Middle East & North Africa Archive

In the modern security environment, insurgency is the strategy of choice for violent extremists. Even so, the United States insists on clinging to an outdated concept of insurgency steeped more in the anti-colonial struggles of the Cold War than the fluid battlefields where movements like the self-declared Islamic State (IS), Boko Haram and the al-Qaida affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa lurk. During the Cold War, the most dangerous insurgencies blended a leftist ideology with nationalism. This combination gave revolutionary insurgency its reach, appealing to more supporters and recruits than either leftism or nationalism alone could have done. […]

SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates—Demands for democratic reform in the Arab world over the past five years have met with a range of responses. In most of the countries where a wave of uprisings toppled regimes beginning in December 2010, the process and its aftermath proved traumatic. In some cases it has been devastating. The segment of the Arab world that survived the fury of pro-democracy revolts most effectively was the one ruled by monarchs, whether kings, princes or emirs. These countries have been mostly able to withstand the winds of revolution, at times by accommodating demands for democracy with modest […]

Last week, the European Union launched a review of its European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), its instrument for engaging with non-member states along the bloc’s edge from Eastern Europe to North Africa. Announced by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and the commissioner responsible for ENP and enlargement negotiations, Johannes Hahn, the consultation process will review the ENP’s underlying principles and scope as well as the tools at its disposal. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had promised a review of the policy within his first year in office. The ENP, established in 2004, governs the EU’s relations with 16 countries […]

On Monday, 47 GOP senators published an open letter warning Iran’s leadership that any deal on Tehran’s nuclear program concluded solely on the basis of U.S. President Barack Obama’s executive authority would remain vulnerable to being reversed by future congressional and presidential action. While impolitic and a breach of the long-standing protocol that the White House is the primary American interlocutor with foreign governments, the letter starkly and bluntly lays out a series of constitutional and political arguments to make its case. What impact will the letter have on the down-to-the-wire negotiations to reach a substantive political accord with Iran […]

More than ever, Iraq’s Sunnis remain ground zero in the struggle that is being waged against the so-called Islamic State (IS). Recent military successes by the international coalition formed by the United States last summer to counter the jihadis through the intercession of local fighters—particularly Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish militias—make it clear that the war’s outcome will in large part be determined on the battlefield. But any defeat of IS, which arose and has been fed principally by the failure of political powers to grasp the scale of the problem in time, must include a political component addressing Sunni grievances […]

The Ninth Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which begins next month, promises to be much more contentious than the previous 5-year review conference held in 2010. However, with a good game plan both before and during the conference, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration can limit the damage to U.S. interests and the nonproliferation regime. Such a game plan should include reaffirming Washington’s commitment to eventual nuclear disarmament; highlighting the United States’ NPT-related achievements in some areas, even if admittedly limited; focusing attention on long-term future possibilities rather than past failures; blaming the relevant responsible actors for missed […]

Here is a modest proposal to resolve the Ukrainian crisis: NATO should invite the so-called Islamic State (IS) and Boko Haram to send fighters to assist Kiev’s battered military. Die-hard IS and Boko Haram extremists would surely be happy to battle the Russian-backed separatist forces in Ukraine and their Orthodox Christian-nationalist creed. For veteran Islamists, it would bring back memories of past glories in Afghanistan and Chechnya. This whole idea is clearly bonkers. But does it make more sense to ask Russia to help fight threats to Europe from IS and its affiliates in Africa and the Middle East? Last […]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress this week slammed U.S. President Barack Obama’s quest for a nuclear agreement with Iran, unleashing a political firestorm in Washington. While the speech did not compel anyone to shift their position on the Obama policy, it dramatically amplified the debate, with each side fully convinced that Netanyahu made his case or failed to do so. That the United States has been unable to manage its conflict with Iran, or even implement a coherent policy, reflects the intricate complexity of the issue—with its multiple components, clashing priorities and impassioned domestic political […]

Last weekend, the Iraqi government reopened the country’s national museum in Baghdad 12 years after it was looted during the U.S.-led invasion. The unexpectedly early reopening was a small act of defiance after militants of the self-declared Islamic State (IS), also known as ISIS, released a propaganda video showing a rampage through the Mosul Museum. Some of the objects destroyed by the extremists in Mosul were plaster reproductions, and when toppled over smashed quickly in a cloud of dust. But others were ancient limestone originals, millennia-old, struck with sledgehammers and jackhammers. The museum houses a vast collection of antiquities from […]

When the idea first emerged of giving a speech before the U.S. Congress on the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political advisers must have thought the platform would give him a strong boost in Israel’s upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 17. The hero’s welcome they expected Netanyahu to receive would all but ensure success in his quest for another term in the prime minister’s office. Electoral politics, to be sure, were not the only or even the principal reason for Netanyahu’s decision to deliver his controversial address. Netanyahu genuinely sees himself […]

Diplomacy has always had a long, hard slog in the effort to find a settlement of the Iranian nuclear question. That slog hit its latest obstacle yesterday: With the U.S. and its negotiating partners in the final stretch of trying to hammer out an agreement with Tehran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress in an attempt to derail the deal. That there is even the possibility of a deal for Netanyahu to derail is itself something of a testament to the negotiators’ Herculean efforts, given the initially diametrically opposed preferences of the two main interlocutors, the Islamic […]

For many years, U.S. special operations forces (SOF) did important, often invaluable work, but were at the periphery of the U.S. military, simultaneously part of the team yet different. Commanders of conventional units often complained that SOF operating in the same area as their troops did little coordination and seemed to have their own objectives. The actions of special and conventional forces were more in parallel than synchronized. Even in the classrooms of the military’s staff and war colleges, the special operators were easy to spot, connected to their fellow students while somehow distinct. Then the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and […]

Two parliamentary brawls in as many days, filibusters, street demonstrations and a courthouse sit-in have characterized the controversy over a new domestic security bill that Turkish legislators look set to make law. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) insists the security “package” is up to European Union standards and needed urgently. Critics argue it will create the legal conditions for a police state. They point in particular to two immediate concerns. First, Kurdish national leaders have warned the law could scuttle the government’s high-stakes peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to end the three-decade insurgency that has […]

Is Russia a rogue power bent on ripping up the international rulebook? Or is it a master of diplomatic brinksmanship with an uncanny knack for turning multilateral negotiations to its advantage? Commentators in the United States and Europe increasingly fear that Moscow is set on a destructive course. Yet Western diplomats at the United Nations are frequently impressed by their Russian counterparts’ maneuvers. Last month, the Russians pulled off two small diplomatic coups in the Security Council. Shrugging off tensions over Ukraine and Syria, they initiated a resolution in early February aimed at cutting off funding to the so-called Islamic […]