Art and Cultural Production in the GCC Working Group II
2016-02-07 09:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On February 7, 2016, the Center for International and Regional Studies held its second working group meeting on “Art and Cultural Production in the GCC.” Project participants, as well as other scholars, engaged in critical group discussions, and provided feedback to the authors on draft chapters. The chapters written under this project address a variety of subjects, including amongst other topics: utopian ideals and art museums in the Arabian Peninsula; public art in Gulf cities; aesthetics, artistic production, and censorship in the GCC; art as modernity and “soft power”; and art and discourses of culture and “authenticity” in the UAE.

Over the course of three decades, economies of the Arab states of the Gulf have been experiencing immense growth. This has influenced the political significance of these states on the international and regional levels, and the social fabric of these states, due to the influx of expats from all around the world, on the domestic level. The pace of changes in the social fabric of these states has influenced the development of artistic and cultural institutions. The limited existing scholarship tends to focus on the rapidly growing museum culture and the acquisition of foreign art as indicative of several Gulf states’ use of oil revenue. This project builds on available literature by contributing towards furthering knowledge on the prevailing issues around art and cultural production in the Gulf. The contributed chapters explore the process of art acquisition and certain GCC governments’ investment in museums and artworks, and investigate the effects of art importation and assimilation on citizens’ perceptions of identity and self.

The working group commenced with Karen Exell’s chapter on “Utopian Ideals, Unknowable Futures, and the Art Museum in the Arabian Peninsula.” In her chapter, Exell explores the idea of the utopian in relation to art museums and the contemporary moment in the Arabian Peninsula. The transference of global art museums—constructed according to dominant western art historical principles and museological practices—to the Arabian Peninsula has brought with it the rhetoric of post-Enlightenment humanist idealism. The ability of these museums to instrumentalize international peace and understanding, as well as offering solace on an individual level through solitary communion with works of art, results in a transcendental experience. This experience is desirable in a secular society, but perhaps unnecessary and even problematic in an Islamic one. The chapter addresses the differing ideologies at play, and concludes by evaluating some of the futures posited for global art museums in the Arabian Peninsula.

The second chapter was presented by Nadia Mounajjed on “Public Art in Gulf Cities.” Mounajjed claims that although “public art” refers to artworks, either permanent or temporary, commissioned for sites with open public access, in the Gulf it is only discussed in the context of architectural production and urban design. This steers her investigation on the nature of the public and the public realm in the Arab cities of the Gulf. She explores the specific “parameters of publicity” and the potential of public art to act as a force for social discussion, place making and collective memory. In her chapter, Mounajjed raises a series of questions around: what counts as public art, and what does not? What does “public” mean? Who is public art intended for? Who funds public art? And how is public art tied to notions of place, identity, and social diversity?

In the third presented chapter titled: “Of ‘Gray Lists’ and Whitewash: The Aesthetics and Artistic Strategies of Complicity and Circumvention in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries,” Nancy Demerdash examines the GCC’s “areas of gray” in artistic censorship. She claims that the processes by which works receive endorsement and acceptance, or scrutiny and rejection, by a combination of private sponsors, patrons, or the public, presents a complex fabric of actors beyond the state apparatus, extending to institutions and organizations. In addition, Demerdash examines suppression and artists’ complicity or subversion, and analyzes the outlets through which aesthetic alternatives arise. She also illuminates a more nuanced perspective of artistic freedom and aesthetic choices with respect to the cultural spaces, institutions, and biennials of the GCC. Throughout her chapter, Demerdash raises a series of questions: in what ways do we define artistic freedom generally within the GCC? How do artists of the Gulf engage with customs of religion and everyday politics of the region? In what ways do such artists wittingly self-censor, effectively depoliticizing their practice? How does the intended viewership of an artist inform his or her production? If art of the Arab world, in recent years following the so-called Arab Spring, has become increasingly situated or defined as “activist,” “political,” or “revolutionary,” where is the place of these types of art forms in the Arab states of the Gulf? What shape does this engagement with unstable or transgressive content take? And what are the aesthetics of art forms that cannot be openly dissident or subversive?

Lesley Gray presented the fourth chapter on “Contemporary Art as Modernity: Art and Global Identity in Azerbaijan and the Gulf.” Using textual and media discourse analysis for both academic and popular media, Gray examines the factors that were instrumental in the rise of contemporary art as part of a strategy of international engagement, and contextualizes this information with the opinions of those who work in the art scene in Baku. Moreover, within the context of other similar geographies in the Arabian Peninsula who share Azerbaijan’s energy wealth, Azerbaijani modernity is one that has incorporated elements of Western-style economic progress propelled by oil wealth without the accompanying personal, social, and political freedoms and rights. Specifically, this chapter asks how can we define Azerbaijani modernity, and under what conditions has it arisen? How has the media shaped the image of Azerbaijan to an international audience? How has contemporary art developed in the post-Soviet era and how does it express Azerbaijan’s modern identity to the international art community? What does the contemporary art scene look like from the ground up and who is their public? And how does Azerbaijan, and specifically Baku, compare to other similar cities like Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dubai?

In the final chapter on “Authentic Culture in the UAE,” Elizabeth Derderian argues that the “museum boom” in the Gulf region raises questions of authenticity and cultural appropriation. Focusing largely on the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this chapter explores the concept of authenticity and how its deployment affects exclusion in particular ways. Derderian examines the ways in which authenticity claims create the need for experts and serve as forms of knowledge production that rely on and reproduce different structures and dynamics of power. In addition, Derderian parses cultural exchange from cultural appropriation, focusing on hierarchies of power and exclusion.

Mehran Kamrava, the Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies, concluded the working group meeting by highlighting the participants’ contributions to scholarship through their papers, which will be published in a forthcoming special issue of an academic journal.

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Participants and Discussants:

Haya Al Noaimi, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nancy Demerdash, DePaul University
Elizabeth (Beth) Derderian, Northwestern University
Karen Exell, University College London in Qatar
Lesley Gray, University College London in Qatar
Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Nadia Mounajjed, Abu Dhabi University
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Museums and Modernity in the Arabian Peninsula
2016-02-23 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Karen Exell, Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL Qatar, and a consultant at Qatar Museums, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture, titled “Museums and Modernity in the Arabian Peninsula,” on Tuesday February 23, 2016. Highlighting some key arguments from her forthcoming book Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula (Routledge, 2016), Exell recounted that when she first arrived to Qatar with the task of setting up an institution to cultivate professional museological practices, the general consensus was that no such practices existed in the local context, and that Qatar was a “tabula rasa” in need of such imported knowledge and services. However, after spending time in the country and researching the local museological landscape, she argued that a very different picture emerged.

Exell explained that there are two simultaneous and oppositional discourses of cultural production currently being articulated in the region. These are presented as oppositional in terms of both style and content: modern art is seen as a product of Western art history, while traditional cultural practices draw on the oral histories and traditional practices of the region. These binary cultural productions are also presented as providing contrasted cultural experiences: one evokes an internationally-recognized art world, while the other invites a dialogic and immersive interaction with traditional regional productions. In order to examine how these discourses have been put into practice, Exell compared the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar with the Saif Marzooq Al-Shamlan and Bait Al Outhman museums in Kuwait.

“The Museum of Islamic Art draws extensively on the Western paradigm of museological expertise,” she said, and is a prestige project that attempts to create a new global cultural center within Qatar. Such “engagement with Western-style museums was and is a strategic choice by the ruling families and elite actors,” and has been geared towards realizing a multitude of agendas over the years. Following independence, museological practices aided in nation-building, creation of consistent historical narratives, and legitimizing the status of the region’s ruling families. In the contemporary period, they are “a means of branding nations and gaining symbolic global power through accessing cultural capital,” she noted.

The Saif Marzooq Al-Shamlan and Bait Al Outhman museums in Kuwait, meanwhile, represent centers for the protection of local histories and traditional knowledge. Since these cultural forms are “rich in the kind of heritage that orthodox Western heritage models struggle to accommodate: intangible, performative, and embodied,” they are hard to promote or export. Simply put, they do not fit within the Western museological paradigm. However, Exell argued, while these local museological practices are deemed of little international value, they are of extreme importance in supporting and creating national identities and narratives.

It is by examining the rhetoric surrounding these supposedly contrasting cultural spheres that one can begin to understand how the two discourses actually play towards specific and strategic regional agendas, she said. As the Gulf states attempt to exploit the immense wealth created through hydrocarbon industries, these nations must also answer to how they are protecting against the encroachment of rapid regional transformations. Even as certain elements of modernity are being celebrated, there is a simultaneous call to strengthen local heritage as defense against what is perceived to be an onslaught and effacement of local histories anc cultures. This balancing act between the old and the new is exemplified in the two types of cultural engagements practiced in the region.

Ultimately, Exell argued, “the rhetoric of fusing the traditional and the modern represents the region’s approach to modernity…an agenda of retaining cultural identity in balance with aspects of a more secular modernity, while the rhetoric of engagement with global art and ideas of the universal is a method of discursively bridging cultures—bridging the East and the West and bringing people together—is repeatedly emphasized by actors investing in and producing the global art projects.”

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Karen Exell directed the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice at UCL Qatar from 2011-2015, after teaching museums studies and holding curatorial positions in university museums in the UK for several years. She is currently involved in two QNRF-funded research projects, as a PI on project researching museum pedagogy in Qatar and the region, and as LPI on project exploring the concept of national identity in relation to the planned new National Museum of Qatar. Her recent publications include the co-edited volumes, Cultural Heritage in the Arabian Peninsula: Debates, Discourses and Practices (Ashgate, 2014), and Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and Regional Processes (Ashgate, 2016).

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Managing Editor for CIRS Publications.

What the U.S. Presidential Election Means for the Middle East
2016-02-24 12:30 - 13:30 (Europe/Moscow)
On February 24, 2016, John Hudak, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director at the Center for Effective Public Management Governance Studies–Brookings Institution, delivered a CIRS Focused Discussion titled “What the U.S. Presidential Election Means for the Middle East.” Hudak, an expert on U.S. elections and campaigns, stated that it is difficult to gauge the positions and policies of the U.S. presidential candidates on the Middle East region since they are often vague and variable, especially during the primaries. Compared to previous election cycles, however, the 2016 elections are unique due to the rise of foreign policy as a critical issue for both parties’ candidates. Hudak also discussed the foreign policy credentials of the Republicans and the Democrats, and explored which party has generally seen itself as the bastion of U.S. foreign policy goals.

The first part of Hudak’s talk focused on describing the convoluted nature of the U.S. presidential elections. Before running for the general election, presidential candidates have to participate in a competitive primary campaign to become the party’s standard-bearer. During the primaries, candidates compete with each other for delegates who represent the constituents of the states. As the results of different states emerge, starting with Iowa and New Hampshire, it becomes a little clearer to see who is better positioned to become the party’s representative. However, the 2016 race has still not been decided since some candidates can surge while others sink. “If we take a step back one year and look at what our expectations were about this race, they are entirely turned on their head,” said Hudak, “the realities of the election this year are very different than what expectations were in February of 2015.” By the end of July 2016, the winning candidates will be announced at the parties’ national conventions and will begin the rapid race for the general election.

After familiarizing the audience with the intricacies of the election process, Hudak shifted the discussion to the factors behind the increased prominence of U.S. foreign policy in the 2016 elections. Hudak attributed this shift to two main points: the topical interest in the Middle East’s crises—particularly the conflict in Syria and the rise of Islamic States—and the fact that both parties view foreign policy as the winning issue in this general election. “There are a lot of serious conflicts in the world where either the U.S. is involved, or there is an expectation for American leadership,” said Hudak, “either to help ameliorate the challenges, or to fix the problem.” The level of interest in foreign policy usually increases when such situations arise; the most recent example was the 2004 election when John Kerry and the incumbent president, George W. Bush, fought a contested election that hinged on the decision to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan. In contrast, the elections of 2008 and 2012 focused on domestic policy and the economy, particularly after the 2008 recession.

In most election years, “the Republicans, in terms of polling, are typically much more trusted in terms of dealing with policy issues than Democrats are,” said Hudak. Democrats, on the other hand, focus more on the “bread and butter” issues that concern domestic affairs, such as the economy, jobs, and issues of social justice and equality. In 2016, however, both parties approach foreign policy as their winning issue, and both parties have candidates with strong stances. Hillary Clinton believes she is well versed and experienced with the major foreign policy issues from her time as Secretary of State, and this makes her unique among Democrats. She also sees it as a benefit for her candidacy because she is a woman, and foreign policy is commonly seen as the purview of men. “In that sense,” Hudak reasons, “she sees it as a transformational thing, both for herself, gender, and her party […] that is the thinking within the campaign.” While Clinton has not focused as much on foreign policy as she would have liked, she will likely prop up her foreign policy credentials again in the general election. In contrast, the Republicans pride themselves on their traditional focus on foreign policy, and their campaigns have especially focused on pointing out the disastrous aftereffects of Clinton’s time as Secretary of State.

Finally, Hudak concluded by discussing potential areas of foreign policy interest for the next president such as Syria, Israel, and Iran. After taking the presidential oath on January 20, 2017, Syria will be priority for whoever is elected. Hudak stated that either the new president will dramatically change course from Obama’s policies or mildly alter them, depending on whether a Republican or a Democrat emerges victorious. Regardless, Americans can be sure that there will be a change in policy, and foreign policy will remain one of the most vital issues in the first 100-200 days in office. Other important foreign policy issues on the president’s mind will be alleviating the U.S.’s strained relationship with Israel—one area both Democrats and Republicans agree on—and working out the next steps for the nuclear deal with Iran.

John Hudak is Senior Fellow and Deputy Director at the Center for Effective Public Management Governance Studies, Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. His research examines questions of presidential power in the contexts of administration, personnel, and public policy. Additionally, he focuses on campaigns and elections, bureaucratic process and legislative-executive interaction. You can access his complete bio, click here.

Article by Salman Ahad Khan, Senior Publications Intern at CIRS

Pluralism and Community in the Middle East Working Group Meeting I
2016-03-06 09:00 - 2016-03-07 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On March 6–7, 2016, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held a working group on “Pluralism and Community in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, a number of distinguished scholars discussed issues related to ethno-linguistic and religious pluralism in the Middle East, identified gaps in the existing literature, and pointed to potential areas of original research. Amongst the various topics discussed, Working Group participants examined pluralism and diversity as represented through governance and legal regimes; social inclusion/exclusion and policymaking; the role and symbolism of iconoclasm in the Middle East; architecture, the urban space, and identity; digital culture, political communication and regional notions of “multiculturalism;” language; and literature and cultural representation. Two specific case studies, the Amazighs and Armenian Christians, were also discussed.

The Middle East’s pluralistic social and political fabric has gone through several historical changes, and ethnicity, religion, language, and political ideologies play pivotal roles in contemporary identity affiliations across the region.

National and regional conflicts often intensify subnational identities, and this has especially been the case in the Middle East over the last several years. Working Group participants identified a series of original areas of research regarding the on-going intensification of identities in the Middle East, including the relationship between the conceptions of the state and inclusion of some identity groups and the exclusion of others; the impact of globalization and transnational communities; the historical legacy of the Ottoman millet system; sectarianism in the post-Arab Spring era; the role of intellectuals and social media in identity formation; and the underlying causes and consequences of increasing religiosity.

Governance and state policies impact the social, economic, and political inclusion or exclusion of communities in the Middle East. Working Group participants discussed the multiple linkages between statehood and identity-formation in the Middle East. They questioned the relationship between communities and sites of power; and challenges international law’s values and principles pose on states’ traditional governance. The participants also discussed topics related to the parallel development of local human rights traditions along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a sort of self-determination in the decision-making processes, and the role of state institutions in enforcing social harmonization and cohesiveness.

State policies dealing with education, families, kinship and law, mobility of labor and capital can directly impact social inclusion and exclusion. In recent years, state policies have greatly impacted foreign, national and private educational institutions. Although this is not unique to the Middle East, there is limited literature on the notions of inclusion and exclusion in Middle Eastern educational curriculums. The relationship between policymaking and ways in which families are being constructed also has direct bearing on education. The participants claimed that the nature of communities’ relations both with each other and the state could be seen as a result of exclusionary and inclusionary policies. In addition, the participants discussed issues related to mobility of people and ideas, social representation in the education system, globalization, and war on terror and school curriculum in the Middle East.

Modern nation-building processes began roughly in the middle of the twentieth century in several states of the Middle East, such as Egypt and Iraq. Driven by ideology, politics and religious beliefs, states, and recently non-state actors like ISIS, have used iconoclasm as a tool to limit the multiple identities within the nation state, and reinforce a monolithic identity. The practice of iconoclasm has impacted the material culture and visual heritage of the different religious and ethno-linguistic communities that comprise the region’s demography. Archeological negligence, and inconsiderate urban planning have also contributed to this erasure of visual pluralism. In addition, participants also discussed the role of social media, media and film in encouraging and countering iconoclasm in the Middle East.

Urban spaces in the Middle East have been going through swift progression in some countries, and massive urban decay in others. Master planning of urban spaces is very politicized in the Middle East, with various socio-economic drivers and consequences. The planning of gated and smart cities, and new capitals segregates communities by nationality, class, ethnicity, and religion. The participants posed questions related to the definition of public good, social representation in master planning, public contestation, access to public information, democratic decentralization, communities’ quarters, gentrification of communities, security, citizenship, and urban equality and inequality.

Media is a tool of communication greatly influenced by states in the Middle East. It propagates certain convictions insofar as religious and ethno-linguistic communities in the Middle East are concerned. The participants identified four main topics that are insufficiently researched: labor and digital media; citizenship; border; and knowledge production. Within these four main topics, questions around the usage of media by migrant workers and expatriates in the Gulf, redesigning of borders, under-representation in political and media institutions, capitalism and cognitive knowledge, memory preservation, and production of knowledge were identified as important areas of original research.

Language and linguistics are germane to the discussion on pluralism in the Middle East. Members of ethno-linguistic communities have been attempting to maintain their languages and dialects despite attempts by states to undermine their languages and reinforce the official language of the state. The participants suggested research questions that examine the influence of local groups and authority over language, communities’ resistance to states’ language policies, unification and fragmentation among different ethno-linguistic communities, Shiite-Sunni dialect differences, preservation of dialects, linguistic class processing, media and film, and different usages of colloquial and classic languages.

“Minor literature” is literature produced by the colonized in the colonizer’s language that resists colonization. Post colonization, minor literatures have emerged as a form of resistance and denationalization produced by religious and ethno-linguistic communities in contestation to their marginalization by their respective states. Minor literatures in Turkey often refer to Greek, Jewish, Armenian, and Yazidi literature. The body of literature was always studied in relation to the past. The place and role of minor literature in the imagined futuristic social and political conditions of post nationalist Turkey remains understudied. Ethnographic studies on the readership of minor literature in Turkey also remain under-studied. Thus, the participants suggested original research questions that addressed the engagement with minor literature in Turkey, diasporic migrant experience and minor literature writers, representation of communities in mainstream literature, engagement of Turkish minor literature with the international literary community, engagement among different communities in Turkish minor literature, and targeted audience of Turkish minor literature.

Insofar as the Armenian Christian community in the Middle East is concerned, the participants discussed four original areas for research. These areas looked at the issue of Muslim Armenians, and whether Islam is not compatible with Armenian identity. They also discussed the question of Armenian citizenship and if practicing Christianity is a pre-requisite. The participants identified also other gaps in literature that included: the role of Armenian media, communal publications and propagation of Armenian political agenda, the tension between Eastern and Western Armenians, perception of Armenians in diaspora on the Armenian state, usage of national language, objectives of Armenian publications, Armenian urban space in the Middle East, Armenian scouts, Armenian transnational networks, media and film, Armenian progressive national movements, and the relationship between Armenians and Hezbollah.

Finally, the participants discussed the Amazigh community in North Africa. The participants claimed that the main gaps in research have less to do with how the Amazigh community has changed, but more with how to change the methodological lens through which the community and its struggles can be viewed and analyzed. Regional and transnational analysis can contribute to the study of the Amazigh community in North Africa as it addresses larger political questions, and recognizes the unintended consequences of pluralism. Four gaps in literature were identified: regionalism, transnationalism, localism, and language policy. Under these four main thematic topics, the participants posed questions that touched on topics that included: the relationship between foreign policy and identity formation, Amazigh activism, differences between first and second generation Amazigh immigrants, urban versus rural elitism, institutionalization and politicization of Amazigh as an ethno-linguistic minority, and concepts of inclusion and exclusion.

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Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
James Barry, Deakin University
Kathleen Cavanaugh, National University of Ireland
Paolo D’Urbano, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
Amanda Garrett, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Shak Hanish, National University, California
Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Umber Latafat, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Catherine Miller, Aix-Marseille University
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Firat Oruc, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Annika Rabo, Stockholm University
Diane Singerman, American University, Washington
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Antonio Zarandona, Deakin University

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Is Black Money Really Black? The International and National Fight Against Money Laundering
2016-03-23 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Reem Al-Ansari, a professor at Qatar University’s College of Law and the 2015-2016 CIRS Qatar University Fellow at Georgetown University in Qatar, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue on March 23, 2016, on “Is Black Money Really Black? The International and National Fight Against Money Laundering.” The talk focused on the billions of dollars criminals launder through the global financial system, the staggering social, economic, and political fallout they cause, and what countries like Qatar are doing in response.

Beginning her lecture by defining the term “money laundering,” Al-Ansari said that: “In its simplest form, money laundering refers to an amount of money leaving from destination A, and using techniques to make it seem like the funds were obtained from destination B, a legal source.” Once the money has moved through several banks in different countries, it can then be returned to its owner, ready to be used as legitimate funds.

Al-Ansari, who is also the Director of the Legal Research and Studies division at Role of Law and Anti-Corruption Center (ROLACC) in Doha, listed the various countries targeted for money laundering, as well as the nations that serve as destinations for newly cleaned money. Adding that Qatar is also a target of this criminal activity, she said that Qatari authorities have taken steps to respond to the threat of money laundering by introducing a specific law to mitigate against it. This comprehensive law was enacted following the unsatisfactory conclusion of an IMF-led evaluation report of Qatar’s banking system. “Qatar is awakening to the threat, and it led to the new law,” she said.

The newly established regulations are particularly important as a result of the criminal opportunities posed by the upcoming World Cup in 2022, she said. Further strengthening Qatar’s anti-corruption commitment, she added that, “Qatar now adheres to the series of recommendations that FATF has developed and that set the international standard for combating of money laundering,” referring to the nation’s membership to the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental policy-making body, established in 1989 to promote effective implementation of measures for combating threats to the integrity of the international financial system.

The consequences of unchecked money laundering, she concluded, are severe, including increased criminal activity and currency inflation in developing economies, which bear the consequences of economic collapse when critical funds simply disappear as they continue through the multi-step money cleaning process.

Reem Al-Ansari received her LLM from the University of Michigan Law School–Ann Arbor, and earned her Doctorate degree from Georgetown University’s Law Center in Washington D.C., marking her as the youngest Qatari lawyer and doctorate degree holder in the state. In addition to lecturing, Al-Ansari is the Director of the Legal Research and Studies division at Role of Law and Anti-Corruption Center (ROLACC) in Doha, Qatar. Previously, she worked at the World Bank headquarters in the Governance and Anti-corruption (GAC) unit, and is the recipient of two EED awards for education excellence. She is currently working on a book tackling the issue of money laundering and corruption, and tweets under @ReemaAlAnsari.

Shantayanan Devarajan on "How the Arab World Can Benefit from Low Oil Prices"
2016-03-24 12:30 - 13:30 (Europe/Moscow)
Shantayanan Devarajan, Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Region, delivered a CIRS Focused Discussion on “How the Arab World Can Benefit from Low Oil Prices” on March 24, 2016, in which he proposed that the widespread concern about plummeting oil prices, particularly among rentier states, is not a predicament to be solved, but an opportunity to be harnessed.

Devarajan highlighted four key problems facing the Arab world today. The first of these is that the region has the highest unemployment rates in the developing world, a figure that reflects the systematic exclusion of women and young people from the labor market. The second problem is the lack of economic diversification, and especially in the case of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, concentration on the exports of a single commodity, whether oil or gas. Made more visible by the events of the Arab uprisings, the third problem includes the poor quality of public services, such as the widespread lack of sustained electricity and sanitation in many Arab countries. The final problem concerns the high volatility of already declining average growth rates for countries such as Egypt.

All of these issues, he argued, are intimately connected with the prevalent policies decision-makers have implemented across the Arab world in recent times. Devarajan identified and discussed three key adverse policies. The first concerns a variety of policies that have led to the non-optimal use of public resources, whether deliberately or inadvertently. The second adverse policy involves the high proportion of civil servants in the labor force, making the ratio of public to private sector workers in the MENA region the highest in the world. In Kuwait, for instance, 95 percent of the male labor force works in the public sector. Exemplifying the high levels of volatility in the region, the third policy underscores the pro-cyclical strategies that allow countries to enter into an expansionary mode when oil prices are up, often with the risk of debt, and contraction when prices drop.

Devarajan emphasized the connection between poor policymaking initiatives and the four major problems facing the Arab world. As an example, he examined the impact of fuel subsidies on energy-intensive industries, arguing that the persistent subsidizing of these large, old, and capital intensive firms hinders these small firms from growing, ultimately affecting the labor market and precluding employment growth. Young and small firms, on the other hand, which do create jobs through growth and expansion, are associated with non-energy-intensive firms. Thus, unemployment in many Arab countries can be partially, but not exclusively, attributed to energy subsidies. Similarly, the policy of Arab countries maintaining a large civil service has the effect of crowding out the private sector. The relatively more stable working conditions for those employed in the public sector, in both oil importing and exporting countries, discourages nationals from working in the private sector, thus limiting overall economic growth.

These examples, Devarajan noted, constitute the “bad news.” However, the “good news” has been steadily taking shape since the price of oil fell in 2014-15 when the region began witnessing remarkable systematic investments in energy subsidy reforms by oil importers and exporters alike. “The UAE, basically, has eliminated its fuel subsidies,” Kuwait, Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt have followed suit, and “Lebanon has addressed its water subsidies,” leading to a positive environment of policy reform. In the civil service sector of many Arab countries, partial reforms are being undertaken, where governments are cutting back on civil service wages, benefits, and wasteful expenditures. Underpublicized are also efforts by some of these countries to improve energy efficiency, including investing in renewables. Owing to recent subsidy reforms, and by association, the drop in oil prices, oil-dependent countries are unexpectedly moving towards renewables, even faster than some European countries, thus making a larger contribution to the mitigation of global climate change. In contrast to times of stability, therefore, low oil prices allow for the formation of political coalitions necessary to pursue a variety of political and economic reforms. The reason for these changes, Devarajan explained, is budgetary pressure. “It is actually the right thing to do even if there were no budgetary pressures. This is something that should have been done a long time ago if you wanted to solve these problems of unemployment and poor quality services.”

Even though Devarajan acknowledged many of the major advancements made, he said there remains much work to be done. He suggested further improvements that can be implemented, including a variety of public service reforms to overcome the “credibility trap” where mistrust of the government’s ability to improve public services paralyzes public contributions to financing those services. Further, the persistence of reactionary decisions and policies towards changes in oil prices underscores the necessity of adopting standardized fiscal rules to overcome obstacles to economic growth. Lastly, the civil service in oil-exporting countries, particularly those with small citizen populations such as Kuwait and the UAE, function as a system for redistributing oil revenues. “There is no reason to have 95 percent of the labor force in the civil service. There are not that many jobs. There is not that much work to be done in the public sector to have so many people employed,” he argued. Devarajan concluded by sharing his optimism for further positive change in a low oil-price Arab world due to already demonstrated possibilities for reform.

Shantayanan Devarajan is the Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Region. Since joining the World Bank in 1991, he has been a Principal Economist and Research Manager for Public Economics in the Development Research Group, and the Chief Economist of the Human Development Network, South Asia, and Africa Region. He was the director of the World Development Report 2004, Making Services Work for Poor People. Before 1991, he was on the faculty of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The author or co-author of over 100 publications, Devarajan’s research covers public economics, trade policy, natural resources and the environment, and general equilibrium modeling of developing countries. Born in Sri Lanka, Devarajan received his B.A. in mathematics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Article by Hazim Ali, Center for International and Regional Studies

Uday Chandra Faculty Research Workshop
2016-03-28 09:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On March 28, 2016, CIRS hosted a Faculty Research Workshop on Uday Chandra’s book manuscript Negotiating Leviathan: State and Tribe in Modern India. The manuscript explores how and why certain people and places came to be seen as “tribal” in modern India, and in turn, how “tribal” subjects remade their customs and communities in the course of negotiations with colonial and postcolonial states. Dr. Chandra argues, briefly, that the state and tribes make and remake each other recursively in the margins of modern India, historical processes of modern statemaking shaping and being shaped by myriad forms of resistance by tribal subjects. Implicit here is a critique of theories of “subaltern” resistance that treat tribes and peasants as vestiges of a pre-modern past and at odds with the workings of modern states. Comparatively speaking, the manuscript carries much relevance beyond South Asia, especially in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, where “tribes” continue to be politically salient yet widely misunderstood as pre-modern vestiges.

Research for this book, which comes out of Dr. Chandra’s doctoral project, was conducted over the past decade. Archival research in London, Delhi, Kolkata, Patna, Pune, Bangalore, and Ranchi permitted Chandra to piece together a history of the modern Indian state in its “tribal” margins over the past two centuries. These archives, far from being mere repositories of the state’s own perceptions of tribal communities, presented a polyphonous chorus of voices, ranging from paternalistic British and Indian officials and Christian missionaries seeking converts to tribal subjects from diverse backgrounds speaking in different tongues. In-depth ethnographic research over three years in the forests of Jharkhand in eastern India complemented work in the archives by offering a close-to-the-ground understanding of the everyday lifeworlds of tribal communities residing in this region. As the author lived and worked among the Mundas of central Jharkhand, he listened to their songs, stories, and histories, and observed the ways in which their ways of life were enmeshed with those of the state. Indeed, even the Maoist movement, which was spreading across the region, coexisted curiously with the state, and ordinary men and women lived under circumstances of dual sovereignty.

The participants at the CIRS research workshop came from universities in India, the Gulf, and Europe. These historians, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists specialize in the study of modern India. The book manuscript as a whole presented them an opportunity to grapple with the totality of his project rather than just smaller article-length chunks of it. The workshop participants approached the manuscript from their diverse disciplinary positions, though they appreciated that the author wished to speak across conventional disciplinary divides in clear, jargon-free prose. Each participant had been assigned specific chapters, on which they offered detailed comments and criticisms in each session. Other participants raised their own questions for the author, who took copious notes and responded to calls for clarification as well as queries on the specific goals each book chapter sought to accomplish.

The workshop participants suggested vital changes to the manuscript in order to avoid certain pitfalls and to appeal broadly to its intended audiences. Firstly, they recommended rewriting the introductory chapter entirely for a general audience unfamiliar with the subject matter of the book. The introduction, they explained, should reflect the core strengths of the book, namely, the author’s interdisciplinary approach and deep familiarity with his fieldsites and their inhabitants. Secondly, some participants suggested laying out clearly at the outset how the data were collected, especially during ethnographic fieldwork, and rendering the author more visible in the book’s narrative. Doing so, they claimed, would permit readers to appreciate the uniqueness of the research and the author’s close relationships with informants, both of which are implicit rather than explicit at present. Thirdly, other participants argued for a closer braiding together of the historical and ethnographic parts of the manuscript. Each chapter could, of course, make its own arguments, but to the extent that the author argues that the past matters for the present, they need to be brought into close conversation with each other across chapters. Lastly, a number of workshop participants advised the author to clearly define key terms such as the “state,” “resistance,” and “negotiation” so that readers are certain of how they are being deployed in the book. The author thanked the workshop participants for these suggestions, which, he said, will greatly improve the overall quality of the manuscript.

Dr. Chandra is currently in discussions with Stanford University Press regarding the publication of his book. Two other leading university presses have expressed an interest in publishing the book. Since the subject matter of the book should appeal to multiple audiences across regional and disciplinary boundaries, the author has written it in a way that makes sense to even undergraduates unfamiliar with the region of study. The manuscript should be ready for submission this summer, and may be expected to be in print sometime during the 2017-18 academic year. By that time, Dr. Chandra will have commenced work on a second book, tentatively titled Democracy and Fascism in Modern India, which traces the historical entanglements of democratization in the public sphere and fascist tendencies therein that have favored the rise and growth of Hindu majoritarianism over the past century or so. CIRS will be supporting that book project too.

See the Workshop AgendaRead Participant Biographies

Uday Chandra is an Assistant Professor of Government. He received his B.A. in economics from Grinnell College and his PhD in political science from Yale University in 2013. He received the 2013 Sardar Patel Award for writing the best dissertation in a US university on any aspect of modern South Asia. Before coming to Doha, he held a prestigious research fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Goettingen, Germany. Uday’s research lies at the intersection between critical agrarian studies, political anthropology, postcolonial theory, and South Asian studies He is interested in state-society relations, power and resistance, political violence, agrarian change, rural-urban migration, popular religion, and the philosophy of the social sciences. Uday’s work has been published in the Law & Society Review, Social Movement Studies, New Political Science, The Journal of Contemporary Asia, Contemporary South Asia, and the Indian Economic & Social History Review. He has coedited volumes and journal special issues on the ethics of self-making in modern South Asia, subaltern politics and the state in contemporary India, caste relations in colonial and postcolonial eastern India, and social movements in rural India today.

Geopolitics of Natural Resources in the Middle East Working Group Meeting II
2016-04-03 09:00 - 2016-04-04 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On April 3-4, 2016, CIRS held a second working group under its research initiative on “Geopolitics of Natural Resources in the Middle East.” On the course of two days, working group participants presented draft papers on a number of related topics including, amongst other things, on the politics of natural resources in the Middle East; scarcity and economic development; environmental and social mobilization; the securitization of natural resources in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states; “greening” policies in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf; Tunisian phosphate mining; coastal sand mining in Morocco; piracy and illegal fishing in Somali territorial waters; and illegal charcoal trafficking from Africa to the GCC states.

Georgetown University’s Harry Verhoeven initiated the group discussion by suggesting that there are three principal paradigms that can serve as a guiding analytical framework through which we can study the politics of natural resources within the Middle East. The first is a fundamentally positivist approach, which conceives of the natural world as a separate realm that is disconnected from the actions of human beings. Within this framework, politics is withdrawn from the equation, and development and environment can be reconciled, particularly through technological intervention and innovation. A second paradigm is resoundingly negativist and Malthusian, conceiving of human behavior as ultimately destructive in relation to the environment. A third paradigm suggests that human society and the environment are inexorably entwined; and thus, any conversation concerning the environment is fundamentally political.

Following Verhoeven’s largely theoretical discussion, Wessel Vermuelen presented a paper titled “Scarcity Derives Economic Development: The Effect of Energy Subsidies on Export Diversification in the Middle East.” Vermuelen tests the effect of energy subsidies on export diversification, particularly focusing on varieties of exports, and the number of export destinations. His research points out that energy subsidy reform remains a critical challenge in many developing countries, and particularly within the Middle East and North Africa. Subsidy reform is considered difficult to implement due to resistance from both the general population and the private sector. However, over the longer term, reductions in energy subsidies remain inevitable if the Middle Eastern states are economically integrated with the rest of the world and advanced economies in particular.

Building on Vermuelen’s paper, Jeannie Sowers offered an examination of “The Evolution of Environmental and Social Mobilization in the Middle East.” Through her research Sowers explores the changes and continuities in patterns of environmental mobilization as seen across the region. Sowers situates Middle Eastern environmental mobilization within broader studies of activism, social mobilization, and state-society relations. Her analysis draws attention to existing structural economic and ecological challenges across the region, and discusses which of these have proved more salient to environmental activism. Sowers also identifies the dominant forms of environmental mobilization seen in the Middle East, from the popular campaign (hamla), to the state-donor project (mashru’), as well as the mobilization driven by NGOs. In her paper, Sowers draws on the popular environmental campaigns that occurred in Egypt and Lebanon.

Jill Crystal shifted the group’s focus to the Arabian Peninsula, presenting a paper on “Securitization of Natural Resources in the Gulf.” Crystal examines the political construction of a broad security framework in the GCC states insofar as natural resources are concerned. She argues that when the GCC’s critical energy infrastructure was threatened by terrorism, governments created a language of anti-terrorism and developed a discourse of securitization to frame energy resources. After the Arab uprisings, new modes of authoritarian behavior have been observed across the region, and the securitization discourse has infiltrated a number of domains. Amongst other things, in her paper Crystal argues that the historical trade-off between political quiescence and economic satisfaction has been replaced by political quiescence in exchange for security.

Ali Al-Keblawy sharpened the focus on the Arab states of the Persian Gulf further through his paper “The Greening of the Gulf,” in which he claims that the landscape and vegetation of deserts in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf have been significantly altered during the last fifty years by a variety of factors. These factors include: livestock grazing, off-road vehicle use, urbanization and its attendants, oil exploration and production activities, and introduction of exotic species. Several other factors have slowed natural recovery of the desert vegetation after disturbance, some of the most notable of which include unpredictability and scarcity of rainfall, repeated drought, extreme high temperatures, intense sun light, high wind storms, and the low fertility of desert soils. However, many of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf paid too much attention to the recovery and greening of the deteriorated landscapes. Al-Keblawy argued that working with, not against, the harsh conditions of the environment would help in creating a sustainable green landscape. He suggests a number of alternatives that include, among others, plantation of native trees, genetic modification of crops, sea watering, and usage of halophytes.

Another paper, by Abbas Maleki, focused on “The Politics of Natural Resources in the Caspian Sea.” Maleki claims that the Caspian region today is a zone of interest to the United States, Russia, European Union, China, Turkey, Japan, Iran and India, largely because of its promising oil and gas resources. These resources exceed those of the North Sea. Under the bottom of this trans-boundary body of water, which is the largest lake in the world, there is four percent of the world gas and oil reserves. Given the amount of oil and gas reserves, Maleki argues that the geo-economic power has not fully surpassed more traditional, military control of territory in this context, which continues to be complex on several geopolitical scale. In his paper, he studies the geopolitics, ecosystem, energy politics and economics, and legal debates insofar as the natural resources in the Caspian Sea are concerned.

Francis Ghiles and Eckart Woertz’s contribution focused on “Tunisian Phosphates and the Politics of the Periphery.” In their paper, the authors presented a historic overview of Tunisian phosphate mining and its role in regional development. They also analyzed the politics of Tunisia’s periphery, Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail’s role within it, and the emergence of new social actors. They presented a detailed examination of how such conflicts played out during the strikes in the phosphate mines in 2008 and after 2011, concluding with some thoughts on possible future developments.

Maria Snoussi provided a critical review on coastal sand mining in Morocco through her paper on “The State, Business, and Morocco’s Environmental Strains: The Case of Coastal Sand Mining.” Snoussi investigates the main causes that have impeded the authorities to effectively manage sand mining. She argues that these causes lie in the lack of comprehensive and integrated policies governing coastal sand resources, and the weakness and lack of enforcement of legal frameworks. This is compounded by a shortsighted vision on the potential value of the coast as a natural capital. Finally, Snoussi argues that only a decisive policy shift toward resource conservation, integrated coastal zone management, and legal reforms regarding sand mining could lead to a different outcome.

Afyare Abdi Elmi led a discussion on his research on “Piracy and Illegal Fishing from Somalia to the Middle East.” Elmi argues that Somalia’s territorial waters are of critical importance and that seventy percent of the Middle East’s transit goes through the Gulf of Aden. Elmi points out that the piracy that has been dominating Somali waters is rooted in a previous history of illegal fishing from vessels originating from Yemen, Iran, and other Middle East countries. Elmi provides a deep analysis of the political and economic explanations and consequences of the causes of piracy, the links to illegal fishing, as well as how this particular political economy is connected to the Middle East. His research suggests five principal causes: statelessness or weak statehood; profit; business opportunities; illegal overfishing; and toxic waste material dumping.

Finally, Illyaa Gridneff shared the findings on “Illegal Charcoal Trafficking in the Middle East.” Gridneff has investigated the economic and environmental consequences of the illegal charcoal trade in Somalia that have led to political tensions on the local, regional and international levels. His work suggests that illegal charcoal trade links Somalia to the Middle East and particularly Arab states of the Persian Gulf. In southern Somalia, acacia tress have been cut and burned to create charcoal and subsequently exported to the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The demand for Somali charcoal, which is one of the world’s finest, and the income that comes with it, has led to competition over influence in Somalia between African Union forces and neighboring countries on the one hand, and aboriginal forces in Somalia, Al Shabab, on the other. The Somali charcoal trade, a source of income to Al Shabab, constitutes an environmental as well as a political and security threat to both Somalia as well as to the broader Middle East and Africa regions.

See the meeting agendaRead participant biographiesRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarJill Crystal, Auburn UniversityAli El-Keblawy, University of SharjahAfyare A. Elmi, Qatar UniversityFrancis Ghilès, Barcelona Center for International Affairs (Cidob)Ilya Gridneff, Sahan ResearchIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarUmber Latafat, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarAbbas Maleki, Sharif University of Technology in TehranSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMaria Snoussi, Université Mohammed V, MoroccoJeannie Sowers, University of New HampshireHarry Verhoeven, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarWessel N. Vermeulen, University of OxfordElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography and the Road Ahead
2016-04-05 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Mehran Kamrava, Professor and Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture to discuss the findings of his most recent book, The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography and the Road Ahead (Yale University Press, 2016), on April 5, 2016. Explaining why he felt the need to write this book, Kamrava said that what he had learnt about Palestine as a student and professor of the Middle East bore little resemblance to the reality of what he experienced when he began conducting fieldwork in Palestine. He recalled this disconnect by noting, “I was immediately struck, while I was on the ground, by the inconsistency between my own assumptions—what I had studied and what I had thought about over the years—and the reality on the ground.” Kamrava argued that the Oslo Accords, an exciting development in the stalemate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offered little to alleviate the struggle of Palestinians and lead to further entrenchment of the continued struggle raging on the ground.

Introducing the thesis of his book, Kamrava explained: “If you think about Palestinian history, Palestinian society, and Palestinian politics, a Palestinian state is impossible. The realities on the ground as they have unfolded have made a Palestinian state impossible and improbable.” However, he continued by saying “a Palestinian nation, or, more specifically, a Palestinian national identity will continue to live on and will be extremely vibrant. In fact, the vibrancy of Palestinian identity—of what it is to be Palestinian lies largely because of the impossibility of the Palestinian state.”

In order to examine this thesis more closely, Kamrava adumbrated three complicated reasons that have made a Palestinian state impossible. The first of these is a result of the complex political forces that have shaped Palestinian history and continue to dictate its current predicament and future direction. Within this category, Kamrava examined four subsets of these political dynamics, including Israel’s military and territorial conquest and defeat of an ill-equipped Palestine in 1948; the subsequent decades of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through outright violence as well as through “legal” administrative policies resulting in the stealthy “silent transfer” of Palestinian communities from their historical homelands; the systematic defeat of Palestinian armed struggle taken up since the 1970s; and, finally, the international community’s betrayal of the Palestinian leadership in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords.

The second reason for the impossibility of Palestine, Kamrava explained, is due to the debilitating geographic segregations introduced after the Oslo Accords. Palestinian mobility became increasingly restricted with the division of the West Bank into three separate territories: Area A, under Palestinian control; Area B, under Israeli military control and Palestinian civil and administrative control; and Area C, under complete Israeli control. “This,” he said, “is result of the Oslo Accords. This is the Palestine that the Palestinian leadership agreed to.” These political dynamics conspired to divide Palestinian territories into a series of dysfunctional and ungovernable entities, thus disempowering Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and undermining any notion of a future Palestinian state.

The third, and most consequential, reason for the impossibility of a Palestinian state is the critical changes that have been taking place in Palestinian society, and the multiple factions therein. Kamrava stated that, despite their eagerness to offer assistance, a multitude of civil society and non-governmental organizations have, in many ways, hampered the constitution of a Palestinian state. While these organizations have often been supportive, they are, ultimately, beholden to their foreign funders, who then dictate where support can be given and where it should be withheld. Many of these decisions have been politically motivated, seriously curtailing the areas in which civil society organizations are allowed to operate. Over the years, the proliferation of such organizations has meant that non-governmental support has developed its own type of bureaucratic bankruptcy. Kamrava explained that “with unintended consequences, Palestinian society, today, in the West Bank and to a lesser extent in Gaza, has become paralyzed because of the work of these civil society organizations.”

Kamrava concluded with what the road ahead might look like for Palestine, and offered three possible scenarios for the future of Palestine. The first of these is the model of a national rebirth in the wake of almost total annihilation, similar to Poland in the post-WWII period; the second is a model in which a nation is overtaken almost entirely by another civilization, similar to modern-day Tibet; and, finally, the third is a model in which a community of people are deliberately segregated into islands of deprivation, similar to the dispossession of native populations in America and Australia.

Mehran Kamrava is Professor and Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He is the author of a number of journal articles and books, including, most recently, The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography, and the Road Ahead (2016); Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (2015); The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War, 3rd ed. (2013); and Iran’s Intellectual Revolution (2008). His edited books include Fragile Politics: Weak States in the Greater Middle East (2016); Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East (2015); The Political Economy of the Persian Gulf (2012); The Nuclear Question in the Middle East (2012); and The International Politics of the Persian Gulf (2011).

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications

CIRS Hosts Reception for Dean Nonneman
2016-04-18 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Moscow)
CIRS hosted a reception for Gerd Nonneman, dean of Georgetown University in Qatar, on April 18, 2016. The reception was attended by Georgetown University in Qatar faculty, students, and staff, as well as members of the Qatar community, including diplomats, community leaders, and invited members of the general public. Gerd Nonneman served as dean of Georgetown University in Qatar for five years, a period in which he oversaw a series of institutional developments leading to an expansion of the Qatar campus, an increase in specialized faculty, establishment of the Arabic heritage program, and sustained community engagement. Although Nonneman is stepping down as dean of the university, he will return to Georgetown University in Qatar as a professor and researcher in the coming academic year.

Dr. Gerd Nonneman, Professor of International Relations & Gulf Studies, holds an M.A. in Middle East Politics (1985) and Ph.D. in Politics (1993) from the University of Exeter. He also holds Licentiates in Oriental Philology (Arabic) (1980) and Development Studies (1981) from the University of Ghent, Belgium. Prior to his appointment as dean, he served as Professor of International Relations & Middle East Politics, and Al-Qasimi Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter, where he has also directed the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies and the Center for Gulf Studies. A former Executive Director of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES), he is also a Council member of the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES). Aside from his academic work, he has worked in the private sector in the Gulf region, and acted as a consultant to a range of companies, NGOs, governments and international institutions. Dean Nonneman is Associate Editor of the Journal of Arabian Studies (Routledge). Among his recent publications are: Al-Mamlaka Al-‘arabiyya al-sa’udiyya fi-l-mizan [Saudi Arabia in the Balance] (updated Arabic edition: Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 2012); ‘Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States: Elite Politics, Street Protests and Regional Diplomacy’ (Chatham House, 2011); ‘Europe, the US, and the Gulf after the Cold War’, in V. Mauer & D. Möckli (eds.), European-American Relations and the Middle East: From Suez to Iraq (Routledge, 2010); ‘Terrorism and Political Violence in the Middle East and North Africa: Drivers and Limitations’, in A. Siniver (ed.), International Terrorism post 9/11 (Routledge, 2010); ‘Political Reform in the Gulf Monarchies: From Liberalisation to Democratisation? A Comparative Perspective’, in A. Ehteshami & S. Wright (eds.), Reform in the Middle East Oil Monarchies (Reading: Ithaca Press, 2008); Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (New York University Press, 2006); ‘EU-GCC Relations’, (Gulf Research Center, 2006); and Analyzing Middle East Foreign Policies (Routledge, 2005).

Highly Skilled Migration to the Gulf in Comparative Perspective Working Group I
2016-06-01 08:30 - 2016-06-02 14:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On June 1-2, 2016, The Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted a working group on “Highly Skilled Migrants: The Gulf and Global Perspectives.” This working group is an outcome of a joint research project on Highly Skilled Migrants in Qatar that Zahra Babar, CIRS Associate Director, and two co-collaborators, Nabil Khattab of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and Michael Ewers of Qatar University’s Social and Economic Survey Research Institute recently began working on. The working group provided Babar, Khattab, and Ewers with the opportunity to share their preliminary research results and receive feedback. A number of other scholars with regional and global experience on the topic of skilled migration were invited to present on their own research during the working group. The gathering allowed the group to revisit some of the fundamental assumptions about the nature, patterns, and processes of labor migration to the Gulf region, through the lens of highly skilled migration.

Zahra Babar, Michael Ewers and Nabil Khattab started the discussion by introducing their pilot project on “Highly Skilled Migrants in Qatar.” They shared the results of a survey of 300 highly skilled migrants that was carried out in Qatar in January 2016 and also some of the preliminary findings of a few in-depth interviews that they have carried out in the past month. The survey and qualitative interviews address a number of areas, including among other things: highly skilled migrants’ careers and professional lives in Qatar, motivations and drivers for coming to the country and reasons for staying, human capital development— both the tacit skills and know-how that they contribute to their work, organizations and the country— and their values and aspirations relating to their mobility, as well as life strategies and future aims and life strategies.

Building on the first session and allowing for a very interesting comparative geographic perspective, Micheline van Riemsdijk led a discussion on the “Integration of Highly Skilled Migrants in the Workplace: A Multi-Scalar Model” which is focused on highly skilled migrants in Scandinavia. Dr. van Riemsdijk’s research examines the integration of foreign-born skilled migrants within Norway’s petroleum industry. Just as in Qatar and in other hydrocarbon producers, Norway draws on an international workforce to populate its petroleum industry. Through her study of foreign-born engineers and other highly skilled migrants in Norway’s petroleum industry, Dr. Van Riemsdijk argues that integration and retention of skilled migrants is essential to the success of the sector, as these foreign workers contribute to knowledge creation and innovation in their host countries. Van Riemsdijk has developed a multi-scalar model to assist her in studying the socio-cultural integration of skilled migrants in the workplace. This model includes several interdependent variables that influence the integration of skilled migrants in the workplace, including societal values, industry characteristics, companies, managers, and the agency of migrants. This model can be useful to the broader literature on immigrant integration and international skilled migration.

Mathias Czaika led a group discussion on “High-Skilled Migration Policies and Practices in Emerging Economies.” Dr. Czaika’s research focuses on emerging economics, in particular the “BRICS plus” of Brazil, Russia, India, China, Turkey and Indonesia, as “new hubs” of global migration that are drawing highly skilled workers. Dr. Czaika’s work on recent developments in migration policy-making reveals that in highly developed (mostly OECD) states, policies to attract the highly skilled are implemented, as are carefully crafted migration policies that allow for selectively allowing the highly skilled to immigrate. The newly emerging migration hubs of the BRICS plus are at a different stage of development, and as a result they are experiencing a “migration policy transition”. Dr. Czaika concluded by suggesting that the “global race for talent” is not so much a race for the new migration hubs as it is for the old.

Martin Hividt’s presentation was on the role and impact of highly skilled migrants in developing economies of the GCC. Dr. Hvidt’s research demonstrates that the contribution of highly skilled migrants to the GCC is vital, particularly given the focus on creating a knowledge economy. While highly skilled migrants are certainly an important component of the skilled labor force, in larger and more mature industrialized societies, in the GCC the countries could not transform into knowledge-based economies without the international skilled workforce.

Payal Banerjee shifted the regional focus once again, by sharing her research on Indian IT workers in the United States technology sector. Dr. Banerjee’s research helps us to unpick and think through some of the binaries that exist that suggest that migrants who are “skilled and highly skilled” face less exploitation or obstacles in their lives than migrants who are considered “low skilled.” Dr. Banerjee’s work suggests that there is in fact a fluidity to migration categories and visa classes. Her works demonstrates how the development of capitalism and neo-liberal economic globalization have impacted the creation of immigrant categories and work visas in the United Sates, such as the H-1B, L-1, and B-1. According the Dr. Banerjee these visa programs allow for the differential construction of immigrant statuses in terms of producing different entitlements, pay-scales, rights, and protections under law. Banerjee argues that there is a troubling disjuncture between the neoliberal rhetoric of “free market” policies and the daily practices of subordination and control witnessed in the methods of subcontracting-based immigrant recruitment.

Building up on the differences between migrants in terms of governing and rights, Binod Khadria discussed “The Gulf Divide: Indian Highly Skilled vs. Labor Migrants.” He examined whether the so-called “Asian Century” has sowed the seeds of a paradigm shift in the GCC states, ushering in a change of trend in the ratio of “knowledge workers” to “service workers.” More Indians are migrating as generic workers and students with varying endowments of knowledge, experience, and training. These migration trends turned high-skill migration to the GCC states from “occupation-tied” to “occupation-wide.”

The last session was led by Neha Vora on “Western ‘Experts’ in an Age of Knowledge Economy.” Dr. Vora explored the experiences of highly-skilled migrant workers who have been hired for their expertise to develop GCC’s knowledge economies. These highly-skilled migrants, who are predominantly Westerners, include: consultants, administrators, and educators in all areas of research, development, and education sectors, and primarily those who participate in projects of liberal education. Vora examined the role of “whiteness” and self-segregation in Western migrant experiences, whether they rehearse earlier colonial and civilizational attitudes to projects of development and modernity, and their articulations of their place within highly stratified ethno-racial and class regimes of migration and labor.

​

See the meeting agenda
Read participant biographies
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Payal Banerjee, Smith College
Mathias Czaika, University of Oxford
Michael Ewers, The Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) at Qatar University
Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Binod Khadria, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Nabil Khattab, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
Martin Hvidt, Zayed University
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Micheline van Riemsdijk, University of Tennessee
Neha Vora, Lafayette College
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Leading the Faithful: The Role of Religious Authorities in the Middle East Working Group I
2016-08-22 09:00 - 2016-08-23 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On August 22-23, 2016, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held the first working group meeting under its research initiative on the topic of “Leading the Faithful: The Role of Religious Authorities in the Middle East.” During the course of the two days, scholars identified a number of key gaps in the literature on the position and role of religious leaders of different communities present in the Middle East, as well as broader themes relating to the issue of religious authority across the region as a whole.

The Working Group commenced with a discussion led by Dr. Reem Meshal on “The Crisis of Religious Authority in Egypt and the Arab Spring.” In particular, Meshal raised three current crises relating to the issue of religious authority in the Middle East that need further scrutiny: the crisis over who demonstrates legitimate religious authority in Sunni Islam, the crisis of revitalized sectarianism, and the crisis in the academy produced by limiting our understanding of religious orthodoxy via the secular critique. Meshal suggested that in Egypt it is challenging to identify a religious leader who hold a monopoly over authority over Sunni Islam. Many contending and oppositional sources, like Al Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood, claim to speak for Sunni Islam, but none can serve as sole authority over it. Recently, spreading sectarianism is another crisis that has produced most visible results in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and to an extent in Egypt and also points to a crisis in religious authority. Additionally, Meshal raised a question of whether we might be in the midst of a “third reformation period” of Islamic history where state actors and technocrats presume to speak for religion. Meshal stressed the need to question orthodoxy in a more nuanced and complex manner than what is provided by the secular critique, and to address it as a process that is constructed, rather than given.

Dr. Sajjad Rizvi moved the discussion forward by raising areas of inquiry related to “The Changing Marjaiyyat and Shiite Religious Authority in the Middle East.” Rizvi started his discussion with the impact of certain moments in the history of the Middle East on Shiite religious authority. He discussed the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and how it further established the idea that clerics possess authority; and the Iraq war of 2003, and how it raised the question of who is going to take over religious authority. Rizvi also discussed the structures of Islam in Shiite theology, and how they are more resilient than those of Sunni Islam. Rizvi followed this discussion by a series of questions that, he believes, are understudied. Amongst other interesting and original research questions Rizvi identified the following: how is a Marja produced now days? What are the impacts of social media, new media, new forms of communication on the role and relationship of the Marjayyat and believers? How are the financial flows and networks of the Marjas managed? And how has the militarization and militia-making changed the role of the Marjayyat? Additionally, Rizvi raised some very interesting points relating to the relationship amongst different Shiite clerics, as well as on the difference between traditional mode of religious authority, networks arranged around piety of particular figures and their philanthropic work, and contemporary figures that take on different and broader roles. Rizvi also questioned what impact class, ethnicity, and race play producing Shiite religious leadership, and whether a Marja could be produced outside of Najaf and Qom.

Robert Bianchi led a discussion on the topic of “Religious Authorities and the Politics of Hajj in the Middle East.” Bianchi raised four main themes that could benefit from extended study, and would add to the existing scholarship. First of all, Bianchi suggested that it is important to consider the implications of the changing demographic composition of Hajj pilgrims, who are no longer primarily for Arab states, but rather from Asia and elsewhere. This demographic change has had implications for power relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim majority states. Secondly, Bianchi suggested that over the past few decades the management of Hajj has become increasingly internationalized with a number of other states and private sector actors involved in management and organization of the Hajj, and this also needs to be more closely examined. As a third area of research, Bianchi suggested studying Hajj as part of the global pilgrimage system, and from a comparative and complementary perspective. The Hajj has seldom been in comparison to other religious pilgrimage global as performed by devotees of other faiths, and it would be interesting to provide this new and comparative framing of Hajj. And finally Bianchi offered the suggestion of discussion to what extent there are possibilities for reinventing, reforming or re-imagining the Hajj, to make it both more practical as well as more inclusive.

Stephane Dudoignon led a session on Iran, focusing on the role of “Sunni Religious Leaders and Inter-Confessional Relations in Iran.” Dudoignon argued that the re-activation of historical memory of religious minority identity versus majority identity had cemented the complex interaction of interests between the Shiite and Sunni religious binary in Iran. Iran also provides an interesting case-study for examining what role local religious authorities play in a context where tribal identity and transnational affiliations also exist. Amongst other understudied areas of research on Iran, Dudoignon suggested the need to carry out a study of the Sunni ulama as a distinct power group within Iran, to deepen our understanding of the complex interaction between the Sunni and Shiite “universes,” to examine how Iranian religious authorities articulate or engage with ethnic, tribal, religious, and linguistic identity in Iran, and finally the role of Sunni clerics in secularizing Iran.

Zachary Wright and Usama Alony discussed “Personalized Religious Charisma in Jihadi Islamist Circles.” Wright started with a broad discussion on long-standing theological debates around leadership and authority amongst religious scholars of different Islamic schools of thought. Wright highlighted the importance of examining the development of doctrine in Salafi Jihadi circles. Following this, Alony spoke about variations in core ideologues of different Salafi religious authorities associated with different transnational movements. Based on qualitative research conducted in Syria in 2013 with interviews of a number of military leaders of various Jihadi movements in Syria, Alony provided details on who these Jihadi leaders are, where they come from, what their ideology is, and how they see themselves and their lives post-civil war Syria. Alony stated that based on his field research he would suggest that while religious leadership continues to be important, it is not the sole motivator for Jihadi militant groups in Syria. Wright and Alony suggested that it is important to address gaps in the scholarship on the religious authority and legitimacy of Daesh, and on the subject of charismatic leadership and different sources of religious authority in Salafi groups more broadly.

Leon Goldsmith, Albert de Jong, and Michael Leezenberg all provided focused case-studies on different, smaller religious communities in the Middle East. Leon Goldsmith provided a lot of insight on the topic of “Alawite Religious Leadership, the State, and Politics in the Levant.” In his discussion, Goldsmith suggested that it currently it is not clear whether religious leadership continues to be of real importance for Syrian Alawites and whether Alawite religious figures remain influential. It could be argued that decades of Ba’athism successfully coopted, dismantled, or significantly limited the authority of Alawite religious figures and limited their ability to influence decision-making for and by the community. In terms of broader gaps in our understanding, Goldsmith suggested that there was limited work on actually defining Alawite identity and whether Alawite religious leaders attempt to influence the formation and development of Alawite identity. Goldsmith also discussed the publication of the Alawite Declaration in April of this year, which could be considered an historic turning point as it attempted to dismiss previously existing notions of Alawite identity. Among other gaps in the literature Goldsmith stated that this project should attempt to provide further study on the following suggested topics: Alawite Religious Leadership in the Levant (who, where, what etc), the Importance and Influence of Alawite religious leadership on the Community, Alawite Religious Authority and State Co-optation in Syria and Turkey, and Fragmentation or Unity in Crisis: Current Status of Alawite Religious Leadership.

Albert de Jong led a discussion on a very understudied community in the Middle East about whom little is known, the Mandaeans. De Jong commenced his session on “Mandaean Tarmida, Mandaean Identity, and Religious Authorities in Iraq and Iran” by stating that there is very limited scholarship on Mandaeans in contemporary times, and what work does exist tends to be historical. As such there are multiple gaps and questions that need to be addressed. Among other areas to study de Jong identified two in particular worth exploring within this topic: the dissolution of religious diversity in the Middle East, and the death of a religion, or how does a religion die? Does it really die out or transform into something else? In both these topics multiple communities facing similar dilemmas could be incorporated into the discussion, the Mandaeans, Zorastrians, and Yezidis. Michael Leezenberg concluded the working group with a discussion on “Shabak and Yezidi Religious Leaders and the Iraqi State.” Leezenberg started his discussion with questioning if Iraq is currently a full functioning “state.” During his presentation Leezenberg highlighted some interesting areas of original research that ought to be undertaken on Shabak and Yezidi religious leaders. Among other things he suggested that it was necessary to study how the recent spate of violent upheaval across the Middle East is affecting these communities, and in particular how the growing instability has shaped the leadership of these groups. Are there in fact even distinct religious leadership bodies for these groups that engage with state and non-state actors in Iraq?

The discussions reflected the significance of the role religious leaders play in the Middle East through their interactions with both sates and publics. They also revealed the extent to which this significant role is understudied in scholarship, especially in light of the developments that swept the region post the 2011 Arab uprisings. Through the aforediscussed topics, this research initiative addresses an increasingly important but largely understudied topic in Middle Eastern studies.

See the working group meeting agenda
Read participants’ biographies
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Usama Alony, Northwestern University in Qatar
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Robert Bianchi, Shanghai International Studies University
Albert de Jong, Leiden University
Stéphane Dudoignon, French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRF)
Nazarbayev University of Astana, Kazakhstan
John Fahy, Georgetown University in Qatar
Leon Goldsmith, Massey University and University of Otago, New Zealand
Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Michiel Leezenberg, University of Amsterdam
Reem Meshal, Qatar University
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Sajjad Rizvi, University of Exeter
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Zachary Wright, Northwestern University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Pluralism and Community in the Middle East Working Group II
2016-09-18 09:00 - 2016-09-19 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On September 18–19, 2016, CIRS held a second working group under its research initiative on “Pluralism and Community in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, working group participants presented draft papers examining pluralism and diversity within the contemporary Middle East, addressing amongst other things: how governance and legal regimes incorporate or engage with issues of plural communities; how architecture and urbanism in the Middle East reflect changing notions of identity and inclusion; iconoclasm and heritage destruction undertaken by the Islamic State (IS); education in plural societies of Lebanon and Syria; the economic conditions of Sunni communities in Iran; the evolution of Armenian nationalism and identity in the Middle East; race, ethnicity, and identity in Iran; and Qatari social structure.

The working group commenced with a presentation of Kathleen Cavanaugh’s paper on “Governance and Legal Regimes in the Middle Eastern Plural Society.” In her paper, Cavanaugh appraises the normative universalism of human rights principles in addressing issues of pluralism and inclusion, examines how these principles have influenced governance in the Middle East, and provides a robust critique of ‘secularism’ as being the prescriptive means by which to foster greater inclusion in the Middle East. Cavanaugh’s paper suggests that that there is a need to undertake a pragmatic assessment of the ways in which the language of the “universal” and the “secular” have actually suffocated voices of diversity and allowed states to suppress culture and identity.

Nezar Al Sayyad presented his paper “On the Changing Identity of Architecture and Urbanism in the Middle East during the Era of Globalization.” Al Sayyad argues that the Middle East serves as a convincing geographical space from which to argue that “universal modernism” is only or at least mainly a European phenomenon. The permanently hybrid and evolving nature of architecture and urbanism in the Middle East make it impossible to accept an inflexible or static idea of what is “universal.” Al Sayyad’s paper suggests that the history of the world demonstrates a movement towards greater cultural differentiation as opposed to homogenization, and at an individual level this means that a person considers himself or herself to simultaneously hold multiple affiliations and identities. If hybridity is also accepted as an inherent constituent of national identity, this means the ensuing forms of urbanism must be accepted as only a reflection of a specific transitional stage or era within any society. Since culture has become increasingly placeless, urbanism will likely become one of the few remaining arenas where one may observe how local communities and nations mediate the tensions between the local and the global.

James Barry tackled another facet of the question of identity in the Middle East through his paper on “Millet Ethnicity: Christianity, Islam, and the Politics of Armenian Identity in the Modern Middle East.” He claims that the Armenian perception of “Armenian Muslims” as a contradiction is gradually being challenged, although the centrality of Christianity, nominal or otherwise, to Armenian identity still holds fast. In the Turkish context, the ethnic gulf that separates the Armenian-Christian from the Turkish-Muslim remains a potent legacy of the millet system, which in the modern context has “ethicized” religious identities. He also argues that in the Armenian Diaspora, there has been a change in attitude towards Muslim people of Armenian descent who are living in Turkey. Finally he claims that the contemplation of the potential Armenian-ness of both the Hopa Hemshin and the Islamized Armenians, coupled with the enthusiastic engagement by the Diaspora with these two groups, demonstrates that there is a change afoot in modern conceptions of what it is to be an Armenian, and indeed to be a Turk.

Following Barry’s discussion, Taghreed Al-Deen discussed “Cultural Cleansing and Iconoclasm under the ‘Islamic State’: Attacks on Yezidi and Christian Humans/Heritage.” Al-Deen argues that the devastating brutality and heritage destruction carried out by the IS has included deliberate attacks against two of the most vulnerable minorities in Iraq and Syria: Yezidis and Christians. Such attacks on the human/heritage dimension of a given community ultimately rupture their identity, dismembering their connections to each other and to their collective past. More to the point, attacks by the IS on Christian sites such as the Armenian church in Deir ez-Zour and the villages along the Khabur River appear to be deliberately designed to conjure sharp memories of the Armenian Genocide and the Siemele massacre. Re-enacting earlier waves of genocide allows the IS to connect their contemporary brutality—ideologically, temporally, physically—to those moments in Yezidi and Christian history that are most sensitive and painful. These attacks also intends to erase any vestige of a cosmopolitan and diverse Middle East towards the creation of a monolithic and oppressive caliphate governed by the most perverse interpretations of Islamic law.

Annika Rabo presented a paper on “Educating Citizens in Lebanon and Syria.” Rabo paper draws attention to criticism that Arab educational systems have frequently received, particularly for inadequately preparing pupils for managing contemporary challenges, and for failing to create an educational environment that develops and nurtures open-minded and creative future citizens. Rabo argues that, in any context all, elements of an educational system—from public policies of education, to classroom learning practices and teaching methods, to curriculum development and teacher training—are an essential place to examine how a state and society are managing larger issues of inclusion and exclusion. Through an in-depth examination of two comparative case studies on the evolution of educational systems in Lebanon and Syria, Rabo presents evidence of two very different approaches to managing pluralism and identity. In Lebanon, a society where pluralism and a more open and liberal approach to politics co-exist with highly politicized and at times sectarian identity issues, the educational system reflects ongoing struggles over curriculum and a lack of harmonious adoption of texts and teaching methods. As a result there exist a proliferation of schools catering to the country’s many different religious, linguistic, and ethnic communities, with the end result that parochial citizens are created who are cosmopolitan and engaged with the outside and broader world, but ill-equipped to negotiate the challenges of their own complex plural society. Syria in its pre 2011 form offered a stark contrast to Lebanon, at least within its educational system where there was suppression of ethnic, linguistic and religious identity, and an ideological approach of flattening identity down to a nationalistic unified identity with no acceptance of differences.

Afshin Shahi shifted the discussion to examine notions of inclusion and exclusion in Iran through a paper on “Economic Conditions of the Sunni Community in Modern Iran.” Shahi claimed that Sunni Iranians’ economic situation in modern time is multi-angled and influenced by various elements. Each of these elements had different level of importance in various historical periods. In their paper, Afshin Shahi and Ehsan Abdoh Tabrizi focus on the contemporary era of Pahlavi monarchy (1925-1979) and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although they shed light on the general economic situation of the Sunni Iranians in general, the main focus is on ethnic Sunni Iranians, including the Baloch, Turkmens and Kurds, who still comprise the majority of Iran’s Sunni population. The authors argue that the uneven modernization and imbalanced growth brought by Pahlavi policies automatically disfavored Iran’s Turkmen, Kurdish and Baloch ethnicities, yet these policies were not driven by sectarianism or anti Sunni sentiment. Under the Islamic Republic, although certain economic elements of rural Iranians—including Sunni ethnic Iranians—have improved, the State’s economic policies still disfavor Sunni Iranians, like the Pahlavi policies, but this time such policies are driven by sectarianism and discrimination.

Following up on Shahi and Tabrizi’s paper, Firoozeh Kashni-Sabet presented her paper on “Colorblind or Blinded by Color?: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Iran” providing a historical review of the evolution of notions of race and skin color in modern Iran. Kashani-Sabet’s analysis of archived graphics and texts suggests that conversations about race in Iran, while rooted initially in linguistic and ethnic differences, and while far from color-blind, became more politicized over the course of the twentieth century. She further suggests that the production of knowledge about race, ethnicity and identity in Iran over the twentieth century moved away from colonial actors and institutions, and became instead the function of Iran’s state institutions, which at times reproduced the prejudices first introduced by colonial administrators. By the 1960s, however, even as the state remained stunted in its understandings of culture, ethnicity, and race, key Iranian intellectuals moved away from discourses of Aryanism and participated instead in the larger struggles of peoples and nations who had long been subjected to colonialism or racial discrimination.

Islam Hassan concluded the working group’s discussions with his paper on “Qatari Social Structure and the State: Problems of Inclusion and Exclusion.” Hassan claims that the historical narrative of the composition and evolution of Qatari society is an imaginaire that contributed to the reproduction of the current social inclusion and exclusion scheme. This historical narrative emphasizes on the role of Arab tribes in the inhabitation process, evolution of governing authority, and creation of statehood in Qatar disregarding a major faction of the society, particularly those of slave and Persian backgrounds. He also argues that the Qatari State has been playing a major role, by adopting a social conservatist approach, in maintaining and further stimulating the existing social hierarchy and inclusion and exclusion scheme. This can be viewed by examining two main issues: the State’s effort to narrow down the definition of the Qatari national identity; and articles of the constitution and legal system, symbols, and official history of Qatar that have been perpetuating the social inclusion and exclusion scheme through resisting marriages that could challenge the existing social order.

Mehran Kamrava, Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies, concluded the working group meeting by highlighting the participants’ contributions to scholarship through their papers, which will be published in an edited volume by CIRS in the near future.

See the working group meeting agenda
Read participants’ biographies
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Taghreed Jamal Al-deen, Deakin University, Melbourne
Nezar Al Sayyad, University of California
Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
James Barry, Deakin University, Melbourne
Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, University of Pennsylvania
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Firat Oruc, Georgetown University in Qatar
Annika Rabo, Stockholm University
Afshin Shahi, University of Bradford
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Strategic Forum on Gulf Security
2016-09-25 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Moscow) | Education City, Al Luqta St, Ar-Rayyan, Doha, Qatar
On September 25, 2016, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar in collaboration with the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (NESA) at the National Defense University hosted a one-day workshop under the title “Strategic Forum on Gulf Security.” A number of distinguished scholars, experts, and policy-makers were convened to discuss current threats and concerns, and potential opportunities in some of the Persian Gulf’s countries, including: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Iran. Participants also discussed the United States’ (US) positions on a number of these security concerns and opportunities.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states have been keen to protect their monarchies, and maintain the status quo in the Middle East by following more assertive foreign policies, and utilizing their financial capabilities to influence the political dynamics in the region. Five main perceived security concerns have been driving the active role of GCC states in the Middle East: the instability in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; the uncertainty about the American priorities in the region; the rise of non-state actors such as the Islamic State; the profound fluctuations in the oil market; and the domestic social and economic challenges.

Regardless of internal disagreements, security remains a top priority for the GCC leaders, as do regional and domestic stability. Despite significant steps toward integration since its formation some thirty-five years ago, the GCC is still far from providing a model of security integration. GCC member states have different perceptions of their security threats, especially when it comes to Iran. Some perceive of Iran as having hegemonic aspirations in the region; and thus, pursue policies designed to undermine Iranian influence, especially in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Many GCC states are also developing advanced security systems in order to minimize possible cyber attacks on their oil facilities and other infrastructures.

Another priority of the GCC states has been maintaining rapid economic growth, which is central to regime legitimacy, and, by implication, security. Although largely immune from it, the GCC states are also concerned about the threat of domestic terrorism. These different perceptions among GCC states have undermined attempts at security integration, and especially collective efforts to develop a common missile security system directed at threats from Iran.

Considering these perceived threats, the participants argued that each of the GCC states would continue to think in national rather than collective terms. They will also invest heavily in their own security through arms purchases and weapons acquisition. There has been an increasing perception that the US is an unreliable ally, and, as a result, there is greater need for self-reliance.

Focusing on the UAE, the country’s security mood could be described as one of confidence as well as concern. The UAE is living through one of its most confident eras. At the same time, the country remains very concerned about the region and the pervasiveness of tension, extremism, violence, and sectarianism, which may spillover into its own territories. There are five main perceived security threats facing the UAE. The first threat is Iran as both an instant and a continuous threat. With the election of the Rouhani administration, Iran is perceived as more problematic, threatening, destabilizing than ever before. This perception of Iran is shared by some of the other GCC states, especially by Saudi Arabia. The threat from Iran has also escalated from being merely security oriented, to an ideological threat, with Wahhabism versus Khomeinism.

The second threat is the prolonged war in Yemen that needs to stop as soon as possible. This directly relates to a third threat, namely “the weak links between GCC member states.” Bahrain, Kuwait, and post-Qaboos Oman, and possibly even Saudi Arabia, are all weak links that challenge a strong and unified GCC. The last threat is the “post-US Persian Gulf.” President Obama’s foreign policy has encouraged GCC states to seek a path of less dependence on the US, and compensate for that by establishing relations and alliances with other global and regional powers.

The key challenge facing the UAE’s leadership is how to navigate between these concerns and opportunities. The UAE has invested in the most advanced security systems in order to shield itself from as many security challenges as possible, and has become more assertive and preemptive in confronting security threats. It has also been playing an active role at the regional level. On the international level, the UAE, through the GCC, has been establishing stronger ties with the European Union (EU), and is in talks to sign bilateral trade agreements with Britain. This regional and international activism is designed to prepare the country for the post-US Persian Gulf.

Insofar as Qatar is concerned, there are three levels of analysis from which to examine the Qatari leadership’s behavior: domestic politics, foreign policy, and security politics. In terms of domestic politics, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa tried to transform Qatar into the Singapore of the Persian Gulf. Articulating such a vision, and at the same time diving away from the shadows of Saudi Arabia, was facilitated by three main factors: social cohesion in Qatari society; absence of sectarian divides; and the absence of a parliament that resists the Emir’s agendas.

For Qatar, threat perceptions in the 1990s revolved around possible machinations by Saudi Arabia to reinstall in power the deposed emir, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad. As the country became more stable under Sheikh Hamad’s rule, Qatar’s efforts at protecting its security turned into power projection. This projection of power often occurred through the country’s use of hedging as a foreign policy option. Accordingly, Qatar placed its security bet with the US, but also maintained ostensibly warm relations with states and non-state actors such as Iran, Hamas, and the Taliban. Qatar also sought to position itself as an honest broker for peace and negotiations. During and after the Arab Uprisings, Qatar saw the instability in the region as an opportunity rather than a threat, and capitalized on what it perceived as emerging opportunities.

However, Qatar’s overambitious assertions in regional foreign policy, particularly in Egypt and Libya, had some undesired consequences. A strong reaction from Saudi Arabia and other GCC actors, culminating in the withdrawal of the Saudi, Emirati, and Bahraini ambassadors from Doha, led to a change in a chastened Qatari foreign policy direction. Currently in Syria, for example, Qatar is no longer competing with Saudi Arabia for influence. Qatar’s relationship with the US has traditionally been close at multiple levels, and there are visible signs of this in terms of diplomacy, economy, culture, and security. Due to the robustness of its cooperation with the US, Qatar appears to be less concerned than other GCC states about US foreign policy in the region. Additionally, Qatar continues to develop its security partnerships with other Western states, as the recent arms deal with France demonstrates, and is also developing a strategic relationship with Turkey.

Iran’s perception of its security interests and threats have been going through a transitional phase following the signing of the nuclear deal. The Iranian leadership had assumed that the deal would help the country reprioritize its security threats and open up new opportunities for international engagement, but to date little of substance has changed. While the Iranians feel that they have fulfilled their side of the bargain, US and European leaders remain skeptical. As a result, the US has been discouraging Western companies and international banks from working with Iran. Currently Iranian foreign policy aims are to enhance the country’s relations with the EU, while also cooperating closely with Russia and China. When it comes to Iran’s foreign policy towards the Arab world, although there are still tensions with a number of Iran’s traditional regional rivals, the country has been keen to develop relations with a number of Arab states and non-state actors in the region.

US foreign policy towards the Persian Gulf region is seen as also being in a period of transition, with the view from the GCC being that the Americans are shifting their priorities to the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf, namely Iran. The Obama administration is considered to be unwilling to challenge Iran and uphold the interests of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. This uncertainty around US foreign policy towards the Persian Gulf region is driving GCC states to embark on reengineering their countries’ agendas in preparation for the transition to the post-US Persian Gulf.

At the end of the forum, Mehran Kamrava, Director of CIRS, and Richard L. Russell Professor of National Security Affairs at NESA gave their concluding remarks. They stressed on this forum’s contribution to a greater understanding of the current realities and high stakes of the security environment in the Persian Gulf region.

Read participants’ biographies

Presenters:

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, Qatar University

Gawdat Bahgat, NESA, National Defense University

Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Mohammad Marandi, University of Tehran

Rory Miller, Georgetown University in Qatar

Richard Russell, NESA, National Defense University

Houchang Hassan Yari, Royal Military College of Canada

Participants:

LTC Sadiam Al Dhulaimi, Representative for Yemen, US Central Command

H.E. Bashir Al-Shirawi, Former Ambassador of Qatar to South Africa

LTC Mustafa Abdel Haleem Mohammad Alhyari, Jordan Armed Forces

Abdullah Baabood, Qatar University

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Daniel Baltrusaitis, National Defense College of the UAE, and NESA, National Defense University

Kai-Henrik Barth, Georgetown University in Qatar

Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Doha Institute of Graduate Studies

Afyare Elmi, Qatar University

Glnar Eskandar, US Embassy

Ibrahim Fraihat, Brookings Doha Center

Lauren Granger, Georgetown University in Qatar

Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Hussein Heydari, Embassy of Iran

Ludovic Hood, US Embassy

H.E. Willy Kempel, Ambassador of Austria to Qatar

Kentaro Niimi, Embassy of Japan

CSM Cynthia Pritchett, (retired) US Central Command

James Reardon-Anderson, Georgetown University in Qatar

Jean-Marc Rickli, King’s College London

Marta Saldana, Georgetown University in Qatar

Youssef Shatilla, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology

Rana Shayya, US Embassy

Douw GJ Vermaak, Embassy of South Africa

Steven Wright, Qatar University

Luciano Zaccara, Qatar University

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Transitions in Qatar’s Architectural Identity
2016-09-26 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Ibrahim Mohamed Jaidah, renowned Qatari Architect and Group CEO & Chief Architect of the Arab Engineering Bureau, was invited to deliver the inaugural CIRS Monthly Dialogue of the 2016-2017 academic year with a lecture on “Transitions in Qatar’s Architectural Identity” on September 26, 2016. The talk focused on the definitions of Qatari architecture; its history, influences, aesthetics, and the future of its development.

Jaidah explained that the history of the Gulf region in general, and Qatar in particular, has always been one of global influences through trade routes and contact with neighboring countries and cultures including Basra, Najd, Zanzibar, India, and Iran, among many others. Qatari culture, he said, has always been a blend of borrowings “from the way we dress, to our dialogue, to our cuisine, to our music,” and to the diversity of the local architecture. These are all products of historical learning.

Defining the history of Qatari architecture, Jaidah noted that it falls into broad time periods that can be categorized according to pre- and post-oil styles of development. He explained that, in a few decades, Qatar achieved what other nations strived to accomplish over centuries, and this incredibly rapid growth has had massive effects on the nation and its architectural growth and design. The transition from one period into another occurred relatively rapidly, where Qatari architecture that was once defined by haphazard mud houses in the pre-oil period, was quickly transformed with oil wealth in the immediate post-oil period to encompass a growing town defined by cement and bricks, and, in the contemporary period, a global city brandishing steel and glass towers.

The invention of cultured pearls in Japan in the 1930s brought about the decimation of the pearling industry in Qatar—its primary source of wealth—plunging the nation into poverty and affecting its architectural development. “In the pre-oil period,” he recalled, “the architecture was quite straightforward; simple houses, courtyard houses, that expanded as the families required.” The architecture of this time period was defined by respect to the environment, sourcing local materials and building according to optimum orientations to make best use of the natural weather conditions. Jaidah noted that “all natural materials were used, and that is why it was responsive to the environment and it was pleasant to live in.” In fact, “the only thing that was brought from abroad was the wood—because we didn’t have enough trees—which we call the danshal was brought from either Zanzibar, from Iran—usually recycled from other buildings—and from India,” he said.

The discovery of oil a few years later, set Qatar onto the path of industrial wealth and with it immediate effects on the growth of the urban environment. Although the styles of the buildings and the arcades remained largely the same, natural materials were gradually being replaced by cement and bricks and architectural lines became more even and straight. In central Doha, “the clock tower, I think, is one of the most important buildings, because it was the start of the new construction,” made of concrete and other manmade materials. The old Ottoman fort that was the center of administrative rule, was replaced with the first diwan amiri. “As soon as the Ottomans left, the first thing the ruler did was to build the diwan amiri there in different stages because it had the most prime and historical control of the whole bay,” Jaidah explained. This transitional period was defined by a blending of natural and manmade materials that were combined within the same buildings.

This immediate post-oil period was defined by increasing incoming wealth, which was being transformed into the design of the local landscape. Prosperous residents were able to commission, for the first time, architects from India, Pakistan, and Lebanon to build unique, art deco designs, full of motifs and symbolic flourishes, or what Jaidah calls, “Arabian deco.” During this period, there was a whole era in the 50s that, unfortunately until today, is not considered as part of Qatar’s history, and so buildings have been systematically demolished to make way for the new high-rises and urban developments. Jaidah noted that he had an opportunity to preserve some of these buildings, and to document others, before they were demolished. Today, the renovation of the Fire Station building and its re-purposing to accommodate art initiatives and galleries is an example of preserving the early modern history of Qatar. He noted that these buildings are crucial to the story of Doha; “it doesn’t have to be a mud house to become history. Our modern history is what is forming the new generation.”

In what Jaidah describes as the contemporary “post-oil period,” there was a boom of construction and urban developments in the 1990s and 2000s, especially with massive land reclamation projects and the development of West Bay, Lusail, and the Pearl island. With the government’s announcement that it would rent buildings and offices in West Bay, a construction race took place to take advantage of the new policy, leading to massive growth in the construction and infrastructure sectors. However, Jaidah said, “there was a sort of scary moment because architecture became a commodity,” and towers were being constructed within a few short months. In this period, architecture became more about unique, innovative, fashionable, and flagship designs that completed with each other, and with other countries, rather than serving a function or harmoniously fitting within the exiting cityscape. Jaidah admits that during this period, not many of these construction were environmentally sustainable and “mistakes happened” in the rush to compete.

However, he argued in conclusion, “there was a wakeup call,” and new regulations were put in place to guarantee a more sustainable style of urban development, which is important for the future of the landscape and the environment. In the contemporary period, the architectural development of Qatar is taking a more measured and mature stance and is involving leading international architects. Today, there is “the beauty of getting people from all over the world to participate and to…redefine what is culture,” and to preserve our history, not only in architecture but in other areas of cultural development. Today, there is a kind of “cultural revolution” reconnecting Qatar to its history and heritage by taking the local, vernacular architecture into the future. Today, Jaidah concluded, “there is a language that is being created, sensitive to the environment and to the culture”—one that is as respectful of the past as it is open to the future.

Ibrahim Mohamed Jaidah is a researcher and author of The History of Qatari Architecture and 99 Domes who grew up in the old neighbourhood Al Jasra in the heart of Doha. He ranks as a pioneer of a new architectural movement, which combines the far reaching influences of traditional Qatari architecture with modern style, creating memorable landmark structures that are helping to shape the developing State of Qatar. Jaidah is a highly recognized architect who has won numerous awards such as the Islamic Cities Award, the Arab Town Organization Awards, and has been nominated for the Agha Khan Awards. In 2005, Jaidah was honored with the medal of the State of Qatar Encouragement Award. His projects reflect the cultural, historical, and environmental contexts in which they exist. Ibrahim is a dedicated advocate for sustainability and is a co-founding member of the Qatar Green Building Council.

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

The Resource Curse in the Gulf Working Group I
2016-10-09 09:00 - 2016-10-10 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On October 9-10, 2016, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held a working group under a research initiative on “The ‘Resource Curse’ in the Gulf.” During the course of two days, assembled participants identified key gaps in the literature on rentier states of the Persian Gulf, while leading discussions on a variety of related subtopics: rent distribution and development of institutions; political legitimacy; military establishments in the Persian Gulf; stability and instability; human rights in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states; gender equality; entrepreneurship; and education, occupation, and Khaleeji youth.

The working group discussions commenced with a session led by Matthew Gray on “Rentier Wealth: Curse or Cure for the Gulf.” During his session Gray provided a broad overview of existing theories of the resource curse, and identified a number of questions relating to its application in the Persian Gulf. After presenting the main arguments on the resource curse that have been made by scholars over the past decades, Gray provided a review of several questions that remain understudied or that have not been adequately addressed. Amongst other things, Gray suggested that the issue of state autonomy in rentier states is not as empirically established as theory suggests it is, and in fact remains highly debatable. It is important to provide greater empirical evidence of rentier-driven state autonomy (or a lack thereof), and studying this question within the GCC states would provide for an original case study. Gray also argued for a deeper understanding of Gulf state capitalism, and particularly the role of elites and resource rents. In rentier states institutions and corporations may serve as tools for forging patrimonial networks. These social dynamics in state institutions and corporations raise a question on the extent to which patrimonial networks are steered and maintained by resource rents. Gray suggested another important research gap exists in terms of labor policies in hydrocarbon-rich states studied from an interdisciplinary context. Insofar as foreign relations and history are concerned, Gray pointed out that there has been no comprehensive work on developing a theory of international relations in the Persian Gulf that is centered on rents and resources. Finally, there is a need for a comprehensive history of rents and rentierism in the Persian Gulf, from pre-oil rentierism to post-oil rentierism.

Desha Girod led a discussion session on the topic of “Rent Distribution and the Development of Institution in the Gulf.” Girod has carried out a comparative research project examining the challenges that faced institutional development in very different sorts of resource-based economies. She has studied the historical evolution of institutions in two African states, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, against developments in two GCC oil states, Kuwait and Oman. Girod’s findings suggest that pre-oil discovery is important when considering the evolution of institutions in rentier states. Her examination of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon suggested that the extractive economies that were developed by colonial powers weakened state institutions and destroyed existing social pluralism. The colonial legacy led to a particular development of institutions in these two nations. Kuwait and Oman did not experience the same sort of pre-oil extractive economic conditions through colonial domination, and colonial powers were not interested in intervening in the domestic politics of either of these two states. Based on her ongoing research, Girod suggested that further study is important to assess how certain conditions (such as weak institutions) conventionally attributed to the resource curse may be in fact be an artifact of an earlier curse (such as the colonialism or institutions developed to assist the colonial project of exploiting natural resources) that shaped the development of certain key institutions. Further research is also needed so that we have a stronger explanation than the current one in the literature that suggests that “weak” versus “strong” institutions can determine whether the resource curse is suffered or avoided. It is also important to study how institutions in the GCC evolved over time, through a historical study of the sorts of institutions that existed in the Gulf during the time of hydrocarbon discovery, and how these subsequently shaped the ways in which rents were used by the modern states that came into being. Another area of research suggested by Girod is on the role of external actors in the GCC, their impact on institution building and the use of rents.

Building on Girod’s discussion, Mehran Kamrava led a discussion on “Political Legitimacy and Scaling Back during an Oil Bust in the Gulf.” Kamrava claimed that there are differences among GCC states in terms of patterns of state building, social cohesion, rent-driven policies, relationship between ruling families and tribes, and bureaucracies. These differences are stimulated by implicit understandings between ruling families and other stakeholders, such as the merchants, pre and post-oil discovery. Stakeholders’ corporatism and marital bonds between ruling families and stakeholders contributed to the resilience and adaptability of the social contracts between ruling families and stakeholders; and thus to the establishment of enduring ruling bargains. Kamrava also argued that Persian Gulf states have reacted differently to fluctuations in oil prices. The variance in reactions raises a question: what are the conditions that shape states’ responses to changes in oil prices? Kamrava added that in countries where the State establishes strong clientelistic relationships with the merchant class through offering contracts, the merchant class becomes more dependent on the State, especially during times of downturn. How did entrepreneurial classes and States react in three different oil bust cycles? What was the relationship between state and business in previous oil cycles? And what does this tell us about institutional evolution between the three oil boom and bust cycles? Kamrava also claimed that States have responded to economic downturns by promoting nationalization of the labor force, which has decreased the efficiency of state institutions. Finally, Kamrava argued that identity politics captures public imagination rather than issues such as transparency and accountability. This questions how governments use salient concerns, during times of economic downturns, to influence social cohesion in the society.

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan focused his discussion on “Oil Rents and the Military in the Gulf.” Farzanegan raised seven original research questions that address critical gaps in the literature on the impact of oil revenues in rentier economies on military establishments. First, he claimed that a systematic analysis of the correlation between GCC military spending and oil prices is missing. Thus, what is the impact of positive and negative oil price shocks on military spending? Second, Farzanegan claimed that the effect of oil revenues on military spending depends on the level of corruption. This raises the question: how does the quality of political and economic institutions matter? Third, he argued that increasing military spending may increase political stability at higher levels of oil rent; while at lower levels of oil revenues, increasing military spending may require cutting social spending such as subsidies and other transfers, leading to reduction of life satisfaction of locals and higher political instability. Thus, it is critical to examine how do fluctuations in oil revenues matter insofar as the effect of military spending on political stability is concerned. Fourth, since Middle Eastern countries have one of the highest levels of military spending burden around the world, how does economic growth impact military spending? Fifth, is there a military spending threshold pegged to oil rents and growth? Sixth, Farzanegan discussed the youth bulge in the GCC, and how this can be a burden on governments if oil rents decrease. He asked if there is any moderating role of oil rents and military in the stability-youth nexus. Finally, Farzanegan highlighted the effect of oil rents on corruption, which questions how the involvement of military establishments in politics can impact corruption insofar as military spending is concerned.

Jessie Moritz led a discussion session on the topic of “Resource Rents and Stability/Instability in Gulf Societies.” Moritz argued that there is a difference between “resource abundance” and “resource dependence.” She stated that resource abundance promotes regime stability, but resource dependence promotes violent conflict or instability. In examining this issue, Moritz raised a series of questions, among which: what makes an individual, or a group of people, challenge the State? And how do states co-opt public dissatisfaction? Moritz also emphasized the importance of studying exceptions to rentier logic, rather than just focusing on commonalities between rentier economies. She claimed that studying these exceptions lead to another series of questions, such as: how effective has state co-optation been, especially on the subnational level? What causes subnational groups to move away from the royal court’s side, to the opposition’s side? Is political loyalty determined by rent distribution? What has happened to reformist groups, especially when oil prices are at a low? How effective will broader societal movements be? Will they be able to influence state policies? And will they side with particular factions of the regime against others?

Zahra Babar led a session on “Hydrocarbons and Human Rights in the GCC.” Babar suggested that the “universality” of human rights remains highly contested, with polarization between which rights are meant to be prioritized in different contexts. Within the GCC there continue to be limitations on political and civil rights for individuals, while rentier resources may have led to the evolution of greater protections for economic and social rights of citizens. Most of the studies of the Gulf states are from the perspective of human rights in authoritarian and non-democratic contexts, and have not applied the lens of rentierism and human rights. Babar identified a number of research gaps in relation to the evolution of human rights issues in rentier-based political economies of the region. Among other things, Babar raised the need to study the question of the impact of falling or rising oil prices and how they increase or limit political freedoms and human rights in the GCC. A second research gap raised by Babar was on the role of international actors and external patrons, and the advancement of human rights in Gulf oil monarchies. Human rights regimes have found greater means of imposing disciplinary mechanisms (such as sanctions or isolation) on “pariah states” that somehow are presented as being outside the norms of international relations. How do human rights actors interact with more complex cases such as the GCC states that have been considered to be “security partners” or “economic partners” and critical to the global energy economy? A third set of research questions center on the narrative of citizenship and its sets of rights across a spectrum of GCC distributive states which vary in the degrees of capacity to distribute. Post 2011 increasingly the GCC states have been conflating their goal of “protecting economic rights” of citizens with increasing measures to securitize citizenship – how is this impacting the regional human rights narrative? Finally Babar raised a number of areas of research in relation to the Gulf oil sector and human rights. Clashes and confrontations between the global oil industry and international and transnational networks of human rights have been increasingly commonplace from Sudan to Ecuador, how come we have not seen the GCC as a locus of this exchange?

Following Babar’s discussion, Gail Buttorff led a session on “Hydrocarbon Wealth and Gender Equality in the Gulf.” Buttorff started off her session by highlighting the major differences between GCC states in terms of level of rentierism, political economy, and social cohesion. She then listed three original research topics. First, she discussed the various nationalization policies that have been employed across the GCC, and how their impact on female participation in the labor forces remains understudied. Buttorff also claimed that the impact of fluctuations in oil prices on government efforts to boost female labor force participation is also understudied. Finally, Buttorff discussed the link between female labor force participation and political empowerment. She raised a question: does female participation in higher levels of government reflect improvements in women suffrage in the GCC?

Hanadi Al Mubaraki shifted the working group discussions to examine “Oil Wealth and Entrepreneurship in the Gulf.” Hanadi started her discussion with highlighting GCC governments’ efforts to encourage and support entrepreneurship and innovation. Yet, she claimed that there has not been any literature on the success or failure of projects supported by GCC governments. Al Mubaraki highlighted the importance of studying entrepreneurship policies in the GCC in comparison to policies employed in other developed regions. Al Mubaraki also raised attention to the challenges and opportunities in establishing Technology Commercialization programs in GCC universities, which have impacted the evolution and internationalization of GCC based entrepreneurship. Finally, Al Mubaraki questioned the outcomes of business development programs—such as business incubation programs, innovation programs, accelerator programs, and small and medium-size enterprises—on entrepreneurship in the GCC.

Crystal Ennis concluded the working group discussions with a session on “Education, Occupation, and Khaleeji Youth Success.” Ennis claimed that there is a mismatch between Khaleeji youth’s education and job market demands. Yet, this is not the only challenge Khaleeji youth face. She claimed that class, rural divide, gender, and family status factor in education and job options among youth in the GCC; this is a topic that deserves further study. Another issue is the limited production base in the GCC that impacts the analysis of Khaleeji youth labor, and our understanding of youth contribution to global production. Ennis also argued that there is a critical need to investigate the impact of neo-liberal ideologies on the social construction of youth in the hyper-modernity of the GCC, and the factors that shape economic citizenship among youth in the GCC, especially when it comes to the private sector. Ennis also discussed the impact of expats’ expertise on the learning development of Khaleeji youth in the private sector. The impacts of neo-liberal ideologies and expats’ expertise raise a question on Khaleeji youth’s perception of their belonging to the labor market.

Mehran Kamrava, Director of CIRS, concluded the working group with emphasis on the contribution of the working group discussions to literature on the resource curse in the Persian Gulf, which will be published in a special issue by CIRS in the near future.

See the working group agenda hereRead the participants’ biographies hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Hanadi Mubarak Al-Mubaraki, Kuwait UniversityZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarGail Buttorff, University of KansasCrystal Ennis, Leiden UniversityMohammad Reza Farzanegan, Philipps-Universität MarburgDesha Girod, Georgetown UniversityMatthew Gray, Waseda University, JapanIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarJessie Moritz, Australian National UniversityMoamer Qazafi, Georgetown University in QatarElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
2016-10-18 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On October 18, 2016, CIRS hosted a Panel discussion on “The 2016 US Presidential Elections,” featuring Joshua Mitchell and Clyde Wilcox, professors in the Government Department at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and world renowned authorities in their respective areas of expertise. Mitchell specializes in political theory and, among other topics, has written on religion and freedom in the United States. Wilcox has written extensively on interest groups, public opinion, electoral behavior, and campaign finance. The discussion was moderated by Mehran Kamrava, Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies.

Mitchell opened the debate by framing his speech around a central question: “Why did Trump so easily take the nomination?” He clarified that: “my task here…is not so much to defend Trump, but rather to explain him through the lens of the history of political thought.” Giving some background to the current political climate, Mitchell painted a picture of the United States as a nation sharply divided, stating that “there are two different Americas right now.” One America is reflected in the power and wealth of Washington, and other key urban centers, where property prices and incomes are soaring, while “the other America is an America of despair, drug addiction, suicide, low-paying jobs, and never-ending condescension toward ‘flyover’ country.”

Because of such sharp divisions between wealth and poverty, and indeed the growing rifts within US politics, a “populist uprising” in the form of an outlier candidate like Trump has been a long time coming. Examining key political moments to explain Trump’s success, he argued that during the Cold War, factions of “the Republican Party hung together not by virtue of internal coherence, but by virtue of what they were opposed to—namely, progressivism within, and the Cold War without.” After the end of the Cold War, Mitchell noted, there really was no reason for the party to be held together since their common interest was defeated, thus, “it was just a question of time before that party fell apart; if it wasn’t Trump, it was going be somebody else, sooner or later.”

In the aftermath of the Cold War, a new type of political thought was cultivated in young people who began defining their lives around issues of “globalization” and “identity,” which have become the central features of contemporary political engagement. These terms differ greatly to how politics was conceptualized in the past, revolving around notions of the sovereign state and the rational citizen, as outlined in the treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and Hobbes’ Leviathan in 1651. Today, sovereignty is no longer located in the state, but is located “above the state,” in global norms, international trade and laws, and transnational organizations, and “below the state,” in identity politics. “You have this tremendous paradox: the disembodied citizen who imagines his or her identity in relation to others, and politics as activism—not citizenship,” Mitchell explained.

Currently, the battle being waged in the US—as well as in Europe as seen in the Brexit vote—is whether the future of politics will continue along the lines of the post-1989 organizing principle of globalization and identity politics, or, whether someone with Trump’s ideals will dismantle the current political arrangement. Trump has enthralled his electorate by turning the tide on a world obsessed with globalization by offering fervent claims that borders matter, immigration policy matters, national rather than universal interests matter, entrepreneurship matters, decentralization matters, and, finally, that politically correct speech—an essential component of identity politics—does not matter. “When Trump says crass things,” for example, “the way he thinks through this problem is in terms, not of sin but, of error,” Mitchell argued. The counter reaction to Trump’s rogue behavior, with Hillary Clinton’s campaign being a chief proponent, is to utilize the old American religious tropes of “purity” and “stain.” Mitchell noted that this revival of a religious language is a deeply troubling development in which Trump and his supporters are tarnished as deplorable and irredeemable, further diving the country along political and racial lines. Especially because Hillary Clinton is white, he argued, her democratic campaign is even more driven to chastise the faults of white America, and its seeming penchant for racism.

These two sides of the divide fall along the historic conservative and left set up of US politics, which is anathema to, and leaves little sustenance for, the third alternative, which is a Liberal regime that has no interest in either of these types of divisive party politics. In conclusion, Mitchell argued that “the battle for the future is not over identity politics or the state. I think identity politics and globalization have lost. The question now before us is whether we are going to have a liberal state or an illiberal state.” As a final thought, Mitchell noted that, along with the current political impasse, there is yet another tremendous danger being instigated by the media who refuse to accept Trump—the officially nominated Republican Party candidate—as legitimate, thus fueling a growing crisis of authority.

Clyde Wilcox offered a different narrative to Mitchell’s historical political analysis by focusing on the current electoral contest and the likely outcome. Despite Trump’s many political liabilities, he remains close in many polls. The key question that needs to be answered, therefore, is “how can it be that a man who is catastrophically unprepared, and who is not trying, is still somewhat close” in the polls? Wilcox argued that the narrow gap in the poles is worrisome, because “Donald Trump is, let’s be honest, catastrophically unprepared to be president. He lacks the knowledge to be president, he lacks the curiosity to attain the knowledge…he is making no effort to appeal to the voters he would need to win, which include women and minorities.”

Wilcox noted that current polling and survey data are all indicating that Hillary Clinton will win the election. However, survey data have been wrong in the past, and there are reasons for why Trump might actually win. Elections have been traditionally predicted by consulting a series of abstract models that include a number of variables related to economic indicators, employment figures, and GDP rates. In this particular election, however, there is another key factor that is determined by what Wilcox termed “the 8 year itch,” where voters become disenchanted with the incumbent party and elect the alternative option in order to receive a fresh start. By this token, he argued, Republicans would normally be expected to win a close election, if the Democrats and Republicans nominated equally attractive candidates.

A key rallying cry for the Republicans has been that this is an election about the forgotten white people in impoverished small towns, “but when we look at survey data, we something slightly different: the people who support Trump are not the ones who have lost the jobs, those people are actually Hillary Clinton people. Trump’s people are actually slightly above average in income, not a whole lot, but slightly above average. The single best indicator of who supports Donald Trump right now is racial resentment,” with increasing numbers of confederate flags being raised as a symbol of this growing antagonism.

Another reason for the narrow gap in the polls is because Hillary Clinton has a number of obstacles stacked against her, including the very fact that she is one of the Clintons—a name synonymous with the political status quo for almost three decades—along with a number of scandals arising from some of her questionable acts. Despite “being the most admired woman in America when she was Secretary of State,” Clinton must also overcome the disadvantages of running as a female candidate, and the many sexist characterizations of her temperament, her decision-making skills, and her political will. “The Republicans have been bashing her consistently for the last six years,” Wilcox said. “She has the highest negatives of any presidential candidate in our history, except for one: Donald Trump.”

Although he admitted that Hillary Clinton is a much weaker candidate than the Democrats would normally have offered, Wilcox did not believe that these weaknesses necessarily translate into her being a bad president. He argued that the US is a polarized nation of partisans, with many people traditionally voting for the same party at every election. In this case, however, Trump has become such an unpredictable political liability that many staunch Republicans have publicly voiced their disappointment with the candidate, with many opting to vote for Hillary Clinton, thus further destabilizing the Republican Party.

In conclusion, Wilcox argued, while many of Trump’s supporters are outspoken and proud to vote for him, it is possible that many others who plan to vote for Trump are, in fact, too ashamed to say so publicly, thereby skewing the polling data. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has already predicted that the election is fraudulent if Clinton wins, and has encouraged his supporters to challenge Clinton supporters in the event that he loses the election. If Hillary Clinton does indeed win, Wilcox argued, it is very likely that the Republications will be holding hearings on impeachment within the year. Either way, he concluded, “I come away with a rather pessimistic view of the future of American politics; it has been the ugliest election in my lifetime, and I hope that on their deathbeds my children will be able to say it was the ugliest in theirs.”

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

Trump’s Election and the Need for a Mass Movement for Constitutional Reform
2016-11-23 12:30 - 13:30 (Europe/Moscow)
In his November 23, 2016 talk, “Trump’s Election and the Need for a Mass Movement for Constitutional Reform,” Anatol Lieven, Professor of International Politics at Georgetown University in Qatar, spoke about the recent US elections in the broad context of the United States Constitution. Today, many Americans consider the Constitution “sacred,” and would reject even the smallest changes to it, even though it has undergone twenty-seven successful amendments over its history. This passionate attachment comes from the Constitution’s central importance to American civic nationalism and national identity, and its success in framing the United States as it grew to become the most powerful country on earth.

This is not really a problem if a system delivers good government and basic, consensual civic peace, however, Lieven said: “I fear that the US Constitution is, as it presently exists, less and less able to do this.” As things stand today, “the Constitution is beginning to work massively in favor of one section of the American population and American politics, namely white conservatives, who are not anxious to give up the advantages that this system gives them,” he said.

Other western democracies have made changes to their constitutions over the years, but systems that have been as successful as that of the USA over a long period will find it more difficult to change. But however successful it may have been in the past, “A system which is not capable of even limited and pragmatic change may be in serious trouble,” Lieven cautioned. Because of the way that US presidential elections work, and because of the institution of the US Electoral College, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in this election, but Donald Trump won because he secured the Electoral College votes. The same thing happened with Al Gore and George Bush in 2000. “As far as I know, the United States is the only presidential democracy in the world that operates in this this way,” he said.

The US presidential election campaign has essentially been reduced to fifteen states, those needed to win the Electoral College, according to Lieven, and the other thirty-five states are ignored to a considerable degree. This has created a somewhat odd image of American democracy in the world. Lieven asked, “Is the United States, in fact, a democracy? Well, the obvious answer is no, of course it isn’t, because it wasn’t intended to be.” The founders were notoriously suspicious of democracy, which they associated with the threat of anarchy and mob rule leading to tyranny, according to Lieven. They put barriers against democracy into the Constitution, and it was almost forty years later that the US actually became a more or less democratic country in the (then) sense of a country where all adult white males had the vote.

The founders’ intention was to create a system that would prevent tyranny while providing reasonably good, though very limited government. “It was, above all, to create a system that would last, that would create institutions that could mediate and reconcile different interests,” among thirteen very different states, Lieven said. This balanced state powers against those of the central government. The battles of states’ rights remain critically important to this day, especially when it comes to racial and cultural issues, Lieven said. This is what led to the secession of the South before the Civil War and the battles over states’ rights in the 1940s–60s, as the white South fought to retain racial segregation and discrimination.

While some of the workings of the Constitution have been transformed, formal institutions such as the Electoral College remain in place. The founders saw it as a kind of temporary parliament, a national assembly of elected, independent legislators who had made promises to their electors, but were also free to choose the president as they saw fit. In this context, direct democratic election was secondary, according to Lieven. “Today we have a situation where the Electoral College remains in certain respects highly undemocratic, but is democratically nailed to the candidate to whom they have promised their vote in advance,” he said.

When the Constitution was formulated, the smallest state had roughly one-twelfth of the population of the largest state, and most states had roughly similar populations. In 2010, there were seven states with more than 10 million people each, and they had fourteen US senators. These are the big, urban states, multi-racial and largely Democratic in their leanings, and they account for approximately 45 percent of the US population. There were seven states with fewer than one million people in 2010, accounting for about 2 percent of the total US population. These are overwhelmingly Republican leaning states with white conservative populations, and they also have fourteen US senators. Basically, this means that California has roughly 40 times less representation than a state like South Dakota.

The problem of democracy in the House of Representatives is a different one. Currently in the House of Representatives, due to the rights held by the states under the Constitution, forty-three out of fifty states have their constituency boundaries for the House determined by state legislatures and state executives, and they are politically manipulated. This despite the fact that the House was always conceived as a national popular legislature, popularly elected. The drawing of constituency boundaries to produce solid, unchangeable majorities for one party or another is favored not just by Republicans but also by black Democrats, who see this as a way to guarantee black representation in Congress (and their own seats).

As a result of this effectively rigged system, in this year’s election, Republicans won the national popular vote, but by a margin vastly smaller than the number of seats won in the House. In 2012, Republicans lost the popular vote by a wide margin but gained a majority of seats. “This raises not just questions about democracy, but it creates additional problems in America, especially a polarized America,” said Lieven. Only around seven per cent of House seats were really contested in the last four elections. The result of this is to push the real political contest for the House from the area envisaged by the Constitution (elections) and into party primaries, in a way that inevitably favors extremists and increases polarization—since there is no longer any need for candidates to try to win candidates from the middle ground or the opposing party. “Battles in party primaries always, always—in every country—tend to favor active activists and extremists,” said Lieven.

The courts have challenged individual cases of drawing district maps, but Lieven said, “It seems obvious that this should be done the way it is done just about everywhere else in democracies, which is to have an impartial national—not politically chosen—electoral commission that will distribute the seats, and be subject always to judicial review,” Lieven said. “The Supreme Court has to judge according to the Constitution, and it is very difficult to challenge the system as a whole constitutionally, given the power of states’ rights. Additionally, there is the pretty strange provision under the Constitution that the Supreme Court has far greater powers than those of any other Supreme Court that I know of in the world. Powers that are, in effect, legislative—not just judicial,” said Lieven. “And the Supreme Court has repeatedly made laws—not interpreted them—made new laws that have radically changed aspects of American life,” he said. When to this are added the Constitutional provisions that Supreme Court judges are chosen by the President, and for life, there is a very real possibility that (with a number of Democrat judges nearing the end of their life), President Trump could ensure a Republican grip on the Supreme Court for a generation to come, putting the Republicans in a position constitutionally to block large parts of a future democratic president’s legislative agenda—completely irrespective of the popular vote.

Lieven predicted that as America changes demographically and whites sink from a majority to a plurality of the population, the effective disenfranchisement of millions of urban Americans and the demand for constitutional reform are going to become a much bigger issue in the future. However, he said it is highly unlikely that the Democrats under their existing leadership will raise this issue effectively.

Due to the Senate distribution, the way the House is arranged, and the certainty the Supreme Court would do nothing about it such a demand for change would have to be pushed for by a mass popular movement—as in the struggle against slavery and for civil rights. The Democratic leadership that produced Hillary Clinton is far too cautious and intertwined with the US economic elites to consider such a radical step. Fortunately, Bernie Sanders has shown the deep desire among much of the rank and file of the Democratic Party for a more radical path.

However, Lieven cautioned against a movement for Constitutional reform couched in terms of democratic rights for racial minorities, as this would be sure to drive many moderate working class whites into the ranks of the reactionary opposition. Instead, he summoned up the examples of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King when in his last years he campaigned for social and economic justice for all Americans. Lieven called for “A movement for democratic reform, linked to economic justice, appealing to the disadvantaged and disenfranchised urban poor of all races, and couched in terms of the need to renew American democracy in the name of American nationalism and America’s national image in the world.”

Anatol Lieven teaches International Politics at Georgetown University in Qatar. He received a BA in History (double first) and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge. Before joining academia, he spent most of his career as a foreign correspondent for British newspapers, and later as a member of think tanks in Washington DC. Between 2007 and 2014 he worked in the War Studies Department of King’s College London, where he remains a visiting professor. His main project at present is a book on the history of the Pashtun ethnicity in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the context of the wider history and theoretical analysis of modern nationalism (commissioned by Yale University Press). His taught courses at Georgetown in Qatar include international security issues; US foreign policy; war and diplomacy in Afghanistan and South Asia; comparative political systems and the history, theory and comparative study of nationalism. He is author of numerous books, including Pakistan: A Hard Country (2012); America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (second edition 2012); and Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry (1999).

Article by Jackie Starbird, Publications and Projects Assistant at CIRS.

Did Democracy Lose this Round? And Why?
2016-11-28 08:00 - 17:00 (Asia/Qatar) | Education City, Al Luqta St, Ar-Rayyan, Doha, Qatar
Azmi Bishara, General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on the topic “Did Democracy Lose this round? And Why?” on November 28, 2016. While these questions were posed in regard to the state of democracy in the Arab world in the wake of the recent uprisings, he noted that some of these concerns could be equally applied to the failure of liberalism in the West, and the rise of increasingly right-wing tendencies.

Bishara gave four broad explanations for why this round of democratic transition has failed in the Arab world, with a background of the brutality of old regimes and the oppression of civil protests. The first of these was that Arab political elites of both the opposition and the ruling factions could not come to any compromises or agree on shared settlements in the wake of the Arab uprisings. This, he said, was because “the Arab political elite, had no democratic culture”. He rejected the tendency to blame popular culture. Democratic cultures take time to flourish in society in general, and are learned over many years through various aspects of a nation’s foundational systems, including its educational system, the institution of which is the responsibility of political elites in the transitionary phase.

To this effect, Bishara argued that there is no such thing as a “democratic revolution,” since “democracy happens afterwards through reform, not through revolutions. This includes the French Revolution. It did not lead to democracy at the beginning; it needed a long process of reform to reach democracy at the end.” It is a historical norm that after mass societal and political changes, opposing political elites enter into rounds of negotiation regarding the future direction of the country. This did not happen in the post Arab uprisings. He argued that “the young people who went out to the streets, protesting torture, humiliation, and physical abuse of human beings, thought that…they actually achieved or finished the job when Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Zine El-Abidine resigned or abdicated.” In earnest, the protestors delivered their hard won changes to the political elites in order to transform the new raw political environment into actionable, viable reforms, but no such restructuring took place.

The second reason for why democracy did not take root in the region is because of the failure to find a balance between democracy and liberalism—something that was achieved only relatively recently in Western nations in the post-World War II period. Today, we understand that “democracy in itself is not only majority rule; it is not only a question of the ballots; and it is not only a question of free elections,” Bishara argued. “Now when we speak of principles of democracy that should be respected by the majority, we actually mean liberal rights,” he said. These are the meta-constitutional principles that have not been taken to heart by Arab political movements. Even as traditionally conservative parties finally began to accept democracy in the shape of ballots and elections, they did not respect or believe in the related liberal principles. While it is understood that the more radical Islamic movements, like the Islamic State, openly reject democracy in general, in the post-Arab uprisings, “even the mainstream Islamic movements who accept democracy as majority rule underestimated how important civil liberties are for the co-called new Arab middle class, without which you cannot build anything,” and without which the urban centers will be lost—as was witnessed in Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood took control.

Bishara’s third reason for the failure of democracy is due to the ways in which modern Arab regimes are engaging in the divisive and dangerous politicization—and polarization—of the multiethnic, multicultural, and sectarian social structures of their societies, especially in the countries of the Levant. Recently, there have been concerted attempts “to mobilize political loyalties to nondemocratic ruling regimes by using subnational affiliations repoliticized sects, identities, ethnicities, tribes,” which was not the case in the past, he said. This policy of so-called secular regimes elicited feelings of sectarian discrimination and confessional reaction among the people. In fact, “political sectarianism, which is exploiting these lines of identity in the struggle to control the state, is a new phenomenon.” Bishara noted that it would be impossible to build a sustainable democracy within these polarized and factionalized societies.

A fourth reason for why democracy has failed in the Arab world is due to the military’s historical stranglehold on political systems in some of these countries. When imperial powers withdrew from Arab lands, new national armies were created from the remnants of colonial military structures, and these emerged as the most organized and powerful entities from the chaos of newly forming postcolonial nations. Bishara said that “we still live the issue of politicization of the military in the Arab world,” and these armies have become increasingly politically motivated. Powerful figures within Arab militaries have strong political ambitions and think of themselves as both powerholders and as watchdogs in the balance of power. For example, in “Egypt, the army achieved a kind of autonomy before 2011,” but when the government collapsed during the Egyptian protests, “the army thought that there was an opportunity, reinforced by the inability of the elites to reach a bargain,” he explained. He drew a comparison between Sisi’s military coup in Egypt and that of Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s.

Although these many political impasses facing the Arab world might seem insurmountable, Bishara concluded on a positive note by arguing that “these hard times are suitable for rethinking,” and for encouraging a new generation of political elites who can accept disagreements and who can debate and bargain to reach compromises with each other for the sake of a future that respects democratic principles.

Azmi Bishara is the General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. A prominent researcher and writer, Bishara has published numerous books and academic papers in political thought, social theory, and philosophy, in addition to several literary works.

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

Mishal Husain on "News and Views in a Post-Truth World"
2016-11-30 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Mishal Husain, one of the BBC’s best-known presenters, delivered a CIRS Focused Discussion on “News and Views in a Post-Truth World” on November 30, 2016. Her talk gave insights into how journalists navigate through, and respond to, ever-changing news environments, particularly during seismic world events such as the Arab uprisings and the recent spectacle of the US presidential election. Relaying her journalism experience, spanning over two decades in the field, she said: “I am aware, and feel the privilege of the job I do, not just the places I go to, but the moments in time and, certainly, the access to both the powerful and the powerless.”

Husain reflected on how the UK’s recent EU referendum was reported, highlighting the duty of the BBC and other broadcasters to ensure due impartiality in political coverage, the controversy about “fake news” in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory, and her concerns about hearing “mainstream media” employed as a term of abuse.

Many people have become progressively dismissive of traditional, established news channels that reach a mass audience, and there is a growing environment in which people are seeking to reinforce their own views, rather than opening up to a culture of informed debate. “The debate about fake news is very compelling at the moment, but the influence of stories that are misleading at best will also require careful scrutiny.” Ultimately, she noted, all this is leading to the increasing circulation of misinformation, the dismissal of facts, and the erosion of truth.

In conclusion, she argued that there is a personal responsibility for people to examine the facts and to weigh the evidence. “I am deeply concerned today about the echo chamber, but also what I see as the lack of a critical thinking mindset, which is now even being identified as a bulwark against radicalization.” Husain stated. She talked about the importance of a wide range of news sources, particularly for minority communities, and an openness to explore other opinions and perspectives. “Our capacity for citizenship will not improve unless these personal skills are developed.”

Mishal Husain appears on the influential Today programme on BBC Radio 4 and presenting the main Sunday evening news on BBC1. She also presents on location from around the world, including Pakistan after the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the Peshawar school massacre, and the Middle East through the Arab uprisings and the Syrian refugee crisis. For many years she was one of the main presenters on the international channel BBC World News, and while based in Washington between 2003 and 2004, her nightly news broadcasts developed a keen following among American viewers on PBS. She was also based in the BBC’s Singapore bureau for a time, presenting business news programmes, and her sustained focus on Asia took her to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the Shanghai Expo in 2010. Mishal has presented four critically acclaimed BBC documentaries: Malala—Shot for Going to School, and How Facebook Changed the World on social media and the Arab uprisings, and a three-part series on the life of Mahatma Gandhi. In 2016, her hour-long film Britain & Europe: The Immigration Question was screened days before Britain’s landmark EU referendum vote. In January 2016, she was named by the Sunday Times as one of the 500 most influential people in Britain, and in 2015 she won the London Press Club’s Broadcaster of the Year award and was the Women in Film and TV Awards Presenter of the Year. In 2013, she was one of the Financial Times’ Women of the Year and in 2009 the Times named her as one of the top five most influential Muslim women in Britain.

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

Climate Vulnerability in South Asia's Coastal Cities
2017-01-10 09:00 - 2017-01-11 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On January 10-11, 2017, urbanists, governance experts, and climate change specialists gathered in Doha for a two-day workshop co-hosted by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin and the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University in Qatar to consider climate change vulnerability and governance in coastal cities of South Asia.

Topics debated in the workshop include the nature and definition of various understandings of climate vulnerability, the role that coastal geographies and ecologies play in exacerbating climate vulnerability, the impacts of climate change on urban settlement and migration, and the governance challenges faced by cities as they attempt (or in some cases do not attempt) to address their climate change vulnerabilities. The conversation was specifically designed to generate comparative discussion across coastal cities in the region with particular attention paid to coastal mega-cities of the region including Chennai, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, and Mumbai.

Key policy-relevant questions considered by the workshop participants include:

How should we understand climate-related vulnerability in South Asia’s changing urban context?How should we think about governance vulnerabilities as we contemplate climate hazards?In which ways will climate change transform the ways that coastal cities encounter their physical and governance environments?How will the anticipated phenomenon of mass displacement and migration challenge our accepted understandings of sovereignty and the protection missions of the state, the city, and the community?How does and should our understanding of the science of climate change affect the ways policy is developed across borders and governance systems?

The workshop was the latest in an ongoing series of conversations on this topic organized by Dr. Paula Newberg as part of the Strauss Center’s research initiative on Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia (CEPSA). The research program explores the diverse forces that contribute to climate-related disaster vulnerability and complex emergencies in Asia, the implications of such events for local and regional security, and how investments in preparedness can minimize these impacts and build resilience. CEPSA is a multi-year initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Minerva Initiative, a university based, social science research program focused on areas of strategic importance to national security policy.

Please click here to view Agenda

Participants and Discussants:

Kamran Asdar Ali, University of TexasNausheen Anwar, Institute of Business Administration, KarachiZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMisba Bhatti, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSheryl Beach, University of TexasTimothy Beach, University of TexasSolomon Benjamin, Indian Institute of Technology MadrasJason Cons, University of TexasVinita Damodaran, University of SussexRupali Gupte, Collective Research Initiatives Trust, MumbaiArif Hasan, Architect, Planner, and Social Researcher, KarachiIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarIftekhar Iqbal, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, BangladeshGarima Jain, India Institute for Human Settlements, BengaluruMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarM. Hafijul Islam Khan, International Centre for Climate Change and Development, BangladeshMathangi Krishnamoorthy, Indian Institute of Technology MadrasAnatol Lieven, Georgetown University in QatarSohail Malik, Innovative Development Strategies, IslamabadPaula Newberg, University of TexasMahesh Rajasekar, Taru Leading Edge and Taru Research Information Network, IndiaAsad Sayeed, Collective for Social Science Research, KarachiAli T. Sheikh, Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD), PakistanSam Tabory, Chicago Council on Global AffairsClare Wait, Georgetown University in QatarAdeel Zafar, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia

Middle Power Politics in the Middle East Working Group I
2017-01-15 09:00 - 2017-01-16 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On January 15-16, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies held a working group under its research initiative on “Middle Power Politics in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, participants identified key gaps in the literature on the international relations of the Middle East through the lens of middle power theory. The participants led discussions on a number of related subtopics, including: Middle Eastern middle powers and the international system, middle powers and the 2011 Arab uprisings, domestic politics, middle powers’ cooperation and competition, humanitarian diplomacy, norm entrepreneurship, and conflict resolution and mediation.

The 2011 Arab uprisings have been an evolving moment of significance in the Middle East. While increasing domestic instability in some of the traditionally strong states led to a retraction in their capacity in international and regional affairs, smaller states were suddenly given an opening for more prominent engagement. It remains to be seen whether these smaller states’ regional and international status-seeking endeavors are of a durable, sustainable nature. During the working group, scholars examined the post-2011 dynamics of the international relations in the Middle East through the lens of middle powers.

There is ambiguity in the scholarly literature in terms of providing an exact definition for middle power states, and little work has been done on which states might qualify for middle power status within the context of the Middle East. The first topic discussed during the CIRS meeting revolved around the characteristics for determining whether, or not, a state is able to claim middle power status. These characteristics include, among others, states’ relative hard-power capabilities, their capacity to exert influence over regional events, their financial resources, their institutional strength and bureaucratic capabilities, and their relative autonomy. Participants also discussed common foreign policy features among Middle Eastern middle powers. These states tend to impact their immediate sphere, are regional balancers, have the capacity to bargain with super powers and great powers, establish alliances with lesser powers, and generally do not engage in warfare. Another issue in studying middle power politics in the Middle East is the limitations in middle power theory as to how it only focuses on the international hierarchal structure of power, and disregards the multiple hierarchal substructures within the international order. In other words, there are middle powers that pursue this role on the international level, and others who pursue it only within their respective regions. This raises a number of questions: Should the Middle East be defined based on exceptionalism, and thus needs a new definition of middle power? Can a middle power be a nondemocratic government, and not a good global citizen, such as in the Egyptian and Saudi cases? And do middle powers have to share similar pillars of foreign policy agendas? In other words, is the concept of middle power theoretically so diverse as one, for example, cannot compare Iran to Australia as middle powers?

Since status is a self-proclamation met with international recognition, the interactions of Middle Eastern middle powers with extra-regional powers, the expectations of global powers from middle powers in the region, and Middle Eastern middle powers expectations from other global middle powers are all issues worth in-depth examination. Moreover, the perceptions of middle powers in the Middle East with regard to international options, especially with the rise of China, Russia being a potential partner, and the South-South relations, remain profoundly understudied.

When discussing how the Arab uprisings reconfigured the power relations of the Middle East, it is evident that domestic dynamics impact foreign policy agendas. The post-2011 dynamics force us to reconsider traditionally understood conceptions of power, state, and sovereignty. The transnational impact of the Arab uprisings on middle powers in the region, in terms of political ideologies and migration patterns, have led to realignments of alliances. For example, under the current Egyptian leadership, President Abdel Fatah Al Sisi tried to pursue a balanced foreign policy by strengthening the Egyptian relations with Russia. In other incidents, it revived rivalries, such as the Saudi-Iranian case. The realignments and revival of animosities were results of discrepancies in regional actors’ rhetoric on the Arab uprisings. The discrepancies in rhetoric manifest the impact of agency on the identity of states, especially in totalitarian regimes of the Middle East. The transitions in leadership in many countries of the region, despite their various natures, have re-shaped the foreign policy agendas not only of these states, but also across the Middle East. United Arab Emirates is an example, as the transition in leadership from Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan to Sheikh Khalifa Al Nahyan was coupled with a transformation of Emirati foreign policy, which became more assertive.

Agency, size, and material capacity of middle powers matter in assessing their influence, particularly as they are expected to take part in directly shaping the regional order, and indirectly influencing the international order. Thus, based on material capacity, countries like Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the pre-2003 Iraq could be considered destined middle powers. Israel and Algeria may be considered middle powers; while countries like Qatar and UAE are influential regional actors. Some participants questioned the concept of “destined middle powers,” suggesting that states should have an interest in seeking a middle power status in order to be one. This interest should not be only expressed by the political leadership, but also supported by cohesive centers of power within the state, and commended by the public. A mismatch between interests of the leadership and its constituencies impacts the country’s ability to claim a specific status in the regional or international order. If the leadership fabricates a state identity that does not fit with the public narrative, tensions in the foreign policy of the state are inevitable. Therefore, material capacity and interest in seeking a middle power status are both indispensible.

Furthermore, colonial legacies have impacted states interests and public narratives. For example, Algerian foreign policy is an extension of its nationalist movement that, for years, fought for independence. These colonial experiences encourage states to avoid conceding sovereignty to regional alliances that may hinder their status and influence. The UAE, as an example, sought an independent foreign policy agenda to escape the Saudi hegemony over the Gulf Cooperation Council. At the same time, Middle Eastern middle powers tolerate alliances that may support their regional activism and competitions. Delving deeper in the Saudi hegemony over the GCC, one can see that Middle Eastern middle powers act differently through regional organizations than other middle powers as they aim to dominate rather than collaborate. However, economic interdependence among Middle Eastern middle powers has been the key to cooperation.

Norm entrepreneurship activities of Middle Eastern middle powers are critical in studying middle power politics in the Middle East. Humanitarian diplomacy has been a prominent form of norm entrepreneurship exercised by middle powers across the world. When it comes to the Middle East, there has been Western scrutiny and skepticism on Middle Eastern charity organizations’ activities, especially after the September 11 attacks. This has impacted not only humanitarian diplomacy of individual countries, but also regional organizations, such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, as member states scaled back their charity activities to avoid accusations of supporting terrorism. This has impacted Middle Eastern states that seek a middle power status by using philanthropy as a way to project themselves as global good citizens.

Middle Eastern middle powers have also pursued other forms of norm entrepreneurship, such as conflict resolution and mediation. Since being involved in mediation is a key component of the behavioral definition of middle powers, Middle Eastern middle powers (and aspiring middle powers) have acted as active mediators and honest brokers. However, the Middle East is not an ideal setting for studying norm-driven mediation for three main reasons. First, there is a scarcity of comprehensive agreements and a tendency to only perpetuate ceasefires. Second, oil-rich countries of the Middle East seeking middle power status have relied only on incentive-diplomacy, which is not viable in ongoing diplomatic crises. Third, there is an ostensible weakness of multilateral settings and institutions in the Middle East.

Finally, why do countries seek a middle power status? There are not necessarily common motivations among states to pursue a middle power status. Each state has its own domestic, regional, and international dynamics at play driving its pursuit for a middle power status. Some states pursue status-seeking endeavors as a legitimization strategy. Claiming a higher status in the international or regional order induces the public and helps in preempting the spillover of instability to the country, as in the case of the UAE. It also drives attention away from domestic challenges affecting the public such as low GDP, youth population bulges, and budget deficit, such as the case in Saudi Arabia.

At the end of the working group, Mehran Kamrava, Director of CIRS, concluded the session with emphasis on the contribution of the working group discussions to the literature on middle power politics, to be published in an edited volume in the near future.

Please click here to view the AgendaRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarJonathan Benthall, University College LondonSuleyman Elik, Istanbul Medeniyet UniversityIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSimon Mabon, Lancaster UniversityImad Mansour, Qatar UniversityRobert Mason, American University in CairoSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMarco Pinfari, American University in CairoAmin Saikal, Australian National UniversityAdham Saouli, University of St. AndrewsNael Shama, University of St. AndrewsJackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarYahia Zoubir, KEDGE Business School, France

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

CIRS Screens Suzi Mirgani's Short Film Caravan
2017-01-19 12:30 - 13:30 (Europe/Moscow)
Award-winning filmmaker Suzi Mirgani recently hosted a screening of her latest work, titled Caravan, to an audience of students, staff, faculty, and guests at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q). The short film, which premiered at the Doha Film Institute’s Ajyal Youth Film Festival late last year, tells the story of members of a cross-section of Qatari society stuck in a traffic jam.

Mirgani, who is the manager and editor for publications at GU-Q’s Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), also used the screening as opportunity to share more about the production and themes in the work. The five-minute long short film, which was shot on location at The Pearl Qatar, took a day to film and more than two months to prepare for. It depicts a type of lyrical relay, as the camera zooms in and out of the stationary cars. The voices and thoughts of drivers and passengers stuck in the traffic jam play out in a stream of consciousness style.

In the film, the actors are located on a literal bridge to nowhere, as the end of the road disappears into the sand. Mirgani explained that this can be seen to symbolize a path from prosperity to nothing, as construction is still underway on the man-made island. The mix of built and unbuilt can also be viewed as a metaphor for the rapidly developing country, and its often transient residents. “If you give in to the traffic jam, it can be a space of reflection,” said Mirgani.

Featuring vehicles filled with taxi drivers, tourists, and families (speaking languages ranging from Arabic to Tagalog and Urdu), the film represented the range of nationalities, interests, and languages present in Qatar. “This film was a reflection of what I see on a daily basis,” said Mirgani.

The CIRS researcher, who has edited and written numerous books on topics ranging from food security in the Middle East to media and politics, is also the director of 2014’s Hind’s Dream. That film won the jury award for artistic vision at the 2014 Ajyal Film Festival, and has screened at film festivals around the world.

Article by Lauren Granger, Georgetown University in Qatar Media Writer

Highly Skilled Migrants: The Gulf and Global Perspectives Working Group II
2017-01-29 09:00 - 2017-01-30 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On January 29-30 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted a working group on “Highly Skilled Migrants: The Gulf and Global Perspectives.” This working group took place under a broader joint research project on Highly Skilled Migrants in Qatar which was launched last year by Zahra Babar, CIRS Associate Director, and two co-collaborators, Nabil Khattab of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and Michael Ewers of Qatar University’s Social and Economic Survey Research Institute. A number of scholars with regional and global experience on the topic of skilled migration were invited to present their articles during the two-day meeting, and receive feedback from the group. The topics discussed in the working group included, among others: “involuntary immobility” of highly skilled migrants in Qatar; the impact of highly skilled migrants on GCC economies; structural factors and recruitment of highly skilled migrants in the GCC; transition from oil- to knowledge-based economies; categories, visa classes and visa programs of skilled migrants; integration in the workplace; and the global competition amongst different countries seeking to attract highly skilled migrants.

Zahra Babar, Michael Ewers and Nabil Khattab started the discussion by presenting their article on “Immobile Highly Skilled Migrants in Qatar.” In investigating the motivations and experiences of highly skilled migrants in Qatar, the authors analyze the results of a nationally representative survey of 300 high-skilled expatriates in Qatar, as well key-informant interviews with 32 individuals. During their presentation, the authors presented their data and suggested that given the research carried out, it could be argued that under certain circumstances highly skilled migrants might become “involuntarily immobile” in Qatar. The authors suggest that under the restrictive migration regulations present in Qatar, certain groups of highly-skilled migrants face conditions of involuntary immobility, as they are unable to switch jobs easily either for professional advancement or to escape unsatisfying work experiences. This research study also explores the relationship between highly skilled migrants’ countries of origin, and their experiences in Qatar, particularly their motivations for coming here and for staying. Some of the data collected demonstrate that instability, conflict, and insecurity at home for certain Arab communities of highly skilled workers in Qatar means that they are also made involuntarily immobile as they cannot return home or move to resettle in a third country.

Martin Hvidt led a discussion on the subject of the impact of highly skilled migrants on the economies of the Gulf States. Hividt’s paper addresses the actual and potential contribution of highly skilled migrants to the growth of the Gulf states. He explores the nexus between economic growth in the Gulf States and immigration of highly skilled migrants. While it is nearly impossible to document the actual impact on the economy of this group of migrants due to lack of data, Hividt analyzes and identifies not only the potential positive contributions the highly skilled migrants have, but focuses closely on the barriers embodied in the policies that manage the intake and labor market conditions of the migrants.

Francoise De Bel-Air presented her research article that focuses on the structural factors in the GCC which are spurring policy changes for highly skilled migrants. De Bel-Air shared data on the characteristics and backgrounds of highly skilled migrants working in the GCC, using available demographic and labor force surveys available for various states. De Bel-Air also reviewed the policy framework adopted for highly skilled workers in the region, and particularly certain reforms that have been implemented since the late 2000s. De Bel-Air stressed that policies have developed and been influenced along three pillars of economization, securitization, and management of migration. Del Bel Air concluded by suggesting that there are structural explanations for the reforms of migration policies and the way they directly impact or do not impact highly skilled professionals in the region.

Binod Khadria’s article shifted the discussions to “Transition from Oil- to Knowledge-Economies and Indian Student Mobilities to the Gulf: Education Cities in Three GCC Counties.” In his paper, Khadria examines the transition of GCC countries from oil-economies to knowledge-economies. He analyzes this transition by tracing the development of four educational cities in four GCC cities: Doha in Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi in UAE and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Khadria argues that the transition economies of the three countries are trying to tackle their worsening balance of trade arising from the decline in export of oil and natural gas in recent years. In doing so, he analyzes two trends: expansion in the number of Indian students in foreign universities in the GCC countries; and deepening of the foreign direct investment (FDI) in the education sector in the aforementioned cities.

Building up on Khadria’s article, Payal Banerjee led a discussion on “Skilled Migration: Categories, Visa Classes and Visa Programs.” Banerjee offered an introductory analysis of the different visa classes and typologies, the skilled/unskilled dyad in particular, to investigate how the reification and normalization of “skilled immigration,” as a category, result in very troubling outcomes. She argued that once a motif classification gets cemented on the basis of the absence or presence to skills/education, immigrants’ entitlements, legitimacy, and success and failure get calibrated on the basis of individual characteristics. This obfuscates the salience of racially coded structural inequality that is evidenced in a number of recent studies, which document skilled immigrants’ downward occupational mobility and various forms of marginalization, despite educational qualification and language skills. Furthermore, Banerjee claimed that the skilled/unskilled binary detracts from analyzing the role of immigration/visa policies in the production of tenuous legal status, which results in immigrants’ exploitation and vulnerability, in the low-wage as well as skilled, high-wage sectors.

In her presentation, Micheline van Riemsdijk discussed “Integration of Highly Skilled Migrants in the Workplace: A Multi-Scalar Model.” She argued that skilled migrants are often expected to adapt easily to the host culture based on their social, cultural, and human capital. However, these migrants experience integration challenges that have been little addressed in the literature. Using a case study of foreign-born engineers in the Norwegian oil and gas industry, van Riemsdijk proposed a multi-scalar conceptual framework to examine the integration of skilled migrants in the workplace. She combined literature on immigrant integration and diversity management with data from interviews and a survey of foreign-born engineers. The framework van Riemsdijk developed serves as a tool to move beyond single-scale, unidirectional studies of immigrant integration toward a multi-scalar, inter-linked conceptualization of the integration of skilled migrants.

Finally, Lucie Cerna and Mathias Czaika’s article steered the discussion to investigate the “Rising Stars in the Global Race for Talent? A Comparative Analysis of Brazil, India, and Malaysia.” The article examines how emerging economies increase their attractiveness for international talent. In order to analyze the strategies of the “global South” to attract or retain high-skilled people, the authors focus on the three emerging economies: Brazil, India, and Malaysia. Based on 15 expert interviews in these countries, the authors describe the short-term practices and long-term strategies of these three countries in reversing the brain drain by recruiting and retaining highly skilled workers. They argue that while Malaysia has become an active player and innovator on the international talent recruitment market, the other two countries still consider themselves as “self-sufficient” by relying either on their domestic skill supply or on engaging with their skilled diaspora in the case of India. Finally, the authors argue that despite the rising demand for human capital in these three countries, which are at different stages in a “migration policy transition,” they still lack sufficient legal, administrative and economic provisions to bring in skilled foreign workers in significant numbers.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Babar, Ewers, and Khattab highlighted that the original contributions of the group’s articles to the existing literature would greatly expand the scholarly lens on highly skilled migrants, moving it outside the traditional focus on OECD countries. The articles are due to be published in a special issue of a journal in the near future.

See the working group agenda here
Read the participants’ biographies here
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Payal Banerjee, Smith College
Lucie Cerna, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Amanda Chisholm, Newcastle University
Françoise De Bel-Air, Gulf Research Center, Geneva, and the European University Institute
Michael Ewers, SESRI, Qatar University
Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Martin Hvidt, University of Southern Denmark
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Nabil Khattab, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Jackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Micheline van Riemsdijk, University of Tennessee Knoxville
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

The Regional Humanitarian Crisis
2017-02-07 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Reach Out To Asia is a Qatar-based non-profit organization that works to ensure that people affected by crisis across Asia and the Middle East have continuous access to relevant and high-quality primary and secondary education. Since its inception in 2005, ROTA has had a vision of providing education for children and youth to discover their potential to become full, responsible citizens building their communities and their futures. Today ROTA has education and development projects in thirteen countries and it has a major strategic initiative to build local capacity and community service in Qatar.

Essa Al-Mannai, the executive director of ROTA, delivered the talk, “The Regional Humanitarian Crisis: How ROTA is Mobilizing Resources to Tackle the Refugee Crisis through Education,” at the Center for International and Regional Studies on February 7, 2017. He shared these grim figures about the status of refugees today:

Currently there are twenty-one million refugees in the world.
About fifty percent of the world’s refugee population is children.
On average, a refugee will live away from home for seventeen years.

There are sixty-five million forcibly-displaced people worldwide. This number is comprised primarily of internally-displaced people who do not have any country or state that would acknowledge their citizenship, and the aforementioned twenty-one million refugees. Tragically, against these disheartening numbers, Al-Mannai reported that only 107,000 refugees were resettled in 2015. He cautioned of the danger of just looking at the magnitude of these problems in terms of the numbers, however. “When we talk about refugees, we are talking about humans with ambitions. People who have hopes and the right to fulfill life dreams,” he said.

ROTA upholds education as the top priority in humanitarian crises because children are the most marginalized and most vulnerable. Providing access to education in safe, nurturing environments can enable children to develop critical lifelong skills. Al-Mannai explained that it is essential for children in emergency situations to have a sense of normalcy, to make friendships, build self-confidence, acquire knowledge, and have a chance to become something in the future. Furthermore, he said, “The simple fact is that illiteracy is isolation, and isolation can lead to destructive tendencies towards the self and towards others.”

What benefits does the world get by educating refugees? “It’s our moral obligation as humans to identify and respect the human mind through fulfilling its desire to learn, to acquire knowledge, to ask questions, to debate, and ultimately to create something,” said Al-Mannai. It is a human need for everyone, regardless of status or where you are from, and he said, “without education this right is denied.”

Another benefit of educating refugees is the huge return on investment for a country that has experienced a crisis, such as the civil war in Syria. Eventually there will need to be resettlement and rebuilding. “Do you want to rebuild a country with engineers and doctors or people who are illiterate?” Al-Mannai asked. “The benefits of education are self-evident.” He reported that, according to the World Bank in 2016, education is an investment where, overall, each year of schooling will raise individual earnings by ten percent; bringing better results than almost any other form of investment. However, of all the international aid that goes for emergencies, only 1.4 percent goes to education.

The Syrian refugee crisis rose from 3.7 million in 2015 to 4.8 million in 2016. Schools were severely in need, with a broken-down infrastructure and limited teacher capacity and access to materials. ROTA’s basic approach to this dire situation was to increase teacher capacity and offer non-formal education, because schools simply could not meet the great needs of the refugee populations. “Education goes beyond the book, the teacher and homework,” Al-Mannai said. Non-formal education can provide a support system to children and youth and offer a positive environment with psychosocial support, and other assistance. ROTA does not just build schools, they take a holistic approach because, he explained, “education is a multi-party process that engages the community, the government, ministries of education, the school directorate, the parents, and even the teachers and the school administration.”

Al-Mannai said a shift is occurring in the global agenda for international humanitarian work and development. In the year 2000, leaders from 189 countries gathered at the United Nations and approved eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Progress was achieved in a number of those goals, but the new target is Sustainable Development Goals. The big lesson learned from the international community, according to Al-Mannai, is that “Giving is not enough. We have to give, but we also have to build local capacity.”

Global development goals are moving from quantity measures towards quality. According to Al-Mannai, the focus in the past was on the most needy, poorest countries; now there is recognition that everyone must be included to achieve targets. The previous approach was top-down, donor to beneficiary; now it is bottom-up, and developing capacity is the new goal. Al-Mannai said the new understanding is that top-down will never work, because the needy will continue to come back and ask for more. Teaching people to build their capacities, systems, and governance are the new global directions. The current draft of the Sustainable Development Goals has seventeen goals, and include peace, stability and human rights.

ROTA is building local capacity in Qatar through youth engagement, community service, and global citizenship. ROTA has created various platforms for youth to become active locally and internationally, and to serve as representatives of Qatar in the region. To date, over one-thousand youth have been trained by ROTA. There are currently eighteen Qatari-based youth clubs, each with its own unique vision and mission. Some international platforms that Qatari youth have participated in include the UN General Assembly and the UN World Humanitarian Summit, and ROTA hosted the Global Youth Consultation in 2015, which shapes youth engagement in humanitarian work.

ROTA is a partnership-led initiative, working with organizations in other countries, because Al-Mannai said, “One solution will not fit all, and no one organization has all the solutions.” There are many humanitarian and aid organizations, each with their competitive edge and good capacities. ROTA is mobilizing resources and is building the capacity of the community as a whole, and is partnering with other local non-governmental organizations to increase its impact.

Not since World War II has the world witnessed the number of refugees that we are witnessing today, according to Al-Mannai. The world is developing, but there is a huge percentage of the world that is lagging behind, and he says, we are at risk of these two worlds growing apart from each other. ROTA’s deep commitment to partnership, sustainability, and building local capacity could go far in reversing this alarming trend.

Essa Al-Mannai was appointed as ROTA’s Executive Director in 2010. Under his leadership, the organization has led initiatives in thirteen countries and local programs in Qatar. Additionally, ROTA has led adult literacy trainings, youth leadership programs, and programs designed to benefit students and teachers. He has served on the steering committees of various international and local groups in the fields of development and social responsibility. Recently, Al-Mannai represented the Qatar NGO sector at the high-level event on Refugees’ Education in Emergency Situations hosted by the Permanent United Nations Missions of Portugal, Qatar and Turkey.

Article by Jackie Starbird, Publications and Projects Assistant at CIRS.

Leading the Faithful: The Role of Religious Authorities in the Middle East Working Group II
2017-02-12 09:00 - 2017-02-13 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On February 12-13, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held its second working group under the research initiative on “Leading the Faithful: The Role of Religious Authorities in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, working group participants presented a number of draft papers investigating the dynamics, the position of, and the role played by religious leaders of assorted religious communities present in the Middle East. While some of the papers provide nuanced historical depth when tracing the role of religious leaders, others cast their attention to the role of religious leadership during more recent times, particularly in the wake of increasing confessional and sectarian civil conflict seen in the wars in Iraq and Syria. The draft papers focused on a number of specific themes and case studies, and together provide an examination on the following areas: the role of Sunni authority from a historical perspective; the evolution of the marja’ and Shi’i religious leadership in the Middle East; the role of Sufi religious leaders and orders in the Middle East today; the evolution of leadership and authority over the Hajj; the conditions of the Alawite community and the role of the Alawi Sheikhs in Syria in the current context; and case studies on the religious leadership of the Mandaean, the Yezidi, and the Shabak religious communities.

The opening session of the meeting was devoted to discussing Professor Tamara Sonn’s paper on the topic of “Who Speaks for the Umma? Sunni Authority and Religious Leadership in the Contemporary Middle East.” In her paper, Sonn suggested that there is no single source of Sunni religious leadership in the contemporary Middle East. Due to political and demographic changes over the past century, Sunni religious leadership is in a state of transition. Traditional nodes of religious authority have been called into question, and are themselves evolving. As well, non-traditional sources of authority are emerging and, in some cases, have become sufficiently institutionalized to supplant traditional authorities. Sonn briefly described traditional sources of religious authority in Sunni Islam. She also provided an overview of political and demographic developments that called traditional authorities into question. In addition, Sonn surveyed representative examples of both reformed traditional authorities and emerging non-traditional religious leaders in the Sunni Middle East. Finally, she concluded with some observations about long-term trends in Sunni authority and religious leadership in general.

Following on from the discussion on the role of authority and religious leadership for the Sunni community, Sajjad Rizvi presented his paper on Shi’i leadership and the making of a marja’, focusing on the role of Sīstānī and Shi’i Religious authority in the Twitter Age. In his paper, Rizvi considers the question of how one becomes a marja’, particularly in reference to the authority of that marja’. Rizvi focused his discussion on an examination of Sīstānī, and the shift and development of the marja’ in the form of the “Sīstānī model” in the age of social media. Rizvi argues that globalization has both increased the power and reach of the marājiʿ; but yet, ironically, made their significance more local. The increasing consensus of the political role of the marājiʿ is clear in Qum, Najaf and beyond. Rizvi also claims that the recent developments in Iraq have shown that the theory of the authority of the jurist (wilāyat al-faqīh) is no longer just Iranian, nor does the support for it signal a disloyal support for the Iranian state and its jurisdiction. What is properly Iranian and Iraqi in the contemporary world cannot be so easily compartmentalized; this further complicates the question of the role of “Iran” in Iraq. A study of the marāji’ demonstrates that there is more than one conception ofmarja’iyya and of the ḥawza, as well as multiple claimants and potential centers of power for the marāji’. In other words, Rizvi argues that the marja’iyya is traditional and local as well as dynamic and transnational, quietest and conservative as well as politically engaged and reforming. Finally, Rizvi unpacks whether the marja’iyya will survive.

Mark Sedgwick led a working group discussion on his paper that examines Sufi religious leaders and orders in the Middle East today. Sedgwick’s paper studies the basis and nature of the primarily esoteric, person-centered authority of the Sufi shaykh in the context of the ṭarīqa (Sufi Order), and Sufi doctrine. Sedgewick in his paper raises the interesting point about the inverse relationship between the power of the shaykh and the size of the ṭarīqa. The smaller the order over which he asserts leadership, the more direct and over-riding is the authority of the shaykh. The larger the order, the more diffuse and limited is the authority of the shaykh. In addition, Sedgewick also examines the foundation and nature of the primarily exoteric, scripture–centered authority of the Sufi shaykh beyond the ṭarīqa, which includes the social influences of the person-centered authority. Sedgewick argues that this sort of authority diminished during the twentieth century. Sedgwick’s paper concludes with an exploration of more recent developments, particularly the political promotion of Sufism by some states, such as Morocco, as an alternative to other forms of “radical” Islam.

In his presentation, Robert Bianchi focused the discussion on “Religious Authorities and Reimagining the Hajj.” Bianchi argued that the Saudi data leave little doubt that the quality of care for Hajjis varies enormously depending on several key factors which policy makers and religious leaders must address with greater honesty and determination. Year in and year out, the most vulnerable pilgrim populations are poor people, women, and children from across Africa and Asia as well as foreign workers, refugees, and illegal migrants living in Saudi Arabia. Most of the current proposals for Hajj reform ignore these high-risk groups. Saudi planners focus on promoting year-round pilgrimage to boost tourism revenues and high-end infrastructure. In most other countries, government-run Hajj agencies are busy cutting market-sharing deals with private business cartels and their political patrons. The combined effect of these policies is to weaken what remains of already inadequate regulations that are vital to the protection of all Hajjis. Meanwhile, support is also growing for more sweeping proposals to reimagine and reinvent the Hajj instead of fine-tuning the status quo. Some of these reforms are particularly likely to test the ingenuity and influence of religious leaders from all backgrounds because they challenge longstanding custom.

Leon Goldsmith presented his paper on “The ‘Alawī Sheikhs of Religion: A Brief Introduction.” He argues that the ‘Alawī religious leadership has always lacked structure or explicit roles, but nonetheless, filled an important function in the social milieu at local levels. The ‘Alawī mashayikh would cooperate to mediate among individuals and with other groups at times of danger or tension such as in 1936, 1973 and possibly in 2016 as indicated by the unverified Declaration of an Identity Reform. He also claimed that pressures were exerted on the sect to conform to mainstream religious identities, whether Sunni or Shi’i, throughout the twentieth century from both inside Syria and at the regional level. Moreover, Goldsmith claimed that the Ba’th/al-Asad regime has coopted ‘Alawī religious leadership as an instrument of regime maintenance since 1982. The effect of this has been to further divide religious leadership between the traditional and regime-appointed mashayikh. The appointment of regime loyalists as religious sheikhs has seen the standard of sheikhs deteriorate and they have lost respect and independent status in their communities. Finally, the growing corruption and opportunism creeping into the ‘Alawī religious class at the expense of the traditional sheikhs bode poorly for the future of religious leadership as a positive agent for political transformation and stability in Syria.

Albert de Jong shifted the discussion to pseudo-Islamic sects in his presentation on “Kings on Earth, Angels Beyond: Spiritual Elite Communities in the Contemporary Middle East.” de Jong argues that within the mosaic of religious communities of the pre-modern and modern Middle East, there is a wide range of religious communities that predated the rise of Islam alongside a cluster of communities that decidedly came into being after the Islamic conquests, in various distinct geographical, religious, and social contexts. de Jong questions how wholly distinct religious communities have not only survived, but also almost continually increased in the Middle East. He credits their survival and expansion to the organizations of these religious groups, and the role of their leaders. de Jong suggested two fundamental patterns of the social and religious organization that have contributed to the survival and growth of these religious groups: endogamy; and the characteristic division of the community into a small section of specialists in whom knowledge of the tradition is vested, and a large majority who do not (need to) know much about their religion.

Michael Leezenberg presented the last paper of the working group that examines the transformations in the leadership of minority religious communities in Northern Iraq: the Yezidis, Shabak, and Assyrians in Northern Iraq. In his paper, Leezenberg discusses these three religious communities that in some ways have shared the same fate, that of to some degree being at the mercy of their geography, a geography that has left them ensnared by ongoing conflict which has only accelerated over the past three decades. While these communities were certainly vulnerable even during the Baathist years, in post-Saddam Iraq their conditions have grown much more precarious status. Most recently they have suffered by becoming a target for violence directed at them by ISIS. In his paper Leezenberg traces the at times converging and at other times diverging trajectories of these groups, focusing particularly on the role of their religious leaders and how they have dealt with crises and conflict at different points in the bloody history of the region.

See the working group agenda hereRead the participants’ biographies hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarRobert Bianchi, Shanghai International Studies UniversityAlbert de Jong, Leiden UniversityLeon Goldsmith, University of Otago, New ZealandIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMichiel Leezenberg, University of AmsterdamSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSajjad Rizvi, University of ExeterMark Sedgwick, Aarhus University, DenmarkTamara Sonn, Georgetown UniversityJackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Higher Education Policies and the Emerging Over-education Crisis in the Middle East
2017-02-19 12:30 - 13:30 (Europe/Moscow)
Student enrollment in higher education institutions has rapidly increased in most Middle Eastern countries in recent years. Governments have shown a strong commitment to higher education, and there has been broad support from politicians and citizens for establishing more universities and increasing access to higher education. However, in recent years, the supply of university graduates in many fields of education has exceeded the labor market demand and the unemployment rate among university graduates has increased. Unfortunately, so far this high unemployment rate has not led to a reduction in student enrollment. Instead, some Middle Eastern countries have fallen into an “over-education trap,” according to Nader Habibi, Professor of Economics and Middle East Studies at Brandeis University.

The over-education trap, as defined by Habibi, includes the following process: university graduates who cannot find employment in their university majors will eventually accept low-skill and semi-skilled jobs that do not require a university degree. In doing so they reduce the employment opportunities for high school graduates, who would have been employed for these jobs traditionally. Consequently, high-school graduates face higher unemployment rates (crowded out by university graduates), and many will conclude that their only option for avoiding unemployment is a “university education.”

Habibi presented his talk, Higher Education Policies and the Emerging Over-education Crisis in the Middle East, at the Center for International and Regional Studies on February 19, 2017. He argued that there must be a balance between quality and quantity of education in the region. “Getting a degree in physics and then getting a job in chemistry or another job that requires a university degree is not big a waste of resources; you’re still a university graduate working in some other field,” Habibi said. “But if you are a university graduate and you are working in a field that does not really need the skills of a university education then you have to think about the resources you (and the government) have devoted to your education.”

Habibi began his research on conditions of higher education in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey about four years ago. Along with local research partners in these countries, he has conducted research on the earnings of university graduates, examined the motivations behind why individuals choose to get degrees, interviewed policymakers, and studied higher-education planning patterns.

There is strong cultural demand for higher education everywhere, but this was not the case forty or fifty years ago, he explained. “In 1976, it was unheard of for university graduates to be unemployed in Iran, but in 2011 the unemployment rate for university graduates was nineteen percent.” Habibi reported that in many MENA countries today, the unemployment rate for people with university degrees is higher than high school graduates.

In the past two decades, because of the political acceptance of privatization of higher education, policymakers have been able to expand higher education without expanding the government expenditure by the same proportion. Therefore, in a way, the fiscal burden of expansion has been reduced through privatization. “In these countries, enrollment has increased, but the burden of education on government has not increased,” Habibi said. Politicians did not foresee that increasing enrollment would become a massive burden. “The cost of education is to a large extent a burden on the entire society,” he said, “so we should justify the return to education not just for the individual but for the entire society, by taking into account the massive government investment in tertiary education.”

A common feature among Middle Eastern countries is that governments take a very active role in educational planning, Habibi said. This is not the case in Europe and the United States, where a large number of universities are private, and governments do not really have much control over admission and enrollment policies. He said there are two primary justifications for governments expanding educational opportunities in higher education, economic justification (labor market demand for university skills) and social demand.

Labor market justification arises from manpower planning. Based on long-term forecasts for economic growth and industrial development, the government estimates the amount of skilled labor that is needed in each specific field. Social demand for higher education, on the other hand, is based on the desire of students and their families for higher education, according to Habibi. Social demand is generally larger than the labor market demand because citizens observe that university graduates tend to earn more income, hold a higher social status, and have improved social interactions and opportunities. While there are many obvious social and cultural benefits to having a more educated population, he said, “You also have to look at the employment and labor market conditions for university graduates.”

Habibi shared some statistics about recent spikes in university enrollment. Between 1995 and 2015, Iran and Turkey each saw enrollment increase by almost five hundred percent. With a population of ninety million, Egypt has 2.5 million university students enrolled at present; Turkey’s population of eighty million has five million university students. Egyptian citizens aged 25-29 who hold a university degree increased by an astounding eighty percent in this timeframe.

Universities in Iran expanded very rapidly, especially since 2005, “because of political reasons and because of populist pressure,” Habibi reported. If you are a graduate in computer science or law, he said, you should have good opportunity for employment. However, “we see surprisingly high unemployment rates in these and some other university majors like architecture and civil engineering.” He reported that in Iran in 2016, the unemployment rate for male university graduates was thirteen percent, and 65.5 percent for females.

Habibi and his colleagues observed that in every country policymakers received some practical recommendations for addressing the issue of over-education through workforce planning, (for example, estimating the labor market need for university programs, and admitting students according to set requirements). But in every proposed case, he said, “solutions were rejected by policymakers because social demand for higher education was so strong that they could not say no to families that wanted to send their children to university. . . . Rather than focusing on labor market demand, politicians focused on satisfying the social demand for higher education, which has now resulted in unemployment and underemployment.”

Habibi cited two countries that have been able to contain the problem of over-education, Germany and Singapore. Germany uses vocational training programs in high schools that are popular and effective, and many students choose the vocational education for manufacturing jobs because they find good-paying jobs after graduation. This system has worked because there is cooperation between the private sector corporations and the vocational training schools, Habibi said. Singapore has been successful in resisting populist demand and puts strict limits on university admissions. The government achieved this by reducing the role of the ministry of higher education in determining the enrollment quotas for universities, and it has empowered the ministry of manpower to play a more important role in higher-education planning. As a result, enrollment limits are closely linked to labor market demand projections for each university major.

“There are some steps that can be taken to prevent over-education, but they will require political will,” Habibi said. He cited the need for economic planning and a “cap and trade” concept, where a cap is placed on the number of students admitted into each major (for example civil engineering), and universities then compete for enrollment permits. He said the over-education crisis reminds him of the issue of inflation, and how countries manage to fight it. Using this analogy he said, “As long as the parliament is in charge of monetary policy it is hard to fight inflation because members of parliament would like to satisfy their constituency by increasing government expenditures and they will force the central government to finance the budget deficit by printing more money. However, when the central bank of a country is independent the politicians cannot force it to print money and cause inflation.” Transferring the higher education enrollment decisions to an independent body away from political and social pressures, can have a similar effect in preventing over-education.

Nader Habibi is the Henry J. Leir Professor of the Economics of the Middle East at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. Before joining Brandeis University in June 2007, he served as managing director of economic forecasting and risk analysis for Middle East and North Africa with Global Insight Ltd. Habibi has more than twenty-eight years of experience in teaching, research and management positions; including vice-president for research in Iran Banking Institute (Tehran), assistant professor of economics in Bilkent University (Ankara), research fellow and lecturer on the political economy of the Middle East at Yale University.

Article by Jackie Starbird, Publications and Projects Assistant at CIRS.

Sports, Society, and the State in the Middle East Working Group I
2017-03-12 09:00 - 2017-03-13 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On March 12-13, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held a working group under its research initiative on “Sports, Society, and the State in the Middle East.” During the course of two days, participants identified key gaps in the literature on sports in the Middle East through the lenses of their various disciplines. The participants led discussions on a number of related subtopics, including: the historical evolution of sports in the Middle East; nationalism, identity and sports; ethno-national conflict and sports; social inclusion, gender, and sports; fans, brands, sponsorships and the commercial development of sports; the politics of football in the Levant; physical education; the evolution of sports media; Khaleeji soft power, branding and sports investments; and GCC mega sporting events and foreign relations.

Murat Yildiz led the opening discussion on “The Historical Evolution of Sports in the Middle East.” Yildiz identified a number of questions that remain understudied in the literature on the history sports in the Middle East. He proposed that it would be worthwhile to develop a unique periodization of the Middle East through the lens of sports, and that such a periodization might look quite different from the social and political markers that are most commonly applied when separating the region into different historical eras. Yildiz also suggested that the question of the relationship between late imperial structures and sports development in the region needs further study. It is also important to understand why Middle Eastern states had attempted to promote sports in rural areas, and how this has contributed to our understanding of the urban history of the Middle East. Clearly there have historically been factors that have led to certain sports being more successful and popular in the region, with others less so. Yildiz claimed that studying these factors would contribute to the existing literature.

Nadim Nassif provided an overview of new research questions in relation to “Nationalism, Identity, and Sports in the Middle East.” Nassif argued that there is a “Gold War” and a global race among Middle Eastern states seeking to engage in sports for the purpose of branding, image-building, and reputational gain. The scholarship that looks at the role of sports in identity and nation-building in the Middle East is incomplete, as it has focused primarily on the cases of Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen. Nassif emphasized that the study of sports in the Middle East has not provided enough empirical evidence for how sports are playing into or trying to counter the broader sectarian divisions across the region. Nassif suggested that there are three levels of analysis which need to be applied in order to understand the role of sports in Middle Eastern politics: the relationship between regime type and sports development; the strength or weakness of the state and the role of sports in nation-building; and the different echelons of stakeholders, and their particular motives behind their engagement in sports. Among other questions which need to be addressed, he suggested: What are the factors that impact ethno-national rivalries in sports? How can states promote national identity through sports when in fact so many “national” sports teams rely heavily on foreign players and coaches? How do states position themselves regionally and internationally by hosting mega elite sports events? How do sports investments contribute to national identity? Is there a correlation between self-identity and involvement in sports? Do sports serve as a tool to stimulate or counter sectarianism and sub-national identities? Additional questions that are relevant examine the role of diaspora- and homeland-players in stimulating public support to national teams, the evolution of cross-national identities and sports, and the role of political parties in appointing heads of national sports federations.

Closely related to questions raised during Nassif’s session, Tamir Sorek led a discussion on “Ethno-national Conflict and Sports in the Middle East.” Sorek explored how sports can impact public attitudes in countries experiencing ethno-national conflicts, and how sports can promote the exclusion of ethno-linguistic and religious communities. For example, he raised a question: How does the performance of an Arab star in the Israeli national team impact Jews’ perceptions of Arabs? The same question could also be asked with regards to Copts in Egypt, and other communities in the ethnically and religiously plural Middle East. Another issue Sorek raised is the display of nationalism in sports arenas. He claimed that at the time some states are antagonistic towards displays of overt nationalism in sports arenas (i.e. Israel’s response towards Palestinian identity expressed in public), other states remain agnostic towards such displays (i.e. Lebanon). Sorek also raised an interesting question on the value of sports sanctions as a tool for modifying the behavior of states seen to be acting outside international norms.

Nida Ahmad continued with a discussion on identity, social inclusion, and exclusion by examining the issue of gender and sports in the Middle East. Ahmad raised a number of questions in relation to women’s participation in sports in the Middle East, including how social media has shaped female athletes’ ability to communicate at the national, regional, and international level with their audiences and fan-bases. She also suggested that there are new forms of physical activity which are gaining popularity among women in the MENA region, particularly “action” sports. Ahmad observed that there is increasing agency of for women in terms of creating a new narrative around sports. Female athletes and sports participants are influencing the regulatory environment, changing local and regional norms, and perhaps making sports more accessible to Muslim women at a global level. There has been a gradual easing of regulations that had previously prohibited the wearing of hijab in international sports competitions. International sportswear brands’ have also made a strategic shift towards producing sportswear designed for Muslim women athletes, such as the Nike “Pro Hijab” advertising campaign demonstrates. Ahmad also suggested that some Middle Eastern states have promoted women in sports as a means to counter radicalization in their societies. Additional worthwhile contributions to the literature could be examining underground females’ sports competitions, the emergence of senior female sports officials and their role in sports organizations and federation, and girls’ inclusion in athletic programs through the educational system.

Simon Chadwick led a session on the commercialization of sports in the Middle East. Chadwick stated that there is a sizable sports economy in the Middle East which is valued at about sixteen billion US dollars, and yet it remains significantly understudied. Chadwick proposed five approaches to studying the sports economy in the Middle East: fans, brands, sponsors, commerce, and the future. Expanding on this, Chadwick raised a number of questions: on what basis do fans engage with sports? How is this manifested in their choices, thinking, and behavior? How are sports brands built? And what contribution can this make to the business of sport in the Middle East? What forms can sponsorship in the Middle East take? And how should sponsorship deals be managed to ensure maximum effectiveness? What is the economic and commercial role of sport in the Middle East? And how should the challenges faced by the industry be addressed? And finally, what role will new sports and new sports formats play in the Middle East?

Dag Tuastad shifted the discussion to “The Politics of Football in the Levant.” Tuastad claimed that football remains at the center of politics in the Levant. It reflects cultural and social processes in the region; in addition to being a space for political struggle between the social units of state. Therefore, given that remembering takes place in individual minds through membership, Tuastad argued that football should be studied as a critical constituent of the social memory of peoples of the Levant. This would explain the active remaking of the past through social groups’ attachment to the past. Tuastad gave a number of examples that justify his argument, among which: Palestinians and their invented symbols that represent their identity in Jordanian stadiums; primary solidarity groups, “tribal football”; how Hamas took control over football clubs and resumed the league once it came to power; and the Palestinian football league of Beirut.

Following Tuastad’s discussion, Ferman Konukman explored “Physical Education and Sports Development in the Middle East.” Konukman traced physical education through the imperial history of and in the Middle East. This raised questions on how colonial experiences impacted the physical education system in the GCC? And what is the role of foreign physical educators in the development of sports in the wider region? He also highlighted how, later on during state building processes, physical education served as a bonding and nation-building strategy, particularly in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and the GCC states. Konukman then focused the discussion on physical education curriculum in the Middle East, and asked: How has physical education in the Middle East accommodated students with special needs? What is the perception of female students towards physical education in the Middle East? How do co-ed classes impact physical education in the Middle East? These questions led the discussion to issues around policymaking, graduate and executive sports management programs, and elite sports academies in the Middle East.

Mahfoud Amara discussed another aspect of sports: “The Evolution of Sports Media in the Middle East.” Amara started by highlighting the various types of sports media that range from state television’s sports channels; sports magazines that turned into television channels; private-owned channels; cable-channels; football clubs television channels; and YouTube channels. The wide variety of sports media channels and popular sports programs provoked questions around the international legislation of broadcasting, and migration of sports journalists. Amara highlighted BeIN Sports as an understudied case-study. He raised questions, among which: Is BeIN Sports commercially viable, or underwritten by the government similar to Al Jazeera news? Why did Aljazeera Sports transform into BeIN Sports? In the competitive structure of media rights, does Qatar have the capacity to compete in the broadcasting market? Is BeIN Sports an example of economic diversification? What role does social media play in competing with BeIN Sports? What intellectual property rights exist in broadcasting mega sports competitions? And how are they enforced?

Nnamdi Madichie led a discussion on “Khaleeji Soft Power, Branding, and International Sports Investments.” Madichie focused his session on the role of states in the development of sports for branding, and claiming regional leadership purposes. He highlighted how such endeavors by states are not only to claim international and regional recognition, but also to consolidate legitimacy domestically. In analyzing states’ sports endeavors, Madichie investigated issues around sports tourism; investments in elite sports; sports diplomacy; sports foreign investments; and promoting Khaleeji products in European stadia.

Finally, Danyel Reiche discussed “GCC Mega Events and Foreign Relations: Reputational Gain or Loss?” Reiche started his discussion by defining mega-sporting events, which he claimed are events that have global or continental appeal. There are two dimensions of mega sports events: hosting, and participation. Insofar as hosting mega-sporting events in concerned, he raised questions around: What drives hosting mega sports events in the GCC?Why do some GCC states still behind in terms of hosting mega sports events? Why do not GCC states cooperate in hosting mega sports events? What is happening with the infrastructure states invest in after the sporting event? Reiche also raised issues around perceptions of hosting mega sports in GCC by nationals and expats, and the impact of hosting such event on the local society. With regards to participation, Reiche discussed specialization in specific sports, and institutional promotion of participation.

In conclusion, Mehran Kamrava, Director of CIRS, thanked the participants for identifying key gaps in the literature on sports in the Middle East. It is worth noting that the participants will contribute empirically-grounded articles addressing these questions, among others, to be published in an edited special issue under the auspices of CIRS.

Click here for the working group’s agendaClick here for the participants’ biographyRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Nida Ahmad, University of Waikato, New ZealandMahfoud Amara, Qatar UniversityZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSimon Chadwick, Salford University, ManchesterIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMonèm Jemni, Qatar UniversityMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarFerman Konukman, Qatar UniversityCraig LaMay, Northwestern University in QatarNnamdi Madichie, London School of Business and ManagementSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarNadim Nassif, Notre Dame University, LebanonDanyel Reiche, American University of BeirutTamir Sorek, University of FloridaJackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarBetsi Stephen, Georgetown UniversityDag Tuastad, University of OsloElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMurat Yildiz, Skidmore College

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Migrant Recruitment Fees and the GCC Construction Sector
2017-03-19 12:30 - 13:30 (Europe/Moscow)
While human rights issues faced by low-wage migrant workers in the Gulf region have been widely reported on, the related issue of “recruitment fees” paid by these workers in their countries of origin – central to the experience of so many migrants – hasn’t received as much attention.

There are legitimate costs associated with recruitment and migration, according to David Segall, a policy associate with New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, who researches construction industry migrant labor in the Gulf. “The point is that recruitment is not free; it costs money to find workers, to skills-test them, to process visas, to interview them, and to make sure they’re qualified for the job that you’re hiring them for,” Segall said.

But according to Segall, in the current predominant recruitment model in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, clients throughout the supply chain do not pay their suppliers for services rendered. As a result, instead of project clients and construction companies bearing these costs, the most vulnerable migrant workers usually pay for their own recruitment—and then some—in violation of GCC and international law.

“Every single player in the chain seems to have leverage over their supplier, and that leads to downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on costs of migration” ultimately borne by migrants, Segall noted in his talk, “Migrant Recruitment Fees and the GCC Construction Sector,” at the Center for International and Regional Studies talk on March 19, 2017. Fatima Al-Dosari, a research consultant at Stern, Qatari citizen, and graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., joined Segall and shared her insights on migrant workers in Qatar.

What Segall called an “inverted payment chain” has clients (such as a government, a government-sponsored development project, or a private company) at the top of the supply chain and low-wage workers at the bottom. In between, there are layers of employers/sponsors, registered recruiters in South Asian sending-countries, and unregistered local “subagents.” According to Segall, “Clients are not actually paying their suppliers for the services that are rendered . . . or they are getting paid. So it flips the entire chain, such that at the end of the line it is the migrant worker who essentially foots the bill for all of the costs of migration, plus some.”

Segall and his colleagues are trying to understand why this is occurring and what makes it so ubiquitous in the GCC for low-wage construction workers, who mostly come from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Segall and Sarah Labowitz, co-director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, have conducted more than a year of research in this pursuit, primarily focusing on workers from India and Bangladesh. They will publish their findings in a report in early April.

Segall and Labowitz found that an imbalance of power between multiple economic players leads to an inversion of the normal fee-for-service payment business model. Supply chain pressure begins with intense competition in the construction industry in the Gulf, where companies often submit bids at less than normal market value just to break into the region. In order to keep these bids competitive in such a hot market, construction firms generally do not include the cost of recruitment in their bids to clients, and they do not pay the recruiters that service them. Smaller subcontractors and GCC-based “manpower firms”—which import, employ, and lease out labor for short-term projects—also avoid paying their recruiters.

Why would a recruiter in South Asia take on work if they are not getting paid by the employer? Segall explained that recruitment is also a very crowded market, and the current expectation is that construction clients will not pay for low-wage workers. “Recruiters also have to make a living, and if we acknowledge this is a legitimate service they are providing, it would be legitimate for them to take a service fee [from the employing company] and earn a small profit,” he said. But Segall said that with few exceptions, recruitment firms will agree to take a contract without payment: “We hear time and time again from recruiters, ‘if we’re not fulfilling it, someone else will.’”

In order to keep their doors open and earn a profit, then, recruiters must take money from prospective migrants themselves. “If they are not being paid by the client, they have to get paid by somebody. They have very little leverage to push back if they are not receiving payment from the employer.” Additionally, he said, corruption among recruitment agencies is a major problem. Among the few recruiters who are paid by construction company clients, reports indicate that some charge workers anyway, essentially “double-dipping.”

Recruitment agencies (and therefore employers and their clients) themselves rely on unlicensed sub-agents to access remote populations of inexpensive labor, because they don’t have access to or requisite social networks in certain common regions of migrant origin. The subagents, who are not paid by the registered agents that commission them, in turn charge additional fees to prospective workers. Segall argued that sub-agents should be registered, legalized, regulated, and priced into bids as a legitimate cost to borne by the employer and client.

Segall said the actual cost of recruitment may be in the range of US$400-700, excluding flight costs. However, Indian migrants end up paying between $1,000 and $3,000, and Bangladeshis can pay from $1,700 to $5,200. The discrepancy is due both to layers of recruiters and subagents throughout the process—each of whom takes a cut of profit—and to markups to the cost due to kickbacks. For example, recruiters are willing to pay significant amounts to representatives of the employer merely for the right to a visa, Segall said—sometimes up to $1,300, a cost ultimately paid for by the worker. Migrants also end up paying for other illegitimate costs and markups, such as kickbacks by recruiters to visiting employer representatives and markups to flight ticket charges.

Finally, migrant workers agree to pay recruiters because of the imbalance between supply and demand for workers and jobs. If a worker doesn’t pay a recruitment fee, many others in line behind him will. Segall argued that opportunities to enter the GCC are actually quite limited. While there are twenty-five million migrants currently in the GCC, and in any given year hundreds of thousands of new workers will arrive, “there are still tens of millions more who would come if they could,” said Segall.

And although there is corruption in most migrant-sending countries—and among recruiters—according to Segall, if an employing company is not paying its recruiters, there must be corruption. “You’re essentially creating a model where there is no option but to charge the workers,” he said. “If ever there is to be a comprehensive solution to this issue, construction companies and their clients will need to adopt a ‘pay and investigate the recruiter’ model.”

Fatima Al-Dosari works on migrant workers’ welfare, which has taken her to labor camps in Qatar, where she has met with laborers and heard their concerns. She said that attitudes of Qataris toward migrant workers are changing and the Qatar government is increasing efforts toward sustainable change, but many challenges—particularly with regard to social attitudes toward migrants—remain. “Both Qataris and non-Qataris have an obligation and responsibility to create change,” she said, adding that it “won’t happen without collaboration.”

David Segall is a research scholar and policy associate with the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. The Center conducts research and advocacy on issues at the intersection of these two realms, pushing for sector-specific, standards-based approaches to the most serious rights challenges in global supply chains. Previously, Segall directed the Human Rights in Iran Unit at The City University of New York, and he served as an Associate in the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.

Article by Jackie Starbird, Publications and Projects Assistant

The "Resource Curse" in the Gulf Working Group II
2017-04-02 09:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Moscow)
On April 2, 2017, CIRS held the second working group under its research initiative on “The ‘Resource Curse’ in the Gulf.” During the working group, the participants presented their original contributions to the literature on rentier state theory, and covered a variety of related subtopics, including: rents, neopatrimonialism, and entrepreneurial state capitalism in the Gulf; co-optation mechanisms in rentier state theory; imperial origins of the oil curse; the resource curse, gender, and labor nationalization policies in the GCC; and military spending and corruption in rentier states.

Mathew Gray began the discussion with his paper on “Rentierism’s Siblings: On the Linkages between Rents, Neopatrimonialism, and Entrepreneurial State Capitalism in the Persian Gulf Monarchies.” In his article, Gray asserts that the politics of the Gulf have been changing rapidly for the past two decades or more, and continues to do so. The patterns of state and regime control are becoming more complex and sophisticated, and the simple rentier explanation, if it was ever suitable, is long out of date. Thus, Gray highlights the necessity of combining theories of late-stage rentierism with two other concepts, namely neopatrimonialism and entrepreneurial state capitalism, to better explain the political dynamics and arrangements in the GCC. Gray argues that rent is not only a tool of justification and co-optation used by states, but also links closely to neopatrimonialism and entrepreneurial state capitalism. Neopatrimonialism is essential to how state capitalism operates, and to ensuring that the political benefits derived from state capitalism reach the state and the ruling elite. State capitalism also provides a commercial realm within which the regime can create and manage elites, and develop the patron-client relationships that are a salient feature of Gulf politics.

Jessie Moritz led the discussion on her paper that questions the resilience of rentier theory’s hypothesis that the state effectively co-opts the public via rent disbursement, and thus avoids having to either reform or face opposition and dissent. In her paper on “Reformers and the Rentier State: Re-evaluating the Co-optation Mechanism in Rentier State Theory,” Moritz suggests that the argument that the oil and gas-rich GCC have, through their rent-based wealth distributions, effectively bought off society needs some pressing against. In her examination of informal and formal opposition in Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman since 2011, Moritz provides a nuanced analysis of the effectiveness of the rentier “co-optation mechanism” at the sub-national level. Drawing on a series of over 130 semi-structured interviews conducted with Gulf nationals, Moritz uncovers evidence of both rent-seeking behavior as well as open political dissent to state authority among nationals. Even Gulf citizens who contend with heavy material disincentives to challenge state authority do so if there are political motivations for it. Mortiz’s research highlights three underlying forces that can overpower rent-based incentives for political quiescence in the GCC states and propel the public to openly challenge the state: ideology, repression, and inequality.

Desha Girod presented her paper co-authored with Meir Walters on the “Imperial Origins of the Oil Curse.” Girod and Walters’ purpose in writing this paper is to explore why some leaders of oil-rich states invest their rentier earning in socio-economic development while other leaders largely spend this wealth on themselves and their networks of support. The rentier literature suggests that oil is a curse when it is discovered or exploited in countries that have weak institutions at the time of oil discovery or exploitation. However, this causal explanation needs to be tested further, as not all states with weak or nascent institutions at the time of oil discovery distribute hydrocarbon-derived wealth in the same way, as can be seen by the behavior of the GCC states. Other factors may exist at the time of oil discovery which incentivize leaders of states to spend on broad-based development and their populations despite the lack of existence of strong national institutions. In order to understand these dynamic in more detail, Girod and Walters trace the evolution of rent distribution in two oil-rich states in the Arabian Peninsula (Kuwait and Oman) that experienced remarkable development yet, like paradigmatic cases of the oil “curse,” contained weak national institutions at the time of oil discovery. However, unlike the classic cases, the nascent leaders and regimes in Kuwait and Oman lacked a dominant political class with access to coercive institutions capable of marginalizing their rivals. Imperial powers active in the region did not build coercive colonial institutions for extractive purposes because they had historically viewed the region as poor in natural resources. Unlike their behavior in other parts of the Middle East, imperial powers did not need to develop coercive extractive institutions nor an established hegemonic class of local clients to carry out the colonial project. As a result, at the time of independence the GCC rulers had to spend their oil revenues on development as a survival strategy and in order to placate any potential rivals. This paper thus suggests that the oil curse on development is modified by a pre-existing curse of natural resources and colonial extractive intent.

Gail Buttorff shifted the discussions with her paper (co-authored with Nawra al-Lawati and Bozena Welborne): “Cursed No More?: The Resource Curse, Gender, and Labor Nationalization Policies in the GCC.” The authors argue that recent scholarship posits that the resource curse has gendered as well as economic effects on oil-rich economies, entrenching paternalistic relationships that disadvantage women’s entry into the labor force in states such as those of the Middle East. Upon closer examination, however, it appears that oil may not be the most compelling argument to explain Arab women’s low presence in the workforce—especially since we see relatively high levels of women in the labor force within the Gulf Cooperation Council member states. The authors’ analysis suggests that oil-driven development might even boost female labor force participation as a by-product of labor nationalization policies.

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan concluded the working group discussions with his paper on “The Impact of Oil Rents on Military Spending: Does Corruption Matter?” Farzanegan’s study shows that the level of corruption matters in how oil rents affect the military spending of different countries. Using panel data covering the 1984–2014 period of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries (including Gulf Cooperation Council countries), the author argues that the effect of oil rents on military budget depends on the extent of political corruption. Oil wealth boosts military spending when corruption (measured by the re-scaled ICRG index) exceeds a critical score of five (out of six) in the MENA region. The intermediary role of corruption in the military–oil nexus is robust, controlling country and year fixed effects, and a set of control variables that may affect military spending.

These original, empirically grounded contributions have been published as an edited volume and in a CIRS special issue of the Journal of Arabian Studies.

Click here for the working group’s agendaClick here for the participants biographiesRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarGail Buttorff, University of Kansas, USMohammad Reza Farzanegan, Philipps-Universität MarburgDesha Girod, Georgetown UniversityMatthew Gray, Waseda University, JapanIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarAnatol Lieven, Georgetown University in QatarSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarJessie Moritz, Australian National UniversityGerd Nonneman, Georgetown University in QatarJackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS
