Dr Larbi Sadiki, senior lecturer at Exeter University in the UK, argued that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) uprisings over the past seventeen months did not appear out of nowhere but that the Arab world has had a history of protests, uprisings, organisation and mobilisation.

Sadiki was speaking at a seminar organised by the Afro-Middle East Centre on 24 April. Tunisian by birth, Sadiki was in South Africa as a guest of Dajo Associates, a consultancy based in Midrand. He is a prolific writer and an expert on democratisation in the Arab world. His columns on AlJazeera’s English website and his sharp analyses of the uprisings of the past year have attracted much attention. Sadiki’s seminar addressed the question of the possibilities for democracy in the MENA region.

By Afro-Middle East Centre

The uprisings that spread across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region from the beginning of 2011 not only caught global and regional powers unaware, but also upturned seemingly entrenched regimes that had maintained a veneer of strategic stability for western powers. In the ensuing tumult of uprisings that saw a re-shuffling of alliances and power blocs, spaces opened for regional players to jostle to assert their agendas and scramble for ascendancy. In the ensuing scuffle, few would have predicted that tiny Qatar would emerge alongside Iran and Turkey as a significant player. Interestingly, because of the physical diminutiveness of the state with a native population of only 225 000, its strategic influence and potential was previously largely overlooked. This has been to Qatar’s advantage, allowing it – and its extensive role in the uprisings – to evade the sort of global scrutiny that its positions and actions might otherwise have attracted.

By Fred H. Lawson

United States strategic planners are carrying out a fundamental reconfiguration of America’s military presence throughout the world. The shift came to light in November 2011, when President Barack Obama announced that some 2 500 US Marines would take up permanent positions at a training base on the northern tip of Australia. It was underscored in January 2012 when the president appeared at the Pentagon for the release of an extraordinary guidance document with the striking title ‘Sustaining United States Global Leadership: Priorities for the Twenty-First Century Defined’. The revised strategic posture earmarks more US military resources to East Asia in general and the South China Sea littoral in particular.

By Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn

Recent events in Afghanistan have fuelled speculation over the ability of international forces to continue their presence in the country until 2014. In January 2012, four American Marines in Helmand were shown in a video urinating on Afghan corpses. In February, in a case that appears to have been no more than exceedingly poor judgement, copies of the Qur’an were burnt, damaged and treated disrespectfully manner. In March, a US army staff sergeant in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province is believed to have killed seventeen individuals (many of them women and children) in a single night.

By Afro-Middle East Centre

Introduction: Background to the uprising

Nearly nine months into the Syrian uprising, the death toll, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), has reached a staggering 5 000 people (civilians, government soldiers, army defectors and members of armed opposition groups). Despite a consistently rising death toll and continued violence, the situation has reached an impasse.

By Dr. Mohsen Saleh

The Palestinian reconciliation agreement still lacks the necessary momentum to transform it into a practical programme that has the potential to be implemented on the ground. Sixth months have lapsed since the signing of the reconciliation agreement on 3 May 2011, yet no genuine initiatives have been presented for its implementation. This despite the fact that negotiations between Fatah and Hamas happened throughout most of 2009, and it took nearly eighteen months to respond to Hamas’ objections. Although the 4 100-word draft agreement was thorough and detailed, it appears to lack any sign of life.

By Esam Al-Amin

In early 1994 a small Islamic think tank affiliated with the University of South Florida (USF) planned an academic forum to host Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of the main opposition party in Tunisia, Ennahda. The objective of this annual event was to give Western academics and intellectuals a rare opportunity to engage an Islamically-oriented intellectual or political leader at a time when the political discourse was dominated by Samuel Huntington’s much hyped clash of civilizations thesis. Shortly after the public announcement of the event, pro-Israeli groups and advocates led by Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, the head of the local B’nai B’rith, and a small-time journalist for the local right-wing newspaper began a coordinated campaign to discredit the event and scare the university.

By Afro-Middle East Centre

Introduction

Despite the chronic under-reporting on popular protests in Bahrain, the uprising in the small Gulf state that left over thirty dead and hundreds arrested in a brutal government crackdown offers a potent reading of the regional and global dynamics and interests at play. Mainstream coverage of the uprising has mostly portrayed the Bahraini uprising as an extension, or a natural continuum, of the ‘Arab Spring’ that has swept across the region. Even though the Bahraini protests might have found inspiration in the tidal wave of calls for democratisation elsewhere in the region, and reflect similar demands for greater freedoms and rights, such a homogeneous framing ignores the particularities of the Bahraini context, and the country’s geopolitical and strategic significance. Additionally, it negates a long tradition of pro-democracy campaigns by not contextualising this uprising as an extension of extensive civic and popular protests dating back to the 1990s.

By Afro-Middle East Centre

Introduction

The Palestinian bid for ‘statehood’ has become one of the key items on the agenda of the general debate of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly’s sixty-sixth session – to begin on 21 September 2011. The request being tabled by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) will ‘approach the UN … to obtain recognition of the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders and Palestinian membership in the international community.’

With just days left before the request is formally made in the chamber of the General Assembly, it remains unclear what this bid will mean in terms of the path the PLO will pursue at the UN. It could apply for full membership of the UN, but PLO spokespeople have indicated that even moving from being an observer entity to being a non-member state would in itself be an important progression for the Palestinian people. Within these options are various possibilities and permutations, especially regarding whether the bid will be submitted to the General Assembly (GA) or the Security Council (SC) or both. This lack of clarity is reflective of the vigorous debate between Palestinians regarding the bid, with a growing number arguing that – irrespective of its outcome – it would likely pose greater dangers than benefits for the Palestinian people.