Center for International and Regional Studies

The Evolution of Gulf Global Cities Working Group I
2013-10-05 08:00 - 2013-10-06 18:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On October 5–6, 2013, CIRS held a two-day working group under the research initiative “The Evolution of Gulf Global Cities.” Scholars from various multi-disciplinary backgrounds as well as urban practitioners and architects examined historical, social, economic and political aspects of urban transformations in the Persian Gulf.

During the working group, group discussion bridged past and present conditions of Gulf societies in order to understand the evolution of urban centers across the region. Before the advent of the oil economy, Gulf port cities were considered “cosmopolitan,” with fluid borders and territories that deemed them as centers of cultural and economic exchange. While these cities are contemporarily integrated into global networks and continue to host large populations of foreign migrants from around the world, the diversity and hybridity of the city has eroded into what participants characterized as “hyper-segregated and divided” spaces.

Aspects of these modern urban developments and features may be understood in relation to historical modes of globalization. Oil has served as a vital globalizing factor, as its discovery brought an influx of international oil companies to the Gulf and led to the localization of global forces of international capitalism. This was clearly manifested in the development of company towns across the region, which also provided new modes of institution building and urban planning. Many of these company towns—such as Kuwait Oil Company’s Ahmadi town in Kuwait—enforced socio-spatial segregation amongst its residents based on ethnicity, occupational standing and socio-economic status. Dubbed by some participants as “neo-colonial capital enterprises implanted in space”, these company towns resemble the segregated urban fabric of many Gulf cities today—underscoring the need to understand how the Gulf region has been and continues to be shaped by imperial and colonial legacies.

The contrast between the rigidity present in today’s cities compared with the mobility that Gulf port cities historically exemplified may be paralleled to ramifications of planned cities versus naturally created urban spaces. With the advent of state centralization, master urban plans were introduced, and increasingly the state managed the inflow of migrants through socio-spatial engineering. Of growing interest and importance is assessing the political economy of governance and its impact on the urban fabric. Various stakeholders, including the ruling regimes, governmental and political institutions, the business community, foreign consultants and local urban practitioners collectively affect the urban landscape. National strategies, such as Qatar’s 2030, envision a transition from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, and have resulted in the development of large scale projects that aim to increasingly incorporate the city into global knowledge-economy networks. These state-driven transitions manifest in uneven spatial and social development at the city level, where different spaces exhibit varying levels of global integration and where gentrification benefits an increasingly mobile capitalist class.

Diversification from the oil-based economy has also led many GCC states to focus on developing the tourism sector. Cities such as Dubai and Doha have exhibited rapid commodification of their space, heritage industry, and environment in order to build venues tailored for tourism consumption. Particularly problematic is the limited version of regional and local history and identity presented by the emerging heritage industry, as epitomized by the narrow representations of indigenous religious and ethnic minorities within national museums of contemporary Gulf cities.

Unplanned spaces were also discussed by the participants. In Iran’s bustling port of Bandar Abbas, informal settlements have spread on the city’s periphery. While Bandar Abbas appears to be an affluent port due to trade and revenues generated from illicit trading activities, inequality and poverty are manifested in its urban slums and informal settlements. Periodical city plans however, seek to upgrade and formalize these informal settlements by incorporating them within the city’s boundaries. This formalization process however, does not provide avenues for community participation as urban planning continues to be developed by the central state. As agreed by the participants, community participation in urban planning is vital for the social sustainability of the built environment. In contrast to today’s Gulf cities, the built environment of traditional Middle Eastern cities was shaped by the end user and proved to be more “organic.” With the zonal segregation of today’s planned cities however, residents have gradually lost the ability to have regular encounters and confrontations with each other—namely, they’ve lost the urban sense of the city. As such, only a social force as opposed to a top-down agenda can create social sustainability in these already planned cities. Around the Gulf, civic groups have started to emerge that are attempting to restore urban fluidity and their right to the city. These grassroots attempts, along with recent protests around the region, depict a politicization of urban space where the city has become both a site and stake of political contestation.

Read the participant bios
See the working group schedule
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Ala Al-Hamarneh, University of Mainz
Nadia Al-Khater, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Farah Al-Nakib, American University of Kuwait
Pooya Alaedini, University of Tehran
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Samer Bagaeen, University of Brighton
John T. Crist, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nerida Child Dimasi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nelida Fuccaro, University of London
Barb Gillis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Ahmed Kanna, University of the Pacific
Arang Keshavarzian, New York University
Catherine Lechicki, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Stephen J. Ramos, University of Georgia
Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, Philipps-University of Marburg
Ashraf M. Salama, Qatar University
Marcus Stephenson, Middlesex University Dubai
Florian Wiedmann, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Abdullah Al-Arian Lectures on the Muslim Brotherhood
2013-10-07 08:00 - 18:00
Abdullah Al-Arian, Assistant Professor of History at the Georgetown University School of ‎Foreign Service in Qatar, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture titled “From Revolution to ‎Coup: Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood” on October 7, 2013. ‎

Testament to Egypt’s importance in the Arab World, he argued that “whatever happens in Egypt ‎has a tremendous impact on the outcomes of movements across the entire region. We are already ‎seeing the consequence of that in places like Tunisia, Syria, Palestine, and elsewhere.” To this ‎effect, Al-Arian addressed three areas: first, he traced the trajectory of the Muslim Brotherhood ‎over the last four decades of its history. Second, he evaluated how that history shaped the ‎decisions and performance of the Muslim Brotherhood over the course of the last few years in ‎Egypt. Finally, he ventured some possible scenarios for the future of the Brotherhood, and its ‎place in Egyptian politics and society. ‎

Giving some background to the institution of the group, Al-Arian noted that despite having been ‎formed eighty-five years ago by Hassan Al-Banna, it experienced very few ideological or ‎organizational shifts over the years. During the presidency of Anwar Sadat in the 1970s, Egypt ‎began a new era in which formative economic and political liberalizations were taking place, ‎shifting power away from the military and towards a new urban middle-class. The Brotherhood’s ‎traditional support-base existed in rural Egypt, but “during the course of its reconstitution, the ‎organization’s veteran leadership tapped into this emerging social group that was increasingly ‎urbanized, middle-class, professional, and, to a certain extent, more religiously devout due in ‎large part to disenchantment or disillusionment with the failures of the Nasser period,” he argued. ‎The group entered into a modern phase of its history where Islamic activism was coupled with ‎practical concerns, and economic prowess. At this time, the Brotherhood worked on streamlining ‎its message in order to overcome an increasingly fragmented sense of Islamic identity, and to ‎challenge the rise of competing movements that attempted to fill the void of post-colonial power ‎struggles. During this phase of its history, “the Muslim Brotherhood is slowly beginning to ‎engage more directly with society and, to a certain extent as well, with the state,” he explained.‎

Seeking to protect their vested interest, and not wanting to jeopardize the tacit agreements ‎forged with the Mubarak regime over the years, the Brotherhood acted cautiously when it came ‎to overt political engagement, and remained on the margins of the 2011 uprisings. Al-Arian ‎suggested that “It’s not a revolutionary movement, it’s a reform movement,” which is ‎exemplified by the group’s reticence to join the civil society uprisings in Egypt at the early stages ‎of unrest. “It was only three days later, when the momentum was clearly picking up that finally ‎the leadership reverses its decision and decides to flood Tahrir Square with its supporters who, of ‎course, played a very critical role in the biggest clashes between them and Mubarak’s security ‎agents,” he said. After the fall of the Mubarak regime, “the Muslim Brotherhood along with ‎millions of other Egyptians faced a very critical choice: do they support the transition to a new ‎government that was basically being put in place by the military, or do they demand true ‎revolutionary change by opposing all attempts by the military to try to impose its roadmap for the ‎ensuing transition?” When Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi took office, despite a ‎few token gestures to appease the public, he made no major changes to the existing mode of ‎governance. In fact, “the most critical institutions—the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the police, the ‎intelligence services, and most major ministries—would essentially continue to function with a ‎‎‘business-as-usual’ attitude, with only cosmetic changes being made,” Al-Arian noted.‎

Although the Brotherhood had a successful history of organizing grassroots civil institutions at ‎the community level, the group lacked any form of expertise when it came to large-scale ‎economic and political proficiency necessary for the functioning of an entire nation. Thus, during ‎their time in office, the Brotherhood submitted to the entrenched authoritarian hold of the army ‎ensuring that it remain beyond recrimination despite the abuses committed during the uprisings, ‎and that it would not be held accountable despite its undemocratic and opaque modes of ‎operation. Ultimately, allowing the military to continue its control would be the group’s undoing ‎as “the Muslim Brotherhood was actually helping to create the climate in which a freely elected ‎president could be overthrown by the defense minister and head of the military,” he contended.‎

In conclusion, Al-Arian argued that, after a brief moment in charge, the Muslim Brotherhood has ‎once again become an ostracized entity whose leaders have been imprisoned, their institutions ‎destroyed, their assets seized, and their media shut down. As a final thought, however, he ‎posited that “an unintended consequence of the state’s desire to destroy the Muslim Brotherhood ‎will actually enable the development of alternative modes of organization and mobilization by ‎the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood, with a particular emphasis on the youth generation.”‎

Abdullah Al-Arian holds a doctorate in history from Georgetown University, where he wrote his dissertation on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the decade of the 1970s. He received his Masters degree from the London School of Economics and his BA from Duke University. A frequent contributor to the Al-Jazeera English network and website, Al-Arian is the author of the upcoming book Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Egypt, 1968-1981, to be published by Oxford University Press early next spring.Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications.

Micha Kurz on “Mobilizing Communities in Occupied Jerusalem”
2013-11-12 08:00 - 18:00
Micha Kurz, a co-founder of “Grassroots Jerusalem,” delivered a CIRSMonthly Dialogue lecture ‎on “Mobilizing Communities in Occupied Jerusalem” on November 12, 2013. Kurz works to ‎support a Palestinian platform for community-based advocacy in Jerusalem, putting Jerusalem ‎back on the international map as a Palestinian capital. His lecture focused on the high degree of ‎misinformation regarding the political realities experienced by the increasingly segregated ‎Palestinian communities on the ground. Issues of escalating Palestinian impoverishment are often ‎marginalized, and the daily suffering sanitized, under the Israeli political narrative of “security ‎and peace.” Even though Israelis and Palestinians share some of the same physical spaces in the ‎city, their experiences could not be more dissimilar causing ongoing conflict and tension.

In order to understand the history of Jerusalem, Kurz said, it is important to understand the ‎bifurcated histories of conflict. For Israelis, the modern historical understanding of the tensions ‎starts in 1967 and the discussions of a “two-state solution,” but for Palestinians this begins much ‎earlier in 1948 with the Naqba, or catastrophe. In Israeli schools, teaching a history of the Naqba ‎is practically an illegal topic, Kurz argued. Thus, many Israelis as well as communities in the West ‎do not have, nor often care to have, a full picture of what is happening on the ground. ‎

If one goes back further in time, before there were divisions between Israelis and Palestinians, ‎there was a Jerusalem that was populated by Jews, Muslims, and Christians, Kurz said. ‎‎Jerusalem was a central city in the region connecting the cities of Bethlehem, Hebron, and ‎Be’ar Saba’a in the South, to Nablus, Nazareth, and Tiberius in the North. The city also ‎connected Jericho from the East, through the oldest trade route in the world, to the port of Jaffa ‎and the Mediterranean sea in the West. The city wasn’t just a spiritual or religious capital; it was ‎also an economic capital in the region. But Israel has detached the city from its suburbs and the ‎West Bank, isolating Jerusalem, and treating it as if it were a city in Europe, not a capital in the ‎Middle East. ‎

In an attempt to control demographics, for the last four decades, Israeli government policy has ‎been to keep Palestinian parts of the city underdeveloped, while expanding mass Israeli ‎settlement housing projects—illegally according to international law. While Israeli settlement ‎grew on stolen Palestinian farmlands during the 1970s and 80s, without the freedom to develop ‎their own neighborhoods, young Palestinian families had no choice but to move out of town, and ‎to live in the suburbs. Later, in the 1990s during what was described as “a step toward Peace,” ‎checkpoints were constructed limiting Palestinian access to the Central Business District and ‎with it access to the main market, employment, healthcare, and education. Palestinians who were ‎caught at checkpoints or Israeli military house-raids and designated as not living within the ‎Israeli-defined borders of the city have had their “residency” status revoked. These no longer ‎have the right to visit their hometown without an Israeli issued permit. Israel finally severed ‎Jerusalem from its age-old suburbs with the construction of the “separation wall.” The “wall” was ‎built during the period known as “the Bush War on Terror,” and its presence has often been justified under ‎the rubric of “security.” However, it has been widely proven by many Israeli sources that this is ‎not the case, and the “wall” has benefited the Israeli economy by segregating Palestinian cities ‎from one another. ‎

Today, the Israeli government does not allow the Palestinian Authority jurisdiction in Jerusalem. ‎Without the right to vote in proper government elections, Palestinian Residents of Jerusalem have ‎not been politically represented for the last four decades. Kurz discussed the divisions and ‎segregations that have occurred; Palestinians living in the suburbs of the city are physically ‎isolated and segregated from their communities and from basic amenities. As a result, over 5,000 ‎businesses have shut down over the past decade, bringing unemployment, poverty, and rising ‎tensions to peak levels. The age-old character has been cleansed from Jerusalem together with its ‎Palestinian residents.‎

Kurz lamented how “Israel has over time gained control of the land between the Jordan River ‎and the Mediterranean sea, including the economy, resources, and the peoples living in it.” He ‎added later, “I find it difficult to describe Israel either as a democracy or a Jewish state.” In ‎conclusion, Kurz questioned how “Many people around the world still discuss a Two-State ‎Solution, expecting ‘Peace, Dialogue, and Coexistence,’ where I feel we ought to be discussing ‎human rights, justice, and leading practical conversations about freedom of movement and ‎development in an important regional capital.” ‎

Micha Kurz was born and raised in Jerusalem. During the second Intifada he learned about the ‎Israeli Occupation of Palestinian land and people first hand as an Israeli soldier. In 2004, he was ‎a co-founder of “Breaking the Silence” and has since focused his work in Al Quds-Jerusalem, “a ‎forgotten epicenter of the occupation. “Grassroots Jerusalem” has recently opened the doors to ‎Al Marsa (the Harbor), a Political Community Center and Legal Clinic built to counter the threat ‎on freedom of speech and assembly in Jerusalem today.‎

CIRS Research Roundtable
2013-11-17 08:00 - 18:00
In order to enhance local research productivity, and build upon its established collegial ‎relationships with other research entities in Qatar, CIRS hosted a “Research Roundtable” on November 17, 2013. During this one-day event, academics, policy analysts, and representatives of research institutions and think tanks discussed their respective research initiatives and activities in an attempt to identify research synergies across institutions. Participants additionally discussed the extent to which their research endeavors align with Qatar’s National Research Strategy, and the linkages between their research output and policy making in the country.

The research landscape and various challenges faced by research organizations in Qatar were central discussions of the Roundtable. As with most early stage research economies around the globe, capacity building of research institutions, coordination between research organizations, and establishing partnerships between research and policy-making bodies are core areas in need of development. In the past decade, research organizations have mushroomed throughout Qatar and collectively cover a wide array of subject areas. At this stage in its development, participants discussed Qatar’s need to build the capacity of organizations to conduct and disseminate research. More importantly, the complex research landscape in Qatar requires a coordinating body that could generate awareness on the type of research carried out by various institutions. This would enable organizations to effectively articulate research synergies with other institutions, avoid duplication of efforts, and identify areas where research is needed. Communicating research activities and transferring knowledge output to policy making entities is also of importance. Informed decision making and evidence-based policy are contingent upon access to and knowledge of the relevant research. This Research Roundtable provided a platform for various members of the research community to highlight their research areas and share insights on the state of research in the country.

Participants:

Ibrahim Sharqieh, Deputy Director & Foreign Policy Fellow, Brookings Doha Center
Nader Kabbani, Director of Research and Policy, Silatech
Florian Wiedmann, Urban Planning and Development Authority
Professor Tim Cable, Director of Sports Science, Aspire Academy
Hanan Abdul Rahim, Associate Director SESRI, Qatar University
Tatjana Martinoska, Independent Researcher
Noor Al Malki Al Jehani, Executive Director, Doha International Family Institute (DIFI)
Sanaa Alharahsheh, Associate Researcher, Doha International Family Institute (DIFI)
Simon Hall, Project Manager Qatar National Food Security Programme
John Crist, Director of Research, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, Director, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Zahra Babar, Assistant Director of Research, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor of CIRS Publications, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Elizabeth Wanucha, Project Manager, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nerida Child Dimasi, Financial and Budget Analyst, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Barb Gillis, CIRS Coordinator, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

The State and Innovation in the Gulf Working Group I
2013-12-08 18:00 - 2013-12-09 18:00
On December 8–9, 2013, CIRS held a working group to launch the State and Innovation in the Gulf Research Initiative. Regional and international scholars and experts from various multi-disciplinary backgrounds convened to discuss issues related to the pursuit of a knowledge-based economy (KBE) throughout various states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Within the last decade, members of the GCC have individually drafted, formulated and launched development plans and strategies that convey the common drive among these states to create a knowledge based-economy. Although they have experienced large-scale rapid development due to abundant hydrocarbon rents, rulers and public officials of these states have increasingly stated that economic diversification is necessary for the sustainability of economic growth. Diversification has been used almost interchangeably with the concept of developing a “knowledge-based economy,” underscoring the ultimate goal of these states to reform education, R&D, ICT, and other sectors that enhance productivity and scientific progress.

Investment in higher-education has been one of the most prominent manifestations of this drive towards developing KBEs. As a result of the lack of capacity and expertise of national public universities across the region to produce the necessary skillsets in their graduates fit for a KBE, governments have increasingly invested in international branch campuses (IBCs). While IBCs are not a novel phenomenon across the globe, organizations such as Qatar Foundation in Qatar have adopted unique organizational practices and arrangements of IBCs that are cluster-based. Graduates of these hosted top-tier US and European universities’ IBCs gain degrees that are identical to those obtained by graduates from the main campuses. While this model of imported universities is meant to transfer knowledge from one campus to another, certain types of “knowledge” have more complex forms of adoption. Participants discussed the relative seamless transfer of the sciences, while humanities programs that are embedded in social and cultural values may need to be adapted to fit the specific locale.

The investment in IBCs and research institutions indicates that the infrastructure to build a R&D culture and economy is present; however, retaining the human capital to carry out research has proved to be a much more difficult feat. Small national populations throughout the GCC have resulted in the large import of human capital to satisfy labor market needs. However, the resulting demographic imbalance between nationals and non-nationals has shaped the stringent residency rules in these countries, which offer no formal pathways to citizenship. Although recruitment of labor has not proven to be much of a concern, retaining a work-force that has a sense of long-term commitment and ownership over their work is something that organizations have to contend with. Thus, while GCC states have attempted to create an environment of innovation and knowledge production through financial and infrastructural investment, the ability to seed and harvest innovation with a largely transient population in place remains a question. Achieving sustainability in innovation requires a comprehensive approach that looks at the social dimensions of this transition to knowledge-producing economies.

While higher education has been the focus of investment for these aspiring KBEs, there has been a relative neglect of primary education systems in the GCC. Participants argued that in order to effectively enable systems for knowledge production and knowledge sustainability, states should aim to produce knowledge “societies” rather than “economies” per se. Rote learning and functionalist approaches to education are prevalent from the primary years of education and act as hindrances to harvesting innovation. With critical thinking undermined and the value of knowledge beyond the labor market requirements rarely articulated, fostering knowledge production and a risk-taking culture may be a distant achievement for the GCC states despite the presence of top-tier research universities.

Labor market employment of nationals continues to be a main priority for GCC states. The nationalization of the education and tourism sectors reflect the government’s attempts to diversify their economies, while minimizing national unemployment. Within the GCC, there is also a big push for entrepreneurship and SME development, which act as modes of employment that concomitantly spur innovation. Participants noted, though, that a multitude of systemic and ideational challenges face the state in encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation. Among other factors, the systemic hurdles include institutional competition, overly bureaucratic procedures, as well as endemic inconsistencies between policies and monopolized market conditions. The ideational challenge on the other hand, poses a hindrance that hits at the root of entrepreneurship development—the limited motivation for entrepreneurial innovation amongst citizens of the Gulf. Participants noted that the rentier path dependencies and the dual-wage structure between the public and private sector across the GCC obstruct incentives for innovation and entrepreneurism amongst nationals. In fact, state attempts to invigorate the private sector through SME development, has further embedded the public sector within the economy and entrepreneurship has become a new mode of state patronage and means of accessing rent.

As GCC states strive to develop “innovation cities”, policy adoption and diffusion from well-established global KBEs is at play. What may be much more complex, however, is tackling the social dimension that is required to transition to a KBE, and tailoring these policies to fit the local conditions. Fostering innovation may lead these states to revisit their rentier dependency policies aimed at nationals, and to develop motivational mechanisms that incentivize the citizens to play a key role in the development of a knowledge-based economy.

Read the participant bios
See the working group schedule
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, United Arab Emirates University
Osama Abi-Mershed, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Matt Buehler, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nerida Child Dimasi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
John Crist, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Crystal A. Ennis, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Barb Gillis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Martin Hvidt, Zayed University
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Tanya Kane, Texas A&M University at Qatar
Hiba Khodr, American University of Beirut
Daniel Kirk, Emirates College for Advanced Education
Jim Krane, Rice University
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Rabi Mohtar, Qatar Foundation
Anne Nebel, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Firat Oruc, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Andy Spiess, GCC Network for Drylands Research and Development
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Kenneth Wilson, Zayed University

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Zahra Babar on Arab Migrants in Qatar
2013-12-11 08:00 - 18:00
Zahra Babar, Associate Director for Research at CIRS, delivered a CIRSMonthly Dialogue ‎lecture titled “Working for the Neighbors: Arab Migrants in Qatar” on December 11, 2013. Babar ‎proposed to examine some of the trends in Qatar’s dramatic population increase over the past ‎few decades, paying particular attention to the demographic patterns of non-GCC Arab migrant ‎populations. “The migrant population in the Gulf in general, and in Qatar in particular, has ‎increased significantly over the past few decades,” she said. In the 1990s, the total population of ‎Qatar was about 500,000 people, and has increased threefold to almost 2 million in 2013. ‎Giving some background to her research, Babar explained that “although we all are aware of this ‎large demographic presence of foreigners in Qatar, surprisingly enough, we actually do not know ‎very much about them.” Reliable data on who these people are, where they come from, how they ‎are integrated in the labor market, and how they experience life in Qatar is scant. “Obtaining data ‎in Qatar on national and ethnic compositions of the migrant population is a huge challenge. Any ‎researcher trying to work on some aspect of labor migration in Qatar finds that the data ‎availability, data accessibility, and data reliability is very scarce,” she noted. With Qatar’s hosting ‎of the 2022 FIFA World Cup approaching, critical attention has focused on Qatar’s labor ‎practices with several high-profile and defamatory exposés in the international media. Babar ‎warned, however, that people should be wary of those who claim to have solid facts and figures ‎regarding migration and labor conditions in Qatar. “I hope you would remain skeptical when any ‎one of these articles proceeds to give you particular figures,” she said. ‎

Guiding her research, Babar explained, was the question: “why is it important to talk about ‎nationality?” Nationality, she said, has a direct impact on one’s life in Qatar as a migrant, ‎including how it determines salary structures, benefits and prospects, and how one experiences ‎life and work in the country. Thus, “nationality has a strong correlation with how one is ‎integrated into Qatar’s labor market,” she surmised. ‎

Tracing nationality trajectories in Qatar over the past few decades, she argued that ethnic and ‎national compositions of the expatriate presence have gone through a complete transformation. ‎Focusing on changes to the non-GCC Arab migrant populations in Qatar, Babar highlighted the ‎significant decrease in numbers from 70 percent in the 1970s and 1980s to less than 20 percent ‎currently. Babar reported recent figures obtained from the Qatari Ministry of Labor, which ‎placed non-GCC Arab expatriates in Qatar at 146, 000, or 13 percent of the total workforce. Of ‎these, Egyptians comprise the largest percentage in terms of national composition, closely ‎followed by Sudanese and Syrians. Together, these three nationalities comprise 65 percent of the ‎total non-GCC Arab expatriate population in Qatar and 72 percent of the non-GCC Arab ‎workforce.‎

Situating these demographic changes historically, Babar argued that the GCC states, with their ‎burgeoning hydrocarbon industries and small populations, were obliged to employ foreign ‎workers. Initially, in the early days of the industry, the logical choice was to employ workers ‎from neighboring Arab countries, given the geographic, linguistic, religious, and cultural ‎affinities, and the ease of Arab integration into existing Gulf societies. However, as these ‎massive hydrocarbon industries grew and globalized and as political economic imperatives ‎surpassed these initial sociocultural considerations, there were dramatic shifts in the policies, ‎practices, and patterns of the Qatari labor market. ‎

Effectively, non-GCC Arab migrants in Qatar have, since the 1970s, integrated into society by ‎maintaining their traditional family structures. Of the total non-GCC Arab residents in Qatar, ‎only 52 percent are active in the labor force and contribute to the economy, while 48 percent are ‎dependents—children and housewives. If this is compared to corresponding data from other ‎nationalities, there is a significant and noticeable difference. There are only 17 percent non-‎working dependents in the Indian community and only 1 percent in the Nepalese community. ‎Further, the discrepancy in these figures also reveals that non-GCC Arab migrants presumably ‎earn higher salaries to be able to maintain a dependent household in Qatar. Thus, Babar argued, it ‎is easy to see why Qatari policymakers would be more inclined to import cheaper and more ‎manageable labor from Asia. ‎

In sum, Babar concluded that, “in Qatar, the state and society are extremely concerned about the ‎demographic imbalance and the increasing presence of foreigners outnumbering them, and so ‎really what they are looking for is to have their labor market needs met without any incremental ‎increase to the population.” ‎

Zahra Babar is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), Georgetown University-Qatar. Previously, she worked in the international aid, community development, and poverty alleviation sector. Babar has served with the International Labour Organisation and the United Nations Development Programme. She also spent several years working in Pakistan with the Sarhad Rural Support Programme, one of Pakistan’s large multisectoral rural development organizations. She has edited, with Mehran Kamrava, Migrant Labor in the Persian Gulf, and with Suzi Mirgani, Food Security in the Middle East. Babar received her BA in Government from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and her MA from the School of International Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications.

Social Currents in the Maghreb Working Group I
2014-01-07 08:00 - 2014-01-08 18:00
On January 7-8, 2014, CIRS held its inaugural Social Currents in the Maghreb Working Group in Washington D.C. While much of the mainstream media and recent scholarship on the Maghreb has focused on the political and security dimensions of the region, participants gathered over two days to discuss the social changes and fluxes in contemporary Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Mauritania. The Working Group provided an avenue of deliberation on social issues that precede the recent political transformations of the region, and sought to examine the complex trajectory of its existing societal conditions.

As highlighted above, much of the recent debates on the Maghreb have revolved around political transformations, and more specifically on their relation to Islamic movements in the context of the Arab Spring. While the historical trajectory of Islamic movements and parties has generally been accounted for, the internal dynamics of political parties have largely been neglected in the scholarship. Working Group participants highlighted the dynamics between Islamists and leaders of various political parties as well as generational dynamics within the parties. Political parties and movements as a unit of analysis need to incorporate internal notions of ideological hybridity that not only challenge the status-quo of the country’s political landscape, but also of the movements’ longstanding policies and strategies. These internal subtleties allude to the ideological innovation of Islamic movements that move beyond the traditional prism of analysis of “moderation through inclusion” or “radicalization through repression”.

In addition to political parties and political Islam, participants discussed religious practice and the anthropology of Salafism and Sufism. In the context of the latter, Sufi observances and religious pilgrimages by the Tijaniyyah who migrate from West Africa to the Maghreb, have created economic and social networks that permeate the two regions. While the Tijaniyyah movement has largely expanded to West Africa, these Sufi networks have also traditionally served as vital linkages of knowledge production.

Another thread connecting the Maghreb to West Africa and the Sahel is the transnational element of Amazigh movements. While most scholars have focused on political and social struggles of the Amazighs in Algeria and Morocco in isolation, their movements have become increasingly transnational in nature as they incorporate other Amazighs or social groups such as the Tuareg, in their politics. With these attempts to create transnational connections comes a sense of national ambivalence as questions of identity are pushed to the forefront with regards to “Africanity” and “Amazigh-ness”. These questions do not allude to deep ethnic tensions between a certain social group and their respective national counterparts, but rather serve to highlight contemporary politics and how it emerges in a changing political system with relative political openings or closings.

Hybrid identities were also discussed in the context of the Haratine in Mauritania. The Haratine, or people of slave descent, currently experience different levels of political and social subservience. The Haratine are also not a homogenous group and identify themselves as Arabs, Berbers, African, and Mauritanian. Identity, which may also be used as a political tool, directly affects the strategic alliances that the Haratine movement builds in order to further its political cause in Mauritania. While much of the movement’s emphasis has been on political and social subordination, economic emancipation has not been effectively addressed by the movement nor experienced by the Haratine today.

Other movements such as the Polisario in Western Sahara have not gained much footing in their political trajectory but have secured greater access to economic funds. Contrary to conventional wisdom about the armed movement, the Polisario has increasingly diversified its portfolio of economic and developmental funding to include non-state sources beyond Algeria. Resources from civil society organizations and family members abroad broaden the Polisario movement’s economic base of support and simultaneously affect the activities and investments of the movement.

In addition to identity politics, the politics of language and its historical, economic and social salience were discussed. The language of instruction in Moroccan schools for instance, has largely been caught between the dual and seemingly contradictory goals of cultural and linguistic preservation (e.g. Arabic or Berber) and the necessity of equipping graduates with languages that meet global market needs (e.g. French or English). The language of instruction in the Moroccan education system is fragmented where Arabic is utilized in public primary schools and French in higher education. This tends to exacerbate the hurdles that socio-economically disadvantaged populations face in attaining social mobility as they move from one educational level to another. This linguistic fragmentation in the education system can be contrasted to the linguistic hybridity that is increasingly incorporated into the artistic expression of the youth. The incorporation of the Darija (colloquial Arabic) into cultural forms produced by youth serves as a means to deconstruct issues of identity and provides an underlying commentary on the language of politics as being distant from the everyday life; this artistic utilization of linguistic hybridity by youth was identified as an element of youth’s cultural and social entrepreneurship in the contemporary Maghreb.

Parallel to the politics of linguistic preservation, participants discussed movements of cultural preservation, specifically as it relates to Jews of North Africa. Jewish presence in Morocco and Tunisia has significantly diluted since the pre-independence era, and concomitantly, efforts to conserve and renovate Jewish heritage sites have been on the rise. While these preservation projects serve to keep the memory of the Jewish community in North Africa alive, the politics of preservation also indicate that these movements seek to reify Jews to a past rather than an ongoing present.

Sports in relation to migration, identity and political transitions in the Maghreb were also topics tackled by the participants. While Europe has been the main destination for athletes, the GCC has more recently become a new lucrative destination for youth from the Maghreb. Issues related to reverse migration of athletes, their sense of belonging, and identity construction around religion and language are of interest in comparing the Gulf and Europe as prime sport destinations. Moreover, with the political transitions in the region, regimes have utilized sports for various strategic interests such as the promotion of reconciliation in Algeria or the rebuilding of the national sport system in Libya after decades of neglect by Qaddafi.

These societal threads, from social movements by marginalized groups to the language employed by youth in artistic expression, collectively shed light on the social underpinnings of the contemporary Maghreb.

Read the participant bios
See the working group schedule
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Osama Abi-Mershed, CCAS – Georgetown University
Lahouari Addi, Centre de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle (CRASC)
Mahfoud Amara, Loughborough University
Néjib Ayachi, Maghreb Center
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Aomar Boum, University of Arizona
Charis Boutieri, King’s College London
Alice Bullard, IRA-USA
Francesco Cavatorta, Université Laval
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Ricardo René Larémont, Binghamton University
William Lawrence, George Washington University
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem, University of Nouakchott
Paul Silverstein, Reed College
Loubna Skalli-Hanna, American University
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Alice Wilson, University of Cambridge

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS​

Sustainable Development for ‎Economies and Corporations
2014-01-20 08:00 - 18:00
R. Seetharaman, Group Chief Executive Officer of Doha Bank‎, delivered the first ‎CIRS ‎Monthly ‎Dialogue of 2014 with a lecture on “Sustainable Development for ‎Economies ‎and ‎Corporations”‎ ‎on January 20, 2014‎. Drawing on his experience as the head of a major ‎financial institution, he explained how, as a result of the global financial crisis, ‎economic ‎systems ‎all over the world ‏have been shaken to their core and forced to undergo massive ‎transformations ‎at a fundamental ‎level. These global financial institutions have had to align ‎themselves according to a new world ‎order of financial market re-regulation in the interest of ‎creating ‎more ‎conservative, cautious, and sustainable global economies. ‎

Seetharaman adumbrated the unprecedented circumstances that affected global financial systems ‎over the past few years, including the liquidity crisis that turned into a funding and solvency ‎crisis where entire nations such as Greece and Iceland experienced far-reaching economic ‎collapse. In these cases, he argued, politics and economics did not speak to each other on the ‎level of convergence that they should have. The liquidity crisis was addressed by unstable and ‎short-term solutions, such as printing more money to improve the cash flow and to stabilize stock ‎markets, but this was ultimately unsustainable. The problem was patched up on a superficial level, ‎but the fundamental roots of the economic crisis remained. Because “we live in an ‎interconnected, interdependent world,” currency markets and commodity markets are ‎intertwined, and what affects one affects the other. ‎

Reeling from years of global economic stagnation and recession, governments, corporations, ‎and ‎financial institutions have realized that massive overhauls in the system are necessary, ‎Seetharaman ‎explained. “This crisis is an opportunity for the new world order,” he advised. The ‎type of rapacious corporate capitalism and market speculation that defined the last few ‎decades ‎of deregulated market economies have altered in form and substance. Similarly, countries that ‎adhered to a socialist structure of economic governance have also ‎found it necessary to change ‎their financial structures, and have been making concerted efforts to end their isolation and ‎connect with the global ‎economy. In fact, Seetharaman said, these two formerly oppositional ‎economic ‎philosophies are increasingly becoming intertwined for a more effective and sustainable ‎economic ‎reality. “Mixed economies are the game changers. We have seen the emerging markets ‎incrementally producing ‎over 60% of gross domestic product in terms of global growth, and ‎these economies have to be an integral part of the order of inclusive growth. This is why the G7 ‎has become the G8, and G8 has become G20,” he said. ‎

Because financial institutions operate as much on public money as they do on private shareholder ‎assets, the public-private partnership model is the most sustainable way of moving forward, ‎Seetharaman advised. Taking the example of Doha Bank, Seetharaman argued that private ‎shareholder money accounts for approximately 11 billion, and yet customer deposits account for ‎an enormous 35 billion. It thus becomes obvious that even if a financial institution is private, it is ‎often, in reality, public. The global financial crisis revealed that the public is in fact an important ‎stakeholder whose investments must be protected and not gambled with. “Whether you run a ‎socially responsible mission as a corporate head or a country head, you have to practice social ‎responsibility. That way, you will take care of all the stakeholders,” he explained.‎

In conclusion, Seetharaman argued that because of the increase in patterns of globalized ‎connectivity on all levels, ‎whether in terms of financial markets or broader issues of climate ‎change, governance systems all over the ‎world must attempt to adhere to the same ethical, ‎socially-responsible, and sustainable standards. At the universal level, we need to “set new ‎initiatives that are responsive to see the ‎United ‎Nation‏‎’s ‎mission ‎for eradication of extreme ‎poverty,‎‏ ‏gender ‎equality, ‎‏economic ‎sustainability,‎‏ ‏primary ‎healthcare,‎‏ ‏education‏,‏‎ global ‎collaborations‏‎,” he concluded.‎

Dr. R. Seetharaman (www.seetharaman.org), Group Chief Executive Officer of Doha Bank, is ‎a ‎recipient of ‎multiple doctorates from leading universities of the world, including a PhD in ‎Global ‎Governance by European ‎University and Doctorate of Laws by Washington College. He ‎is a ‎Chartered Accountant and holds certificates ‎in IT Systems and Corporate Management. He ‎has ‎been named “Best CEO in Middle East” and “World Leader ‎Business Person” and is a ‎recipient ‎of “The Gullands Excellence Award as a Phenomenal Banker.” A regular ‎commentator ‎on ‎international finance in global media outfits such as BBC, CNN, FOX, CNBC, Sky ‎News, ‎ABC, ‎and Bloomberg, he has transformed Doha Bank as one of the best performing ‎Banks in the ‎Middle East region.‎Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications

The Paradox of Renewable Energy in Qatar
2014-02-12 11:00 - 21:00
Omran Al-Kuwari, co-founder and CEO of GreenGulf, delivered a CIRS Focused Discussion lecture on “The Paradox of Renewable Energy in Qatar” on February 12, 2014. The talk was centered on the drivers of investing in renewable energy in the context of Qatar, and how these have been radically transformed over recent years. The Gulf is seen as a single market, Al-Kuwari said, but it is important to point out the differences between the various regional states. “Qatar is a very unique country in the Gulf,” as “it is the only country in the world that you can safely say has enough gas and enough power to supply itself and to export for the foreseeable future.” Qatar is in a favorable position because of its large natural gas reserves, which has provided an increasingly advantageous energy option for a new generation of people.

Al-Kuwari gave a brief historical overview of the Gulf region’s hydrocarbon exploitation efforts. The largest gas reserves in the world were discovered in the North Field between Qatar and Iran about thirty years ago. At the time, this discovery was greeted with disappointment as natural gas commanded little value, and was seen as inferior to oil and other hydrocarbons, which were driving the global economy. However, over the years, as technology advanced, and as environmental issues became more pertinent, “gas became the fuel of choice for power production,” he said.

Currently, “Qatar is the only country in the GCC that could supply all its power—100%—from gas,” meaning that it can exploit its oil reserves purely for export and revenue generation. Other countries in the region like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman rely on oil to generate power supplies to drive their own national economies as well as international ones, and so must divide oil reserves between national needs and international requirements. Such a model, Al-Kuwari argued, is ultimately unsustainable as these countries are burning their own oil, which leads to loss of export revenue, the rapid depletion of the resource, as well as increased pollution. Thus, “renewable energy has become a necessity,” he said. In the Gulf, this is a necessity that stems purely from an economic perspective, regardless of the positive ideological and environmental advantages renewable energy offers. Oil and gas reserves will gradually become depleted, and nuclear energy will take a long time to establish, if at all. Renewable energy is actually the only viable alternative for many of the regional states, as well as international ones.

“Solar energy,” Al-Kuwari said “is low-hanging fruit in the region” because of the large amount of predictable sunlight – on average, the region receives ten hours a day in comparison to only five hours in other parts of the world. Al-Kuwari explained that “solar energy actually fits with our needs…it’s a good match for our region, and it’s a good match for Qatar, and it is easy to implement” because it is a resource that can be used to generate immediate power and does not even necessarily need to be stored. The paradox, Al-Kuwari argued, is why countries in the region have not taken full advantage of this abundant, natural resource and why there is so much sunlight, and yet so little infrastructure geared towards harnessing solar power. This paradox exists for two reasons, he explained. The first is related to the question of cost and the second is related to lack of demand. While these prohibitive reasons were valid in the past, the circumstances have now changed. Due to technological advancements in the area of renewable energies, the costs have now been considerably reduced. Demand has simultaneously been increased because of an increase in population in all the countries of the region as well as an increase in industry and output.

Because Qatar is in a unique position in terms of having excess energy, the decision-makers have the luxury of creating these projects from their foundation in a deliberate and efficient way that makes sense for the future. Importantly, Al-Kuwari noted, “because of Qatar’s long-term interest in becoming more of a diversified economy,” these initiatives are being built from the ground up, and are being established all across the country in a simultaneous and synergistic manner that makes cohesive and efficient sense. Currently, GreenGulf is involved in multiple projects and encouraging the use of solar energy as a highly efficient and clean energy source that will ultimately lead to more awareness and education regarding the benefits of clean technologies.

Omran Al-Kuwari is the co-founder and CEO of GreenGulf, a clean technology and renewable energy advisory business focused on the development and management of renewable energy in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. He is an energy professional with over 10 year experience in the Energy Industry. After joining Qatargas in 1999, Al-Kuwari worked for several joint ventures, Qatar Petroleum affiliates and ExxonMobil in Doha and the United Kingdom. He was General Manager and Director of South hook Gas Company in London until August 2009, Qatar Petroleum’s first major LNG trading venture abroad and the UK’s largest LNG importer. Al-Kuwari holds a BA in Business Administration from the George Washington University, and an MBA from City University London. His research has focused on “Renewable Energy in Qatar” in 2010.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications

Transitional Justice in the Middle East - Working Group I
2014-02-15 08:00 - 2014-02-16 18:00
On February 15-16, 2014, Regional and international experts gathered for the inaugural meeting of the CIRS “Transitional Justice in the Middle East” research initiative. While much of the scholarship on transitional justice has been conducted in other regions of the globe, recent political transitions in the region have invigorated studies on the manifestation and application of transitional justice mechanisms in the Middle East. Various topics ranging from the theoretical underpinnings and scope of transitional justice to specific case-studies of Middle Eastern experiences related to reconciliation, and restorative and retributive justice were discussed by the multi-disciplinary working group participants.

In beginning the discussion on transitional justice in the Middle East, participants drew on past and current experiences of countries from around the globe in order to identify the most salient markers studied in the field. Studying transitional justice in a comparative perspective however, has revealed that assessing its impact is not a seamless activity as the process itself continues to have shifting goals. Within transitional justice, there is a myriad of objectives related to retributive justice, deterrence, vindication of victims, and reconciliation that both practitioners and academics discuss and refer to. However, each of these benchmarks remains elusive with regards to whom they address, what form or shape they take, and the mechanisms and institutions that are used to address them. For instance with regards to the vindication of victims, the diversity in types of victims and the fact that the requirements of victims change over time, further complicate the objectives.

Moreover, it is not clear how practitioners and scholars define victim-centered justice. At times, and particularly in Islamic law and teachings, there exists a structural tension between forgiveness and societal reconciliation and the private rights of retribution for the individual victim. A victim-centric approach would more actively advocate for the individual’s right to justice. In addition, the scope of transitional justice is also a contested issue. While in the past it has primarily been about accountability for gross violations to human rights—particularly in relation to bodily harm—it has expanded its remit and is increasingly connected to development policy, and economic, social and cultural rights. This is particularly salient in the context of the recent uprisings in the Middle East, where criminal liability for monetary and political corruption has been put on the transitional justice agenda.

Part of the difficulty in defining goals and assessing impact lies in the issue of local versus international ownership over transitional justice processes. Since the 1990s, mechanisms and processes of transitional justice have been heavily internationally driven and funded. Thus, assessing where the demand for various goals stems from and the level of local ownership are vital when discussing case-studies of transitional justice and their respective impact. Concomitantly, the local power dynamics that are at play in articulating demands also provide insight into why particular actors advocate for certain temporal boundaries of transitional justice as well as various mechanisms and institutional designs to deal with past injustices. Political parties and actors in Tunisia that have borne the brunt of state repression since the state’s independence, particularly Ennahda, have advocated for longer temporal boundaries of transitional justice that predate Ben Ali’s regime and extend back to the founding of the Tunisian state in 1956. In opting for a longer temporal boundary of transitional justice, it is evident that Ennahda seeks to “deconstruct modernist narratives” of both Ben Ali and Bourguiba and to delegitimize the older political order. Other groups, such as women that have been victims of state repression, have sought to correct historical narratives of Tunisia’s state feminism and perceptions of women’s rights in Tunisia as being the most advanced in the Arab world. Ennahda women and women affiliated with Ennahda supporters are actively seeking in this transitory phase to provide accurate narratives about what the status was for all women in Ben Ali’s Tunisia by speaking out about gender injustices.

Memories and narratives about the past are an integral part of a society’s transition post-conflict. There are more formal processes of truth telling and dealing with the past such as truth and reconciliation commissions and trials and tribunals; many of these visible processes however, have been adopted by the state. Other informal processes involve civil society, cultural production, and non-recorded narratives. In dealing with the past, participants specifically discussed martyrdom in North Africa and its role in transitional periods. Martyrs are employed into state-building efforts and the political agendas of political actors, exemplifying how the past serves an agenda for the future; the FLN in Algeria, for instance, based a lot of its political strategies on mujahedeen or martyrs. Martyrs have also been deployed by citizens of the state, as is the case in Tunisia, who have advocated for communal reparations for those that have died during the protests and have simultaneously promoted a distributary vision of the state as seen in the slogan Haq Al-Thawra or “right of the revolution.”

In various post-atrocity transitions around the world, constitutional development has been intertwined with the process of transitional justice. In dealing with past grievances and planning for the future, constitutions provide a method of creating, shaping and allocating power. Working group participants discussed the successful example of constitutional development in post-apartheid South Africa and the particular sequencing of the process. Dealing with injustices of the past presumes that the transitional justice process is a selective process that emphasizes certain problems and actors to the exclusion of others. While advantaging groups who were previously repressed, transitional justice can also create obstacles to visiting certain issues by marginalizing them during the initial process. They can also be damaging by reifying particular solutions which become problematic for society in the long-run. Participants further questioned whether there is a trade-off between the timing and depth of transitional justice. In the South African example, a consociational government drafted the interim constitution. Contrasted to the current situation in Libya, where the presence of militias has created a “shallow” form of justice and where political isolation of previous regime members has taken worse form than de-Baathification in Iraq. Participants further discussed how structural constraints related to the ancien regime can also pose challenges to institutional development and the promotion of human rights—two areas that are closely linked with transitional justice processes. Where the security sector has been implicated in human rights violations and lacks accountability, security sector reform is a focal point of institutional development. In Egypt, the continued dominant role of the army has hindered efforts of security sector reform—reform that is particularly concerned with citizen and human security rather than that of the ruling powers. Although transitional justice promotes the development of constitutions and institutional reform, whether it creates systems that align with values that are beneficial to societies in the long-run, depends on a multitude of vital factors.

While discussing constitutional development and transition, participants noted the faulty assumption that transitional justice is linked to democratization and that the endpoint to the transition is in the form of a liberal democratic system. In fact, in some cases such as the monarchies of Bahrain and Morocco, transitional justice mechanisms have been implemented without the preface of political transition. Evidently, in these cases, democratization is not the end goal, but rather, the implementation of these mechanisms may enable monarchs to gain political capital both locally and internationally. In the absence of political transition the efficacy of truth commissions and the commissions of inquiry in Morocco and Bahrain, respectively, were discussed. In addition to the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms in countries without political change, participants also discussed plans for transitional justice in cases of ongoing conflict—specifically, in Syria where members of the opposition have already drafted detailed plans for transitional justice.

Read the participant bios
See the working group schedule
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Rogaia Abusharaf, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Mohamed Arafa, Alexandria University
Omar Ashour, University of Exeter
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Mietek Boduszynski, Pomona College
Matt Buehler, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Thomas DeGeorges, American University of Sharjah
Mohammad Fadel, University of Toronto
Elham Fakhro, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Doris H. Gray, Al Akhawayn University
Sune Haugbølle, Roskilde University
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Christopher Lamont, University of Groningen
Clark Lombardi, University of Washington
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Chandra Lekha Sriram, University of East London
Ibrahim Sharqieh, Brookings Doha Center
Susan E. Waltz, University of Michigan
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

​Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Why did the Arab Spring miss the Maghreb?
2014-02-17 11:00 - 21:00
Matt Buehler, the 2013-2014 Postdoctoral Fellow at CIRS, delivered aMonthly Dialogue lecture on“Why did the Arab Spring miss the Maghreb? Continuity through Co-optation in Morocco and Mauritania,” on February 17, 2014. The talk summarized the results of in-depth fieldwork undertaken in Morocco and Mauritania, where Buehler conducted over 100 interviews with politicians and policymakers. The central question guiding Buehler’s research was, “Under what conditions did an Arab regime survive the Arab Spring?” Some popular theories currently on offer by scholars propose that monarchical states that have a wealth of natural resources, a long history of military loyalty, and a strategy of appeasing indigenous ethnic groups are more resilient and better equipped to overcome civil unrest than nations that do not enjoy similar privileges. In order to put these theories to the test, Buehler argued that it was first necessary to outline the key infrastructural and political differences exhibited by his case study countries of Morocco and Mauritania.

Giving some background to Morocco and Mauritania’s political structures, Buehler challenged the prevalent thesis of the “monarchical exception,” which states “that monarchies seemed to persist longer than non-monarchies.” He explained that, for these two countries, the regime’s mode of governance mattered little for authoritarian persistence, as both states were able to weather the storm of protests that shook their governments in 2011 and 2012, despite the fact that Morocco is a monarchy and Mauritania is not.”

Another theory Buehler examined suggests that countries with a wealth of natural resources, such as the Arab countries of the Gulf, will necessarily overcome civic discord by dint of their ability to placate any opposition by offering a series of concessions. However, although Morocco has substantial natural resources, Mauritania is poor in terms of natural endowments. Yet, they both were able to stave off any serious opposition. This theory too, Buehler argued, was unsustainable.

Observers argue that military loyalty is another crucial characteristic of regime survival, and that the perseverance of Arab regimes depended on the degree of support given by the powerful underlying military state apparatus. The collapse of governments in Egypt and Tunisia are given as key examples. Yet, Buehler argued, whereas Morocco has a history of military loyalty, “in Mauritania, by contrast, there is a very long history of military coups—every single Mauritanian president has been ousted by a coup.”

Further theories logically state that successful integration and assimilation of diverse ethnic minorities is necessarily a means of avoiding internal friction. “In some Arab countries, maybe in Bahrain, maybe in Syria, you might think marginalized ethnic minorities seized the opportunity of the Arab Spring to assert their demands,” Buehler said. However, he pointed out that Morocco has done much to integrate its once marginalized ethnic groups, but Mauritania made no such progress. Thus, once again, “we can’t say that ethnic integration was a very important factor in driving this process,” he said.

After having outlined the key dissimilarities between the two states, the key question remains “what is the commonality in Moroccan and Mauritanian strategies of survival?” He answered this by saying that “these two regimes employed a very crafty, robust strategy of co-optation, which they used to build certain political parties—pro-regime political parties.” In order to study the much abused and complex phenomenon of “co-optation” more closely, Buehler conducted a series of statistical tests throughout Morocco and Mauritania to gauge the extent of regime infiltration into rural politics. Buehler’s research findings conclude that Morocco and Mauritania’s strength “was their ability to monopolize the rural structures of power in order to buttress their rule during the Arab Spring.”

In sum, Buehler warned against the simplistic categorization of Arab states, and argued that there was no definitive answer as to why some regimes fell, whilst others overcame popular unrest in the long run. As his research in Morocco and Mauritania attests, both governments exhibited resilience in the face of the uprisings, despite their fundamental differences in terms of political structure, resource wealth, military loyalty, and ethnic integration.

Dr. Matt Buehler holds a PhD degree in government from the University of Texas at ‎Austin and he will begin ‎a tenure-track position at the University of Tennessee’s Department of Political ‎Science in fall 2014. Dr. Buehler has done extensive fieldwork in Tunisia, ‎Morocco, and Mauritania, and is currently working on a book tentatively entitled The Social Base of Divide-and-Rule: Left-‎Islamist Opposition Alliances in North Africa’s Arab Spring.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications

Arab Migrant Communities in the GCC Working Group II
2014-03-15 08:00 - 2014-03-16 18:00
On March 15, 16 2014, The final working group of CIRS’ research project Arab Migrant Communities in the GCC was held in Doha. Grant recipients of this research grant cycle gathered with an additional cohort of migration experts and scholars to discuss their research findings and to solicit feedback on their draft paper submissions. The topics investigated ranged from broad migration policies in the GCC and their respective implications on the distribution of nationalities within the population, to specific ethnographic case-studies highlighting the experiences of Arab expatriates in the Gulf.

From the onset of the Gulf oil economy in the 1950s to the present era, the ebbs and flows of Arab emigration to the GCC have largely been attributed to the Middle East’s regional geopolitical context and its influence on national migration policies. While Arab migrants formed a large component of the expatriate community up until the 1980s, their presence in the Gulf has dwindled as Asian migrants from the East currently significantly outnumber non-GCC Arabs. The participants explained that although much of the literature attributes this shift to the geo-political context, rapid development, the ensuing change in Gulf economies and the aggregate increase in demand for low-skilled labor by the private sector has also contributed to the shift in the composition of the expatriate workforce. Labor data from Qatar indicates that non-national Arabs in the Qatari labor force predominantly feature in managerial and administrative sectors, in professional, scientific and technical activities, and in services. Within particular occupations—such as teaching—Arab nationals have continued to have a steady and dominating presence primarily due to the shared linguistic and cultural affinities with nationals, and as such, demand for Arab teachers in the region shows no signs of abating. These tied porous identities coupled with the integral role of Arab migrants in teaching and children’s development, has led to what some have dubbed as the “Egyptianization” of the education field and of local culture and dialects. Thus, while GCC governments may source labor for low-skilled segments of the economy from various geographic regions, Arab migrants will continue to have a dominant presence within sectors that require certain shared cultural, linguistic, and religious affinities.

Concomitant with the rise in import of low-skilled labor has been the increased demand for high-skilled migrants as GCC states strive to develop knowledge-based economies. Participants additionally discussed Arab high-skilled migrants, particularly those emanating from emigration-prone countries such as Lebanon. Within this cohort, there is a significant presence of highly skilled female migrants that challenge the commonly perceived notion that Arab migrants to the Gulf are predominantly male. Moreover, studies within Lebanon indicate that a substantial proportion of Lebanese females migrating to the Gulf are not married, thereby also undermining the conception that female migrants are only present in their capacity as “sponsored – dependents” within the Gulf countries.

Beyond demographics and economic stratification, Working Group members discussed issues of identity, transnationalism, social inclusion and exclusion, and every-day experiences of Arab expatriates. Interviews with highly-skilled Lebanese in Kuwait have indicated that while the Gulf continues to be an attractive destination for employment, interaction and integration with nationals remains limited; this is largely attributed to the lack of provision of pathways to citizenship in the Gulf as compared to other popular destinations such as the USA or Europe. These sentiments of exclusion were also echoed by Egyptians residing in Kuwait that have characterized their stay as transitory and fleeting. While the long-standing presence of Egyptian communities in the Gulf has physically manifested itself in the areas of Khaitan and Farwaniya—labeled by some as “Cairo in Kuwait”—it is not uncommon to hear of feelings reflecting a transitory existence and fleeting relationships in Kuwait by Egyptian migrants.

However, these sentiments of lack of integration and limited inclusion do not reveal themselves uniformly across Arab communities; the decades-long presence of Arabs in the region has exhibited varying generational experiences and attitudes of migrants in the Gulf. A study of Palestinians in the UAE indicates that second-generation migrants tend to socialize with Emiratis much more than the first generation, and as such feel more integrated. Other migrants reveal intergenerational tensions between their families and their Gulf sponsors, as exhibited by the study of second-generation domestic-service Hadrami immigrants in Kuwait. While first generation Hadramis perceive success and dependency on the houses they serve as positively intertwined, the second generation views this relation as a problematic one that impedes their economic and social mobility.

The participants also discussed outlooks and perceptions of second-generation Arab migrants in comparison to other expatriate nationalities and to GCC nationals within a university setting. Given that the geopolitical context of the region will continue to play a significant role in migratory practices, student perceptions of the Arab uprisings and their socioeconomic impact on the region as a whole is vital. For instance, one study indicates that outlooks on the future of the Middle East are not overly hopeful amongst students; surprisingly however, for both GCC nationals and Arab expatriates alike, unemployment remains a significant concern for youth. Thus, the extent to which GCC labor markets will continue to absorb Arab migrants despite insecurities of national unemployment will have significant implications on regional migratory practices in the Middle East and the Gulf.

For the working group agenda, click here

For the participants’ biographies, click here

Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Abdullah M. Alajmi, Arab Open University
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Matt Buehler, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nerida Child Dimasi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Françoise De Bel-Air, Institut français du Proche-Orient (IFPO)
Ismail H. Genc, American University of Sharjah
Barb Gillis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Manal A. Jamal, James Madison University
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Susan Kippels, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research
Garret Maher, Gulf University for Science and Technology
Susan Martin, ISIM – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service
David Mednicoff, University of Massachusetts – Amherst
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
George Naufal, American University of Sharjah
Michael Newson, International Organization for Migration
Gerd Nonneman, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Natasha Ridge, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research
Nada Soudy, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar
Paul Tacon, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
Abbie Taylor, ISIM – Georgetown University
Carlos Vargas-Silva, University of Oxford
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Gas and Alternative Fuels: Present and Future Shares and Challenges
2014-03-24 08:00 - 18:00
Worldwide gas and energy exploration and production trends were the focus of a Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) Monthly Dialogue Series public lecture at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) on March 24, 2014. The event, titled “Gas and Alternative Fuels: Present and Future Shares and Challenges,” featured H.E. Dr. Seyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli, the Secretary General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), an international governmental organization, which is headquartered in Qatar, dedicated to promoting the global natural gas trade.

“What do we do in Tornado Tower here in Doha?” asked Dr. Adeli, who is also Iran’s former ambassador to Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom, and holds two Ph.D.s in economics and business administration. He answered, “Our mission is to provide an authentic platform for the discussion of gas activity and a center for debate and the exchange of ideas, to promote gas as a clean fuel, increase the market share of gas, and contribute to the stability of the global energy market. But our most important task is to develop dialogue throughout the energy market, to be in contact with other producers, exporters, consumers, academics, and all other stakeholders.”

Dr. Mehran Kamrava, Director of CIRS, emphasized the importance of the Monthly Dialogue topic, saying “We know that natural gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel, offering environmental and efficiency advantages over other energy resources. Combined with global energy needs that will only increase over time, it’s vital that we understand the market and policy forces that will impact the relationship of supply and demand. The implications for Qatar’s economy and, by extension, its national vision development goals, as well as the global economy, are tremendous, which is why we were so pleased to host an energy specialist of Dr. Adeli’s caliber on our campus for students, faculty, visiting dignitaries, and the Doha community.”

The former diplomat discussed gas market dynamics at length, which includes both liquified natural gas (LNG) and pipeline, as well as an overview on the latest revolution in the energy sector, shale oil. “There are huge technically recoverable shale gas resources globally,” he said, but noted the negative environmental impact and the required further technological and policy advances to unlock this resource potential. Other challenges faced by the energy sector include security of demand, environmental impact of coal and the technological gaps “clean coal” still faces, safety issues associated with nuclear energy, and the hurdles of subsidies and high infrastructure investment requirements to make renewable energy profitable.

Adeli also compared gas to other competing fuels in the global energy mix, noting that only natural gas and renewable energy sources, such as solar, were on the rise, as opposed to decreasing coal and oil use. “Gas consumption is increasing by 108 bcm (billion cubic meters) per year, and needs to come into production, which means we need enough investment, development, and trading to meet demands. Reserves are not enough. This is why it’s important to think about incremental increase per year.” Commenting on the supply side of the gas economy, he said, “Of course, we have an abundance of supply. Most of the supply is resources and reserves that are undeveloped. But existing projects are under development, and we are hopeful they will enter the streamline of production.”

The real issue, he points out, is the importance of country policies that ensure optimum gas production to meet both internal, and export, demands. “The dynamics of the economics of the gas domestic market everywhere is going to affect the external trade of gas. Most gas is traded domestically, 70%, and only 30% is traded internationally. When you talk about the Middle East as an exporter, you have to start at the domestic market first, assess the subsidies and efficiencies, to understand how much international exports will take place.”

The GECF member countries together hold 67% of the world’s gas reserves, and include Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Kazakhstan, Iraq, the Netherlands, and Norway have the status of Observer Members. Fossil fuels, he concluded, “have the lion’s share in the energy mix. In the power generation sector, efficiency of natural gas is the highest compared to other fuels at around 58%.” As the demand for energy rises, gas will continue to serve as a favorable source of energy, which is good news for Qatar, and for all of the members of the GECF.

Seyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli is the Secretary General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). A career diplomat, Dr. Adeli has served as Iran’s ambassador to Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His previous positions also include Governor of the Central Bank of Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic and Energy Affairs, and Advisor to President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Upon retiring from the diplomatic corps, he founded the Ravand Institute for Economic and International Studies, which is today one of Iran’s premier research and consulting firms. Dr. Adeli holds two PhD degrees, one in business administration and the other in economics.

Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy
2014-04-07 08:00 - 18:00
CIRS held its inaugural Faculty Research Workshop on April 7, 2014, led by Karl Widerquist, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Participants were invited to discuss his book titled, Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy. The manuscript is currently in its final stages of preparation and argues that many prominent contemporary political theories rely on false claims about human origins and life in non-state societies. This book shows how several dubious claims became widely accepted premises because they seemed plausible (or even obvious) to Europeans of the early colonial period. It shows how contemporary theories continue to pass on those premises, often unnoticed and unchallenged, and it assembles anthropological and archaeological evidence to refute them. Finally, it discusses the ramifications of these findings for contemporary justifications of property, inequality, and the state.

The CIRS Faculty Research Workshop, in the form of a closed-door, one-day seminar, gathers together a small number of renowned scholars to engage in a focused discussion on a book manuscript that is in its final stages of preparation and has been authored by a member of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar faculty. The gathering consists of a series of structured brainstorming sessions, through which we engage in a thorough and critical discussion of the book manuscript. All participants will have read the entire manuscript in advance of the meeting and we ask individual scholars to lead focused group discussions on different chapters.

See the workshop agendaRead about the participants

Karl Widerquist specializes in political philosophy. His research is mostly in the area of distributive justice—the ethics of who has what. He holds two doctorates—one in Political Theory form Oxford University (2006) and one in Economics from the City University of New York (1996). He is the author of Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), and coauthor of Economics for Social Workers (Columbia University Press 2002), Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (Wiley-Blackwell 2013), Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), and the Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee (Ashgate 2005). He is currently under contract to author or coauthor two more books: Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press 2014) and Justice as the Pursuit of Accord (Palgrave Macmillan 2015).

CIRS supported the publication of Karl Widerquist and Grant S.McCall’s book Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press/Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

The Evolution of Gulf Global Cities Working Group II
2014-04-12 08:00 - 2014-04-13 18:00
On April 12-13, 2014, CIRS held the final Working Group of “The Evolution of Gulf Global Cities” research initiative. Academics from various disciplinary backgrounds as well as architects, urban planners and designers gathered for the second meeting to discuss their research findings and papers around the theme of Gulf cities. The topics discussed ranged in their geographic coverage of the Persian Gulf and in their temporal analysis extending back to the early-twentieth century until the present-day. Elements of continuity and change in the urban landscape were discussed against the political, cultural and historical backdrop of the Gulf region.

Rapid urbanization and rising skylines have invigorated academic focus on cities of the Gulf. Opening the discussion, participants questioned the way in which Gulf cities are discussed in a highly depoliticized manner within popular discourse. Gulf cities are categorically described as transnational and global cities that are also “prosperous, modern and stable in a larger, more volatile and impoverished region”—how do these depictions diffuse images of the Gulf that constitute a certain ideological substrate? Discussants problematized the category of “city” itself, and pushed their analysis further to incorporate more socially and politically nuanced understandings of space. For instance, how do non-citizens live and fit within the space of the city? How do construction workers who help build the city find their place in these spaces that are generally depicted as transnational and metropolitan yet are highly segregated and limit the mobility of a cohort of its inhabitants? These are all questions that reflect on the current unspoken discursive formations of cities in the Gulf – formations that define ‘cities’ based on narrow and depoliticized interpretations.

While the current depictions of Gulf cities as “transnational” and “global” assume a historical break and disjuncture with urban characteristics of the pre-oil Gulf, participants discussed forms of transnational urbanism that were present in the early twentieth-century port cities. With its vast global networks, the region has always exhibited elements of transnationalism—however, its urban forms have also historically exhibited a privileging of homogeneity and unity of identity and class; a privileging that has led to the control and a morphological segregation and separation of difference. Looking at pluralism within the historical evolution of Gulf cities indicates that while they may have always been transnational, they have not been equally cosmopolitan.

Giving historical context to these spaces, Working Group members discussed linkages between territory, territoriality, infrastructure, and nation-building in the Gulf. In the case of the UAE, infrastructure played a central role during the country’s transformation from an itinerant territory to a fixed one based on oil extraction and subsequently on real estate development. A tool utilized for developing territory, infrastructure was also utilized by the political rulers as a nation-building medium that formed the essence of Emirati discourses on development, its modern territorial order, and ultimately the order of the state. Current major real-estate developers in the UAE—particularly in Dubai—continue to be under the basic control and power of the Emirati rulers, highlighting real-estate’s distinctive role vis-à-vis the state in promoting economic growth and reinventing the identity of the city.

While oil and gas revenues have heavily financed infrastructural developments and mega-projects in the Gulf, recent strides to lay the post-oil era foundation and to develop knowledge-based economies have also influenced their urban fabric. The proliferation of “smart cities,” cities within cities, free trade zones, mixed-use projects and tourism projects are indicative of this transition. Despite rapid urban development, pockets of historical traditional neighborhoods continue to exist in the Gulf. These spaces provide meaningful insight into the sentiments of residents and their emotional attachment and belonging to place in the midst of the proliferating presence of gated compounds and large houses encapsulated by tall fences. Place identity is a central component of residential satisfaction and as a case-study of traditional neighborhoods in Muscat reveals, the sense of community that residents ascribe to a place is what gives place meaning. Efforts to reconstruct and rehabilitate traditional neighborhoods around the Gulf—such as Msheireb in Doha, which envisions bringing the heart of the city back to its roots—in fact risk losing “place-meaning,” by practicing “place-making” and commoditizing the “traditional.” Across the Gulf, stressed or “decaying fabrics” of historical areas in Bandar-Abbas experiencing physical and economic decline have expanded throughout the city. While the government has housing plans to renovate these areas, low-income residents will most likely be pushed to the fringes of the city—exacerbating the “informalization” of their settlements and limiting their right to the city.

Read the participant bios
See the working group schedule
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Pooya Alaedini, University of Tehran
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Marike Bontenbal, German University of Technology in Oman
Matt Buehler, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nerida Child Dimasi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Remah Gharib, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies
Barb Gillis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Ahmed Kanna, University of the Pacific
Arang Keshavarzian, New York University
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Stephen J. Ramos, University of Georgia
Ashraf M. Salama, Qatar University
Evren Tok, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Florian Wiedmann, Wiedmann Mirincheva Associates

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Networked Arab Publics and Contention in the Digital Age
2014-04-15 08:00 - 18:00
Mohamed Zayani, Associate Professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, delivered a CIRS Focused Discussion lecture on “Networked Arab Publics and Contention in the Digital Age” on April 15, 2014. The talk was based on Zayani’s ongoing book project, which analyzes the changing relationship between media and politics in the Arab world, especially as it relates to the Arab uprisings in Tunisia. The book provides an ethnographic account of evolving media practices that bring into focus the intricate relationship between the emerging digital culture in the Arab world; youth engagement and youth involvement; cyber dissidence and resistance; and political expression. Zayani was prompted into further investigations on the subject because in much of the literature, the role of media, especially social media, was either highly inflated or unduly analyzed, leaving little room to cogitate upon the complexities of the nuanced relationship between people, media, politics, and power.

Examining the media’s role in the Arab uprisings, Zayani highlighted the importance of country-specific studies. There has been a tendency to cast the countries of the Arab uprisings into a single homogenous phenomenon under the rubric of the “Arab Spring,” without paying attention to the important contextual differences between each state. Tunisia proved to be a crucial site of convergence for media, politics, and popular contention as it was the first Arab country to connect to the Internet in 1991 and the first overt site of the Arab uprisings. Thus, Zayani analyzes the correlation between Internet penetration and political change, arguing that “on the one hand, the country lived under the rule of a regime that proved adept at modernizing authoritarianism and ensuring regime durability. On the other hand, the country adopted an avant-garde Internet development model and purposefully sought to build a digital infrastructure that is capable of positioning the country as a model for an aspiring networked society in the age of globalization.” Attempts to balance these two factors was a challenge for the Tunisian regime, which ultimately collapsed under the pressure of a technologically-equipped and vocalized public.

As Arab media quickly developed during the 1990s creating a virtual public sphere where political issues could be discussed relatively openly, this schism became even more pronounced. Internet activism was especially propelled by a number of factors including the demographic reality of the region, which was encompassed in a youth bulge where two-thirds of the Arab world are below the age of 25. “The conundrum was that this significant socio-demographic category has been largely left out of political life – or at least that was the perception.” Importantly, this significant and growing youthful population was buoyed by two simultaneous phenomena of mass education and mass media, both of which were significant in their challenge to traditional constructions of authority and advocacy of critical thinking.

Focusing on questions of political socialization, Zayani’s study is geared towards answering a central question: “how do young people become politicized on the Internet?” This goes against the general assumption that Arab youth were, on the whole, politically marginalized and disinterested. The events of the Arab uprisings proved the contrary, and Arab youth exhibited strong political consciousness, activism, and engagement. The main overlooked issue is that they tend to express their political stances through means other than formal political structures.

Thus, Zayani concluded by noting the importance of challenging traditional categorizations of what it means to be political, explaining: “My study aims to redirect attention from the formal political institutions of the Arab world to the politics of everyday life.” In this reformulation, digital contention yields more than just dissidence; it encourages other forms of assertiveness associated with the concept of citizenship.

Mohamed Zayani is an Affiliate Faculty with the Communication, Culture and Technology Graduate Program and the 2013-1014 Faculty Fellow with the Center for Regional and International Studies. His works include Reading the Symptom (1999), Arab Satellite Television and Politics in the Middle East (2004), The Al Jazeera Phenomenon: Critical Perspectives on New Arab Media (2005) and The Culture of Al Jazeera: Inside an Arab Media Giant (2007). He is a recipient of numerous grants, including a Social Science Research Council grant, and a Member of the UNESCO Committee of Experts on Cultural Diversity.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications

New Paradigms for a Palestine in Perpetual Limbo?
2014-04-21 08:00 - 18:00
Sam Bahour, Managing Partner at Applied Information Management (AIM), Director at the Arab Islamic Bank and a policy adviser to the Al-Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on “New Paradigms for a Palestine in Perpetual Limbo,” on April 21, 2014, which centered on the persisting nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Bahour explained that it is not just the overt acts of Israeli violence and injustice that Palestine must overcome, but the “peace industry” itself that has been built around the problem and that paradoxically sustains the struggle even as it attempts to aid in its resolution. A solid superstructure of international NGOs, human rights organizations, advocacy groups, academic think tanks, cultural programs, and solidarity groups have been constructed around the conflict, and thrive off of its existence.

Bahour argued that Palestine is in a state of perpetual limbo because “today’s Israeli position rests on the assumption that procrastination will continue to tilt the strategic balance increasingly in Israel’s favor.” Decade by decade, he adumbrated key instances of how power relations between Israel and Palestine were incrementally and consistently skewed in favor of the Israeli state and with the backing, or indifference, of much of the international community. The Israeli occupation has ingrained ideological pathologies that do not conceptualize Palestinians as equals or as deserving of equality. “We are not facing a right-wing Israeli government. We are facing the state institution of Israel, which has embedded within it an exclusivist ideology of Zionism bent on maintaining a world view which gives preferential treatment to Jews, and is bent on redemption of the land of Israel,” Bahour explained.

Israel is reticent to reach a final settlement and to put an end to the conflict because of four perceived alternatives to a negotiated agreement—all of which are in Israel’s favor and which undermine the Palestinian position. The first is for Israel to prolong negotiations indefinitely by feigning progress even as it encroaches on Palestinian lands and rights. The second is for Israel to set up a pseudo-provisional two-state arrangement wherein a weakened Palestinian authority masquerades as a Palestinian government. The third is a unilateral separation dictated by Israel, and the fourth is for Egypt and Jordan to assume control of the occupied territories.

However, “Israeli strategic planners overestimate their own strength and underestimate the strategic opportunities available to the Palestinians,” he said, as these four Israeli-favored outcomes can be challenged by the reorientation of Palestinian strategy through four new paradigms. These include putting an end to the idea of a two-state negotiation; the reconstitution of the Palestinian authority into a more proactive entity serving Palestinian priorities; the elevation of intelligent resistance over negotiations and the reassertion of national unity through reform of the PLO and eliciting international third-party support; and the shift from a two-state solution to a bi-national or unitary democratic single state. When Palestinians finally concede to the fact that a genuine negotiated outcome is not being offered by the Israelis, they will be able to conscientiously reject the idea of a two-state solution.

Shifting to his perspective as a Palestinian parent, Bahour spoke about how his daughters perceive the future of Palestine. Although his children are aware of the total military occupation that restricts their lives, their modern and globalized attitude means that they think differently on the same issues, and have their own opinions on how the conflict should be resolved. Speaking from the perspective of the Palestinian youth generation, his daughters lamented the futility of fighting against Israel’s behemoth military and nuclear power and expressed their fatigue with decades of struggling for an international law which cannot be implemented. They opted instead to redefine Palestinian self-determination, and to come up with a radical alternative that is both unimaginable and unacceptable to the older generation of Palestinians: conceding that the Palestinians are powerless to create a viable state under the current conditions, thus surrendering the Palestinian struggle for statehood in return for their full human, civil, and political rights within the structure of the Israeli state.

“The issue of Palestine reflects a historical injustice so large and so blatant that its flame refuses to extinguish,” he argued, but this new paradigm of self-determination as envisioned by Palestinian youth turns the model of the conflict on its head and defies decades of orchestrated Israeli control with its counter-intuitive offering. Thus, Bahour concluded, the youth generation “is at a crossroads between continuing on the statehood path, which we are losing by the day […] or to drop statehood and call for civil rights.”

Sam bahour is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine. He is a freelance business consultant operating as Applied Information Management (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on start-ups. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Palestine Telecommunications Company and the PLAZA Shopping Center, and recently completed a full term as a Board of Trustees member at Birzeit University. He serves in various capacities in several community organizations, including serving as a policy adviser to Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, a member of the core Local Reference Group of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), and co-founder of the Dalia Association. Sam writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and has been widely published. He is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians and may be reached at sbahour@gmail.com. He blogs at www.epalestine.com.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications

Gary Wasserman Lectures on “Why Are We Here (in Doha)?”
2014-04-27 08:00 - 18:00
Gary Wasserman, professor of Government at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, delivered a CIRS Focused Discussionlecture titled, “Why Are We Here (in Doha)?” on April 27, 2014. Encouraging discussion among members of the Georgetown University in Qatar community, Wasserman noted that he did not have an answer to the question posed in the title of the lecture, but would offer five different possible models that approach an answer.

The first model is to consider Georgetown University in Qatar as an extension of the American imperium. In this model, the United States offers the Middle East region two of its key capabilities: military bases for regional security, and US schools providing world class education—in other words, what political scientists call hard power of economic wealth and military weapons as well as soft power of ideas. In this sense, Wasserman argued “we are the American superpower in its educational garb.”

These offerings are not necessarily negative and may be key to the current peace and prosperity in much of the world. The limitation to this model, however, is that the faculty and educators at Georgetown in Qatar do not necessarily serve as ideal ambassadors of US government policy. They are more likely to dissent, to question, and to challenge official US policy in their critical scribblings, and in their informed debates with students and others, whether at home or abroad. Moreover, the Qatari hosts are hardly a passive colonized people; they initiated this relationship, they pay for it, and they negotiate the contract under which Georgetown in Qatar operates, at the least as equals.

On the opposite end of the spectrum lies the second model offered by Wasserman—the “expat model.” Here, individual members of the Georgetown community travel abroad to practice their professions; a practical task that is not always integrated into that of any larger, more idealized notion of a Western institution. In this sense, he argued, “we are well-compensated hired help. We are here to fill a job and provide a service that cannot be produced locally; arguably a home-delivered prestige commodity—a Western brand name.” However, Wasserman’s objection to this model is that, whether consciously or not, Georgetown is expected to, and is in fact, changing behavior, as all educational institutions are wont to do.

The third model is the “contract model,” where Georgetown is obligated to act as a professional school for training diplomats in and for Qatar. The institution was invited by its Qatari hosts to offer some, but not all, aspects of the Georgetown college experience, sanitizing the more controversial elements of US culture and society. Wasserman’s reservations of this model center on the fact that very few of the graduates actually end up in the foreign service, and so the Georgetown education is far more encompassing than merely a training center for diplomats. “We are in fact as close to a liberal arts college as Education City gets,” he explained.

Which leads to the fourth model, that of “liberalism,” where Georgetown can be seen as spreading secular humanism in the form of the widest possible inquiry and tolerance of freedom of thought and expression, especially as for those who struggle with social oppression in terms of gender, race, or sexual orientation. However, Wasserman’s objection to the applicability of this model is that even though Georgetown invites students to think for themselves, the institution is in fact asking them to subscribe to a particular Westernized ideal of thinking. By being in Qatar, Georgetown must reconcile with the reality that it does not operate in a liberal society that elevates individual thought above all. Rather it is one where family, community, and religious ties are more highly valued. The students from this region are a complex mix of loyalty and obligation to their families and societies, along with a desire to integrate into globalizing outlooks and identities. This mixed campus experience makes it difficult for Georgetown to “cleanly” deliver the traditional Western ideals of liberalism. Nor should we, Wasserman stated.

The fifth and concluding model Wasserman offered is what he called “the muddled bubble.” In this model, Georgetown in Qatar is operating, without a set blueprint, in an environment of messy uncertainty. This, he argued, will necessarily mean that the institution is at the interface of different and changing cultures. “We occupy what should be an uncomfortable, unpredictable, but potentially innovative space,” he argued. The model of the bubble demands that Georgetown in Qatar seek a degree of autonomy, not only from potentially reactionary local pressures, but also from the foreign traditions and interests of the main campus. The “muddled” part of the model, he explained, comes from the experimental, unclear process by which we create an unusual blend of transnational students prepared for an unclear and unique future. Thus, Wasserman concluded, we should celebrate our unique position of being muddled “not by a clash of civilizations, but by a confusion of civilizations.”

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications.

Gary Wasserman has fashioned a career in teaching, political consulting and writing. Previously he taught graduate students at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Nanjing, China. He received his Ph.D. with Distinction from Columbia University. He recently wrote Politics in Action: Cases in Modern American Government (2012), and Pearson is publishing the 15th edition of his text, The Basics of American Politics (2015). His MOOC, “The Game of American Politics,” is available online this spring.

Healthcare Policy and Politics in the Gulf States Working Group I
2014-04-27 18:00 - 2014-04-28 18:00
On April 27-28, 2014, CIRS convened the first working group under the research initiative Healthcare Policy and Politics in the Gulf States. Healthcare practitioners, strategists and social scientists from various disciplinary backgrounds gathered over two days to discuss the rapidly changing health profile of the region, the existing conditions of health systems, and the challenges posed to healthcare management across the six countries of the GCC.

In recent decades, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) governments have heavily invested in socioeconomic development and have increasingly played an instrumental role in the development of healthcare systems. Rapid transformation of health systems took place between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s across the six GCC States. Commonalities between GCC states, such as geographic location, political order, the presence of hydrocarbon reserves, and the large influx of foreigners into the region, have created common threads across the healthcare industries of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. The evolution of healthcare systems, however, has not been uniform across the region, with Oman (ranked 8th in the 2000 World Health Report on health systems) and Bahrain experiencing more successful models of development as compared to their Gulf counterparts. The participants attributed this development to two salient features in healthcare planning: local healthcare leadership and progressive planning that focused on comprehensive health services. The healthcare leadership involved in the organization and planning of Oman’s healthcare system in the early 1970s was predominantly comprised of local expertise allowing for models of development that were based on local needs and that were conducive to the local environment catering towards long-term development of the sector. This stands in comparison to the “mercenary mentality” that was characteristic of foreign healthcare leadership in other GCC States. Bahrain was amongst the first in the GCC to set up primary healthcare centers enabling a significant proportion of the population to easily access health services—a sector that continues to be under-developed in other GCC states as they disproportionately give emphasis to secondary and tertiary care. Despite disparate levels of healthcare services development across the GCC, the GCC secretariat has adopted some common plans and models that provide a regional approach to the sector. One example is the GCC-wide common purchasing in the pharmaceutical industry, which started in the mid-1970s and has, accordingly, had a major impact on the market. More recently, GCC ministers of health have agreed to create a unified mental health improvement plan to develop a sector that has long been neglected in the region and that is in need of transformation.

While GCC healthcare expenditure continues to be on the rise, there remains a significant gap between investments in healthcare and health outcomes of Gulf citizenry. Rapid urbanization rates and changes in lifestyle have resulted in populations that exhibit a high prevalence of diabetes and obesity (in Qatar, for instance, 70% of nationals are overweight and 40% are obese). Chronic non-communicable disease is on the rise in the Gulf and, as such, preventive medicine and lifestyle health are of growing importance, emphasizing a necessary shift from the current focus on secondary curative care. Moreover, primary care – considered to be the “gate-keeper” of healthcare models in developed countries around the world – plays a key role in preventive medicine, emphasizing the need to provide incentives to patients for its utilization. In addition to the type of care, participants emphasized the need for multidisciplinary teams—incorporating nutrition experts and diabetes educators, for instance—to effectively prevent a rise in the prevalence of chronic disease.

While Gulf nationals predominantly suffer from these lifestyle diseases, the expatriate and migrant populations of the GCC have health profiles that are distinct from nationals. The three tiered population of the region—comprised of locals, long-term residents, and more transient migrant workers—requires Gulf governments to plan accordingly for the health needs of each population. One segment of the population, short-term migrants, is largely employed in the construction sectors of the GCC and, as such, incorporation of occupational health and safety in the healthcare model is another component that the Gulf is increasingly focusing on. Much like the need for preventive care in the case of lifestyle diseases, primary needs for occupational health—such as safety assessments and hazard identification—are not healthcare related but are related to prevention. To have an effective systems approach to occupational health however, a feedback system needs to be incorporated that includes frontline workers and allows for open communication with higher management. Achieving this form of participatory health planning and management, however, is very challenging in hierarchical settings that lack labor unions and labor management.

In addition to satisfying the health needs of foreign migrant residents—who comprise the bulk of GCC populations—GCC states have to cope with their reliance on foreign skills to supply their healthcare workforce. This poses broad risks to the region as the excessive reliance on foreign human resources may leave GCC states vulnerable in times of regional sociopolitical instability should there be an exodus of the foreign workforce. In the absence of political crises, however, challenges remain. In the hospital setting or workplace where nurses, physicians, and staff come from a variety of different cultures, speak a multitude of languages, and have been trained under different schools and standards, the effectiveness of providing care is challenged. Additionally, the hierarchical social organization that was outlined in the context of the construction industry is also prevalent in hospital settings—much of it due to many of the GCC states’ sponsorship system (kefala) where tenuousness exists in the work-status of foreign staff. This tenuousness affects relationship dynamics between local and foreign staff and between patients and hospital staff.

While participants of the working group tackled a multitude of topics—ranging from substance abuse in the Gulf to social organization of nursing practices—a common challenge facing scholars studying healthcare in the region is the lack of both available and published data. Thus, while the industry is rapidly evolving, scholarship on the topic remains limited and is constrained by the limited availability of information, underscoring the need for additional research on the area.

Read the participant bios
See the working group schedule
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Mohamad Alameddine, American University of Beirut
Samir Al-Adawi, Sultan Qaboos University
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Matt Buehler, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nerida Child Dimasi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Suhaila Ghuloum, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar; Hamad Medical Center
Barb Gillis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Cother Hajat, United Arab Emirates University
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nadir Kheir, Qatar University
Nabil Kronfol, Lebanese Healthcare Management Association; Center for Studies on Ageing
Ravinder Mamtani, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
Tatjana Martinoska, Enertech Qatar
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Janet Rankin, University of Calgary Qatar
Salman Rawaf, Imperial College London; WHO Collaborating Center for Public Health Education and Training
Ganesh Seshan, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Rosemary Sokas, Georgetown University
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Insights into the Qatari Legal System
2014-05-12 08:00 - 18:00
Mohammed Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Assistant Professor of Commercial Law at Qatar University and the 2013-2014 CIRS-Qatar University Fellow, delivered the final CIRSMonthly Dialogue lecture of the 2013-2014 academic year on May 12, 2014. The topic of discussion was “Insights into the Qatari Legal System,” wherein Al-Khulaifi gave an overview of Qatari regulations, the judicial and legislative sectors, and the relationship between legislation and developments in Qatar. Current Qatari legislations are divided into two main categories. The first is public law, which involves the public authority such as international law, constitutional law, and criminal law. The second is private law, which includes civil and commercial laws.

Al-Khulaifi gave some background to Qatari legal history by noting that, since the 7th century, early Qatari society referred to custom and Shari‘ah when solving disputes, which were used extensively in cases put forth by pearl divers of the time. Despite the Gulf countries’ subscription to the British mandate in the modern period, Shari‘ah law remained as the prevailing law for citizens. Since Qatari society has always been regulated by a traditional form of social governance, “it would be majorly incorrect to say that the history of law in Qatar started with the issuance of the official gazette in 1960,” he explained. With Qatari independence in 1971, there was an overhaul of the legal system wherein “British courts were eliminated and replaced by the ‘Qatari justice courts,’” which presides over civil, commercial, and criminal law, while the Shari‘ah court presides over family and inheritance issues.

Since the establishment of the hydrocarbon industry in Qatar, the country’s legal system went through a significant transformation to pave the way for foreign corporate and economic interests and investments. This has been achieved by adopting laws that ease the legal process for doing business, and by aligning with many of the international norms, he noted. Currently, “Qatar is engaged in a tremendous number of high-value projects,” as “the country is involved with approximately US$250 billion worth of projects related to the preparation of the FIFA World Cup 2022,” he added.

Describing the legal process itself, Al-Khulaifi explained that, in order for one of the ministries to propose issuing a law, it is first prepared as a “draft” created by specialized legal committees in the Council of Ministers, which is then presented to the Shura Council for consideration. Upon acceptance, the Shura Council returns the “draft” to the Council of Ministers to be crafted into its final form and then to be issued by the Office of His Highness the Emir. Once it is signed by His Highness the Emir, it is sent to the Ministry of Justice for publication in the official Gazette of the State for application in public life. “It is also quite crucial to emphasize that the Qatar legislations are mostly similar in content to the legislations in the Gulf region and the Arab World,” he continued.

In conclusion, Al-Khulaifi noted that Qatar was ranked 14th in the 2011-2012 Global Competitiveness Ranking. Since there is such growth in the commercial and business sectors in Qatar, which are continually expanding, there should also be vigilance regarding the application of the law, and dealing with any necessary revision as needed. “This fact should continuously notify the legislator and lawmakers in the country to cope with the ultimate development in the different fields of law by reviewing the existing laws and providing new reliable regulations that would legally protect […] development in Qatar,” he concluded.Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications.Mohammed Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi graduated from Qatar University with a Bachelor degree in Law (LL.B) in 2007 and received his Master of Laws (LL.M) and Judicial Science Doctorate (J.S.D) degrees from University of California, Berkeley in 2011. Al-Khulaifi received the State Ph.D. award from H.H. Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, the Qatari Emir, at Qatar Education Excellence Day in 2012. Besides his academic work, Al-Khulaifi is an authorized Qatari attorney at Abdulaziz Saleh Al-Khulaifi’s law office in Doha. In addition, he has been consulted by governmental institutions to present his legal opinions on matters related to commercial legislations in the state of Qatar.

CIRS Travels to New Delhi
2014-05-13 08:00 - 2014-05-17 18:00
As part of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar’s efforts to foster academic and institutional linkages with organizations around the world, members of the Center for International and Regional Studies, SFS-Q faculty, and Georgetown University staff traveled to New Delhi, India, on May 13-17, 2014. During the four day trip, the cohort of Georgetown community members held an alumni reception and met with various research foundations, policy think tanks, and universities in India including: the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi Policy Group, and Jindal Global University – School of International Affairs. During each of these visits, SFS-Q faculty and CIRS researchers—Mehran Kamrava, Abdullah Al-Arian, Mark Farha, Gary Wasserman, and Zahra Babar—gave talks pertaining to their respective areas of research and engaged in academic discourse and dialogue with professors, researchers, dignitaries, and students based in India. Linking the Gulf region to India, professors from Doha and researchers, dignitaries, and UN officials from India discussed issues of mutual interest and concern in the West Asia region—particularly, in the context of “Nuclear Trends in West Asia,” and “Regional Responses to the Iran Nuclear Deal” during the visit to the Observer Research Foundation. Broadening the geographic area of focus, SFS-Q faculty gave talks at the Delhi Policy Group on “Changing dynamics in West Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East,” addressing issues related to Iran and Persian Gulf security and evolving domestic political dynamics in Egypt. At Jindal Global University – School of International Affairs, students, professors, researchers, and journalists gathered for a workshop on “Internal and External Dynamics in the Middle East Post-Arab Spring.” During the meeting, participants covered an array of research areas ranging from external and internal security in the Gulf, to the “stalled revolution in Egypt” and sectarianism in the Middle East.

These various engagements enabled participants to explore and exchange research on the Middle East and India, linking the two regions academically and having a dialogue on geographic, social, political, and economic connections. The meetings also provided SFS-Q faculty with a platform for professional development. The professors were able to give multiple talks, share their research and insights with the various organizations, and additionally benefit from the expertise and knowledge of their counterparts at various policy and academic research institutions and universities in India.

See the Observer Research Foundation meeting agenda
See the Delhi Policy Group meeting agenda
See the Jindal Global University workshop agenda

The State and Innovation in the Gulf Working Group II
2014-06-03 08:00 - 2014-06-04 18:00
On June 3-4, 2014, CIRS held the second working group under the State and Innovation in the Gulf research initiative. Participants reconvened in Doha to discuss their paper submissions that collectively analyze efforts of GCC states to diversify their oil-based economies into knowledge-based economies (KBEs), the manifestation of these efforts on the ground, and the structural realities that facilitate or hinder this transition.

Significant dependence on the oil and gas industry has led to the development of national visions and strategies that actively seek to diversify GCC economies. These diversification efforts are not merely related to the diffusion of risk by decreasing dependence on the volatile oil and gas sector, but are rather increasingly intertwined with elements associated with KBEs—namely job creation and the development of sectors with high knowledge content. Global rankings such as the World Bank’s Knowledge Assessment Methodology database provide a comparative indication of the status of knowledge economies around the world. While GCC countries rank below European and North American countries in the World Bank’s KAM database, they also score significantly higher than other states in the MENA region. Despite this relative indication of GCC rankings, participants questioned the applicability of these assessments to the region due to the Gulf’s peculiar economic transition throughout the decades. Developed countries around the world—those that tend to score higher on these global rankings—have gone through a developmental evolution from agrarian to industrial economies, then transitioned to information societies, which led to the present knowledge economies. Gulf states however, are attempting to leapfrog from pearling and trading economies to robust KBEs. The core cause of this rapid transition in the region—in comparison to other resource-based economies such as Norway—is attributable to the concurrent discovery of oil and establishment of nationhood, leading Gulf rulers to focus on strengthening their rule by building physical infrastructure, providing basic services, and essentially suspending the diversification process. Production oriented structures and practices were thus sidelined by robust oil earnings, leading participants to question: can countries which have not been through the industrial revolution enter the knowledge economy phase of development?

One of the ways in which Gulf states are attempting to build the foundations of their respective KBEs is by heavily investing in human capital and intangible assets through the establishment of vast educational and research facilities. By replicating and adopting models of education from abroad, this form of investment enables Gulf states to “leapfrog the lengthy and costly process of indigenous growth and maturity”—indicating a strong motivation to catch-up with the developed world and compete in the global race for innovation. While borrowing and replicating models may have its advantages in reducing the time and cost of establishing native educational systems, the process of borrowing, adoption and implementation is a complex and costly one itself. Cultural transmission is one of the core components of education, and as such, having a standard model that is imported from abroad omits the required cultural and contextual fit for education systems to be locally effective. Second, excessive reliance on foreign models and external providers retards the growth of local capacity building in the Gulf—essentially hindering the ability to foster knowledge and expertise produced locally. Despite this tendency to replicate and borrow, Gulf states have exhibited forms of innovation in developing their education systems. Education City—the flagship of Qatar Foundation in Qatar—is a model of clustered international branch campuses (IBCS), where a number of foreign universities operate under the umbrella of Education City. This clustered model of IBCs creates opportunities for integrating the educational experiences of the different universities, allowing students to cross-register for classes and providing a platform for joint-degree programs and research collaborations to take place. Due to the benefits of this model of clustered IBCs – or the Education City model – other regions of the globe are attempting to adopt it. While the benefits are clear, it is a costly endeavor and its global level of diffusion will largely be dictated by the ability of states with fewer resources than Qatar to effectively replicate the model.

Large investments in higher education are tailored towards developing the skills of the national workforce and producing the “knowledge worker” that is required by KBEs. Despite this investment in human capital however, Gulf nationals are continuously drawn to employment in the public sector—where they accrue large benefits from the state—as opposed to seeking employment in the private sector. While foreigners comprise the bulk of GCC populations and as such dominate the private sector, they have a temporary presence in the labor market due migration policies that limit their duration of stay. This has adverse effects on developing KBEs due to hindering local knowledge retention and transfer of imported foreign knowledge. In developed countries, the private sector is traditionally conceived of as the bearer and fosterer of innovation; however, with minimal presence of nationals in the private sector and the temporally limited presence of expatriates, there exists a large disjuncture between investment in human capital and labor market outcomes that reap the benefits of these investments. In an attempt to fill this gap, GCC states are promoting entrepreneurship by developing institutions that support local entrepreneurs and SMEs, with the aims of building a robust private sector that is promotive of innovation. In the recent years, the SME ecosystem has witnessed a mushrooming of institutions and organizations mandated to cater their services towards the support of private business. While the strategies and infrastructure for SME promotion may be set in place, the pervasive rentier arrangement in the Gulf provides a thick security blanket of social benefits that continues to deter nationals from fostering an entrepreneurial spirit—a spirit that is largely based on uncertainty and risk-taking.

Increasingly so, it is apparent that what is lacking in the GCC is not necessarily the infrastructure or the investment in pillars of a knowledge based economy—but in creating an environment and a national system that is conducive to knowledge creation and innovation. When it comes to university-industry-government collaborations, it appears that the role of the government in incentivizing both universities and industries to collaborate in knowledge exchange and management is weak in some GCC states such as Qatar. As such, industries continue to operate in silos, curtailing the diffusion of knowledge throughout the economy. Moreover, it becomes evident that while state rhetoric is supportive of creating KBEs that foster innovation, the structural realities of Gulf states—namely the rentier arrangements and the demographic imbalance—actively mitigate against the translation of these national visions and strategies into concrete realities, hindering the realization of KBEs and keeping innovation at shallow levels.

See the participant bios
See the Working Group agenda
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Haytham Abduljawad, Qatar Petroleum
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
John Crist, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Crystal A. Ennis, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Martin Hvidt, Zayed University
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Daniel Kirk, Emirates College for Advanced Education
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

World Regions: The Middle Eastern Pivot Working Group I
2014-06-08 08:00 - 18:00
On June 8, 2014, CIRS and the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies (SBIGS) held the first working group under the collaborative research initiative World Regions: The Middle Eastern Pivot. Scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds gathered for the meeting in Doha to discuss topics related to the concept of “regions,” the construction of regional identities, and world regions and civilizations.

Participants began the working group meeting with a discussion of “a Pangaean approach to world regions.” The new-old approach to world regions categorized regions using physical and meta-geographical distinctions. Physically, the distinction is the seven continents that resulted as a fragmentation of the old super-continent Pangea. Other meta-geographical distinctions are: nation-states, which arise out of political categories; North-South and core, periphery, and semi-periphery economic categorizations; and cultural distinctions such as the occident and the orient. However, this traditional way of studying regions lacks the incorporation of the human impact on the geo-body, which is largely affected by techno-scientific means. While the new-old approach fragments the earth based on a predominantly socio-cultural perspective, the new-new approach—or the Pangea II project—seeks to integrate the techno-scientific lens with the cultural studies lens. Our socio-natural impact gives rise to a global techno-scientific culture requiring new imagery and a re-mapping of the world—as Pangea II. Participants also discussed the importance of language when constructing and re-mapping regions. The notion of “world” regions emphasizes the diversity and divisions between various regions, whereas the concept of “global” regions may focus more on the interconnections and overlaps, accounting for the ongoing change that is occurring to earth as a whole and providing a binocular view that incorporates socio-cultural and socio-natural constituents.

“The Islamicate civilization and the Persianate world” was the second topic of discussion amongst participants. The growth of Orientalism by the end of the eighteenth century led to a shift from a unitary to a plural notion of civilization. The Orientalist approach to civilization used language as the decisive marker, and as such, based on the generation and influence of the Persian language, the Persianate world is considered to be a civilizational zone. Max Weber’s approach to civilization replaces language with religion as the main marker. In this conception, the Islamicate civilization is constituted as a world region. These conceptions of world regions are not mutually exclusive and as such identities can be intersecting and overlapping allowing one to be simultaneously Muslim, Persianate and Middle Eastern. In considering world regions as a unit of analysis, geographic, cultural or political, and structural coherence are considered to be the basic criterion. Geographic coherence was evident in ancient and medical empires that were territorially contiguous. Political coherence is produced as a result of polity formation. A framework for considering political coherence is “Sheldon Pollock’s idea of the vernacular millennium where the ecumenical languages—Sanskrit, Latin and Arabic—recede to make possible the growth of vernacular languages and cultures as a result of polity formation with the rise of local monarchies.” While Arabic was the lingua franca of the Islamic Civilization, Persian became a complimentary lingua franca to Islam where the Samanids in the tenth century played a particularly major role in spreading Islam as a world religion. A core component of the third criterion – structural or institutional coherence—is the legal order and juridification of norms and organizing logics. Islamic law—or Sharia—is predominantly private law and developed under the Islamicate civilization. Public or constitutional law however did not develop under this civilization and the idea of an “Islamicate monarchy” as a “political ethic” was largely derived from the Persian idea of kingship—signifying another area of great overlap between the two worlds.

In exploring the topic of the “Islamicate Ecumene in MENA and South Asia before Colonial Empires and Nation-States”, participants discussed the monopolization of literature by two dominant framings on geographic entities: that of the ecumene (ethno/cultural/religious civilizational aspects) and that of the empire (political aspects). Nestled between these geo-entities framings is one that is more socio-cultural and socio-economic—one that focuses on activities centered on exchange and one that includes people who were not part of the elite—such as students, teachers, pilgrims, traders etc. The neglect of the latter geo-entity accounts for the relative absence of the Middle East and South Asia in comparison to other parts of the world in the scholarship of global histories. Addressing this third geo-entity fills a huge gap in the scholarship and facilitates the reconstruction of salient spheres of social communication that took place prior to the nineteenth century. By embracing philology, and drawing on social-scientific techniques that create cardinal visualization, scholars can facilitate the study of conceptual history and the reconstruction of spheres of spatial communication in past contexts.

While addressing the Arab World and the Middle East as overlapping world regions, the “Middle East” as a defined region was problematized by the working group members. Characterized as “one of the most relative terms,” scholars have long debated what geographical, cultural, political and historical patterns give coherence to this label. Despite these disputes in the nomenclature of the Middle East, participants nonetheless engaged with the region. Paralleling an earlier discussion of shifts in regional centers and the reversal of center and periphery, participants questioned whether there is a shift in the regional centers of gravity in the Middle East—moving away from the previous centers of power and economic activity of Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus, to that of the Persian Gulf states. In order to understand whether the center of gravity is shifting, scholars of the region need to have a better read of the intellectual landscape of the Middle East. Much of what we know about the production of knowledge in the region is related to that of political activists, but not much is known about political thinkers in Middle Eastern society. Whether or not places such as Dubai for instance, signify authentic cultural centers of knowledge production in the region could help us understand whether such regional shifts are in fact occurring. Some participants, however, questioned whether there remain any centers of gravity, or perhaps just a series of networks that interlace throughout the region.

Bridging regional studies and social science disciplines, participants delved into the topic of “The Middle East and International Relations Theory.” Each of the four schools of IR thought (i.e. the power, interdependence, Marxist, and constructivist schools) has particular relevance to the region. For instance, the power school emphasizes realism and attributes the shape of the region to the actions of great powers—this is fitting to the Middle East because the shape—and definition—of the region is in fact a product of great powers. When interpreting the modern world, however, another type of realism emerges—realism of power that is defined by the ability to produce and develop techno-scientific knowledge, emphasizing the modern need for civilizations to be progressive as compared to traditional civilizations that did not emphasize the growth process. Though the power school remains salient, it does not account for the power of regional actors nor take into consideration non-state actors. The school of constructivism on the other hand—which is a late comer in IR theory—brings forth the importance of ideas, thereby bringing IR theory closer to social thinking and allowing for deeper analysis and engagement with the internal dynamics of the region. Neo-constructivism—perhaps the most effective of all—integrates the material dimensions of the latter three IR theories (power, economy, class) and that of ideas.

Last on the agenda, working group members tackled the topic of “Central Eurasia as a World Region.” Central Eurasia encompasses multiple ethnic groups and languages making it difficult to define this region as a region. Although linguistic similarities between Uzbeks and Kazaks for instance indicate a level of cultural similarity; natives of these countries do not perceive it to be the case largely due to the linguistic and geographic borders that were reified through the soviet institutions of the twentieth century. From an internal perspective, national legacies of the region make it hard to identify central Asia as a region as its inhabitants have historically emphasized maintaining separateness. Additionally, from the perspective of outsiders such as international aid donors, the divergent developmental trajectories of the countries within also undermines regional coherence (for instance, while Kazakhstan is undergoing rapid economic progression, countries like Tajikistan and Afghanistan are seen as failing states by the international community). The various aspects of language, culture, geography, diasporas and the ways in which international organizations engage with the region, reveal multiple layers of regional identity that may be mobilized by people. Thus, while the region may be a construct of western academic discourse, there are moments when people evoke regional unity for certain purposes. Ascertaining when these moments occur and for what purposes contributes to the understanding of the ways in which people themselves evoke regional coherence.

See the participant bios
See the Working Group agenda
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Laura Adams, Harvard University
Saïd Arjomand, Stony Brook University
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nerida Child Dimasi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Barb Gillis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Bahgat Korany, The American University in Cairo
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Wolf Schäfer, Stony Brook University
Gagan Sood, London School of Economics
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Social Currents in the Maghreb Working Group II
2014-06-22 08:00 - 2014-06-23 18:00
On June 22-23, 2014, CIRS held the concluding Social Currents in the Maghreb research initiative working group in Washington D.C. Participants gathered for the second time to discuss their research findings and solicit feedback from a multi-disciplinary cohort of working group members. The topics and themes discussed ranged from the mobilization of social movements in the Maghreb to language as politics and dissent in cultural production.

Following the Arab uprisings, the rise of Islamist parties has led to renewed interest in Islamist politics and a proliferation of debates surrounding the role of Islamist parties and movements in North African politics and society. Despite increased scholarly attention to Islamist politics, the literature remains predominantly narrow in its scope, neglecting ideological and political innovations within Islamist parties, and the diversity and divisions that exist within the Islamist sphere as a whole. One of the ways in which Islamist parties in North Africa have exhibited ideological innovation is by adopting new ideological references that are based on a national framework, rather than the commonly adopted “eastern” interpretations on the relationship between Islam and politics. By primarily referencing Algerian Malek Bennabi’s work, and Ghannouchi’s earlier writings, al-Nahda is “nationalizing an essentially internationalist project”. This is indicative of a change in the flow of ideas in the Maghreb and the shaping of Islamism based on local experiences. While ideological innovation is taking place in the formal political sphere, younger generations of Maghrebis are increasingly distancing themselves from institutional politics and finding alternative ways of performing “every-day Islamism” through associations that are more focused on the betterment of society, rather than the hierarchical mechanisms of institutional politics. Decreased trust in the formal political sphere as an agent of change has led to this diffusion of what it means to be “Islamist” and a growing perception of the distance from “politicking” as a source of success for these associations.

On the other hand, for young people who believe that religion should play a more central role in politics, Salafism has become a significant outlet to achieve political objectives. Participants discussed Salafism in relation to its three broad categories of scriptural, Jihadi, and political Salafism. Of particular salience is the adoption of Jihadi Salafism by young Islamists who are unsatisfied with the Islamist parties in power and the absence of radical change. The rise of Jihadi Salafism in the Maghreb– even before the Arab Uprisings – has led to the co-optation of Sufism by the state to counterweigh the rising threat of Jihadi Salafism; this has led to what some participants claimed was a “revival” of Sufism in the political sphere. Despite seeming state co-optation, participants problematized “Sufism” as a term and discussed that it entails much more than mere reflective esoteric practices but rather, has institutional politics embedded within – complicating what is generally perceived as a “quietist” movement.

Working group members also discussed the Polisario movement and the question of the Western Sahara. While the Polisario is predominantly thought of as an “Algeria-backed movement”, it has increasingly diversified its support base since the 1990s, to include non-state actors such as activist NGOs, the Sahrawi diaspora and international aid agencies. This flexibility and adaptability has contributed to the movement’s resilience and accordingly this transformation has largely blurred the movement’s boundaries between being an armed and un-armed movement.

In questioning dominant narrow conceptions of North Africa, participants further problematized terms such as the “Arab” uprisings, which fail to recognize the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of the region. Decades of Amazigh activism throughout the Maghreb has challenged the Arab nationalist ideologies of Maghrebi states. By utilizing a discourse of democracy, pluralism, and diversity throughout the decades and particularly in the “Berber Spring” of the 1980s, their movement largely dovetails with demonstrations of the “Arab Spring” that call for social justice and rule of law. Similarly in Mauritania, the Haratin have played a dominant role in shaping the way human rights issues are debated in Mauritanian society and in the political quest for democracy.

Different states of the Maghreb, such as Algeria and Morocco, have appropriated cultural diversity and co-opted various Amazigh activists, bringing forth the fragmentation and internal divides that exist within the Amazigh movement itself, particularly with regards to generation and class. In addition to the heterogeneity that exists within the Amazigh movement and the Maghrebi states, the Amazigh movement is a transnational one that expands the cultural-geographic space of Barbary, essentially raising questions about the boundaries of those nation states and how territorial boundedness relates to the lived experience. In the Mauritanian context, while the Haratin are characterized as those of “slave descent”, they do not constitute a homogenous group, but rather identify as Arabs, Berbers, Africans and Mauritanian. Participants noted that in shifting social and political landscapes the politics of self-racialization come in to play, where in different moments the Haratins are racialized as “black Africans”.

With the neo-liberalization of culture, “Berberness” does not merely represent an object of struggle, but is also an “aestheticized iconography of the visual urban field”. Paralleling the commodification of Berber heritage is Jewish heritage tourism and cultural conservation in Morocco. While Moroccan Jewish history is a valued economic asset that has become central to national tourism revenues, local support and discourses continue to be overshadowed by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, largely overlying Moroccan Jewish history. Due to this low level of national multicultural consciousness, there are a number of Moroccan Amazigh and Muslim activists that focus their activities on incorporating the local history of Jews in school and university curricula in order to broaden and deepen the understanding of Jews within Morocco’s historical cultural diversity.

While official promotion of multiculturalism has largely led to celebratory interpretations that presume it as a precursor to social justice and democratization, its intersection with elements of neo-liberalism masks deeper negative socio-economic repercussions. In Morocco for instance, official rhetoric that promotes multilingualism has further stratified society by placing a heavy burden on students and young Moroccons to manage multiple languages. Due to language requirements in the education system, structural inequalities and limitations exist that discriminate against those who cannot afford private schooling, essentially excluding them from national and international economic arenas. While the poorer populations of the Maghreb continue to be excluded from global mobility due to these structural limitations, other populations – particularly those of the sport elite – have widened their scope of migration destinations. In the context of sport migrant communities, participants discussed the states of the GCC as increasingly becoming part of the Maghrebi social imaginary, and in some ways replacing Europe as the prime target for migration.

Preceding and during the Arab uprisings, labor movements have mobilized to address socio-economic woes in the Maghreb. In Morocco, labor unions pressed for material demands and partially achieved them through a series of strikes, sit-ins and protests during the uprisings of 2011. What is important to highlight is that labor was always able to mobilize and connect with the struggle of other groups. Perhaps in recognition of such, the Moroccan government has become particularly capable and effective in its ‘divide and conquer’ tactics to avert the creation of a broad alliance that seeks to connect actors in the political sphere. As such, participants highlighted the importance of not only investigating the negotiations that take place between labor movements and the government, but between labor and the myriad of social movements that exist in the Maghreb, as it may affect the labor movement’s strategies in broadening their concrete demands beyond the economic sphere.

The case-study of labor movements highlights that socio-economic woes have always been present in Maghrebi society, and more importantly so, that groups mobilized to address their demands prior to the Arab uprisings. Beyond formal mobilization, cultural production in the Maghreb also indicates that other forms of dissent were also prevalent within society. In looking at post-colonial film and dissent in Tunisia, participants discussed the works of Moufida Ttali, Nouri Bouzid, Ferid Boughedir, Mahamd Zran, and Moncef Dhouib. These films challenge the sociocultural status quo by contesting taboos, expanding social boundaries and forming “the critical basis for challenging the governmental and political state apparatus itself”. How these films are received by the Tunisian public and whether or not they inspired political action is much more obscure; what is evident however is that dissent was prevalent in the consciousness and works of many Maghrebi artists.

Read participant bios
See the working group schedule
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Osama Abi-Mershed, CCAS – Georgetown University
Jean R. AbiNader, Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center (MATIC)
Mahfoud Amara, Loughborough University
Alice Bullard, IRA-USA
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Aomar Boum, University of Arizona
Charis Boutieri, King’s College London
Matt Buehler, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Francesco Cavatorta, Université Laval
Nouri Gana, University of California, Los Angeles
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Ricardo René Larémont, Binghamton University
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem, University of Nouakchott
Paul Silverstein, Reed College
Elizabeth F. Thompson, University of Virginia
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Alice Wilson, University of Cambridge

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Transitional Justice in the Middle East - Working Group II
2014-08-13 08:00 - 2014-08-14 18:00
On August 13-14, 2014, CIRS held the second working group meeting under the “Transitional Justice in the Middle East” research initiative. Regional and International scholars and experts gathered for the concluding meeting to solicit feedback on their individual paper submissions. The papers tackled a variety of themes and topics, ranging from theoretical underpinnings of transitional justice, to country-specific case-studies examining the pursuit of transitional justice and its implications.

Implementation of transitional justice mechanisms in the Middle East is a relatively recent phenomenon, and as such, regional scholarly analysis and debates are in their nascent stages. Looking at the experiences of transitional justice in other regions of the globe can potentially provide some lessons to those interested in and working on processes that help societies cope with past atrocities. A significant amount of literature on transitional justice has focused on other parts of the world such as Latin America and Eastern Europe. However, due to the complexities of transitions and variations between different national and political contexts, there are no universal transitional justice mechanisms or tools that can be unilaterally applied. One size does not fit all in transitional justice, but a comparative examination of global experiences allows us to gain a nuanced understanding of the questions that need to be asked in relation to transitional justice processes and goals. As outlined below, various case-studies discussed during the two-day meeting unravel the complexities and layers of transitional justice.

Advocates of transitional justice increasingly call for victim-centered justice as a means of vindication for those who suffered and for promoting reconciliation between victims and perpetrators. While this appears to be a clear rationale for the pursuit of victim-centered justice, its adoption proves to be much more complex. First, identifying the needs of victims that were subject to state repression requires understanding the needs of various victims, and acknowledging that their needs and desires may change over time. Second, should the needs and goals of victims be identified, deciding how they should be addressed also provides a multitude of options. From material reparation to moral compensation, actors on the ground have to decide which institutional mechanism or design is best suited to addressing victims’ goals. In Tunisia, the categorization of women as “secondary victims” highlights that even identifying who were actual victims of past persecution is a challenge. Secondary victims are those that were persecuted, imprisoned, or harassed because of their relationship to men who were deemed a threat to the state. Most women in Tunisia fall under this category, particularly Ennahda women who for decades bore the brunt of state repression. This hierarchy of victimization and the inadvertent relegation of the needs of female victims to a secondary status of victimhood highlight the complexity in identifying and addressing needs of various members of Tunisian society.

The Tunisian case also sheds light on other core elements of transitional justice. With regards to the timeframe that is subjected to transitional justice, what marks the beginning of the transition? How far back should a society go in addressing past injustices? Working Group participants suggested that different political actors advocate for varying temporal scopes of transitional justice based on their visions of the post-Ben Ali state. While investigative commissions initially looked at abuses that happened after December 2010, Ennahda advocated for stretching back the time-frame until 1956 in an attempt to deconstruct modernist narratives of statehood characteristic of the Bourguiba and Ben Ali state.

Collective memory and memorialization are key aspects of transitional justice for societies dealing with past atrocities. In Egypt, transitional justice practitioners have focused on measures of accountability and implementing institutional reforms, whilst relatively neglecting the memorialization of past injustices. Without a focus on memorialization, participants noted that Egyptians risk exclusionary narratives of the past. In their North African neighbors Tunisia and Algeria, martyrdom has played a dominant role in the formation of collective memories. While martyrdom has been recast for the purposes of “historical justice” in Tunisia, in Algeria it has been used by political elites to stymie efforts towards genuine transition.

Recasting narratives of the past is linked to visions of the future, highlighting the potential manipulation of transitional justice mechanisms by transitional elites. For example, in post-Qadhafi Libya political exclusion has been avidly pursued by Islamist militias as a way to wage a proxy battle against their political opponents. The political isolation law passed in 2013 excludes all those who were involved with Qadhafi’s regime from participation in public life. The politics of exclusion has further fragmented Libya’s social fabric rather than promoting post-conflict reconciliation. It becomes a delicate matter where members of society can be held accountable for their behaviors whilst remaining included in the system. Efforts to move towards accountability upsets society as those that have vested interests in the preceding political order stand to lose their relative positioning. In the debate of peace vs. justice, or more aptly characterized as stability vs. justice, participants discussed extremes of political exclusion, such as de-Baathification in Iraq, to blanket amnesties in Yemen, and their societal repercussions. In Egypt, addressing accountability has primarily been carried out in the form of criminal trials. Participants noted that while revolutionaries desired going through judicial structures to address past human rights violations, the acquittal of Mubarak on charges of human rights violations and the mass sentencing of pro-Morsi supporters combined with a trend of speedy trials and relative disregard for due-process, has tarnished the image of the judiciary as an independent branch. Thus, while those in office may have changed, participants noted that there may in fact not be any real transition in Egypt due to the functioning of key state institutions of transitional justice—namely the judiciary and the security sector—in an authoritarian manner.

While Egypt may be an example of a shallow transition, other countries of the Middle East have introduced transitional justice mechanisms without any political transition. The monarchies of Bahrain and Morocco have both introduced truth commissions. The Equity and Reconciliation Commission in Morocco and Bahrain’s Independent Commission of Inquiry have both by and large identified human rights violations committed by agents of the security sector. This implicit admission of government responsibility has enhanced the monarchs’ credibility in both domestic and international circles. While the provision of forthright narratives may indicate a shift from the usual trend of “denial and deflection”, these truth commissions have not led to substantial accountability for the past crimes of identified perpetrators. Linking the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms with human rights performance is not a straightforward feat. As participants noted, the comprehensive implementation of transitional justice mechanisms—of both truth commissions and prosecutions—coupled with a hospitable political environment, may have a positive impact on human rights performance. However, it remains that transitional justice is a public policy tool, and as such, its mere existence does not indicate an improvement in human rights’ performance. On the same note however, participants iterated that conceiving of an end point to transitional justice may be problematic. Much of the literature has a teleological approach to transitional justice, conceiving of democratization as the desired end point. This common presumption is perhaps due to the fact that much of the literature on the topic rose out of Latin America. In the context of the Middle East, and in an attempt to broaden the contextual scope of transitional justice, the underlying question remains: what are we transitioning to in transitional justice?

Read the participant bios
See the working group schedule
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Sahar Aziz, Texas A&M University
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Judy Barsalou, El-Hibri Foundation
Mietek Boduszynski, Pomona College
Terry C. Coonan, Center for the Advancement of Human Rights – Florida State University
Thomas DeGeorges, American University of Sharjah
Nerida Child Dimasi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Elham Fakhro, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Barb Gillis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Doris H. Gray, Al Akhawayn University
Bill Hess, George Washington University
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Christopher Lamont, University of Groningen
Dionysis Markakis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dwaa Osman, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Ibrahim Sharqieh, Brookings Doha Center; Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Chandra Lekha Sriram, Center on Human Rights in Conflict – University of East London
Susan E. Waltz, University of Michigan
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Marieke Wierda, Grotius Center for International Legal Studies – Leiden University

Article by Dwaa Osman, Research Analyst at CIRS

Attitudes to Cybersafety and Online Privacy in the Middle East
2014-09-16 18:00 - 19:00
Damian Radcliffe, leader of the Rassed research program at Qatar’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ictQATAR), delivered the inaugural CIRS Monthly Dialogue of the 2014-2015 academic year with a lecture on “Attitudes to Cybersafety and Online Privacy in the Middle East” on September 16, 2014. Emphasizing the importance of the topic, he noted that, despite their varying characteristics, most countries around the world share similar concerns regarding issues of cyber safety, online privacy, and data security. This has become a global conversation, and one that is no less relevant to the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. “There are very consistent values and attitudes that can often be found amongst internet users even though they might be from incredibly different countries and cultures,” he explained.

In order to test whether this hypothesis was indeed applicable to the countries of the Middle East, Radcliffe conducted research into Arab attitudes towards cyber safety, online privacy, and data security. Collaborating with researchers from a previous World Economic Forum study conducted in 2011, Radcliffe and his team surveyed just under 3,000 internet users from 14 countries across the Middle East. When combined with the previous study, the global sample surveyed was over 11,000 internet users covering nearly 60 countries. “One of the reasons we were really keen to take this project was the fact that it also gave us the opportunity to benchmark the experience of internet users in the Middle East with other people around the world,” Radcliffe explained. The research questions covered five specific areas of study including, usage of ICT and other technologies available in the household; attitudes towards the internet; concerns of internet users; trust in different online actors and online players; and behaviors of internet users.

Attitudes to Cybersafety and Online Privacy in the Middle East from ictQATAR
This comparative dataset gave the research a broad range of results as well as ones that could be broken down geographically and categorized as emanating from the GCC region, North Africa, or a combined MENA figure which also included some additional respondents from the Levant. The resulting data gave the researchers the opportunity to make specific differentiations between the various regions of the Arab World. For example, one of research findings highlighted the fact that differences between internet behaviors in the GCC and North Africa can be attributed to socio-economic factors. “People in the GCC are much more likely to access the internet on the move given smartphone penetration in the region…over 70% in Saudi and Qatar, whereas it is something like 2% in Egypt,” Radcliffe reported.

While there were some important key differences between internet users worldwide, the overall research findings proved Radcliffe’s initial hypothesis which stated that Middle East internet users are not so dissimilar from others around the globe. “Equivalency in terms of technological access as a regional figure compared to the rest of the world was pretty good. In fact, if you look at the GCC, there is much higher access to advanced forms of technology than there are in many other parts of the world,” he noted. The research team found that internet users in the Middle East, especially younger users, were very active online and were positive about the impact of the internet on their lives.

In comparison to the global average in terms of attitudes towards the internet, one main distinction of Middle East internet users was their tendency to place very little trust in those organizations that only existed online, which explains why “e-commerce here is much less prevalent than it is in other markets. In fact, within the region, people are much less likely to engage in e-commerce than they are in any of the other regions that we surveyed. They are also among the least likely to bank online. Traditional methods of shopping and banking still remain popular,” Radcliffe explained. Another key difference was Middle East internet users’ tendency to be more trusting of traditional forms of authority, whether in terms of government or financial institutions. The research results indicated that regional internet users were generally in favor of having governing authorities regulate internet content and were not too concerned about the safety of their personal information online. This is in stark contrast to those surveyed in Western countries who tended to be more wary of government and financial institutions, which is most likely a symptom of the recent economic crisis in those countries.

Radcliffe ended the lecture by highlighting some thoughts for the future of digital technologies, arguing that, with increased availability of personal surveillance technologies, issues of trust will most likely intensify in future. The more digital devices in the world, the greater the risk of security breaches, but simultaneously the greater the possibility of doing this differently and more constructively. “New technologies will bring new challenges, but also new opportunities,” he concluded.

Damian Radcliffe is an award-winning content creator, journalist, and researcher who has led diverse teams at the intersection of journalism, media innovation, and civic engagement for nearly 20 years. He currently leads the Rassed research program at Qatar’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ictQATAR)—an initiative which explores the impact of ICT on society and the potential afforded by emerging technologies. His team has published over 80 studies, presentations, articles and infographics since mid-2012—in both English and Arabic—and their work as featured across a broad range of regional and international media. Their research was in the Top 1% of globally viewed content on LinkedIn’s SlideShare platform in 2013.

Read the full Report in English
Read the full Report in Arabic

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications

Infographic: The attitudes of Internet users in the Middle East towards Cybersafety, Security and Data Privacy from ictQATAR​ مواقف مستخدمي الإنترنت في منطقة الشرق الأوسط حيال السلامة ولأمن على شبكة الإنترنت from ictQATAR​

The Digital Middle East: Working Group I
2014-09-27 18:00 - 2014-09-28 18:00
On September 27-28, 2014, CIRS held the first Working Group on “The Digital Middle East” research initiative. Academics from various backgrounds gathered for this first meeting to discuss their research findings and papers around the Digital world in the Middle East. The topics ranged from the effects technology has had on the Arab uprisings to state measures being undertaken to incorporate technology into everyday life.

Opening the discussion, participants focused on how the socio-political landscape of the Arab world has been changing due to the spread of the Internet. In places such as Egypt and Iran, youth have taken to technology to express their discontent towards political regimes, trying economic conditions and social injustices. The decentralized nature of the media model has led to mass social movements arising in several Arab states, helping facilitate in the fall of several regimes and the severe weakening of others. In the Gulf states, digital anonymity in places such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait has provided an outlet for the youth to articulate themselves online without fear of reprisal. As a result, political experiences were no longer isolated to the offline world, they were incorporated into digital form having been able to transverse physical, cultural, and national boundaries.

People’s instantaneous connections on social media have encouraged academic focus on civil engagement frameworks and the creation of online civil societies that are both inclusive and transnational. In the case of Egypt for instance, online activism has radically affected the nature of mediated experiences since 2011. Prior to the establishment of video sharing and communication platforms, coverage of political events was heavily reliant on television and print journalism. But during the Arab Spring, in certain states social media allowed for the most reliable coverage of events due to the impact of state censorship on traditional media forms. During the Arab uprisings, cyber communities also were made possible by the work of individuals that would spend a substantial amount of time online, collating and contributing crucial information through various digital platforms, without monetary compensation. Discussants voiced their interest in understanding how the nature of information transmittance into the digital world has had an effect on labor theory of value in relation to free labor.

The events of the Arab uprisings have also instigated changed patterns in political behavior in various social groups, especially among women. Engaging in the digital landscape in the Middle East has proven to be a liberating experience, forging alternative collectivities defined by a common, greater cause and uninhibited by definitions of gender, class or race. However, while social movements may initially emerge online, a physical space is still necessary for civic action to occur. During the uprisings women took to the streets alongside their male counterparts; yet, sexual harassment and various other grave violations during protests still took place in great numbers, outlining the disparity in behaviors that still exist in the offline world.

It is important to note that women’s activity online also extends to gaming and game development. Recent published reports on videogame consumption in Europe and America show that female gamers far outnumber males. The trend of female gamers is also on the rise in the Middle East, tangible proof of which can be seen in the recent phenomenon of Saudi Arabia’s annual female-only gaming convention. Participants at the working group noted that even though a digital divide still exists between the genders, the expedited evolution of the digital world has given users more of a stake in shaping alternative discourses on gender in the region.

Working Group members also discussed linkages between videogames and activism. Recently videogames have become places of encounter in the digital landscape, where users engage with one another in a non-physical space. Interviews conducted with producers and users of videogames show that they do not perceive videogames as having the potential to influence thought. However, state initiatives in Iran show otherwise, with the launching of the Iran Computer and Video Game Foundation created with the intention of portraying positive Muslim identities in videogames. The traditional narrative in videogames produced in other parts of the world often portray Muslim characters as terrorists and villains, whereas the Iranian foundation aims to portray Muslim characters in a more favorable light while also improving the videogame economy by supporting local game development. Access to videogames in the Middle East is a relatively simple process, due to the lack of robust copyright laws. The illegal nature of these pirated copies leads to a lack of recorded sales, which in turn affects the gathering of quantitative data on gamer demographics such as age, gender, income level, and time spent playing. Questions that arose from this discussion called for more quantitative and qualitative research on user profiles and needs.

Issues of intellectual property infringement are widespread in the Middle East, due to the lack of a unified copyright law, creating a myriad of issues surrounding this topic. Considering that the globalization of media culture has not been accompanied with equivalent access to media, people in the Middle East infringe on copyright out of convenience and comfort. Such behavior can affect software designers greatly because it restricts developers from selling their products in a fair market. However, for educational purposes, software piracy has contributed greatly to the education of younger generations by giving them free access to expensive software that they could train and learn from.

Working Group members also discussed the role state actors have had in the changing face of the digital world, choosing to develop once offline activities such as commerce and governance into electronic format. Naturally, the growth of political activity and online activism has also caused states to rethink their methods of authoritarianism, leading to acts of state censorship targeting social media sites, such as in the cases of Iran and Turkey. This has led to much debate about the role technology plays within existing power structures in state and society. This innovative technological behavior in the Middle East is indicative of growth in access and usage of the Internet, yet limited statistical analysis is available to fully understand this phenomenon.

Commerce has always played an integral role in strengthening and sustaining Middle Eastern societies both historically and at present. With the advance of technology, commerce has taken a different form in the shape of online shopping. In 2013 approximately a third of GCC residents accessed the internet only to shop, a 7 percent increase from the year before. The e-commerce experience in the Gulf has also made use of various digital platforms, created initially for sharing pictures and communication purposes, to selling products online. The change in cultures of consumption has been aided by the development of digital technology, yet evident gaps in the e-commerce model, such as efficiency and growth, still need to be addressed and accounted for.

In terms of e-governance in the Gulf, attempts have been made in recent years to use technology as a way to improve information and service delivery to citizens. Practically, this proved to be harder to implement as issues of transparency conflicted with Gulf government’s initial commitment to e-governance. Discussants problematized the centralist nature of Gulf states as being an obstacle for e-governance, especially since citizens are often suspicious of various state initiatives and often are too fearful to fully engage with the state and its agencies online.

See the working group agenda
Read the participant biographies
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Ilhem Allagui, Northwestern University in Qatar
Haya Al Noaimi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Jon Anderson, Catholic University of America
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Marion Desmurger, UNESCO Representation in the Arab States of the Gulf & Yemen
Shahd Dauleh, Qatar’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICTQatar)
Muzammil M. Hussain, University of Michigan
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Gholam Khiabany, Goldsmiths University of London
Dionysis Markakis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Damian Radcliffe, Qatar’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICTQatar)
Vit Šisler, Charles University in Prague
Annabelle Sreberny, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Mark Allen Peterson, Miami University in Ohio
Daniel Varisco, Qatar University
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Shafiz Affendi Mohd Yusof, Universiti Utara Malaysia
Luciano Zaccara, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Norhayati Zakaria, Universiti Utara Malaysia
Mohamed Zayani, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Haya Al-Noaimi, Research Analyst at CIRS

Justin Gengler Monthly Dialogue
2014-10-13 18:00 - 20:00
Justin Gengler, Senior Researcher at the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) of Qatar University, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue on “Studying Public Opinion in Qatar” on October 13, 2014. SESRI conducts nationally-representative, scientific household surveys of the different social groups residing in Qatar, including the local national population, professional expatriates, and labor migrants. Giving some background to the state of survey research in Qatar, Gengler noted that the in-depth, nation-wide study of public opinion in the Gulf region is still in its infancy. In this context, it is important to think about “what we mean by public opinion or studying public opinion in the Gulf region—especially in a place where people don’t always associate mass attitudes as being part of the decision-making process,” he explained.

Giving specific examples of how responses can change according to context and over time, Gengler argued that there are three general levels of dealing with collected data. A primary level of data analysis is “descriptive” in reporting basic distributions of survey responses to a particular question. A secondary level of data analysis offers a basis for temporal or cross-societal comparison and so offers enhanced analytical value. A tertiary level of data analysis delves more deeply into survey results not only by situating the data in context, but by moving beyond the question of “what” to explain the “why” of survey responses.

In order to demonstrate how and why responses can vary, Gengler displayed results to the survey question “Which country poses the greatest challenge to Qatar?” In the summer of 2010, approximately 19 percent of Qatari national respondents identified Israel as the greatest challenge. This result in and of itself carries little meaning unless it is compared to those from other years as well as to events occurring during the relevant time periods. “After the events of 2011 and the ramping up of sectarian rhetoric and sectarian feeling in the Gulf, you see that threat perceptions change in a very predictable or a very systematic way, which is that Iran emerges as a much greater threat in the public imagination.” As such, Qatari responses to the same question in 2011 were very different, with the proportion of nationals identifying Iran as the greatest challenge more than doubling over the previous year. In relation to “data situated within temporal or societal context, the thing of interest is not responses to a specific question, but relationships between responses and other variables,” he said.

A final level of analysis when examining data is to look at the interaction between the interviewer and the respondent. This is especially important for the data gathered in Qatar and elsewhere in the Gulf region, because “for social and economic reasons, there are very few nationals employed as field interviewers. We might think this is a problem because we are asking citizens about their opinions on sometimes sensitive topics, so it is a question whether or not the answers we receive are reliable,” he argued. In order to assess the reliability of responses and the impact of Qatari nationality on survey results, Gengler divided two teams of Qatari and non-Qatari students to conduct a field experiment surveying 1,200 Qatari nationals. Contrary to expectations, there were no great variations in answers given to Qatari interviewers versus answers given to non-Qatari interviewers regarding sensitive political questions. Rather, the differences lay in “social questions that touch on the issue of the expatriate-national divides … as well as the relaxation of naturalization laws,” he noted.

Concluding the talk, Gengler’s gave a positive outlook for the future of survey research in the Gulf. He argued that “there is a newfound appreciation in the Gulf region in particular—including at the elite level—for survey research, because it is objective rather than partisan or coming from a simply ideological standpoint; it is based on empirics; and also because states see the value in staying ahead of public opinion.”

Justin J. Gengler completed the first-ever mass survey of political attitudes in Bahrain in 2009 as part of his doctoral dissertation for the University of Michigan, titled “Ethnic Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf.” This project forms the basis of a forthcoming monograph on group conflict in the rentier state, to be published in early 2015 in the Indiana University Press Series in Arab and Islamic Studies. He is a contributor to the volume Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf, published by Hurst/Oxford University Press. His work has also appeared recently in Middle East Policy (2012), Journal of Arabian Studies (2013), and Middle East Law and Governance (2013), in addition to numerous policy-oriented publications.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications

The Changing Security Dynamics of the Gulf
2014-10-25 09:00 - 2014-10-26 17:00
On October 25-26, 2014, CIRS held its first Working Group under “The Changing Security Dynamics of the Gulf” research initiative. Academics from various disciplines gathered for their first meeting to discuss evolving national and regional security dynamics, and to identify research gaps that need to be addressed. The group drew attention to different, prevailing definitions of security, including military, regime, and human security. Amongst other themes, participants debated existing security arrangements in the Gulf and how regional relations may pose security threats to individual Gulf states’ national interests.

Opening the discussion, participants focused on the concept of securitization theory. Classical approaches to security focus on the measurable characteristics of a threat, such as balance of power and military capabilities. Securitization theory examines how certain issues are transformed into security concerns by the state or by political actors and other stakeholders.

State security usually hinges upon military, regime, and resource stability. As a result, state surveillance mechanisms are effective safeguards in ensuring the legitimacy and stability of the regimes in power. In places such as Bahrain, there are sectarian angles associated with regime security. Other forms of threat perception identify political, human and environmental concerns, all factors that can contribute to a populations’ feelings of “relative deprivation”. More recently, in the Gulf, human insecurity has been exacerbated by the interventions of non-state actors such as ISIS.

During the Working Group the “personality element” of regional rulers was also discussed. Often in Gulf states there is no differentiation between the type of threats that are perceived as impacting the personal security of regime leaders and those that affect the security of the state as a whole. Questions were raised as to the relevance of critical security perspectives to the Gulf context, particularly when there is a proliferation of fragile institutions. Oftentimes, the severe demographic imbalances in the Gulf lead to a general consensus amongst the indigenous population to accept the regime’s definitions of what constitutes a security threat

Participants also discussed the weaknesses of collective security arrangements in the GCC. During Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, GCC member states were immobile for several weeks and unable to provide a unified, robust response. This inaction resulted in the Kuwaiti royal family having to escape to Saudi Arabia until the monarchy was restored. Commonalities in security concerns amongst the ruling Gulf regimes reinforce the shared security interests dominant in this region and the institutional importance of the Gulf Cooperation Council in highlighting these concerns. The Council also contemplated extending membership invitations to both Jordan and Morocco, at a time when the GCC felt that it had barely survived the first upsurge of revolts threatening its stability. The invitations were an act of commitment on part of the Gulf states towards monarchic regimes in the region. However, working group participants questioned the purpose of this collective security arrangement, considering the Council’s history of cooperation during times of crisis and its tendency to prioritize national interest once external threats dissipate.

In addition to broad thematic areas the discussions also mentioned a number of specific cases, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. In the UAE’s case, having gone through significant foreign policy changes since the death of Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates identified the danger of militant Islamism as the biggest threat to the security of the regime and state. In March 2013, a group of activists and members of the Emirati community signed a petition urging the regime to shift to a more democratic society, calling for election of all members in the National Federal Council and the bestowing of legislative and regulatory powers upon this body. Approximately, 64 out of 94 activists on trial were found guilty and accused of having ideological sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, the UAE has made an extensive effort towards involving itself in North Africa’s politics, partly encouraged by Egypt’s support. Both Qatar and the UAE have exerted substantial effort in North Africa, in an effort to develop their geostrategic roles in the region. From a security perspective, North Africa is of utmost relevance to the Gulf, as it acts as a gateway to Europe, heightening inter-Gulf state competition over regional relevance.

In Bahrain, the lack of political institutions makes it difficult to gain insight into the political views of the Bahraini population and how they perceive threats to security. GCC states have been very deliberate in structuring political conflict and defining what constitutes a threat to the state, and have often used sectarian sentiments for this purpose. During the February 14th demonstrations state-sponsored Sunni counter-mobilization efforts were a reaction to the rebellion organized by the Shiite majority in Bahrain. One month later, over five thousand troops were dispatched by neighboring Gulf states in an effort to contain and localize the uprisings. Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province was also inspired by the uprisings taking place in Bahrain, whereby the province of Qatif, with a population of 95 percent Shiites, demonstrated in solidarity with Bahrain when Saudi troops arrived.

Working Group members also discussed how some Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, have been showing greater vulnerabilities in their rentier bargain with their citizenry. Since 2011, the majority of Gulf states have reinvigorated their rentierism, by increasing salaries and providing jobs in the labor market, in an effort to discourage people from contesting the regimes’ legitimacy. Scholars suggested that not all the Gulf states are alike, and in some of the Gulf states maintaining rentier disbursements are proving challenging, as state capacity to deliver is stretched. Certain Gulf states with larger indigenous populations and less financial transparency such as Saudi Arabia, have been facing serious cracks in the rentier bargain, whereby 70 percent of Saudi nationals live in rented accommodation due to the inability of the state in providing national housing for its local population. The growing demographic imbalances in Gulf states have only added to the complexity of the local population relationship with the labor market, often intensifying underlying tensions between locals and expatriates. This proves to be problematic for the regimes in power considering that the rentier bargain is the foundation of Gulf regimes’ legitimacies.

The most common explanation for the success of Gulf State’s domestic security and the continuity of the ruling elites has been the presence of hydrocarbon energy, which guarantees geostrategic value to the West and protection for the Gulf states. The management of domestic security has generally been conducted through the strategy of combined cooption and repression of the masses. Such tactics can be witnessed in Bahrain during the 2011 uprisings where sixty people were killed and numerous political activists were jailed and detained for indeterminate lengths of time. In the case of Saudi Arabia, cooption lead to the creation of hundreds of jobs for people in an effort to remedy the economic situation within the country. Working Group members also discussed linkages between religion, tradition, and oil, arguing that Gulf states often cultivate national identities that are corresponding to their domestic security interests.

When Gulf states were granted their independence in 1971, it was apparent that a Gulf “national” identity was not based on principles of self-determination or collective history. This was due to the fact that the trucial states were only under a British economic and political protectorate, having not experienced or been inherently changed by a colonial process. At the time, most coastal states in the Gulf were comprised of either nomadic or seafaring tribes. Amongst these tribes were substantial populations of Iranians and Indians who were part of the mercantile classes. In more recent times and with the creation of city states, there has been an active rejection of external and non-indigenous identities. Gulf regimes have also made a conscious effort to create a national identity that is based on tribal and religious heritage in order to enforce their domestic legitimacy. The question of whether the creation of national identities can lead to “imagined communities” was problematized by the discussants. Namely, the idea that Gulf states revalorize national and tribal ties as a way to construct a narrative based on national and sectarian sentiments.

See the working group agenda
Read participant biographies
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Rogaia Abusharaf, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Haya Al Noaimi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Alanoud Al Sharekh, Secretariat of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development in Kuwait
Khalid Almezaini, Qatar University
Abdullah Baabood, Qatar University
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Gawdat Bahgat, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Study, National Defense University
Patricia Duran, Independent Researcher
Nader Entessar, University of South Alabama
Justin J. Gengler, Qatar University
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Joseph A. Kéchichian, King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies
Anatol Lieven, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Dionysis Markakis, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Toby Matthiesen, University of Cambridge
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Jean-Marc Rickli, Kings College London
David Roberts, Kings College London
Marc Valeri, Center for Gulf Studies, University of Exeter
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Ole Wæver, Center for Resolution of International Conflicts,University of Copenhagen
Luciano Zaccara, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Haya Al-Noaimi, Research Analyst at CIRS

Ole Wæver on Security in a Post-Western World
2014-10-27 18:00 - 19:00
Ole Wæver, Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, and Director of the Center for Resolution of International Conflicts, delivered a CIRS Focused Discussion on October 27, 2014 on the topic “Global Security in a Post-Western World.” Introducing the lecture, Wæver noted that when world events change so quickly and so radically, it is always important to understand the basics of international relations theories, no matter how old-fashioned an idea that may seem. In international relations, it is tradition to want to comprehend the “big picture,” in terms of how one country relates to another and under what kinds of power relations within the international system.

Giving some historical background to the topic, Wæver explained that the idea of the singular “superpower” is one that has its roots in Eurocentric history, and goes back to a time where Europe was central to world events, especially during the colonial period and up to the Cold War. However, since the end of the Cold War, the question of what kind of international political system has replaced the older, more traditional bipolar global engagement of superpowers is still being debated in the discipline. There have been a great many shifts in global engagement. Nations have since attempted to adapt to the new transition and to the decline of powerful global ideologies as they reconstruct their security allegiances within power vacuums. Wæver argued that we are currently in a radically different system to that of the past bipolar world where giant powers faced off against each other. So, how did we get to this stage of finding ourselves in a post-Cold War period and, what he called, a post-West period? The answer is in what comes after bipolarity: is it unipolarity or is it multipolarity? Or, is it neither?

The post-Cold War period saw the rise of an ideologically-victorious United States, with power and influence all over the world. However, Wæver argued, it is evident from events of the recent past that the United States can no longer claim power based solely on market or military might. Around 2005, there was a turning point where the centric approach began showing signs of weakness. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars proved to be a poor strategy, and one in which the United States failed to dominate. Further, the 2008 global financial crisis completely damaged US legitimacy as a global market leader. “The US is really not dominant enough to be able to impose order,” he said.

Perhaps then the idea of multipolarilty could be considered a more appropriate definition in its acknowledgement of fluid and shifting alliances, but, Wæver argued, it is still a concept that is unsatisfactory to describe current international system structures. The idea of multipolarity is problematic since within any group of nations, some are more powerful than others. Thus, these concepts are unstable, and we need a new definition of what is taking place in the global balance of power.

Currently, the world is increasingly made up of many great powers with fewer superpowers in neither a unipolar nor a multipolar world. “No one is really thinking of themselves as global players, they are all anchored and rooted in regions, mostly interested in their own regions, somewhat interested in neighboring regions, and occasionally concerned about global questions,” he explained. Thus, if there is no longer an ongoing struggle for the prime position within the global order, we need a different type of definition, and a different type of understanding for this new global configuration.

In conclusion, Wæver said that, ultimately, many of these issues come down to basic assumptions and ways of thinking. In this sense, the current configuration of world politics is post-Western in three very distinct ways: in power politics that is no longer Western-centric; in the value order that is no longer based on a singular framework of interpretation; and, finally, in the understanding of international relations theory and concepts of polarity and global security, where we now see a greater role for theories that emanate out of different geographic and cultural contexts—ones that are not dominated by Western modes of thinking.

Ole Wæver is most known for coining the concept of “securitization” and developing what is commonly referred to as the Copenhagen School in security studies. His research interests include international relations and security theory, sociology of science, religion in international relations, climate change, conflict analysis, and the role of national identity in foreign policy. He has published and broadcast extensively in the field of international relations and securitization theory. His most recent publications include the contribution of a chapter to Capturing Security Expertise: Practice, Power, and Responsibility (Routledge, forthcoming 2015). His most recent peer-reviewed journal article, “The Theory Act: Responsibility and Exactitude as seen from Securitization” appears in International Relations (2014).

Ole Wæver, Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, and Director of the Center for Resolution of International Conflicts, delivered a CIRS Focused Discussion on October 27, 2014 on the topic “Global Security in a Post-Western World.” Introducing the lecture, Wæver noted that when world events change so quickly and so radically, it is always important to understand the basics of international relations theories, no matter how old-fashioned an idea that may seem. In international relations, it is tradition to want to comprehend the “big picture,” in terms of how one country relates to another and under what kinds of power relations within the international system.

Giving some historical background to the topic, Wæver explained that the idea of the singular “superpower” is one that has its roots in Eurocentric history, and goes back to a time where Europe was central to world events, especially during the colonial period and up to the Cold War. However, since the end of the Cold War, the question of what kind of international political system has replaced the older, more traditional bipolar global engagement of superpowers is still being debated in the discipline. There have been a great many shifts in global engagement. Nations have since attempted to adapt to the new transition and to the decline of powerful global ideologies as they reconstruct their security allegiances within power vacuums. Wæver argued that we are currently in a radically different system to that of the past bipolar world where giant powers faced off against each other. So, how did we get to this stage of finding ourselves in a post-Cold War period and, what he called, a post-West period? The answer is in what comes after bipolarity: is it unipolarity or is it multipolarity? Or, is it neither?

The post-Cold War period saw the rise of an ideologically-victorious United States, with power and influence all over the world. However, Wæver argued, it is evident from events of the recent past that the United States can no longer claim power based solely on market or military might. Around 2005, there was a turning point where the centric approach began showing signs of weakness. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars proved to be a poor strategy, and one in which the United States failed to dominate. Further, the 2008 global financial crisis completely damaged US legitimacy as a global market leader. “The US is really not dominant enough to be able to impose order,” he said.

Perhaps then the idea of multipolarilty could be considered a more appropriate definition in its acknowledgement of fluid and shifting alliances, but, Wæver argued, it is still a concept that is unsatisfactory to describe current international system structures. The idea of multipolarity is problematic since within any group of nations, some are more powerful than others. Thus, these concepts are unstable, and we need a new definition of what is taking place in the global balance of power.

Currently, the world is increasingly made up of many great powers with fewer superpowers in neither a unipolar nor a multipolar world. “No one is really thinking of themselves as global players, they are all anchored and rooted in regions, mostly interested in their own regions, somewhat interested in neighboring regions, and occasionally concerned about global questions,” he explained. Thus, if there is no longer an ongoing struggle for the prime position within the global order, we need a different type of definition, and a different type of understanding for this new global configuration.

In conclusion, Wæver said that, ultimately, many of these issues come down to basic assumptions and ways of thinking. In this sense, the current configuration of world politics is post-Western in three very distinct ways: in power politics that is no longer Western-centric; in the value order that is no longer based on a singular framework of interpretation; and, finally, in the understanding of international relations theory and concepts of polarity and global security, where we now see a greater role for theories that emanate out of different geographic and cultural contexts—ones that are not dominated by Western modes of thinking.

Ole Wæver is most known for coining the concept of “securitization” and developing what is commonly referred to as the Copenhagen School in security studies. His research interests include international relations and security theory, sociology of science, religion in international relations, climate change, conflict analysis, and the role of national identity in foreign policy. He has published and broadcast extensively in the field of international relations and securitization theory. His most recent publications include the contribution of a chapter to Capturing Security Expertise: Practice, Power, and Responsibility (Routledge, forthcoming 2015). His most recent peer-reviewed journal article, “The Theory Act: Responsibility and Exactitude as seen from Securitization” appears in International Relations (2014).

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications
