Afro-Middle East Centre - Afro-Middle East Centre

By Larbi Sadiki On 13 October, the election of retired constitutional law professor, Kais Saied, as Tunisia’s new president triggered a wide array of reactions and energised hopes...

04 October 2019

The Africa-Palestine Conference: Why South Africa must lead the way

on Palestine

By Ramzy Baroud On 16 September, I visited South Africa, a country where many Palestinians have always felt welcomed, if not overwhelmed by the degree of genuine and meaningful so...

14 September 2019

Tunisia’s presidential elections: A fragmented field

By Larbi Sadiki The Tunisian presidential race is heating up. With several front-runners and twenty-six candidates, the upcoming early elections on 15 September reflects a...

06 September 2019

The war ahead: Netanyahu's election gamble will be costly for…

on Israel

By Ramzy Baroud On 1 September, the Lebanese group Hizbullah, struck an Israeli military base near the border town of Avivim. The Lebanese attack came as an inevita...

04 September 2019

Budding frenemies: The complicated US-Turkish relationship

on Turkey

When Donald Trump was elected the forty-fifth president of the USA in November 2016, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was among the first world leaders to congratulate ...

14 August 2019

Syria's security reshuffle highlights Russia's consolidation of power

on Syria

July began with a major shake-up in the Syrian military and intelligence apparatus. In an attempt to consolidate power after regaining territorial control over most of the country...

Geopolitics of Sudan Revolution - Presentation to AMEC
Sudan lies in the hotbed of the Horn of Africa, a region that has been plagued by decades of instability and ruin as a result of i…
The December 2018 revolution and Sudanese professionals in the diaspora
WE LEFT SUDAN In drovesIn the late 80’s and 90’sIndeed, my generation of educated Sudanese professionals are scattered around the…

Geopolitics of Sudan Revolution - Presentation to AMEC
By Zeenat Adam 17 July 2019 Sudan lies in the hotbed of the Horn of Africa, a region that has been plagued by decades of instabi…
A new cold war in Africa
By Mehari Taddele Maru Last month, the twelfth US-Africa Business Summit, a high-level event attended by eleven African head…

28 October 2019

Tunisia's sustainable democratisation: Between new and anti-politics in the 2019…

By Larbi Sadiki On 13 October, the election of retired constitutional law professor, Kais Saied, as Tunisia’s new president triggered a wide array of reactions and energised hopes...

04 October 2019

The Africa-Palestine Conference: Why South Africa must lead the way

on Palestine

By Ramzy Baroud On 16 September, I visited South Africa, a country where many Palestinians have always felt welcomed, if not overwhelmed by the degree of genuine and meaningful so...

14 September 2019

Tunisia’s presidential elections: A fragmented field

By Larbi Sadiki The Tunisian presidential race is heating up. With several front-runners and twenty-six candidates, the upcoming early elections on 15 September reflects a...

06 September 2019

The war ahead: Netanyahu's election gamble will be costly for…

on Israel

By Ramzy Baroud On 1 September, the Lebanese group Hizbullah, struck an Israeli military base near the border town of Avivim. The Lebanese attack came as an inevita...

04 September 2019

Budding frenemies: The complicated US-Turkish relationship

on Turkey

When Donald Trump was elected the forty-fifth president of the USA in November 2016, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was among the first world leaders to congratulate ...

14 August 2019

Syria's security reshuffle highlights Russia's consolidation of power

on Syria

July began with a major shake-up in the Syrian military and intelligence apparatus. In an attempt to consolidate power after regaining territorial control over most of the country...

The Africa-Palestine Conference: Why South Africa must lead the way

on Palestine

By Ramzy Baroud On 16 September, I visited South Africa, a country where many Palestinians have always felt welcomed, if not overwhelmed by the degree of genuine and meaningful so...

06 September 2019

The war ahead: Netanyahu's election gamble will be costly for…

on Israel

By Ramzy Baroud On 1 September, the Lebanese group Hizbullah, struck an Israeli military base near the border town of Avivim. The Lebanese attack came as an inevita...

04 September 2019

Budding frenemies: The complicated US-Turkish relationship

on Turkey

When Donald Trump was elected the forty-fifth president of the USA in November 2016, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was among the first world leaders to congratulate ...

14 August 2019

Syria's security reshuffle highlights Russia's consolidation of power

on Syria

July began with a major shake-up in the Syrian military and intelligence apparatus. In an attempt to consolidate power after regaining territorial control over most of the country...

23 June 2019

Strategic implications of the 'deal of the century' and the…

on Palestine-Israel

Aisling Byrne interviews Abdel Bari Atwan Donald Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ (DoC) - whether in its actual or conceptual form - is ushering in a new strategic era, providing cov...

14 June 2019

Postponed: Unveiling of Trump's 'deal of the century' frozen as…

on Palestine-Israel

Touted by its architects as the ‘deal of the century’, US president Donald Trump’s plan for Palestine and Israel has had to again be kept hidden as Israel heads back to elections a...

Teaching Palestine in South Africa
By Diana Block Reaffirming Internationalism in the Twenty-first Century In March 2019 I traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa t…
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Turkish local election outcome signals disillusionment with Erdogan
Turkey’s local election concluded with the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) incurring heavy losses in maj…
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As Abbas Ages, Fatah Moves to Consolidate Power
By Ramzy Baroud Five years after spearheading what is inaptly referred to as a ‘government of national reconciliation’, Palestini…
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Neopatrimonialism, corruption and the Palestinian Authority: Pathways to real reform
By Marwa Fatafta (This article was first published by Al-Shabaka - The Palestinian Policy Network) Palestinians recent…
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23 October 2018

Jamal Khashoggi, small spark for a large fire

on Saudi Arabia

By Hassan Aourid Until last Saturday, I was hopeful that the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at his country’s consulate in Istanbul was not more than a case of c...

19 October 2018

Khashoggi murder: Killing dissent even from within

on Saudi Arabia

The gruesome murder of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was designed to be a clear and firm message for Saudi dissidents, and reflected th...

08 July 2018

As Hudaida falls to Saudi-Emirati coalition, peace for Yemen seems…

on Yemen

The recent and ongoing Saudi-Emirati offensive on the Yemeni port city of Hudaida will render UN special envoy Martin Griffiths’s ‘new’ solution to the five-year-long Yemeni crisis...

18 May 2018

Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Dilemmas of Transformation in Saudi Arabia

on Saudi Arabia

By Madawi Al-Rasheed Introduction The dominant narrative through which many observers understand Saudi Arabia depicts a progressive and modernist leadership struggling to gra...

27 April 2018

Chaotic Yemen: The deconstruction of a failed state and regional…

on Yemen

by Helen Lackner Yemen remains in the grip of its most severe crisis ever: the civil war between forces loyal to the internationally-recognised government of President Abd Rabbuh ...

12 December 2017

How the Saudis Escalated Yemen Struggle Beyond All Control

on Yemen

By Justin Podur Yemen is a small, poor country in a region empires have plundered for centuries. This civil war is a local struggle that has been escalated out of control by the a...

Yemen: Death of the snake dancer
The 4 December death of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, at the hands of his former Houthi coalition partners, is a cul…
Saudi Arabia: The king is (not) dead; Long live the…
In an extremely busy twenty-four hours in Saudi Arabia this past weekend, a series of moves by the palace sought to consolidate th…

Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum: Barzani’s political (mis)calculation?
The decision by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq to hold a referendum on independence has proven to be a terrible mis…
Bahrain’s call to normalise ties with Israel
By Afro-Middle East Centre Recent statements by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa criticising the Arab boycott of Israel an…

28 October 2019

Tunisia's sustainable democratisation: Between new and anti-politics in the 2019…

By Larbi Sadiki On 13 October, the election of retired constitutional law professor, Kais Saied, as Tunisia’s new president triggered a wide array of reactions and energised hopes...

14 September 2019

Tunisia’s presidential elections: A fragmented field

By Larbi Sadiki The Tunisian presidential race is heating up. With several front-runners and twenty-six candidates, the upcoming early elections on 15 September reflects a...

30 July 2019

Geopolitics of Sudan Revolution - Presentation to AMEC

on Sudan

Sudan lies in the hotbed of the Horn of Africa, a region that has been plagued by decades of instability and ruin as a result of intense conflicts perpetuated by post-colonial vest...

30 July 2019

The December 2018 revolution and Sudanese professionals in the diaspora

on Sudan

WE LEFT SUDAN In drovesIn the late 80’s and 90’sIndeed, my generation of educated Sudanese professionals are scattered around the globe(Out of 200 medical graduates from Khartoum ...

29 July 2019

Geopolitics of Sudan Revolution - Presentation to AMEC

on Sudan

By Zeenat Adam 17 July 2019 Sudan lies in the hotbed of the Horn of Africa, a region that has been plagued by decades of instability and ruin as a result of intense conflicts per...

17 April 2019

Bashir falls but the security apparatus maintains control

on Sudan

Since the military ouster of Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir, early on Thursday, 11 April, after three months of protests, different military factions have been jos...

Haftar's march on Tripoli
Khalifa Haftar’s 4 April announcement declaring his march on Tripoli, and the subsequent attack on the Libyan capit…
Uncertainty follows Moroccan-Saudi spat
By Hassan Aourid Moroccan-Saudi relations have never been as cool and strained as they have become in the past week, following a…

Bashir's eroding domestic legitimacy
The large-scale and wide geographic spread of protests in Sudan over the past few weeks pose a greater threat to the regime of Pre…
The need for Algerian-Moroccan dialogue
By Hassan Aourid An astute observer of Algeria and Morocco will notice that relations between the two countries have taken a…

12 October 2018

Ethiopia, Eritrea: An unlikely peace deal in a fractious region

on Ethiopia

The recent peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea, signed 16 September 2018, is set to have lasting consequences for both countries and for the Horn of Africa ...

06 April 2017

Ensuring Somalia remains in conflict: Trump’s expanded ‘war on terror’

on Somalia

By Afro-Middle East Centre The 29 March decision by the administration of US president Donald Trump declaring Somalia an ‘area of active hostility’ will likely ensure an escalatio...

10 October 2016

South Sudan: Beyond the logjam of UNSC Resolution 2304

on South Sudan

By Majak D’Agoôt and Remember Miamingi No country is entirely self-contained or lacking in interdependencies. These interlocking interests form the critical part of any country’s ...

28 April 2015

Nigeria’s elections and future challenges

on Sub-Saharan Africa

By Afro-Middle East Centre The election of General Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s president will see a renewed focus by the government on domestic challenges posed by endemic...

26 September 2013

Kenyan hostage crisis: The desperation of al-Shabab

on Sub-Saharan Africa

By Afro-Middle East Centre The hostage drama at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi over the past week has raised a number of questions about the Somali organisation al-Shabab. After the...

23 January 2013

French military intervention will add to Mali’s problems

on Sub-Saharan Africa

By Afro-Middle east Centre The north of Africa was plunged into yet another international conflict with France’s invasion of Mali on Friday, 11 January. Without im...

The effects of the ‘War on Terror’ on states’ foreign…
By Afro-Middle East Centre Recent statements that ‘there is no alternative….it’s going to take military force…
Will Al-Shabab recover from a major defeat?
By Osman Abdi Mohamed In recent months Al-Shabab has been suffering successive losses at the hands of Somali government forces fi…

The core of the Somali crisis, and the challenges of…
Unlike the Lebanese crisis, or that of Kosovo, the Somali crisis is characterised by ongoing self-igniting and self-sustaining vio…
Thinking differently in an attempt to break the Somali impasse
By Afro-Middle East Centre On the 22 July 2010, an African Union Summit in Kampala, Uganda, resolved to increase the number of tr…

23 April 2019

India in Kashmir: Risking peace as an antidote to war

By Ranjan Solomon On 14 February 2019, a convoy of vehicles carrying security personnel on the Jammu Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber ...

28 August 2015

Does Pakistan’s refusal to join Saudi Arabia in Yemen indicate…

on Pakistan

By Afro-Middle East Centre Allegedly, the current Saudi-led onslaught on Yemen has already caused destruction that resembles the destruction wrought in Syria over the la...

31 March 2012

The feasibility of a continued United States presence in Afghanistan

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 coun...

28 February 2012

Dangerous uncertainty in Pakistan

By Junaid S. Ahmed With relations between Pakistan's civilian government and military incredibly tense, speculation is rife in the Pakistani and international media of a looming m...

30 May 2011

Pakistan-USA relations in the post-Usama era

By Junaid S. Ahmad The assassination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by US Special Forces was supposed to have been a landmark triumph that would bring peace and stability to the r...

13 December 2010

Kashmir and Obama's Indian appeasement

By Mohammad Abdullah Gul Obama's recent jive with school children in Delhi symbolises the nature of the new relationship that is emerging between India and the United States of Am...

Pakistan’s floods: Pressing problems and potential risks
By Najam Abbas Pakistan's recent floods have left eight million people dependent on aid for their survival, and washed away huge …
Wikileaks, Afghanistan, and Pakistan
By Mohammed Abdullah Gul On 25 July 2010, the New York Timescarried an explosive story by Mark Mazzetti, Jane Perlez, Eric …

India walks a tightrope in its relations with Israel, Arab…
By Ramananda Sengupta 'We do have a defence relationship with India, which is no secret. On the other hand, what is a secret is w…
Afghanistan: terrain for India-Pakistan proxy war
By Ramananda Sengupta The savage attack on Kabul hotels housing Indian workers on 26th February 2010 - the fourth major attack on…

26 April 2017

IS reorganising to face new challenges

Reports in January 2017 that the leader of the Islamic State group (IS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been killed, reports that he had been captured by Russian troops in Syria, and th...

07 March 2017

IS in Africa: Containment and fragmentation

By Afro-Middle East Centre With the Islamic State group (IS) losing territory in Syria and Iraq, many believe that the group will use the territory it controls in Africa as a fall...

14 May 2016

The Paradox of Survival and Expansion: How the Islamic State…

Omar Ashour This paper examines the reasons for the military steadfastness of the Islamic State group (IS) in the face of local and international forces that are larger in numbers...

19 December 2015

ISIS in Africa: Reality far different from IS propaganda

By Afro-Middle East Centre The revelation that the alleged mastermind of the 13 November Paris attacks claimed by the Islamic State group (IS) was of Moroccan descent, the tur...

20 July 2015

Remaining and expanding: Measuring the Islamic State group’s success in…

By Afro-Middle East Centre Since its declaration of a ‘caliphate’ on 29 June 2014, the Islamic State group (IS), the brutal successor to al-Qa'ida, has gone from stren...

31 January 2012

The rise of 'Ikhwanophobia': Fear of the Muslim Brotherhood

By Dr. Mohsen Saleh Introduction Fear of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwanal-Muslimoon), the leading Islamist movement, has gained unprecedented international prominence since the b...

Dialogue with the Taliban: Negotiation or inducement?
By AlJazeera Centre for Studies The London Conference, held at the end of January 2010 in recognition of, and support for, Afgh…
Al-Qa'ida Hot Spots
By AlJazeera Centre for Studies At the end of the phase known as the "Afghan Jihad", most Arabs and Muslims who participated in t…

Al-Qaeda, Jihad and the Democratization of Islamic Authority
by Faisal Devji On the fifth anniversary of 9/11 a jihadist website posted a long interview with Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, A…
Abstract : ‘Jihad’ as a form of struggle in the…
Abstract for paper presented by Na'eem Jeenah, Executive Director of the Afro-Middle East Centre, at the conference on "Rethinking…

18 February 2018

Africa and the problem of foreign military bases

At the establishment of the African Union (AU) in May 2001, discourses about human security and counter terrorism were ubiquitous both globally and on the continent. In Africa, the...

21 November 2015

The Paris attacks: Aftermath and the Islamic State group’s future

By Afro-Middle East Centre The terror unleashed on Paris streets on 13 November reverberated throughout the world. From the G20 summit in Antalya to social media debates about how...

28 May 2010

Al-Qaeda in the New National Security Strategy

By Mark Lynch The Obama administration's new National Security Strategy has been released today. It goes a long way towards providing a coherent framework for American foreign pol...

16 February 2010

Pakistan’s attitude towards Obama’s plan to negotiate with the Taliban

By Dr. Ijaz Shafi Gilani U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan has generally been welcomed in Pakistan. It is being seen as a vindication...

07 February 2010

Mission Absolute: American hegemony in space