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Begin New Search Political Geography Middle East Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution Center for Strategic and International Studies

41. Pushing Back against Narrowing Space for Civil Society in Tunisia

Author:
Yara Shahin
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Civil society plays a vital role in society. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) connect citizens and governments, hold governments accountable, and advocate for citizens’ interests. After being widely celebrated in the 1990s, civil society across the world is now facing shrinking support and growing restrictions. Drivers behind these restrictions in Tunisia include professed concerns about terrorism, a dominant security agenda, and the shift within civil society from service delivery to advocacy, which can seem threatening to governments. Government restrictions most often target the social justice sector and obstruct the work of NGOs through legal restrictions, financial measures, and direct threats to civic actors. Recently, many governments have intensified accusations that civil society and its activists are anti-development, work against economic security, or are terrorist sympathizers or supporters. This paper explores the status of civic space in Tunisia and its development from the most repressive civic space in the Middle East and North Africa during Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime to an open civic space following the 2011 Arab Spring. It also highlights the various ways in which civil society has responded to the closing of civic space, especially as it pertains to pushing back against problematic laws through the formation of domestic coalitions.
Topic:
Civil Society, Space, NGOs, and Social Order
Political Geography:
Africa, Middle East, and Tunisia

42. Changing Attitudes under New and Old Systems

Author:
Carolyn Barnett
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Elites in Tunisia and Jordan stress their need to invest in their human resources, because people are the only resources they have. An array of programs has arisen in both countries to help young people learn life and job skills, find appropriate careers, and launch new businesses. Yet a look at recent and ongoing workforce development efforts in each country reveals that these schemes are intended to produce something fundamentally different in each country. Tunisians are working to overcome the legacies of dictatorship and build a new, more democratic system while simultaneously carrying out economic reforms that aim to alter the state’s role in the economy. Jordanians are trying to alter society and economic incentives within a political status quo where too much change too quickly could threaten the political order, and the government therefore faces compelling reasons both to reform and to keep things as they are. This report examines how similar efforts have evolved in these contrasting contexts
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Human Welfare, and Politics
Political Geography:
Middle East

43. Iraqi Stability and the “ISIS War”

Author:
Anthony H Cordesman
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The events in Iraq over the last month have shown that any success in Iraq requires both the Iraqi government and the United States to go far beyond the war against ISIS, and makes any partisan debate over who lost Iraq as damaging to U.S. national interests as any other aspect of America’s drift toward partisan extremism. The war against ISIS is a critical U.S. national security interest. It not only threatens to create a major center of terrorism and extremism in a critical part of the Middle East, and one that could spread to threaten the flow of energy exports and the global economy, but could become a major center of international terrorism. It is important to understand, however, that ISIS is only one cause of instability in the region, and only one of the threats caused by spreading sectarian and ethnic violence.
Topic:
Terrorism and International Security
Political Geography:
Iraq and Middle East

44. South Asia Regional Dynamics and Strategic Concerns

Author:
Robert D. Lamb, Sadika Hameed, and Kathryn Mixon
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The United States has a number of interests and values at stake in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, or "South Asia" for the purposes of this analysis. But it also has a broader set of such concerns at stake regionally (in the greater Middle East, Eurasia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia)—and, of course, globally as well. Any long- term policy or strategy frame- work for South Asia needs to be built around the global and regional concerns that are most likely to persist across multiple changes in U.S. political leadership regardless of political party.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Foreign Policy, Islam, War, and Insurgency
Political Geography:
Pakistan, South Asia, Middle East, and India

45. Iraq in Crisis

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman and Sam Khazai
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
As events in late December 2013 and early 2014 have made brutally clear, Iraq is a nation in crisis bordering on civil war. It is burdened by a long history of war, internal power struggles, and failed governance. Is also a nation whose failed leadership is now creating a steady increase in the sectarian divisions between Shi'ite and Sunni, and the ethnic divisions between Arab and Kurd.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Ethnic Conflict, Insurgency, Fragile/Failed State, Governance, and Sectarian violence
Political Geography:
Russia, Middle East, and Arabia

46. Maritime Security in the Middle East and North Africa: A Strategic Assessment

Author:
Robert M. Shelala II
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The waterways of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region) are among the most important in the world. They facilitate the export of large volumes of oil and natural gas from the region, while also bridging traders in the Eastern and Western worlds through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. While political tensions in the region have at times played out in these waterways since the mid-20th century, their vulnerability has been exasperated in recent years by the failure of bordering governments to promote internal stability, the lack of adequate maritime security capabilities of nearby states, and the potential naval threats posed by the government of Iran.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, International Security, Military Strategy, and Maritime Commerce
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, and North Africa

47. Improving the US-GCC Security Partnership: Planning for the Future

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Over the years since the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Southern Gulf states and the US have developed a de facto strategic partnership based on a common need to deter and defend against any threat from Iran, deal with regional instability in countries like Iraq and Yemen, counter the threat of terrorism and extremism, and deal with the other threats to the flow of Gulf petroleum exports.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Defense Policy, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Yemen, Arabia, and North America

48. The Struggle for the Levant: Geopolitical Battles and the Quest for Stability

Author:
Aram Nerguizian
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The United States and its allies compete with Iran in a steadily more unsettled and uncertain Levant. The political upheavals in the Middle East, economic and demographic pressures, sectarian struggles and extremism, ethnic and tribal conflicts and tensions all combine to produce complex patterns of competition.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, Middle East, and Syria

49. Security Transition in Afghanistan

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Creating an effective transition for the ANSF is only one of the major challenges that Afghanistan, the US, and Afghanistan's other allies face during 2014-2015 and beyond.
Topic:
Security and Defense Policy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Middle East

50. The Civil Transition in Afghanistan: 2014-2016

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Creating an effective transition for the ANSF is only one of the major challenges that Afghanistan, the US, and Afghanistan's other allies face during 2014 2015 and beyond. The five other key challenges include: Going from an uncertain election to effective leadership and political cohesion and unity. Creating an effective and popular structure governance, with suitable reforms, from the local to central government, reducing corruption to acceptable levels, and making suitable progress in planning, budgeting, and budget execution. Coping with the coming major cuts in outside aid and military spending in Afghanistan, adapting to a largely self-financed economy, developing renewal world economic development plans, carrying out the reforms pledged at the Tokyo Conference, and reducing the many barriers to doing business. Establishing relations with Pakistan and other neighbors that will limit outside pressures and threats, and insurgent sanctuaries on Afghanistan's border. Persuading the US, other donors, NGCO, and nations will to provide advisors to furnish the needed aid effort through at least 2018, and probably well beyond.
Topic:
Government, Politics, and Governance
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Middle East