middle East produced by the Arab Studies Institute […]
Karen Elliot House, Bessma Momani, Kamran Bokhari and Ayham Kamel joined Reza Akhlaghi of the Foreign Policy Association to discuss the growing regional instability, Arab policy, and the breakdown of security structure in Iraq and Syria.
The [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is comprised of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. According to the GCC’s Charter, what unites these countries are their “special relations, common characteristics and similar systems founded on the creed of Islam.” “Their […]
By Manuel Langendorf Does Hamas hold a unified position on the use of violence for resistance? A crucial player in the conundrum that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hamas has always been a controversial actor. It was founded in 1987 by late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, as […]