The UAE in the Red Sea and East Africa
2018-04-11 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Moscow)
The Center for International and Regional Studies invited, Islam Hassan, CIRS Research Analyst, to present his study, co-conducted with Nael Shama, at a Dialogue event on April 11, 2018. Hassan noted that, for the past decade, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has had foreign policy objectives in the Red Sea and East Africa in its pursuit of security and influence in the Middle East. The country has been heavily engaged in establishing military bases and acquiring operational and management rights over ports and economic zones in and around the Red Sea. This foray into one of the most important global shipping lanes is coupled with a significant naval presence in the Gulf of Aden and the Bab al Mandab Strait. Additionally, the presence of private Emirati security companies in the region has expanded for the purposes of conducting anti-piracy operations and providing protection for UAE ships.

During the long years of Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan’s rule (1971–2004), the UAE’s foreign policy was more idealistic than realistic and more reactive than proactive, according to Hassan. It was “pan-Arabist at the zenith of pan-Arabism in the 1970s; turned slightly pan-Islamist in the heyday of pan-Islamism in the 1980s; and then became increasingly pragmatic in the decades that saw the decline of ideologies, the 1990s and after,” he argued. And in the precarious early years of the UAE federation, founded in 1971, Zayed had to contend with the ordinary challenges of state formation. Iran’s occupation of three Emirati islands in the same year meant that the UAE “was put on test from the first day of its formation,” Hassan said.

After the death of Sheikh Zayed, the UAE witnessed five major developments on the domestic and regional levels: the massive wealth the country has generated in recent years; the 2011 Arab uprisings; the country’s intense rivalry with Qatar; the tension between the US and the UAE during the late years of the Obama administration; and the new leadership’s outlook.

The UAE’s economy enjoyed significant growth in the last decade. Since 2004, the country’s GDP has more than doubled, placing the country at third-highest in the Arab world for GDP per capita. This economic robustness has encouraged the new leadership to search for increased political influence and foreign investment opportunities, especially in the Red Sea countries whose economies have been rising in recent years, and are expected to grow in the future, according to Hassan.

Since 2011, the Arab landscape changed dramatically, especially following the uprisings. “A pan-Arab awakening that crossed borders with ease and unleashed deep forces of change; the Arab Spring sent shock waves throughout the ruling establishments in the Gulf monarchies,” said Hassan. The UAE was not immune to the uprisings, which struck the shores of Bahrain and neighboring Oman, and echoed inside the UAE itself. Fear of potential spillover effects rose, he said. With urgent appeals for reform and equality, “particularly worrying to the Emirati leadership” was the potential for the local Al-Islah Islamist movement to become more active and influential. These regional developments were coupled by “deep cracks that have swept the GCC,” and, consequently, the competition that has taken root with other Gulf states, including Qatar, he said.

“A pan-Arab awakening that crossed borders with ease and unleashed deep forces of change; the Arab Spring sent shock waves throughout the ruling establishments in the Gulf monarchies.”

Hassan explained there were also three nearly simultaneous developments that “poisoned the strategic UAE-US alliance:” the gradual US shift from the Gulf region to the Asia-Pacific region; the US administration’s tacit embrace of the Arab Spring; and the landmark nuclear deal in 2015 with Iran. These developments cast doubt on the US commitment to maintaining its long-standing security umbrella over the Gulf region. Additionally, fallout with Washington contributed to the strategic reformulation in the foreign policy of the UAE, whose contours began to emerge more clearly after 2011. This included a disposition towards using military means, he said.

The aforementioned domestic and regional developments were interpreted through the prism of “the overly ambitious new leadership” (Khalifa bin Zayed as the President of the UAE, and Mohamed bin Zayed as Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi) that rose to power in 2004. The new leadership has a regional and international outlook that is conspicuously different from that of their reserved father, according to Hassan. They tend to be more pragmatic, realistic, and confrontational in dealing with regional challenges. So rather than merely focusing on diplomacy, mediation, dialogue, and foreign aid—tools used by Sheikh Zayed—the new leadership has sought influence through military engagement, massive foreign direct investments internationally, and military and naval presence beyond the country’s vicinity, particularly in the Red Sea, East Africa, Yemen, and Libya, he said.

This foreign policy change, which the UAE witnessed during the past decade or so, involved not only a change in means (from soft to hard power), but also in goals (seeking security and pursuing increased regional influence), Hassan said. “These two objectives—security and influence—have been the driving motivations behind the UAE’s intervention [through economic investments and military presence] in the Red Sea and East Africa.” The UAE’s economic aid to East African countries has increased twentyfold between 2011 and 2013, Hassan reported. The country’s “heavy investment with cash and guns” in the Red Sea region has included supplying economic aid, building ports, providing maritime services, and establishing military and naval bases.

The regional competition over the Red Sea, and its islands, ports and straits, has intensified in recent years with Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, and is likely to continue in the foreseeable future, according to Hassan. “The transformation that has taken place in the foreign policy of the UAE over the past few years has been huge. It has not only involved a change in foreign policy means, but also in the identification of new foreign policy problems and goals,” he said. Whether the UAE can sustain such distant foothold in the Red Sea and East Africa despite competition with regional and international powers, and maintain its alliance with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which allows the country to be active in areas always considered strategic depths of the two regional powers, are things for time to unfold, he said.

Article by Khansa Maria, CIRS Student Assistant.

Islam Hassan is the Research Analyst at the CIRS, Georgetown University in Qatar. His current research interests include state-building in the Gulf States and comparative politics and international relations of West Asia and North Africa. He coedited “The State of Middle Eastern Youth,” a special issue of the journal The Muslim World (2017). His publications also include “The GCC’s 2014 Crisis: Causes, Issues and Solutions” (in Arabic and English, with Al Jazeera Research Center, 2015); and “Jordan on the Brink,” International Journal of Culture and History (2016).

CURA Seminar: Water and Conflict in the Middle East
2018-04-12 10:00 - 12:00
On April 12, 2018, CIRS convened its first CURA Discussion Seminar under the center’s new initiative: CIRS Undergraduate Research Advancement. The seminar was introduced to support the research needs of undergraduate students at Georgetown University in Qatar, and to provide them with opportunities to hone their research skills. As part of the seminar, CURA fellows discussed and critiqued two papers from the CIRS research initiative on “Water and Conflict in the Middle East.”

Mohammed Al-Jaberi (class of 2019) started the conversation with a brief summary of Marcus DuBois King’s article, “A Watershed Moment: Hydropolitical Trends and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan.” This paper addressed the increasingly contentious issue of water stress on the region, due to Iraqi Kurdistan’s emerging socio-political trends, as well as environmental changes such as demographic pressures; dam building by Iran and Turkey; declining water quality; recurring drought; climate change; and earthquakes. The author concluded that if the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) did not at least recognize the latter trends’ increasing threat to security, they would further compromise the regions’ water security. King theorized that in order to avoid the adverse impact on Iraqi Kurdistan, the KRG must place water stress as a priority and develop a comprehensive strategy to address the issue.

Rawan Al-Khulaidi (class of 2018) presented Nael Shama and Islam Hassan’s article “In Pursuit of Security and Influence: The UAE in the Red Sea and East Africa.” The article explored the ways through which the United Arab Emirates has attempted to assert its authority over the Red Sea and its ports, showing the importance of the Red Sea and East Africa in the new Emirati leadership’s strategic interests. The article demonstrated how the UAE’s actions and policy arrangements in relation to the Red Sea and its ports reflect a larger change in its foreign policy, which has been evolving for over a decade. This change in Emirati foreign policy is driven by the UAE’s economic wealth; the “rise of Islamism in the region;” the UAE’s military agendas in the border states of the Red Sea – especially those of Djibouti and Yemen; the political environment of the UAE post-Zayed; the shock of the Arab Spring politically and socio-economically; and, finally, UAE-US relations.

Following the presentation of each paper, the CURA fellows engaged in an insightful discussion on the structure and organization of the paper, the employed theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and the clarity of the argument. By focusing on the topic of water and conflict in the Middle East, the students were able to employ the tools and skills of their respective majors—namely international politics, culture and politics, international economics, and international history—to assess, critique, and provide feedback on the papers. Following the discussions, Mohammed Al Jaberi and Waleed Zahoor (class of 2018) presented the fellows’ comments and feedback at the CIRS Working Group, “Water and Conflict in the Middle East.”

For the participants’ biographies, please click here.

Article by Amie Hewka, CURA Fellow at CIRS

Water and Conflict in the Middle East Working Group II
2018-04-15 09:00 - 2018-04-16 16:00
On April 15–16, 2018, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted the second working group meeting of its research initiative on “Water and Conflict in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, scholars came together to present their research papers on a variety of topics including, water mismanagement in the Middle East, the “weaponization” of water by the Islamic State, Hydropolitical trends in Kurdistan, community-based water practices in Yemen, Emirati activities in the Red Sea and East Africa, Turkish hydro-hegemony, and groundwater use in the Middle East and North Africa.

Hussein Amery commenced the working group by presenting his draft article on “Water Mismanagement and Conflict in the Middle East.” In his article, Amery highlights how competition for water supplies between riparian states has become more intense due to the significant increase in water demand. This increase in demand has been a result of a number of factors such as rapid population growth, the improved quality of life, climate change, and geophysical conditions. Amery suggests that distrust between different water stakeholders within a country, unilateral development along international water basins, and gross mismanagement of water resources accentuate the problems facing several Middle Eastern states and raise the specter of water conflict. Amery’s paper is focused on two case studies: the Egyptian-Ethiopian conflict over the Grand Renaissance Dam over the Nile river, and the completion between different riparian states along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. While filling a huge reservoir, as part of a new large dam project, is the principal trigger of conflict in the aforementioned cases, historical distrust between governments, water mismanagement, as well as political instability remain the structural triggers for these conflicts.

Tobias von Lossow presented his paper on the “Weaponization of Water in the Middle East: ‘Lessons Learned’ from IS.” In this article, von Lossow examines how actors engaged in armed conflict use water resources as instruments of power and war. The Islamic State weaponized water both as a tactic of war, and also used water as a political and social tool for garnering people’s support and for state-building purposes. While von Lossow agrees that historically there have been numerous instances of water being deployed as a strategic weapon during conflict, he suggests that the way in which IS weaponized water was different from what had previously been seen.

Marcus DuBois King’s article on Iraq examines hydro-political trends within Iraqi Kurdistan. Although Iraqi Kurdistan enjoys abundant water resources, water stress has been increasing over the last few years. Water stress is being driven by changing demographics, an increase of dam construction in neighboring countries, and an overall declining quality of water. King argues that as water stress increases in the region conflict over water resources will inevitably increase. He concludes that water stress is likely to have an adverse impact on the security of Iraqi Kurdistan unless the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) recognizes addressing water stress as a priority and subsequently develops a comprehensive strategy to achieve that goal.

Helen Lackner shifted the discussion to “Revitalization of Community-based Water Practices in Yemen.” Lackner claims that in recent decades, there have been calls for public participation in addressing most development issues, whether rural or urban. Insofar as water management in Yemen is concerned, for many years the rules of customary water management were the officially recognized mechanisms by the state. However, these rules were transformed through political, social, and economic changes. Such transformation was driven by both domestic dynamics and external funding agencies. Lackner claimed that these developments had a significant impact on state institutions. The domestic- and external-led development interventions limited the control of water resources to state-bureaucrats and pro-state private beneficiaries. Finally, Lackner argues that these developments coupled the rhetoric of ‘community empowerment’, which has not empowered the community as much as it prioritized the concerns and interests of a minority at the helm of the state.

Islam Hassan presented his co-authored article with Nael Shama on “In Pursuit of Security and Influence: The UAE in the Red Sea and East Africa.” The article highlights how in order to safeguard its stability and security at home, thwart the threat of the burgeoning den of militant Islamists in Somalia, Yemen, and other East African states, secure its trade relations and oil transportation routes, and extend its regional influence, the UAE decided to retain a strong foothold in East Africa. The control of ports and islands, and the establishment and administration of military bases, training centers, and economic zones in the Red Sea, the Arabia Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Mandeb Strait has offered the UAE the chance to achieve these objectives. As illustrated by this case study, the authors argue that UAE’s foray into the Red Sea and East Africa is a manifestation of a significant transformation in the foreign policy of the UAE over the past few years. This transformation has not only involved a change in foreign policy means, but also in the identification of new foreign policy problems and goals.

Paul Williams discussed his article on “Turkish Hydro-hegemony and the Impact of Dams”. By focusing on the last three main dams of the Southeast Anatolian Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi or GAP), Williams highlights how Turkey has exhibited positive and negative types of basin-centric hegemony. He argues that the legitimacy of Turkey’s hydro-hegemony and GAP depends not only on Turkey’s measurable progress towards meeting infrastructure targets, but also on the perception of GAP’s by both Turkey’s basin neighbors and intended beneficiaries living in Southeast Anatolia, including large numbers of ethnic Kurds. He concludes that Turkey’s past threats to halt flow or its actual stoppages and its intended use of dammed water to flood guerrilla transit routes could alienate both the downstream states (relatively silent during the Syrian civil war) and Kurdish nationalists. Such broadcasting of dams as military objects, Williams argues, could make them targets and trigger conflict between the different stakeholders.

Elizabeth Wanucha concluded the working group discussions by presenting an article on “Supply, Use, and Implications of Groundwater Use in the Mideast/North Africa: A Review” co-authored by Mark Giordano, Katalyn Voss, and Signe Stroming. Giordani et al. argue that groundwater in the Middle East/North Africa has emerged as a critical resource to support the drinking water supply for booming population centers as well as agriculture expansion to promote food security. While we know groundwater resources are overused in most of this region, as elsewhere, an overall, quantitative understanding of the available groundwater supply and use is missing as is an understanding of the social and political mechanisms that could help ensure equitable and sustainable management. In their paper, Giordano et al. investigate the interplay between the technical understanding of groundwater resources in the Middle East/North Africa and the political, economic, and social dimensions driving use. They summarize the existing data on groundwater supply and demand, discuss emerging points of tension among groundwater scarcity, food security, and global markets, and highlight the challenge of transboundary water management as it relates to shared groundwater aquifers as well as the interplay between international rivers and their respective groundwater basins. The authors conclude with a commentary on the need to leverage emerging technologies and data to better understand trends in groundwater supply and use across the region, but more importantly, suggest approaches for dealing with the short and long term political consequences likely to emerge as groundwater resources continue to diminish, competition for water resources increases, and food availability declines.

For the working group agenda, click hereFor the participants’ biographies, click hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Hussein A. Amery, Colorado School of MinesMohammed Al-Jaberi, Georgetown University in QatarZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMarcus DuBois King, George Washington UniversityHelen Lackner, University of LondonAnatol Lieven, Georgetown University in QatarSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarJackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarTobias von Lossow, Freie Universität BerlinElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarPaul A. Williams, Bilkent University, TurkeyWaleed Zahoor, Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Migrant Workers and Health in Qatar: Research Roundtable I
2018-04-26 09:00 - 17:00
The Center for International and Regional Studies collaborated with Qatar-based partners to study the health of migrant workers in Qatar with a roundtable meeting on April 26, 2018. The project considers the state of healthcare provision to this segment of the population with a goal of contributing to the formulation of policy guidelines with suggestions for improvements to the state of migrants’ health. Currently, there is limited scholarship on health and temporary labor migration in the context of the Gulf region, most of which is anecdotal and journalistic. These accounts highlight the poor conditions of migrant workers’ health, particularly in relation to their vulnerable position in Gulf society.

The research roundtable served as a preliminary brainstorming session with discussants from a variety of academic, policy, legal, and healthcare backgrounds who addressed some of the broader issues on the overall state of migrants’ health in Qatar. The discussion was divided into broad themes regarding the social and political contexts of labor migrant conditions and healthcare in Qatar and the legal and regulatory framework. The participants highlighted areas in need of improvement and pointed out shortcomings that need to be addressed. The experts presented their research to provide a better understanding of migrant workers’ health conditions and healthcare delivery within Qatar. The primary research questions that emerged from this session will inform the agenda of a second research meeting, to be hosted by in the near future.

Citizenship, Class, and Inequality in the Middle East Working Group I
2018-05-06 09:00 - 2018-05-07 16:00
On May 6-7, 2018, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted a working group on “Citizenship, Class, and Inequality in the Middle East.” During the course of two days, scholars were convened to discuss and critique their draft papers that covered a wide array of topics, including: passive and active citizenship in the Middle East; securitization of citizenship and sectarianism in the Gulf; political participation in the post-2011 constitutions; race, ethnicity, and citizenship in Sudan and South Sudan; the Iranian Diaspora and dual citizenship; Palestinian citizenship and non-citizenship; citizenship and the Sinai Bedouins; and national identity creation and Qatar Museum’s merchandise.

Roel Meijer commenced the working group discussion with his article on “Passive and Active Citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa in Modern History.” In his paper, Meijer analyzes the factors in Middle Eastern history that have determined the active and passive character of citizenship. The article focuses on the role of the state, and how the modern state has emerged and influenced the nature of citizenship in the Middle East. Meijer argues that the state has led to the emergence of passive citizenship as the citizen has been perceived by the state as an analytical tool, a category of control, and an object of policies. In other words, the citizen is created to pay taxes, serve in the army, spread universal education, and demonstrate loyalty to the state. The article concludes that since modernity demands greater interaction between subjects and the state, the larger the impact of the state on the people in the form of obligations, the greater the chances are that the citizens will also demand rights.

James N. Sater shifted the working group discussion to “The Securitization of Citizenship and Sectarianism in the GCC.” In his paper, Sater develops a link between sectarianism and the quest for citizenship in the Gulf through focusing on four countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The author clarifies how and when sect-based graded citizenship has become a dominant feature of state-society relations in some of these countries, yet not in others. The paper builds on the concepts of extent, content, and depth of citizenship, and analyzes the case of non-citizen residents and their impact on citizenship evolution. Sater also examines the process of securitization of citizenship, through which sect-based citizenship demands have become polarized and through which the category of the non-citizen has become constructed and solidified. Sater asserts that the process of securitization is intimately linked to the strength of the regimes, which either allows them to securitize and avoid any demands for liberalization or brings them into an equilibrium with opposition movements that allows for liberalizing their citizenship regimes to become more inclusive.

Elizabeth Wanucha presented Gianluca Parolin’s article on “The Jinsiyya (citizenship) Obsession and the Muwatana (nationality) Veil: Political Participation in post-2011 Constitutions.” Parolin frames the increase in jinsiyya and muwatana provisions in the post-2011 West Asia and North Africa’s constitutional texts in light of the enforcement that these provisions have seen in recent years. He argues that the provisions on jinsiyya regulations and those involving single-jinsiyya requirements to hold public office seem to be in line with the liberal trend seen globally. However, the aforementioned provisions are contradicted by executive practices and by the very governance design, while the provisions emphasizing muwatana as the mode of the political system have been heavily profited from. In light of this, Parolin argues that the post-2011 constitutions have been devised to work “against” revolutions. He examines this phenomenon by analyzing the constitution-making process in Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, and Tunisia, and how these processes were captured in the various contexts by certain political elites.

Amir Idris sharpened the discussion by presenting his article on “Race, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in Sudan and South Sudan.” In his paper, Idris argues that Sudan and South Sudan’s crises of citizenship are tied to the historical and political processes that led to the creation of ideas and narratives about racial and ethnic identities prior to the partition of South Sudan from Sudan. Idris problematizes sub-national racial and ethnic identities by examining the historical processes involved in their making. Idris argues that race and ethnicity were central to the colonial, nationalist, and postcolonial projects of inventing the “North” and the “South” as self-contained entities, and that the politicization of race and ethnicity after independence is largely a product of “Orientalizing” cultural differences through colonial administrative rules and postcolonial policies.

Amy Malek presented her article on “Hyphenated Citizens: Constraints of Dual Nationality in the Iranian Diaspora.” In her article, Malek offers three key areas in which, despite growing global trends towards non-exclusive forms of citizenship, the limits of multiple citizenships are felt by Iranian dual nationals in the diaspora, namely: renunciation, securitization, and patrilineal jus sanguinis. She argues that the case of Iranian dual nationals points to the ways in which individuals with multiple citizenships have not been able to access full rights equal to their compatriots. It also highlights how these individuals have also been targeted in their countries of citizenship and beyond in ways that reveal the constraints of geopolitics and power of states to limit flexible, strategic, and compensatory forms of citizenship.

Fateh Azzam shifted the discussion to “Overview of Palestinian (Non)Citizenship.” Azzam argues that Palestinians’ understanding of their own nationality is geographically and historically linked to Mandate-era Palestine, and has been largely inclusive and non-sectarian despite the creation of Israel and attempts by the Ottomans and the British to sub-divide the population into religious communities. However, Palestinians were never able to decide on, establish, and enjoy their own citizenship. Varieties of legal status have historically been imposed upon them by the Ottoman Empire, the international community, the egregious British Mandate, the Nakba and dispossession of 1948, the Israeli and Jordanian caveat, and the decisions of other Arab countries. Five overlapping legal statuses, with concomitant levels of rights, define Palestinians’ lives depending on where they live: stateless persons, refugees, citizens, permanent residents, and minorities. He concludes by suggesting that the recent recognition of the State of Palestine by the United Nations and a majority of states has opened new possibilities that have, as of yet, not been utilized for a variety of political and legal reasons.

Islam Hassan presented Mohannad Sabry’s article on “Informal Economy and Informal Citizenship in the Borderlands: The Case of the Sinai Bedouin.” Sabry argues that since the declaration of the Arab Republic of Egypt by the Free Officers in 1952, the indigenous population of the Sinai Peninsula gradually transformed from the proud Bedouins into the marginalized Bedoons of Egypt. He claims that despite the significant role the Sinai bedouins played during the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation of Sinai, the military has portrayed the Sinai bedouins as traitors to justify the unjustifiable military defeat of the Six Days War. He also asserts that the establishment of police stations, courts, and government departments in the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 failed to incorporate the local communities and the existing informal institutions, which contributed to the bitter relations between the Sinai bedouins and the state. Another chapter of the rather grim Sinai bedouins’ story, Sabry claims, is the 2013 anti-terrorism campaign in Sinai that displaced thousands of Sinai’s bedouins. Sabry concludes that as long as the state approaches the case of Sinai bedouins with the “tank and AK47” mentality, the issue of the Sinai bedouins will never be resolved.

Suzi Mirgani concluded the working group discussions with her article on “Enter through the Gift Shop: Signifying a Modern National Identity through Qatar Museums’ Merchandise.” In her article, Mirgani shows that something significant is taking place in Qatar Museums’ (QM) gift shops—a reformulation of the signifiers of national identity through contemporary commodities. She argues that while traditional gifts and handmade crafts remain prized and promoted, the introduction of modern museum merchandise is a sign that Qatar has entered into a new stage of national identity formation. She asks: if a souvenir attempts to offer a distillation of a nation’s culture, then how do modern museum merchandise—mobile phone covers, accessories, t-shirts—fit into Qatar’s new national narrative? Do these commercial artifacts problematize Qatar’s traditional historical narrative, or do they extend Qatari national identity into new directions—ones that oscillate around shared consumption practices that are no longer beholden to the past?

These research articles will be published in an edited collection by CIRS in the near future.

For the working group agenda, please click here.For the participants’ biographies, please click here.Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Fateh Azzam, American University in BeirutZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarAmir Idris, Fordham UniversityMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarAmy Malek, College of Charleston, South CarolinaRoel Meijer, Radboud University, NetherlandsSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMohannad Sabry, Independent Researcher & JournalistJames N. Sater, American University of SharjahElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Nation Building in Central Asia Working Group II
2018-08-12 09:00 - 2018-08-13 16:00
On August 12–13, 2018, the Center for International and Regional studies (CIRS) held the second working group under its research initiative on “Nation-Building in Central Asia.” Over the course of two days, scholars were convened to present and critique a number of papers that tackled issues relevant to nation-building, such as: multiculturalism, civic identity, migration, perceptions of national identity, food and culinary identity, Islam, socio-cultural integration, and nomadism.

Aziz Burkhanov initiated the working group discussions with his article on “Multiculturalism, Civic Identity, and Nation Building in Kazakhstan.” In his paper, Burkhanov examines issues of multiculturalism and civic identity in Kazakhstan. He argues that since the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, like many other post-Soviet states, has faced a challenge of creating a new sense of national identity. Burkhanov analyzes three main aspects of the recent trends in Kazakhstan’s ethnic diversity policies. He complements that by incorporating perceptions of the civic ‘Kazakhstani’ national identity in the discourses of Kazakh- and Russian-language media, highlighting the divergent views on civic nationhood in these two linguistic realms. Finally, Burkhanov triangulates his results with data from surveys conducted in Kazakhstan in 2005 and 2016 to explore any substantial dynamics in the respondents’ perception vis-à-vis the ethnic-civic national identity issues. By incorporating these different approaches, this study illustrates the complexity of the Kazakhstani supranational identity project, and how this project is reflected in state policies, media discourse, and popular perceptions.

Ruslan Rahimov shifted the working group discussions to “State, Migration, and the Nation Building Process in Central Asia: Resources, Perception, and Practices.” Rahimov’s paper demonstrates the various ways in which states dealt with migration and nation-building processes in Central Asia, with a particular emphasis on emergent trends in Kyrgyzstan. Premised on the assumption that nation-building involves the construction of ideational and expressive processes emphasizing the uniqueness of a nation, Rahimov asserts that the ways in which Central Asian countries have dealt with transnational migration have influenced broader nation-building policies.

Dina Sharipova builds on Burkhanov’s paper in her discussion on “Perceptions of National Identity in Kazakhstan: Evidence from a Nation-wide Survey.” Sharipova argues that although much research has been done on nation building in Central Asia, little has been written on people’s perceptions of their national identity. Hence, she analyzes in her paper the results of an original nation-wide survey (N= 1,600) conducted in January 2016 in Kazakhstan. Based on her analysis, Sharipova argues that national identity in Kazakhstan is multilayered and context specific. Kazakhs use citizenship, patriotism, knowledge of history, respect of laws, and political institutions as well as the knowledge of Kazakh language as identity markers. Sharipova goes in depth to analyze the variant perceptions of civic and ethnic identities, usage of the Kazakh language, and religion as elements of Kazakh’s identities. She concludes that despite the growing significance of religion in Kazakhs’ daily lives, it does not overshadow ethnic and civic identities that continue to be the dominant identity markers in Kazakhstan.

Aida Alymbaeva focused her discussion on “Nations of Plov and Beshbarmak: Central Asian Food and National Identity on the Internet.” In her paper, Alymbaeva surveys the ways how Central Asian food and nation have been imagined and interpreted in the Internet space. She argues that in the Internet, Central Asian food and cuisine have been directly connected to ideas of nation. In other words, food and dishes have contributed ostensibly to the imagination of Central Asian nations. Ideas of belonging and materiality have been interactively and constantly produced, re-produced, narrated, and contested by various actors–individuals and institutions—in the Internet space. Alymbaeva claims that within the virtual phatic communions of known dishes people now associate or dissociate themselves from nations beyond necessity of contact: imagination became not only visually much available, but has also become simultaneously shareable with the globe because of the Internet.

Mukaram Toktogulva discussed “Islam in the Context of Nation Building in Kyrgyzstan: Reproduced Practices and Contested Discourses.” In her paper, Toktogulva examines local practices of Islam, and diverse, sometimes conflicting, understandings of those practices in Talas, Osh, and Naryn regions of Kyrgyzstan. She focuses on Muslims’ reproduction and recreation of local practices of Islam in ways that are meaningful for them. In addition to illustrations of local practices, Toktogulva explores discourses about the meaning and role of Islam in present socio-cultural context. The analysis of diverse understanding of Islam highlights, on the one hand, how state officials redefine the role and meaning of “proper” Islam through strict regulation of religious sphere, and how different groups of the society respond to those official regulations. On the other hand, this analysis also shows how alternative meanings of Islam are emerged in local practices, and how ordinary people interpret these practices’ significance.

Building on Toktogulva’s discussion, Laura G. Yerekesheva presented her paper on “Religion and Socio-Cultural Integration: Functions of Religion and Dynamics of Nation Building in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.” In her paper, Yerekesheva explores the interlinks between nation building and religion as part of social integration. The author looks beyond the strict institutionalized approaches of social integration by studying: the interactions between the inclusive cultural system and its religious subsystem; and functions of religion on institutional, relational, and cognitive planes. Through these lenses, Yerekesheva studies the nation-building process taking place in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan throughout the last two and half decades.

Finally, Elizabeth Wanucha presented Diana T. Kudaibergenova’s paper on “Bringing the Nomads Back In!: Horses, Warriors, Nation-Building and “Nomadism” Discourses in Central Asia.” Kudaibergenova argues that discourses of “nomadism”, which embody lost heritage of the Eurasian steppe and the core of the authentic Kazakh identity, became the most ubiquitous artistic and literary representations expressed by Kazakhstani Soviet intellectuals and artists since the 1960s. This concept of nomadic heritage also constituted an important part of both the official nation building and independent cultural production. Kudaibergenova also claims that Kazakh writers meticulous researched and constructed the basis and genealogy of nomadic heritage in the post-Stalinist period. This wave of romanticized nomadism was developed further with the formation of the contemporary Kazakh art in the late 1980s and the beginning of 1990s. Post-1991 the political elites incorporated these discourses of nomadic heritage into the official nation-building policy envisioned by the president Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. In modern Kazakhstan multiple nomadism discourses are blended in official iconography, heritage management, souvenirization as well as artistic critique. The author concludes that different discourses of nomadism represent a field for contestations and re-contextualization of intellectuals’ own identity in the Soviet period, state’s reconceptualization of national ideology, and a constructed idea of national authenticity.

It is worth mentioning that the aforementioned papers will be published as a special issue of a journal by CIRS in the near future.

For the working group agenda, click hereFor the participants’ biographies, click hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Aida Alymbaeva, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, GermanyZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarAziz Burkhanov, Nazarbayev University, Republic of KazakhstanIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarDiana Kudaibergenova, University of Cambridge, UKSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarAbdul Rehmaan Qayyum, Georgetown University in QatarRuslan Rahimov, American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyz RepublicDina Sharipova, KIMEP University, KazakhstanJackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMukaram Toktogulova, American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyz RepublicElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarLaura Yerekesheva, Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

CIRS Launches CURA Program
2018-09-10 12:00 - 15:00
On September 10, 2018, CIRS formally launched the CIRS Undergraduate Research Advancement program (CURA) by hosting a reception that was attended by GU-Q students, staff, and faculty members. CURA aims to support GU-Q students in the development of their passion for research, by assisting them in developing new skills and providing opportunities for students to present on and publish their research findings.

During the launch, Professor Mehran Kamrava, Director of CIRS pointed out that CIRS has had a robust program of supporting student development since the earliest days of its establishment. He suggested that: “The CURA program gives coherence and direction to this effort by imparting on our students the skills to engage in in-depth research, to present the results of this research in an academic forum, and to publish it for wider audiences,” he said. “We are excited to be working with our CURA Fellows and with the broader student community to ensure CURA’s continued growth and success in the coming years.”

One aim of CURA is to help enrich the undergraduate experience by encouraging students to cultivate research skills beneficial to their studies and careers. To this end, CIRS will hold a research skills workshop each semester on the essential components of the research process and writing of scholarly papers. CURA workshops are open to all GU-Q students and are designed to offer hands-on experience, combining a presentation of techniques with hands-on application of the skills in peer-led group exercises. The first workshop, Designing a Research Question, takes place in October of this year, featuring a presentation by Professor Kamrava and facilitated by Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS Project Manager, and Islam Hassan, CIRS Research Analyst.

“The CURA program gives coherence and direction to this effort by imparting on our students the skills to engage in in-depth research, to present the results of this research in an academic forum, and to publish it for wider audiences.”

Ayesha Iqbal (class of 2022) said by attending the workshop, she was able to narrow the scope of her research, and discern and access the relevant literature in the field. “CURA’s exercises, like mind-mapping, colleague critique, brainstorming sessions and, most importantly, Professor Kamrava’s guidance and expertise, have helped me construct my research question and formulate a sustainable research plan.” She added, “Research is at the heart of Georgetown and I am extremely excited to begin this journey with CURA.” The next workshop will be offered in early February, 2019. You can read more about the CURA Workshops here.

GU-Q students have the opportunity to conduct independent research and submit their work for consideration to the CURA Paper Series. The process of selecting papers is rigorous and competitive. This is an unparalleled opportunity for students to have their work professionally reviewed and published by a reputable source. The CURA Lunch Talk series is another initiative that will give students a platform to present their independent research in a public forum.

Nine GU-Q students joined CIRS as CURA Fellows for the 2018-19 school year; CURA Fellows work for the Center and are also mentored by CIRS staff in a range of areas. CURA Fellows provide research assistance, and also engage in tasks related to publication, administration, and project management. Fellows participate in peer mentorship programs designed to facilitate student to student learning, and also hone their analytical skills by convening one seminar each semester on a current CIRS research project. Fellows are invited to discuss papers written by experts in their respective fields, and share their conclusions with the authors of the papers in the CIRS Working Group organized around that research project.

Mehaira Mahgoub (class of 2019), a CIRS research fellow said, “As a senior preparing to enter the real world, I found the chance to develop my academic research skills with CIRS to be exciting and incredibly useful.” After joining the CIRS team, she said, “I was able to gain valuable insight on Middle Eastern and international politics from topics like the patterns of migration in the Middle East to Russian foreign policy.”

Khansa Maria, CIRS Project Assistant and CURA Fellow

Troubled Waters: Insecurity in the Gulf
2018-09-12 18:00 - 20:00
Amidst international disputes and conflicts, the Gulf region stands out as a political hot zone. Seeking to find out why the region is so chronically unstable, Mehran Kamrava, Professor and Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University in Qatar, set out to explore this phenomenon in depth. He performed extensive field research, interviewing government ministers and experts from Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Muscat, and Tehran, among others, over several years. His research led to the book, Troubled Waters: Insecurity in the Persian Gulf (Cornell University Press, 2018) and he presented his findings at a CIRS book talk on September 12, 2018.

Kamrava began by sharing three particularly memorable conversations. In every interview he posed the question: “What is the biggest security threat that your country faces?” Often, he said, he received predictable answers. In Riyadh, he was told the threat was “Tehran;” in Tehran, it was “obviously the Americans.” However, the foreign minister in Muscat surprised Kamrava with the answer, “unemployment.” The official had explained that if young people were not employed they had the potential to get into trouble. “That really showed me an awful lot about the maturity of Omani foreign policy,” Kamrava said, especially given that Oman has a reputation for negotiating “very subtle, very complex diplomacy in a very mature, reasoned way.” In another interview, he had asked a senior cabinet minister why his country had suddenly introduced conscription. The minister explained that if the youth were bored and idle they can get into trouble, and also “ISIS recruits on the internet.” That also, was not the clichéd answer that one might hear when interviewing a cabinet minister, Kamrava said.

Kamrava happened to be in Riyadh in 2014, at a time when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain had withdrawn their ambassadors from Qatar, an impasse that lasted eight months. During an interview with a senior prince in the foreign ministry, the official realized that Kamrava was from Georgetown University in Qatar—not Georgetown in Washington, DC. The prince’s reaction was, “Qatar! We can close our airspace to them. We can impose a blockade on them. We can suffocate them. We will not let Qatar Airways fly.” Kamrava told the audience that at the time he did not understand why the prince had become so agitated. Three years later, in 2017—when Saudi Arabia led the current blockade against Qatar—it dawned to him that if a simple professor had heard these comments, officials in Doha certainly knew and were making contingency plans, and the Saudis were in motion to further sever relations with Qatar.

Kamrava said he was struck by an insight he gained from meeting with foreign ministers and other officials in Iran. He said that everyone had told him that the experience of the Iran–Iraq war guides their country’s foreign policy making today. He was told, “We never forget that the Arab countries of the region lined up one after another to beat up on us. And Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and a number of others gave billions of dollars to Iraq from 1980 to 1988. And we will not forget that the Americans gave satellite information to the Iraqis to more effectively put chemical weapons on Iranian troops, and told them about Iranian troop movements.” As a scholar of Iran, Kamrava said he had not fully grasped that the memory of the war was “such a living memory.”

As a result of his many interviews and conversations, Kamrava said the causes and dynamics that have made the Gulf region so chronically insecure can be clustered into four broad categories. The first, he said, is how the region’s security architecture is structured, and has been structured for a long time. “Nobody has thought about a win-win scenario; everybody has thought about a win-lose scenario,” he said, explaining that the regions’ security is viewed terms of a zero-sum game—that is, the only way to protect one’s interests is at the expense of someone else’s interests.

The second reason for the region’s insecurity is the “pervasiveness of identity politics.” He broadly outlined the region’s political history. The Middle East from the 1950s on, could be considered “the era of secular nationalism.” From the late 1970s onward, the dominant narrative was one of political Islam. In that period, he said, “the salvation of the region lay not so much in nationalism, which was underlined by secular, non-religious assumptions, but in embrace of political interpretations of religion.” After 2011, he said, “what became important—what became one’s core source of identity—wasn’t just religion in broad terms, but specific sectarian identities within religion.” Kamrava described sectarianism’s deep, colonial roots in the Middle East, citing the divide-and-rule tactics of the British and French in agitating sectarian sensibilities.

“What we’re seeing today, it isn’t so much sectarianism, but a process of re-sectarianization of the Middle East.”

The third reason, Kamrava said, is that many regional actors are belligerent. “Agency matters. It’s not only institutions that matter, people matter. Political science—politics—is ultimately the art of exercise of power, or the science of exercise of power.” He continued, “What we see in our region, particularly since 2013-2014, is the coming to the fore of entirely new generations of leaders who are not playing by the old rules of the game, they are making their own rules,” and are unwilling to be bound by traditional diplomatic experiences, he said.

The final reason he offered for the breakdown of security in the region is what he called the “security dilemma.” That is, when a country increases its own security, it inadvertently makes other countries feel more insecure. “If you buy a new weapon system then your adversary next door feels a new threat, so they have to do the same thing,” thus creating a vicious cycle. How to get out of this cycle? Kamrava said, “You talk to each other. You build trust. You take the first step. And, of course, nobody is willing to talk to each other. We do not have any forum for dialogue.”

Looking to the future, Kamrava offered four questions for consideration. First, what role is the United States going to play in the region? Are the Americans going to step in and say that the Saudis and the Iranians must learn to share the region? Second, what will happen in Iran? Iran is in the cusp of change, he explained, with the impending departure of the aging Supreme Leader Khamenei, the Iranian political landscape will certainly undergo fundamental changes. This will in turn effect President Rouhani’s consensus politics, and the role of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“What we see in our region, particularly since 2013-2014, is the coming to the fore of entirely new generations of leaders who are not playing by the old rules of the game, they are making their own rules.”

The third question concerns the future of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Kamrava described the GCC has “being on life support,” since the start of the blockade on Qatar. “Nobody wants to be the party responsible for pulling the plug” on the GCC, Kamrava said. He projected a continuation of life-support status with technical cooperation, but as far as “having a common defense force, having meaningful political and economic integration—that, I believe, is thing of the past.”

The last and “probably most vexing” question is the long term outlook for energy. The region would not have had its strategic significance if it didn’t produce oil and natural gas, he said. If current trends continue—increasing energy independence in relation to the Gulf region, Kamrava said, “This region will, quite unfortunately, remain insecure for some time to come.”

Article by Khansa Maria (class of 2021), CURA Administrative Fellow

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, Troubled Waters: Insecurity in the Persian Gulf (Cornell University Press, 2018); Inside the Arab State (Oxford University Press, 2018); The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography, and the Road Ahead (Yale University Press, 2016); Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (Cornell University Press, 2015); The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War, 3rd. ed. (University of California Press, 2013); and Iran’s Intellectual Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2008). His edited books include The Great Game in West Asia: Iran, Turkey, and the Southern Caucasus (2017); 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).

Science and Scientific Production in the Middle East Working Group I
2018-09-16 09:00 - 2018-09-17 16:00
On September 16–17, 2018, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted the first working group under its research initiative on “Science and Scientific Production in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, scholars discussed issues around: the social impact of scientific research; Islamic ethics and legitimacy of scientific innovation; women and science in the Middle East; social inequality, economic policies and scientific innovation; sanction regimes; and the military-industrial complex.

Sari Hanafi began the working group discussions with his presentation on “The Social Impact of Scientific Research in the Middle East.” During his presentation, Hanafi discussed four main issues: the relevance of research and internationalization; profiles of Middle Eastern academics; transnational scientific networks; and production versus usage of knowledge in the region. Hanafi stated that based on his study, research publications in Arabic appear to be less influential, and scholarship as well as scholars located outside the region hold more influence. As far as citations are concerned, Arabic publications when compared to research that is published in English are less cited. Research produced in Arabic tends to have less visibility to academics and scholars, as there are no proper databases that capture all Arabic language publications. Much of the research produced in the region, instead of being carried out at within a university setting by academics, is carried out for policy purposes by professional researchers and tends to be funded by international organizations for short, limited periods of time. This is primarily because there is not enough funding being devoted to academic research, and professional researchers are dependent on policy institutes and foreign donors for accessing funds. This has a significant impact on the sustainability and long-term production of scientific research and knowledge, as well as its consumption. There are an absence of intermediary institutions in the Arab world that connect universities to industry and society. Hanafi concluded his presentation with by identifying a few of the core challenges for attaining social impact through scientific research in the Arab world: there is lack of trust in science in the region; research and science are not considered as value neutral; societal debate is part and parcel of research in the region; authoritarian states are not committed to developing evidence-based policies; conducting critical research impacts academics and they can find themselves marginalized and their careers negatively impacted; knowledge production needs to become more socially distributed; and Arab universities have little control over or involvement in scientific production.

Ayman Shabana focused his discussions on “Islamic Ethics and Legitimacy of Scientific Innovation.” Shabana opened his remarks by raising the questions of why Islamic ethics are important for legitimation of scientific innovation, and even what Islamic ethics mean. There have been few deep studies examining the relationship between Islamic ethics and science or scientific innovation in the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East. It is important to also examine who the key stakeholder and actors involved in the domain of Islamic ethics and science are. Emerging social concerns pertaining to legal, theological, and moral domains have challenged the Islamic normative tradition and its authority. From theories of evolution and astronomical calculations in the 1900s to modern biomedical technology, Islam has been invoked either to justify or condemn scientific advancement. In grappling with the issue of Islam and scientific production, Shabana identified four gaps in the literature that deserve in-depth study: the role of muftis/Muslim adjudicators and judicial scholars and the relationship between Islam and science; Islamic ethics and warfare in the Middle East; Islamic bioethics and human enhancement; and Islamic ethics and artificial intelligence.

Rana Dajani’s remarks at the working group discussion focused on the topic of “Women and Science in the Arab World.” Dajani posited that there is a general assumption that there are low numbers of females engaged in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in many parts of the world, but statistics show that in the Arab world and East and South East Asia this is not necessarily the case. In fact in the Arab world there are higher numbers of woman in STEM fields than in the United States, and this needs to be further explored. If gender equality is better in Nordic countries than in the Arab world, what are the reasons for such high female representation in STEM fields in the Arab world as opposed to northern Europe? Dajani argued that despite social conditions that are considered to limit girls’ educational choices and perceived traditional norms challenging women’s empowerment women, the number of females in the STEM fields continues to grow. However, women’s professional participation in STEM fields remains disproportionate to the number of female students pursuing STEM education—there are more young women studying in these areas that are not reflected later on in the labor market. Dajani suggested a few gaps in the literature which need further studying. Among other things she suggested that research was needed to examine the long-term impact of the segregated educational system on female educational choices, and specifically whether girls who study in single-sex environment have a greater tendency to pursue STEM-based higher education. Dajani also suggested that there is a need to further understand how Arab women are impacting the scientific workplace, and women’s influence on scientific laboratories and innovation hubs. Other sub-areas that need to be studied are mentoring schemes in sciences for women and the impact of female scientists as role models for young women and men.

Building on Dajani’s discussion, Abelkader Djeflat discussed “Science and Social Inequality in the Middle East.” Djeflat argued that the pervasive social inequality in the Middle East has been obstructive to the advancement of sciences and scientific production in the Middle East. Social disparity has not only manifested in the high unemployment rates across the region, but also in youth’s access to knowledge. Elites have more access to foreign technology, scientific discovery, and research than lower classes. This incongruent access to knowledge is passed down through generations cementing inequality, and ultimately frustration, between social classes. Djeflat argued that there is a need to study the social system in the Middle East, and identify the dysfunctional social institutions that create such disparity in the access to knowledge between social classes.

Mehran Kamrava presented Parviz Tarikhi’s comments on “Sanctions and Scientific Production in Iran.” Tarikhi suggests that science and scientific production in Iran remain dependent on the state politically, ideologically, and financially. The state’s control over science and scientific production in Iran led to three structural problems. First, given that the state is the biggest funder of scientific research, there has been an ostensible disparity in allocation of public funds to scientific research. Instead of funding research that contributes to scientific production and knowledge, the state has funded pretentious projects that boost national pride domestically, and project an image of a powerful, advanced Iran internationally. Second, state’s control of scientific production has circumcised the parameters of constructive scientific criticism. Finally, many scientific endeavors funded by the state have been considered sensitive to national security; hence, impacting the circulation of scientific information. In addition to the aforementioned structural problems, Tarikhi highlighted the role of sanctions in further hampering scientific production in Iran. He claimed that because of sanctions, the trend towards brain-drain has picked up dramatically, and more Iranian scholars and scientists have been leaving the country than ever before. In addition, Iranian scholars face limited access to scientific production outside Iran both for education and contribution purposes, as some journals do not accept papers from Iranian scholars. However, the sanctions contributed to the growth of cosmopolitanism among Iranian scientists in diaspora and those in Iran. Tarikhi highlighted a number of areas that deserve further studying, among which: the inverse relationship between sanctions and science; sanctions impact on the criticism of scientific production; Iranian scientists’ ability to conduct independent scientific research; immigration and scientific cosmopolitanism in Iran; and the internal quality of dissent, and how it impacts scientific production in Iran.

Tariq Da’na concluded the working group discussions with his presentation on “The Military-Industrial Complex and Technological Advancement in Israel.” Da’na provided an overview of Israel’s business-political-military relations. He argued that the military-industrial complex in Israel could be traced back to pre-statehood. Israel Military Industries, currently known as IMI Systems, was established in the 1933. This company, and the Israeli military-industrial complex at large, played a significant role in the Israel’s state building process in the 1950s and 1960s. Da’na claimed that given the central role the Israeli army plays in politics, the Israeli military-industrial complex remains worth studying. Da’na identified key gaps in the literature on the Israeli military-industrial complex, among which: the connection between Israeli academia and military apparatus, the indigeneity of Israeli scientific production the privatization of security in Israel; privatization of Israeli checkpoint and prisons; and comparisons between the Israeli and Egyptian military-industrial complexes in 1960 to the 1980s.

For the working group agenda please click hereFor the participants biographies please click hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarRana Dajani, Hashemite University, JordanTariq Dana, Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, QatarAbdelkader Djeflat, University of Lille, FranceMohammed Ghaly, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, QatarSari Hanafi, American University of Beirut, LebanonIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarAyman Shabana, Georgetown University in QatarElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

CURA Workshop: Designing a Research Question
2018-10-04 12:00 - 16:00
On October 4, 2018, CIRS hosted its first CURA workshop for students. “Designing a Research Question” was intended to outline the research process and offer strategies for developing a research question. This was accomplished through the process of finding and narrowing a research topic, identifying a research problem, and devising a research question to address that problem.

CIRS Director, Professor Mehran Kamrava, led an interactive session with the participants about his preferred research methods and techniques. He shared the steps he expects of his students when writing their research papers; from choosing a research question and conducting the research process, to organizing the research findings and writing the paper. Kamrava emphasized the need to begin research with a broad area of interest and not a specific question, in order to avoid personal bias and to fully evaluate existing data and resources before identifying a topic. He addressed the importance of planning and organization to academic writing and explained his method of structuring papers. He further shared his expectations of students enrolled in his courses.

The workshop was facilitated by Islam Hassan, CIRS Research Analyst, and Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS Project Manager. Participants were all GU-Q students, and the following CURA fellows provided direction during the workshop: Mohammed Al-Jaberi, Chaïmaa Benkermi, Aiza Khan, Mehaira Maghoub, Riham Mansour, Khansa Maria, and Fatemeh Salari. The facilitators and fellows led exercises encouraging participants to apply and practice the workshop skills on their own research questions.

The exercises helped students to arrive at a succinct research question from their broad areas of academic interest. Personal interests ranged from “Artificial Intelligence in India” to “Islamophobia in China.” Students worked in small groups and discussed their topics in-depth with their peers and mentors. In the first exercise, students were provided with a set of questions to ask themselves and their peers to guide a conversation to a focused area of interest for further deliberation. Next, participants were asked to identify what needed further research and how they would tackle it. Students discussed their different approaches. For the last exercise, students volunteered their research questions for everyone to critique.

The workshop was attended by twenty-five students from every class year, from freshmen working on their first college papers to seniors preparing for their final theses. Everyone engaged in peer learning, with third- and fourth-year students sharing their learned experiences, and first- and second-year students sharing their own perspectives and approaches. Students who successfully completed the workshop were awarded electronic badges that could be shared on their LinkedIn profiles.

This was the first research workshop that CIRS has planned for the purpose of enhancing students’ research abilities. GU-Q students will have another opportunity to participate in a CURA workshop in the spring semester.

“As a freshman starting her career at an institution as research intensive as Georgetown, this workshop proved to be a great kick start for my journey as a researcher,” commented Aimen Khan, a participant in the workshop. Another participant, Jasmin Afifi described the workshop as “enjoyable, informative and enlightening.”

Article by Aiza Khan (class of 2020), CURA Research Fellow

Access Denied: Banning Qatari Ships from Blockading States
2018-10-17 12:45 - 13:45
On June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, imposed a blockade, and immediately moved to close off access to Qatar, with an embargo on air, sea, and land traffic to and from the country. These punitive measures were based on allegations that Qatar was supporting terrorism, which Qatar denied, and were used to pressure Qatar to comply with a list of demands in order to end the blockade, which Qatar rejected.

Muna Al-Marzouqi, Assistant Professor of Maritime and Commercial Law at Qatar University’s College of Law, was invited to share her research on this subject at CIRS on October 17, 2018. Her presentation concerned “access denied” to Qatari ships by the blockading states, and specifically the legality of the ban. Al-Marzouqi studies this unique aspect of the Gulf crisis through maritime laws, and she has probed the question of whether the blockade is in conformity with principles of international laws and conventions.

There are several laws that govern maritime trade. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is a body of laws, customs, and agreements that applies to all nations, and governs how nations interact in maritime matters. Maritime law considers activities and events related to the seas that, for example, would apply to shipping companies, their clients, and their employees.

The blockade has prevented all vessels owned by the Qatari government or a Qatari citizen from being accepted at the ports of the blockading countries. In fact, in the first weeks of the conflict, vessels owned by other countries that were bound for or arriving from Qatar were also denied access the blockade countries’ ports. However, Al-Marzouqi said, Qatar’s minister of transportation and telecommunication filed a complaint with the International Maritime Organization seeking permission for foreign and Qatari vessels to enter these ports and, as a result, foreign vessels were allowed access to Saudi, UAE, and Bahraini ports, but Qatari vessels remained banned.

While analyzing the impact of the blockade, Al-Marzouqi pointed out that Qatar regularly imported goods from the blockading countries—such as food, pharmaceutical products, and other daily essentials—but no longer has access to these. Vessels do not only dock at these ports for fuel and repairs, she explained, but also for humanitarian reasons like medical assistance or ship maintenance. So there are many aspects of trade that are affected by the shipping ban.

Al-Marzouqi has researched the applicable international rules to determine which apply to the blockade. “There are rules from maritime conventions, trade conventions, and also from the principles of international law that may be applicable,” she said. The Law of the Sea regulates the right of coastal states to take some measures against foreign vessels. One of the rights of foreign-flagged vessels is to have “innocent passage” into the territorial waters of foreign states. She explained that any vessel, whatever the nationality, has the right to enter the waters of another foreign state. In the current case of Qatar, however, no Qatari vessel is currently allowed to enter the waters of the blockading states—let alone be granted safe passage. She explained that the term “innocent passage” means that ships can pass through the waters without breaching any laws or doing harm, “and Qatari vessels are now deprived of this right.”

“The actions taken against the state of Qatar are actually unjustified, unreasonable, arbitrary, and outrageous.”

Another applicable treaty in this situation is the Convention on International Régime of Maritime Ports of 1923, which remains in force today. This convention obligates states party to the convention open their ports to other states; however, none of the blockading states are signatories to this convention—including Qatar. Thus, this convention only has a “persuasive effect” on states, but it is a part of the customary international law. Al-Marzouqi said that all states are obligated to apply the rules articulated in the convention, and therefore “states should not deny access to ports.”

One of the most important international conventions is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) of 1994. GATT regulates trade between states and its principles encourage states to adopt free-trade policies and eliminate barriers to trade. By suspending maritime navigation to and from Qatar and hampering trade with the state, the blockading nations are going against the principles of free trade. Al-Marzouqi pointed out one exception to these rules: in a situation where states need to protect their national security interests, they are allowed to resort to these measures. This gives rise to the question of whether Qatar is enough of a national security threat to merit a response like the blockade.

Al-Marzouqi said, based on her research, these claims of threats to national security “do not have any basis, and thus the blockade is a not a legal response,” because the blockading countries have failed to provide any substantial proof to strengthen their claims of Qatar’s security or terrorism threat. In response, Qatar has filed cases with international organizations like the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Al-Marzouqi argued that the case against Qatar does not meet the security exception to the applicable rules, and therefore, “the actions taken against the state of Qatar are actually unjustified, unreasonable, arbitrary, and outrageous.”

Principles of international law urge states to work together to find solutions to crises like this. Al-Marzouqi pointed out that the blockade against Qatar is “a political problem that leads to legal consequences.” There is no international body with the authority to impose binding decisions on states to stop actions that are not in conformity with international law, she said, except for the ICJ. However, “the blockading states don’t want to solve the problem by amicable means or by judicial means,” she said. There is a presumption in law that applies to the blockade, Al-Marzouqi said, where the refusal of all mediation and negotiation attempts by the blockading nations indicates “that they have no evidence to show that Qatar is a terrorist country.”

Article by Khansa Maria, CURA Administrative Fellow

Muna Al-Marzouqi is Assistant Professor of Maritime and Commercial Law at Qatar University College of Law. She received her LL.B from Qatar University College of Law and a Masters degree in law from the University of California, Berkeley. She obtained her doctorate in the field of Maritime Law from Tulane University.

CURA Seminar: Informal Politics in the Middle East
2018-10-25 14:00 - 16:00
In October 2018, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held a CURA Seminar under its CURA (CIRS Undergraduate Research Advancement) initiative. Each semester, CURA Fellows come together for an active discussion of research papers that were submitted to a current CIRS research project. The papers are shared in advance of the seminar, and CURA fellows attend prepared to critique the papers that they have read. At a later stage, selected CURA fellows attend a CIRS scholarly research working group to share fellows’ feedback with the paper authors. CURA was introduced to support the research needs of undergraduate students at Georgetown University in Qatar, and to provide them with opportunities to enhance their research skills by discussing and critiquing papers from CIRS research initiatives. This CURA seminar was under CIRS’ research initiative on “Informal Politics in the Middle East,” where the CURA fellows discussed two papers addressing the blurred line between formal and informal politics and how it shapes government and society within Yemen and Turkey.

Abdul Rehmaan Qayyum (class of 2021) kicked off the CURA Seminar discussion by presenting Charles Schmitz’spaper titled “Weighing the Tribal Factor in Yemeni Politics.” The paper discusses the role of tribes in Yemeni politics. In the North, the Houthi tribe exploits tribalism in pursuit of legitimacy and power, while the South rejects the tribal system, perceiving it as an uncivilized system. Schmitz addresses the role of tribalism while juxtaposing it with the role of Saudi Arabia, the different political parties (such as the Islah party), militias, and the Hadi government. Schmitz claims that tribes function across state institutions. Tribal sheikhs participate in the government and parliament, control areas out of the weak Yemeni state’s reach, and collect taxes on behalf of the state. However, tribes are not the sole actors in Yemeni local politics. External actors, such as Saudi Arabia; local political parties; and the conflicts within the government all factor into shaping Yemeni politics, even more so than tribalism.

Khansa Maria (class of 2021) presented Michelangelo Guida’spaper titled “Çay Politics: Informal politics in Turkey and the Example of Vote Mobilization in Istanbul and Şanlıurfa.” The paper conveys the power of informal politics in Turkey, focusing on the cities of Istanbul and Şanlıurfa. In the aforementioned two cities, political parties’ campaigns and manifestos are less effective in swaying voters toward a specific candidate during elections. Community leaders and voters’ communal affiliations play a much more effective role in influencing public votes. Guida mentions how in a survey conducted in 2005 by the Reuters Institute Digital News Report in the district of Üsküdar Kadıköy and Küçükçekmece portrayed the impact of media on voters, highlighting that 33 percent of people mistrusted TV, and over 50 percent mistrusted the media and preferred to listen to their community leaders and which candidate they support for reference. As a result of the public mistrust in media and the role of community in Turkish politics, several political parties, particularly the AK Parti, use informal space to win votes. Instead of organizing big media campaigns and rallies, these political parties interact with voters face-to-face, and organize community events as unconventional ways of campaigning.

Subsequent to each paper presentation, the CURA fellows engaged in an insightful discussion on the structure and organization of the paper, the employed theoretical and conceptual frameworks, the sources used, and the clarity and strength of the argument. While focusing on the concept of informal politics and its relationship with formal politics in the Middle East, the CURA fellows employed the theories and research tools and skills of their respective majors—namely international politics, culture and politics, international economics, and international history—to assess, critique, and provide feedback on the discussed papers.

Following the CURA Seminar, Chaïmaa Benkermi (class of 2021) and Riham Mansour (class of 2019) presented the CURA fellows’ comments and feedback at CIRS’s second working group on “Informal Politics in the Middle East.”

For the participants’ biographies, please click here

Article by Hala Eid, CURA Publications Fellow at CIRS

Informal Politics in the Middle East Working Group II
2018-10-28 09:30 - 2018-10-29 17:00
On October 28–29, 2018, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held the second working group under its research initiative on “Informal Politics in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, a number of scholars were convened to discuss issues including: the tribe in Yemen, the Dīwãniyya in Kuwait, ‘ashwa’iy cities in the Middle East, social activism in Egypt, vote mobilization in Turkey, women in Iran, and agricultural associations in Saharan Algeria.

Charles Schmitz initiated the working group discussions by presenting his article on “Weighing the Tribal Factor in Yemeni Politics”. Schmitz argues than many consider the tribe to lie at the heart of Yemeni politics and society, and that existing scholarship tends to overemphasize the tribe while not giving enough attention to other institutions or dynamics which are core to understanding Yemen. Schmitz suggests that political parties, the military, various other state institutions, and civil society are all key actors that need to be studied alongside the tribe and tribal dynamics. Entirely ignoring the role of the tribe in Yemen is of course not possible, but what needs to be closely examined is how important or influential tribes are in the contemporary Yemeni political landscape. Assessing the tribal factor is a challenge because of two main realities: the diverse conceptual approaches to understanding Yemeni tribes, and the transformation of Yemeni society and tribes. Schmitz argues that not only is there a great deal of debate about the nature of a tribe, but the last half century also produced new hybrid forms of politics such as the rise of tribal shaykhs in Yemen’s national political institutions, state officials’ use of tribal custom to resolve disputes, and the use of clan identity to secure loyalty in the national security apparatus of Yemen.

Clemens Chay shifted the discussion to “Dissecting the Spatial Relevance of the Dīwãniyya in Kuwait: An Inquiry into its ‘Publicness.’” In his article, Chay argues that as an integral component of Kuwaiti culture, dīwāniyyas have also become spaces where informal politics and formal political negotiations are enacted. In its most basic form, the dīwāniyya has historically served as a social space where people gather. Surviving the transition from its traditional relevance in pre-oil Kuwaiti society towards current forms of urbanized society, the dīwāniyya continues to be relevant as a space for social exchange. This article explains how the dīwāniyya’s spatial relevance is attributed to its “publicness,” and its quality of enabling face-to-face communication that technology has failed to provide. Departing from an understanding of public space, this article shows how the dīwāniyyastraddles the public-private divide. The space’s malleability has ensured its persistence; its capacity for socialization has led to its use by different societal groups, including foreign diplomats. Crucially, this article shows how an informal and indigenous mode of grassroots diplomacy provides an expression of public sentiment.

Building on the Chay’s discussion, Deen Sharp discussed another form of informal spaces in his article: “In the Age of ‘ashwa’iy Cities.” Sharp argues that urban studies, since the start of the new millennium, has stressed the importance of studying the urban fringes and moving away from the rather myopic study of metropolitan cores that have traditionally dominated urban theory, and assumed to stand in for broader urban processes. However, there has been a significant rise of urban perspectives from the global south, in the context of the continued urbanization that has accelerated in more recent years. The contemporary processes of urbanization in the Middle East and the debate on formal and informal urbanism in the region have contributed significantly to the rise of such perspectives. Hence, Sharp argues that the way we study and think about urbanization in the Middle East, and its political importance, is undergoing a rapid change. Finally, he suggests that we are not living in an urban age of “global” or “ordinary” cities, but rather ‘ashwa’iy (haphazard) cities.

Islam Hassan presented Amr Hamzawi’s article on “Egypt’s Resilient Social Activism.” Hamzawi argues that in light of Egypt’s ruling generals’ crack down on civil society, secular opposition parties, and Islamist movements since 2013, four forms of anti-authoritarian platforms have shaped social activism in Egypt: single-cause initiatives that are opposing human rights abuses and advocating for the rights and freedoms of the victims; professional associations that are defending freedoms of expression and association; student groups that are challenging the systematic interference of the security services in their affairs and the permanent presence of security forces on campuses; and the labor movement that is galvanized by deteriorating economic and social conditions and by the government’s repression of labor activists. In addition, spontaneous eruptions of popular anger in response to human rights abuses have become politically significant.

Michelangelo Guida shifted the discussion to Turkey with his paper on “Çay Politics: Informal Politics in Turkey and the Example of Vote Mobilization in Istanbul and Şanlıurfa.” Guida argues interpersonal relations, face-to-face, and person-to-person relationships dominate Turkish public life. Or example in Istanbul, besides conventional political meeting, parties prefer door-to-door political campaigning, visiting families, businesses, and associations of immigrants for a sohbet, intimate conversation, over a glass of tea. AK Party has succeeded in using this form of informal politics as a tool to mobilize votes. Guida also argues that Turks prefer to use existing tribal, family, hemşehri, or community networks to have access to public life. This article examines the interactions between formal and informal political structures, particularly during elections, in modern day Turkey.

Shahla Haeri discussed “Perilous Adventures: Women and Civil Society Participation in Iran.” In her article, Haeri argues that from the early days of the establishment of Islamic Republic, educated urban Iranian women have been actively engaged with the state and civil society in all spheres and domains, despite the many legal and political hurdles thrown on their paths by the state’s medieval gender policies. Their activism, however, was not initiated by the drastic structure sociopolitical changes. Women engaged with the civil society well before the establishment of the Islamic Republic, though perhaps not in such wide scale. Haeri examines women’s success in demanding and partially achieving political authority and representation in governmental and non-governmental organizations, and the evolution of the relationship between women and the Islamic Republic since 1979.

Finally, Jackie Starbird presented Nejm Benessaiah’s article on “Micro-movements and the Politics of Change in Saharan Algeria.” Benessaiah argues that rather than a linear progression from traditional, hierarchical forms of governance to modern, democratic ones, the present governance composition in Saharan Algeria reveals the continued existence of several, mixed forms of political behavior. Among these forms of political behavior: authoritarian (still to some degree the family, the ashīra, the cazzāba and the state); liberal market-driven, competitive behavior (the labor market, mercantile selling of goods, consumption of goods and services); and consensus-based egalitarian decision-making (associations). The existence of these mixed modes of governance could be seen as evidence for a society in transition, as newer forms gradually replace the old. Instead of the eclipse of the “traditional” by a monolithic modernity, Benessaiah argues that this hybrid composition of governance in Saharan Algeria in fact constitutes a locally negotiated form of modernity itself. The Mozabite associations are able to challenge the hierarchy of the local elites, not by violence or even direct conflict, but by simply doing things differently, by organizing in inclusive, voluntary ways, and actually achieving results.

For the working group agenda, click here
For the participants’ biographies, click here
Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Chaïmaa Benkermi, Georgetown University in Qatar
Misba Bhatti, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Clemens Chay, Durham University, UK
Paulino Rafael Robles-Gil Cozzi, Qatar University
Michelangelo Guida, Istanbul 29 Mayis University, Turkey
Shahla Haeri, Boston University
Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Mehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Riham Mansour, Georgetown University in Qatar
Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Charles Schmitz, Towson University, Baltimore
Deen Sharp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar
Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Book Launch: Environmental Politics in the Middle East
2018-11-11 18:00 - 20:00
On November 11, 2018, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) launched its recent book on Environmental Politics of the Middle East (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2018), edited by Harry Verhoeven, Associate Professor of International Relations and African Politics at Georgetown University in Qatar, who presented the research findings at a CIRS Dialogue. In Verhoeven’s words, the book tries “to unmask, to contest, to deconstruct some of the leading environmental narratives that have emerged throughout this macroregion.” He said that these storylines are not just the products of the Middle East, but of interactions between other parts of the world and the states, societies, and markets of the Middle East.

Verhoeven argued that the idea in which nature itself shapes political, economic, and social outcomes, has long been intuitive: “perhaps there is no better illustration of this than the old saying that ‘Egypt is a gift of the Nile.’ As if the mere fact that water flows down from the Ethiopian highlands—and from Lake Victoria in Central Africa, all the way to Egypt—in and of itself would explain all the political and social processes that have been happening in Egypt.”

Environment is often assumed to be, he said, “an exogenous and independent variable shaping the dependent variable”—that is, political, social, and economic outcomes. This notion has a very long history that can be traced back to many illustrious intellectuals. Verhoeven explained that the concept of “environmental determinism”—that environmental outcomes fundamentally shape political and economic thinking—was propagated by Aristotle, who held the idea that in certain types of topography, specific political civilizations would emerge.

Such thinking also underpinned the writing of Ibn Khaldun, who was, Verhoeven argued, perhaps the greatest thinker of the fourteenth century. Khaldun divided the world into seven different types of climatic zones, each of which had a specific outcome in the form of social organization, culture, and political systems associated with it. “The idea here, fundamentally, is that climate, the environment as an exogenous variable, shapes human outcomes,” Verhoeven said.

“Khaldun’s ideas were also used—or, more pertinently, abused—by European colonialism in this part of the world,” Verhoeven said. The classic British and French explanations for why the West was richer and more powerful than parts of North Africa and the Middle East, was in part environmental. Reading the historical chronicles, particularly of the French colonization in Algeria starting in 1830, he said, “one is struck by the repetition of how the French essentially blamed the local population for mismanaging natural resources and therefore justified seizing the land and expropriating its people.” Colonists defended their exploits on the basis that they had far greater knowledge of scarce resources, he explained, and rationalized their efforts as “making a contribution to humanity, and to civilization as a whole.”

“The very way we think about the environment, the way we represent it, the way we try to intervene upon it is not an apolitical exercise. It is an exercise that is essentially concerned with questions of distribution. Who gets what? Who is accountable for what? Whose narrative is told, and whose narrative is not told? Who has the authority to decide on whether to call an environmental problem, a development problem, or a security problem?”

Verhoeven said environmental determinism is still very present in the dominant patterns of thought about the links between the environment, economic development, and politics today. “Technocratic environmentalism” declares itself to be resolutely apolitical and carried forward by the planet’s most erudite minds. One of the world’s most influential economists, Jeffrey Sachs, proposes “a profession of rigor, insight, and practicality” using positivist methods. Technocratic environmentalists believe that science can be and should be a value-free endeavor. Politics in this reading is a corrupting variable, which should not be factored into explaining processes of environmental change, and that interventions should be left solely to experts. However, as Verhoeven explained, this opens the door for highly authoritarian decision-making, in which ordinary people are treated as ignorant and not worthy of participation.

A second, influential way of thinking about the environment, politics, and development, comes out of a more pessimistic tradition, Verhoeven said, which goes back to the Reverend Thomas Malthus, who warned that human capacity to shape nature was limited. This perspective holds that a point will come where population growth outstrips agricultural growth. Such a scenario would lead to a rebalancing of population levels through the combination of famine, war, and disease, or so Malthus prophesized, Verhoeven explained. Today’s discourse of so-called water wars or climate wars—the idea that when societies or entire regions run out of water and food they irredeemably are on a path to war—echoes Malthus’s dystopian visions, he said.

The intuition underpinning “water wars” is the well-known “tragedy of the commons,” a parable about resource use inspired by the famously pessimistic Thomas Hobbes, Verhoeven said. This is the idea that when finite resources have to be shared, in the absence of an external authority which regulates the consumption of individual parties, communities will inevitably deplete the resource as it is in the interest of every individual to consume as much as one can. When these resources are essential for life, like water, people are willing to fight to the death over them, or so the parable goes. “People who believe in water wars are essentially telling you that they need some kind of ‘Leviathan,’ some kind of external central authority, that limits our consumption of resources and that protects us against ourselves,” he said. The empirical evidence, however, Verhoeven argued, suggests otherwise.

An alternative conceptualizing of how environmental factors, development, and politics are linked was illustrated by the thesis of one chapter of Environmental Politics in the Middle East, which Verhoeven presented. Every year, huge amounts of forests are destroyed in southern and central Somalia to bring charcoal to Middle Eastern markets for shisha smoking and grilling of meat. The Gulf appetite for the high-quality charcoal harvested from Somalia’s acacia trees directly contributes to environmental degradation, economic underdevelopment, and violent conflict. It illustrates how resource degradation in one part of the world is intimately linked to process of consumption and accumulation elsewhere. Not only is tree cover in southern Somalia reduced, deforestation driven by charcoal exploitation makes the land increasingly prone to erosion, flash-flooding, and chronic drought. Moreover, the taxation of charcoal by both jihadist groups like Al-Shabab and foreign interveners like the Kenyan Defence Forces contributes directly to the decades-long conflict that has been raging in Somalia.

Verhoeven concluded by restating the book’s central message: “The very way we think about the environment, the way we represent it, the way we try to intervene upon it is not an apolitical exercise. It is an exercise that is essentially concerned with questions of distribution. Who gets what? Who is accountable for what? Whose narrative is told, and whose narrative is not told? Who has the authority to decide on whether to call an environmental problem, a development problem, or a security problem?” The key point is thus that environmental and political issues cannot be analytically seen as separate, in this region or elsewhere. The issues at stake are fundamentally issues of power. The CIRS book is about the ways in which certain groups of people are branded as enemies of the state, are criminalized, and are shut-out of media access—ostensibly because of their activism around the environment, but really because of the way they challenge powerholders across the Middle East and North Africa. Environmental Politics in the Middle East is about “who has a right to say what, on which authority, and who is systematically—over time and over space—being excluded.”

Article by Khansa Maria, CURA Administrative Fellow

Harry Verhoeven is Associate Professor of International Relations and African Politics in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Qatar. He is the author of Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan: The Political Economy of Military-Islamist State Building (2015), and Why Comrades Go to War: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa’s Deadliest Conflict (2016). He acquired his doctorate from the University of Oxford and was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge in 2016-17. He is Convener of the Oxford University China-Africa Network and is coeditor of the new Cambridge University Press book series on Intelligence and National Security in Africa and the Middle East.

Fundamentalist Metamorphosis: Hezbollah’s Ideological Evolution from Idealism to Pragmatism
2019-01-16 12:45 - 13:45
On January 16, 2019, CIRS invited Middle East analyst Massaab Al-Aloosy to discuss his research on “Fundamentalist Metamorphosis: Hezbollah’s Ideological Evolution from Idealism to Pragmatism.” During the talk, he mapped out the trajectory of Hezbollah (“Party of God”), a political and militant Shiʿa Islamist movement, from its origin to the present. The organization came into existence following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and was primarily concerned with ending Israel’s occupation in Lebanon and supporting the Palestinian cause.

Before it was officially organized in 1985, Hezbollah worked as a clandestine operation inspired by several geopolitical events, including the Iranian Revolution and the overthrow of the shah in 1979, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionized Shiʿa theology, which was exported to Shi’a communities, including those in Lebanon. Aloosy said that Khomeini “gave a directive for the clergy in ruling the country and being involved in politics. This had great ramifications in the region as a whole, but specifically for the Shiʿa and the Arab world.”

Another event inspiring Hezbollah’s actions was Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 in its attempt to uproot the Palestinian Liberation Organization from southern Lebanon. According to Al-Aloosy, “This was a massive shock for the Lebanese and the Arab world, to see an Arab capital invaded by Israelis forces.” This event profoundly affected the Shiʿa in the Lebanon because of their constant friction with Israel, leading Hezbollah to launch military operations against Israeli targets, including an Israeli encampment—one of their most devastating attacks against the Israeli Defense Forces (IDS).

Hezbollah “reflected much of Iran’s revolutionary rhetoric; the oppressed versus the oppressors; siding with the people; creating revolutions throughout the region.”

Hezbollah sent an open letter to the world in 1985, declaring its goals. “It reflected much of Iran’s revolutionary rhetoric; the oppressed versus the oppressors; siding with the people; creating revolutions throughout the region,” Al-Aloosy said. One goal was to create an Islamic state, which proved extremely ambitious because Lebanon is a “multi-confessional, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian country.” Another goal was to destroy Israel; Hezbollah “considered Israel as a cancerous gland, which should be completely destroyed; and they would not stop until they liberated every inch of Palestine,” he said.

In 1989, Saudi Arabia gathered many Lebanese politicians together and paid them handsomely to sign an agreement to end the Lebanese civil war and amend the divided political system, he said. Hezbollah was initially against the Taif Agreement, but later decided it was necessary to engage in Lebanese politics. Taking this pragmatic step, Al-Aloosy said, Hezbollah “had a revolutionary outlook that had completely changed with accepting the political system.”

During the 1990s, Hezbollah underwent a process of “refashioning Islamism,” Al-Aloosy said. In the 1980s, their positions had been quite extremist, but over time, “they changed all of this rhetoric, and they tried to change the interpretation of what they said.” Hezbollah’s focus was on Israel, and their perspective had become more nationalistic than Islamist. For example, Al-Alsoosy said that the rhetoric became: “We are here to liberate Lebanese land, mainly. This is our objective.”

The quest for an Islamic state remained, however, but it was “indefinitely postponed,” Al-Aloosy noted. Additionally, Hezbollah acknowledged that the goal of an Islamic state did not mean that it will be imposed by force, and it had to come with the consensus of all Lebanese. “You can imagine how impossible that would be,” Al-Aloosy said, “not even the Shiʿites themselves agree on an Islamic state.” Reaching a consensus among Lebanon’s many communities—including Sunnis, Christians, and Druze, among others—was considered an almost impossible feat, he said.

Further, in 1999, Ehud Barak was elected Prime Minister of Israel on a platform of withdrawing Israeli forces from Lebanon, which occurred in 2000. Despite this, Hezbollah continued its attacks on Israel from 2000 to 2006, but these were not as intense as those of the 1990s. In 2006, “a big miscalculation by both Hezbollah and Israel happened,” he explained. Now under the premiership of Ehud Olmert, Israel decided it would destroy Hezbollah. In 2006, a war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah, lasting for over a month. Hezbollah was not destroyed in this conflict, but, since then, the border between Israel and Lebanon has been comparatively quiet.

Syria, throughout the 1990s, had been using Hezbollahs’ attacks to pressure the Israelis to the negotiating table, Al-Aloosy said, but Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon deprived Syria of a very important negotiating tool with the Israelis. With the civil uprising in Syria in 2011, “this was yet another event that served to make Hezbollah’s ideology more pragmatic and less idealistic,” Al-Aloosy said. Instead of siding with the oppressed, Hezbollah chose to side with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In conclusion, Al-Aloosy argued that Hezbollah has transformed from an offensive force against the Israelis to liberate the south of Lebanon, into a deterrent force. Hezbollah continues the rhetoric of liberating Palestine, he said, but does not actually do much about it. Hence, “when it comes to creating an Islamic state, it is very clear this goal is unattainable especially in the sectarian mosaic of Lebanon. Thus, they engaged in changing the rhetoric and changed their outlook indirectly.”

Article by Khansa Maria, CURA Publications Fellow

Massaab Al-Aloosy received his PhD and Masters of Art in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Previously, he worked with the World Peace Foundation and is currently working as a producer with the Al Jazeera Network. He is the author of a forthcoming book, titled Changing Ideology of the Hezbollah Insurgency and Civil War in the Middle East.

Russia and the Middle East Working Group I
2019-01-20 09:00 - 2019-01-21 16:00
On January 20-21, 2019, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held the first working group under its research initiative on “Russia and the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, scholars were convened to discuss different aspects of Russian-Middle Eastern relations, including: Russian “responsibility to protect” in the Middle East; Russian “sovereign democracy,” Middle Eastern investments in Russia, migration between Russia and the Middle East, ISIS in the North Caucuses, Russia-GCC relations, the Yemeni civil war, and Russia-Iran and Russian-Maghreb relations.

Roy Allison started the working group discussions with his presentation on “Russian vs. Western “Responsibility to Protect” in the Middle East.” Allison suggested that RTP is too narrow for understanding normative claims-making competition between Western States and Russia in the Middle East. He added that Middle East is just one theater among others where Russia and the West have been competing over international norms relating to sovereignty and rights, as well as international justice and international order. Germane to this discussion, Allison suggested that the West is not a united bloc when it comes to normative claims making in the region, as a number of Western countries, such as the United States, currently appears to have slightly withdrawn. Allison highlighted a number of areas that could benefit from in-depth study, among which: the reception of Russian legal and normative claims by Middle Eastern states, the controversy of international legal claims, and the development of laws and norms about drones and other efforts to fight transnational terrorism.

Following Allison’s discussion, Viacheslav Morozov presented on the “Prospects of Russian ‘Sovereign Democracy’ in the Middle East.” Morozov argued that while Russia is not actively promoting sovereign democracy as a principle as strenuously as has done previously, the thinking behind sovereign democracy still exists in Russia’s foreign policy approach. There is complexity to determining exactly whether sovereign democracy is a model of governance that evolved in Russia or whether it is more of an ideology. Sovereign democracy is characterized by direct intervention by the state in running state affairs and the emphasis in “sovereign democracy” is on sovereignty rather than democracy. The rationale is that individual rights can only be protected when there is a strong state that can act as the vanguard of rights. In this line of thinking, sovereignty is understood as being non-interventionist. But given that democracy is an empty signifier, similar to “humanity,” Russia is questioning the universality of international constitutions. Finally, Morozov discussed the applicability of the Russian model of democracy in the Middle East.

Caner Bakir shifted the working group discussions to “Russia: An Emerging Market for Middle Eastern Investments?” Bakir claimed that Middle Eastern foreign direct investments in Russia are increasing, particularly by the United Arab Emirates. However, the share of Middle Eastern investments in Russia’s inward foreign direct investments is significantly small. Such reality provokes questions around Middle Eastern multinational corporations. Bakir proposed a number of areas related to Middle Eastern multinational corporations that deserve study. Among such topics: the dynamicity, drivers and challenges of multinationals; the impact of multinationals on state bureaucracy; the difference in multinational corporations’ behavior from one sector to another; the competitive advantages of Middle Eastern multinational corporations; and what Middle Eastern multinational corporations can offer to the Russian economy.

Andrei Korobkov discussed another aspect of Russian-Middle Eastern relations, particularly: “Contemporary Migration Patterns between Russia and the Middle East.” Korobkov stated that Russia and the Middle East, given their multiethnic histories, have always been key players in global migration patterns. However, particularly with the creation of the modern state in the Middle East and fall of the Soviet Union, Middle Eastern countries and Russia have followed the European model of immigration, by developing strict naturalization policies. Korobkov added that while the numbers of Middle Easterners immigrating to Russia—as students, former students, refugees, or spouses of Russians citizens—have been increasing, only two to three percent of Russians intending to leave Russia say they want to immigrate to the Middle East. Finally, Korobkov claimed that environmental and political factors will continue to drive migration from the Middle East to Russia.

Sergey Markedonov focused the discussion on “Russia, the Islamic State, and Wilayet Qawkaz.” Markedonov argued that the Middle East is of symbolic importance for Russian foreign policy, particularly with the ongoing Syrian conflict. Russia discovered new horizons in the Middle East that could help in Russia’s desire to compete once again with the United States for global dominance. However, besides the Russia-US rivalry, Markedonov claimed that the Islamic States in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is yet another major driver behind Russia’s recent involvement in the Middle Eats. ISIS is seen as one of Russia’s main security threats. The North Caucuses’ allegiance to ISIS and the establishment of the Wilayat Qawkaz have become a security priority to the Russian government. Markedonov delved deeper into investigating Russia’s state-Islam relations.

Nikolay Kozhanov shifted the discussion to “The Drivers of Russia-GCC Relations Post 2011.” Although the Soviet Union always had interest in forming closer ties with the Persian Gulf states for geostrategic motives, the Soviet Union and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf had had troubled relations instigated by ideological differences. With the fall of the Soviet Union, and particularly with the ascendance of Vladimir Putin to power, Russia started becoming increasingly pragmatic in its foreign policy. Kozhanov argued that over the past few years, Russia has been attempting for a rapprochement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states; an attempt with high chances of success. However, Kozhanov highlighted the fact that Russia does not have diplomatic experience is dealing with the GCC states, with exception of Kuwait to a certain extent. The attempt of rapprochement is driven by Russia’s economic and security interests at the backdrop of sanctions imposed on Russia, Russia’s relations with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the government’s pursuit to maintain a higher oil price. Kozhanov stressed the argument that the willingness for a rapprochement between Russia and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf is not one-sided. For the GCC states, better relations with Russia are important given Russia’s increasing involvement in the Middle East, particularly in Syria. As far as oil and gas production are concerned, it is in Saudi Arabia’s interest to have Russia “dance around” OPEC. Saudi Arabia is also interested in economic diversification. To that end, Russia could be a potential investor, and exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) given Saudi’s current troubled relations with its main LNG exporter, Qatar. However, it is important not to limit the economic relationship between Russia and the GCC states to merely oil and gas. Russia also has developed economic relations related to high-tech and agriculture in the region. In conclusion, Kozhanov suggested that Russia’s close relations with Iran will remain an obstacle to solidifying its ties to the GCC. Further complications are caused by the current geopolitical rift between Qatar and its neighbors, as Russia is reluctant to pick sides in the matter.

Samuel Ramani focused his discussion on “Russia and the Yemeni Civil War.” Ramani argued that Russia has been reluctant to pick sides in Yemen unlike in Syria. However, it has been trying to bring conflicting parties to the dialogue table. In such attempt, Russia has been banking on its historical relations with Yemen, particularly South Yemen. Hence, Ramani claims that when studying Russia’s current mediation role in Yemen, one has to consider the Soviet Union’s role in the Yemeni civil war and unification process in 1990. Ramani claimed that one of Russia’s strategic interests in having a stable Yemen is to use it as a naval base to project power in the Red Sea. In addition, the administration in Russia has been finding ways to project and build up on its soft power to reintroduce itself as a key player in international institutions and multilateral negotiations. These attempts by the current Russian administration are palpable in Russia’s addressing of the humanitarian situation in Hodeidah, and the sending of a humanitarian convoy to whitewash its image in the Middle East, and project an image better than that of the “destructive” United States internationally. Ramani added that Russia’s diplomatic engagement with the Houthi rebels is worth exploring. Russia has consistently maintained its stance on inviting Houthis to the negotiation table while supporting the arms embargo and criticizing the Houthis’ missile attacks on Saudi and assassination of Ali Abdullah Saleh. However, Russia appears to have a disaggregated image of the Houthis. They draw a distinction between radical Houthis and the Houthi leader. Ramani also argued that there seems to be an ostensible synergy between Iran and Russia when it comes to perceived solutions to the Yemeni civil war. Both countries prefer diplomatic dialogue and object American military intervention.

Ghoncheh Tazmini sharpened the discussion on Russian-Iranian relations by presenting on “Iran: A Strategic Partner or a Provisional Counterweight?” Tazmini claimed that the relationship between Iran and Russia, at least on the surface, is inconsistent. There is a degree of ambiguity around the quality and durability of Russian-Iranian relations. Such ambiguity is stirred by actions such as the Russian delay in constructing a contracted light water reactor in Iran from 1995 to 2003, and the delay in delivering the Russian S300 missiles, which were dispatched a decade later. At the same time, Russia has supported Iran’s economy by inviting it to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Astana and supporting a three-year provisional free trade agreement between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union in 2018. As far as Iran is concerned, the Iranian leadership allowed Russian boots-on-ground on its territory, which is undoubtedly against the Iranian revolutionary, anti-imperialist narrative. Tazmini also claimed that Russian-Iranian relations have developed after the fall of the Soviet Union. Since then, the intensity and depth of Russian-Iranian relations have been significant. Having said that, Tazmini highlighted the importance of studying the Russian-Iranian relations through the prisms of ideations, preferences, and identities.

Yahia Zoubir concluded the working group discussions with his presentation on “Russia’s Maghreb Moment.” Historically, particularly during the Soviet Union era, Zoubir claimed, Algeria was the Soviets’ only partner in the Maghreb region. While it could be argued that Libya was military aligned with the Soviets, politically it was not. In recent years, Russia has been seeking a grand ingress to the Maghreb. Russia sees the Maghreb states as potential economic partners. Hence, the Russian government is in talks about establishing a free trade zone in Morocco and has recently signed a number of contracts with Maghreb states. These contracts include agricultural agreements with Morocco; tourism agreements with Morocco and Tunisia; and oil and gas, and infrastructural cooperation with Algeria. Zoubir explained that one of the reasons behind Russia’s increasing interest in the Maghreb is that, unlike the Americans and Chinese, the Russians see the Maghreb as an extension of the Mashreq. Hence, its importance stems from the Middle East’s importance to Russian interests. In addition, the Maghreb is part of the Mediterranean; a region Russia has interests in. In forging stronger relations with the Maghreb states, Zoubir claimed that Russia banks on the Russian oil and gas companies operating in Algeria, and its relations with the Algerian military.

It is worth mentioning that this research initiative will be published in an edited volume by CIRS in the near future.

To view the working group agenda, click hereTo read the participants’ biographies, click hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Roy Allison, University of Oxford, UKZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarCaner Bakir, Koç University, TurkeyIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarAndrei Korobkov, Middle Tennessee State University, USNickolay Kozhanov, European University, RussiaAnatol Lieven, Georgetown University in QatarSergey Markedonov, Russian State University for the HumanitiesSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarViacheslav Morozov, University of Tartu, EstoniaAbdul Rehmaan Qayyum, Georgetown University in QatarSamuel Ramani, University of Oxford, UKGhoncheh Tazmini, London Middle East Institute at SOASTatiana Usova, Georgetown University in QatarElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarLuciano Zaccara, Qatar UniversityYahia H. Zoubir, KEDGE Business School, France

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

Taking Measure of American Foreign Policy
2019-01-27 12:45 - 13:45
CIRS invited Richard L. Russell, professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, to deliver a talk titled “Taking Measure of American Foreign Policy” on January 27, 2019, in which he shed light on the Trump administration’s foreign policy. He began by noting that halfway through Trump’s term in office is an appropriate juncture for an assessment of his administration’s foreign policy, but a definitive doctrine still cannot be identified. “It’s really hard for me to discern a ‘Trump doctrine.’ I mean, beyond ‘Make American Great Again’ or ‘America First,’” Russell said. “Maybe that captures the tone of the administration’s foreign policy, but it doesn’t, in my view, capture a substance.”

Russell used two international relations theories—realism and liberalism—to analyze the direction of Trump’s foreign policy, but noted that it was hard to label Trump as either realist or liberal since the president does not fit into either school. Russell explained that Trump does not qualify as a liberal, because he pays no regard to global democracy. Typically, the United States promotes democracy abroad in order to minimize international risks, but Trump “doesn’t promote democracy, he doesn’t celebrate it, and he doesn’t honor it. In fact, personally, he favors authoritarian states,” like Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, Russel explained, Trump has alienated leaders of Western democracies, including the French, German, and British authorities.

Further, Russell argued that Trump does not fit into the liberal model because of his “disdain for multinational institutions,” as was evidenced by his backing out of the Paris Agreement on climate change and his scorn for NATO. The president has had harsh words for the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank—international institutions that became the fabric of international relations after World War II, which foster economic, political, and social stability internationally, he said.

Trump “doesn’t promote democracy, he doesn’t celebrate it, and he doesn’t honor it. In fact, personally, he favors authoritarian states.”

Neither does Trump fit the realist model, Russell explained. While some might consider the president to be a realist, Trump has no appreciation for international balances of power. Traditionally, nation-states balance power to prevent the outbreak of international violence according to realist theory, but Trump is not working to accomplish this, Russell said. For example, while Trump is concerned about China’s trade policy, he does not balance militarily or politically against China. Similarly, the president has not counterbalanced Russia in Europe or the Middle East. Paradoxically, Russell said, while the Trump administration’s documents reflect a realist philosophy, they bear “no resemblance to what President Trump talks about.”

Russell explained that Trump thinks in terms of bilateral relationships and emphasizes the importance of nation-states at the expense of multi-actor alliances. “It is true that the nation-state is the pinnacle of power in international society, but all nation-states operate in a web of interconnected economic, political, and cultural exchanges,” and Trump is not disposed to even acknowledging this fact, Russell noted. For example, instead of communicating with Japan and South Korea, with which the US has formal alliances, Trump focuses on dialogue with North Korea. “That’s not the way to facilitate the formal treaty obligations that the United States has with the security partners in Asia,” Russell said.

Typically, a US president surrounds himself with people who share his philosophy or worldview, but Trump’s government is internally fractured, Russell noted. Even before his election, many traditional Republicans refused to support him. As a result, Trump has relied on congressional and military staff to fill posts in his administration, in the process blurring the lines between the military and civilian government. This, coupled with the fact that Trump has removed two national security advisors in two years, leaves him with an extremely fractured and inefficient team, Russell said. The interagency process—the multilayered decision-making process used by the executive branch in all recent administrations—is also breaking down, Russell said. Important decisions, like withdrawing from Syria, are made by Trump without consultation or critical expertise, and by neglecting the diplomatic corps. Currently, there is no Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, for the Pacific, or for Europe, and many diplomatic posts are currently vacant.

In conclusion, Russell argued that Trump has managed to alienate the Intelligence Community during his time in office, and civil-military relations are at an all-time low. Since the president views the military as his political base, and has drafted military officers to fill national security positions, “Trump runs the risk of politicizing the military at the senior levels and in the rank-and-file,” Russell argued. Contrary to the president’s behavior, the US has always had “a military that’s apolitical—that is to say, it serves the US Constitution, not a president.” As a final word, Russell noted that the Trump administration is “breaking a lot of traditional norms that have held in both Republican and Democratic administrations in American foreign policy.”

Russell noted that the views he shared during this talk were his alone and not the views of the NESA Center or the US government.

Article by Khansa Maria, CURA Publications Fellow

Richard L. Russell is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Near East and South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He also is a Lecturer at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He received a PhD in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and previously had appointments as Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service and Research Associate at Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Russell has published three books on intelligence, American foreign policy, and weapons proliferation in the Middle East.

Prospects for a Peaceful Democratic Transition in Sudan
2019-02-06 12:30 - 13:30
Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities and Professor of Politics at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, was invited by CIRS to discuss the current uprisings in Sudan, with a lecture on “Prospects for a Peaceful Democratic Transition in Sudan” on February 6, 2019. Giving some background on the ongoing issue, El-Affendi explained that Omar al-Bashir has been the president of Sudan for three decades, since coming to power after a military coup in 1989. He is considered a tyrannical leader by many, and stands accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

El-Affendi noted that the recent nationwide uprisings have been the most sustained in the country’s history, ongoing since December 19, 2018. “There has never been such widespread public support for a protest in the past. This protest is supported in almost every town of Sudan, among most classes of people, even among most along the spectrum—from Islamist to left wing,” which is unprecedented, he argued. Large gatherings, even wedding parties, have become sites of anti-government demonstrations. In former Sudanese revolutions, the ruling regimes fell in less than two weeks after the start of protests, largely because “the army—or sections of it—would side with the people and the regime would be forced away. This did not happen” in the current conflict, El-Affendi said. Even though the legitimacy of the government has been decreasing over the years, the military remains in support of it, and has not voiced opposition.

“There has never been such widespread public support for a protest in the past. This protest is supported in almost every town of Sudan, among most classes of people, even among most along the spectrum—from Islamist to left wing.”

El-Affendi explained that the current nationwide uprising was sparked by spontaneous anger, when “people went to their bakeries and found that bread prices had tripled one morning” in Atbara, a working-class town with a long history of labor unions—elements that contributed to the mobilization of protestors. The protests quickly spread to neighboring ad-Damar, the capital of the province, and adjacent Berber. It reached the capital city, Khartoum, within twenty-four hours. While the quick spread of the protests was surprising, it was understandable in the rapidly declining economic climate of Sudan.

Following a smaller uprising in September 2013, al-Bashir had tried to placate the public by holding so-called “national dialogues,” which gave people high hopes of serious reform, El-Affendi said. However, “the outcome of the negotiations was not up to expectations.” Essentially, nothing happened and the buildup of anger and frustration continued. In fact, El-Affendi argued, a Sudanese revolution has long been in the making, and was predicted to erupt years before the 2011 Arab uprisings, largely because of the controversial division of the country into two separate states, an excruciating loss for many in the north. “People had been predicting that this would be a trigger for an uprising because people would not accept this division of the country, and would blame the government for it,” he said.

In past Sudanese revolutions, when a regime fell, a transitional government would be set up by an alliance of political parties, trade unions and professional organizations, and there would be new elections, he said. “Now the revolutionaries are saying no.” The protestors are no longer interested in any form of consensual transition. People are so frustrated with the current regime that they are demanding that the entire structure of the government be dismantled, El-Affendi said. “The revolutionaries are very radical in their demands. They say we don’t want any negotiations with this government, we don’t want any talks with them.” As such, al-Bashir and his administration are on the defensive and mobilizing resources to reassert control. “At the moment, we are in a kind of deadlock where protests seem to be mounting and sustained, while the government seems to be able to hold the fort,” El-Affendi said.

In conclusion, El-Affendi suggested three possible solutions to the conflict: 1) the military can refuse to serve the government, similar to what happened in Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab uprisings; 2) the government can escalate the violence and start killing civilians to deter protests; 3) or a mediation effort can be implemented via the international community, through the African Union, for example. The former African Union President Thabo Mbeki had intervened in Sudan in the past, mediating situations like the conflict in Darfur in 2008, and the conflict between Sudan and South Sudan, he said. However, the Sudanese government seems to think it does not need international or outside help. Finally, El-Affendi characterized the situation as “a kind of Syrian scenario, where the regime will hold its own, but the protests will increase, and will probably become violent.”

Article by Khansa Maria, CURA Publications Fellow.

Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities and Professor of Politics at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Previously, he was Head of the Politics and International Relations program at DI, and Coordinator of the Democracy and Islam program at University of Westminster. He also worked as a diplomat in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry and has worked as Editor or Managing Editor of several publications. He was a Visiting Fellow/Professor at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Norway, Northwestern University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization in Malaysia. He is the author of Genocidal Nightmares: Narratives of Insecurity and the Logic of Mass Atrocities (2015).

CURA Workshop: Introduction to Research Methods
2019-02-07 12:30 - 16:30
CIRS hosted its second CURA workshop for GU-Q students on the topic “Introduction to Research Methods” The workshop, held on February 7, 2019, presented a conceptual definition of research methods, introduced methodological approaches, addressed practical issues concerning data availability, and helped students to identify appropriate strategies for tackling their own research projects.

Justin Gengler, Assistant Research Professor at the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) at Qatar University, gave a presentation that served to identify methodological and scientific research approaches. He shared the basics of theory building, including but not limited to, case studies, process tracing, large-N, surveys, and randomized experiments. He emphasized the concepts of internal and external validity as tools for evaluating the strengths and weakness of different methods.

“After attending the first CURA Workshop, the second one was definitely beneficial as it allowed me to build on my prior knowledge and work on my research skills.” – Khushboo Shah (class of 2022), CURA Administrative Fellow.

His key point was that some approaches are better suited for particular types of research questions, and that there exists a link between a research question and the method used to investigate it. Gengler led interactive sessions with the students in order for them to identify the best methodological approach given a specific research question. One exercise consisted of determining and explaining the dependent variable and the causal processes of different study cases.

The workshop was facilitated by Elizabeth Wanucha, CIRS Project Manager, and Islam Hassan, CIRS Research Analyst, with the assistance of Shaza Afifi, Mohammed Al-Jaberi, Ameena Almeer, Chaïmaa Benkermi, Irakli Gobejishvili, Irene Promodh, Abdul Rehmaan Qayyum, and Khushboo Shah—all current CURA Fellows. The Fellows guided group activities that consisted of matching a research question to the most suitable methodological approach put forward by Gengler.

“The workshop taught me much more than just methodological research plans, but also how to cooperate and compromise as a group and appreciate each other’s contributions, regardless of how radically different they may seem.” – Irene Promodh (class 2021), CURA Research Fellow.

The different exercises, through both the PollEverywhere interactive medium and individual reflection, helped students identify the appropriate methodological approach to answer the research question: “How does university study abroad by Qatar-based students influence their attitudes toward gender relations in society and in the family?” After individual reflections, students formed small groups to come to an agreement on the following criteria for the predetermined question: the scope of the case to be considered; the level of analysis; the indicators and variables to be studied; the theoretical limitations of the chosen approach; and the practical challenges of the chosen approach. The groups then formulated their proposals and presented them to the full group for feedback and evaluation.

CURA Research Fellow Abdul Rehmaan Qayyum (class of 2021) commented that the workshop would “help people seeking to publish papers for CURA, researching for UREP, or even those who plan on pursuing a master’s degree.” Another participant described the group activity as “extremely helpful,” notably due to the feedback from CIRS staff and Professor Gengler.

Seventeen students from all class years attended the workshop. The workshop was useful for all participants, from freshmen working on their midterm papers to seniors preparing for their honors. Those who successfully completed the workshop were awarded electronic badges that could be shared on their LinkedIn profiles.

CIRS has been promoting students’ research skills and research methodologies through its CURA workshop series. GU-Q students will be able to participate in the next CURA workshop in fall 2019.

Article by Chaïmaa Benkermi (class of 2021), CURA Publications Fellow

Western Higher Education in Global Contexts
2019-02-13 12:45 - 13:45
Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar is a Qatar-based novelist and community course instructor at VCUarts Qatar who writes on topics related to gender, race, and pedagogy. On February 13, 2019, she presented a CIRS Focused Discussion, “Western Higher Education in Global Contexts,” in which she explored the topic of international branch campuses (IBCs)—such as Georgetown University in Qatar and other universities in Education City—and their growing popularity and impact on international development in education. She recently edited a book by the same title, published in 2018, which examines global perspectives on the internationalization of American higher education practices in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

The premise of the IBC is the agreement between a national entity and a US-based institution that students will earn the same degree they would receive from the main campus, Rajakumar explained. Due to this arrangement, IBCs typically do not offer professors specialized training in cultural sensitivity because, “If it is the exact same degree, then there would be no additives, no preservatives, nothing at all changed,” she said. Students are also not oriented to the unique nature of studying at an IBC, which may vary drastically from their previous educational training.

Rajakumar shared a case study with the audience to show the importance of understanding the overlapping influences of cultural norms and diversity of values in multicultural classrooms. Such cases are a follow up to the larger project of the book, intended to feature the “brass tacks and lived realities for the people doing the teaching and learning” in IBCs, she said. According to Rajakumar, the main themes within the case study were conflicting norms about timeliness and people’s differing attitudes about authority figures in intercultural settings.

“This is a case that looks at authority; who has authority, who is allowed to question the authority, and the ways in which power circulates in a classroom.”

The central conflict in the case raised the critical question of who is in charge and what is open to negotiation in a university classroom. “Some people think rules are rules,” she explained. Others feel that, “Rules are rules, but they shouldn’t apply to ‘me’ because ‘I’ have this exceptional circumstance.” A one-size-fits-all model for teaching in international contexts is impossible to implement, she said, because students may find faults with their syllabi depending on the importance of the course to their major. Other factors also influence classroom behavior including gender, ethnic background, and personality types; therefore, there can often be conflict between faculty and students, as well as among students themselves.

Ultimately, Rajakumar explained, “This is a case that looks at authority; who has authority, who is allowed to question the authority, and the ways in which power circulates in a classroom.” She concluded by noting that an unfortunate reality of Western education today is that it is not molded to fit various cultural contexts. Additionally, professors and students at IBCs are not prepared for the unique learning process they are undertaking. “No matter whether it was Russia, Japan, Qatar, Lebanon—across all of our research sites, there was little to almost no training given to faculty for their particular cultural setting,” she said. IBCs seem to be perpetuating a Western narrative in this respect, and cultural awareness training is necessary for their future success.

Article by Khansa Maria, CURA Publications Fellow

Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar is a novelist and educator with a PhD in English Literature. Her work has been published in a variety of peer reviewed journals and books including Gender, Teaching American Literature, and South Asian Review, among others. Rajakumar has also been recognized for her work as a novelist. Her contemporary romance, Love Comes Later, won the Best Indie Book Award for Romance in 2013, and her coming-of-age novel, An Unlikely Goddess, earned her recognition as a finalist in the SheWrites New Novelist competition in 2011. Her edited volume, Western Higher Education in Global Contexts, contributes to the scholarship on the project of implementing and expanding US-influenced curricula in the Middle East and Asia.

Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East Working Group I
2019-02-24 09:00 - 2019-02-25 15:00
On February 24-25, 2019, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) brought together a number of scholars to commence a new research effort on the “Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East.” Over the course of two days, the participating scholars discussed a wide array of topics, including: neo-liberal policies post the 2011 uprisings; business interests of Middle Eastern militaries; private security and military companies; economic integration in the Levant and GCC; foreign direct investments (FDI) in North Africa and the GCC; state bureaucracy and the economy in Iran, as well currency and black market manipulations in Iran; development policies in the post-2011 GCC; and the emerging transformation of state-business relations in the GCC.

Angela Joya began the working group discussions by speaking on the topic of “Neoliberal Policies in the Post-2011 Middle East.” Joya provided a review of public sentiment towards economic conditions across the Middle East, and focused on different countries in the region in her discussion. Joya suggested that over the past seven years we have seen a range of public protest in the region which focus specifically on the economy and peoples’ grievances over poor economic conditions. The Arab Uprisings commenced with cases of self-immolation in Tunisia, a brutal form of protest to highlight the lack of financial and material wellbeing for average citizens. Since the Arab Uprisings while this momentum has diminished it has not complete gone away, and neither have the underlying economic issues. In Morocco public demonstrations erupted over the declining standards of living, rising costs of everyday goods, and increasing unemployment. In Egypt, since 2016, there has been a dramatic increase in poverty after the IMF-imposed structural reforms, however public protests have diminished. The economic conditions in Yemen, Libya, and Syria are dire, while Jordan is also seeing increasing economic dissatisfaction. While in several cases the economy is being aggravated by war and conflict, we see people trying to escape war and conflict, but also steady streams of Middle Eastern migrants trying to leave their countries as a result of economic hardship. Joya suggested that further academic exploration is needed to examine the extent of neoliberal reforms in the Middle East and what the implications of the new economic reforms are on social, economic, and political conditions. Joya stated that governments initially responded to protests and public signs of dissatisfaction by adopting bigger fiscal policies, increasing wages, and pumping money into the market. This led to heavy government borrowing and was then followed by restrictive spending measures, subsidies being cut, and then prices being liberalized, an ongoing cyclical repetition seen in this region.

Ahmed Hashim shifted the discussion to “Military Inc.-Private Sector Relations.” Hashim said that while militaries are designed to fight internal and external enemies, in the Middle East, they do a great deal more than that. Militaries in the Middle East have frequently engaged in the economy, often causing significant distortions. This provokes the question: Why and how does the military get involved in the economic sector? The military’s role in the economy increased dramatically as states moved from state-owned to liberal markets. Under the Socialist regime of Nasser in Egypt, for example, the military was involved in arms production, but it was also involved in the private sector and importation of products. Under Sadat the military’s engagement in the economy increased significantly, and since Mubarak there is no sector of the Egyptian economy that the military is not involved in. Hashim also asked: What impact does the military’s involvement in economy have on the economy and private sector? As Sadat dismantled the Nasser system, the military expanded dramatically in the economy. And since 2011, it is estimated that the military controls around thirty percent of the Egyptian economy. The setup encouraged the military’s involvement in real estate rather than expanding the production base. Hashim concluded his presentation with recommending further research on conscripted labors; the impact of the military on the private sector; competition versus collaboration between the military inc. and private sector; and competition among quasi-military inc.

Building on Hashim’s presentation, Shir Hever focused the discussion on “Private Security and Military Companies: The Case of Israel.” Hever highlighted five main areas that deserve in-depth academic study insofar as the Israeli military-industrial complex is concerned. The first area is the privatization of the Israeli security sector. Such privatization expanded to include the military, police, and prison services. Second is the Israeli Laboratory Model. In this regard, arms producing companies in Israel have marketed their products globally as experimented on-ground. However, Hever alluded that the success of such arms and technologies is questionable if the relationship between political events and the financial reports of companies is tested. He argued that an Israeli arms-producing company’s financial reports reached its peak in 2009 after the war in Gaza, and reached a second peak in 2012 after the second Gaza invasion. However in 2014 with the third Gaza invasion, the company’s revenues did not increase. The failure of the company’s arms and technologies to subjugate Palestinians and refrain them from indulging in resistance against the Israeli occupation shows the failure of the Laboratory Model. Finally, Hever claimed that a study of Private Military & Security Companies (PMSCs) and the internal conflicts between Israeli security, business, and state elites are worth studying.

Imad El-Anis shifted the discussion to “The Shifting Boundaries of Economic Integration in the Levant.” El-Anis raised a number of areas worth exploring with regards to economic integration in the Levant. He claimed that commercial institutions do not have the pacification effect, but information and communication technology (ICT) development could be a driver of economic integration in the region. However, ICT has been completely ignored in the region. El-Anis also alluded to the importance of special economic and infrastructure zones driven by resources, such as the aquifer in south of Jordan. He claimed that such resources can serve as modes of cooperation, reshaping the way production and trading is taking place. Among the topics that deserve studying is energy reserve discoveries in eastern Mediterranean. El-Anis argued that such discoveries are contentious, exploited by Israel. Finally, El-Anis claimed that the “pacifying effect” should be studying given that militarized interstate disputes need more attention given their impact on economic cooperation.

Leading the discussion to another significant sub-region of the Middle East, Mumtaz Hussain Shah presented on “The Puzzle of Foreign Direct Investments in North Africa.” Shah raised four important, original research questions. The first question has to do with the puzzle of productivity spillover in North Africa. Second is: Why have not FDIs contribute to short-term economic growth? And how can this be solved? Third, How do GCC states, despite the structural economic impediments and heavy regulation of the market, still increasingly receive FDIs? And what are the lessons learned for the Levant? Finally: How to make effective use of MNCs? Shah argued that there is not significant regional FDI investment in North Africa. Thorough and effective implementation of regional integration schemes, third generation of trade elements, investment in related expense, introduction of investor-friendly policies and nondiscriminatory legal and ethical frameworks could significantly improve FDI in the region.

Kian Tajbakhsh presented on “State Bureaucracy and Economy in Iran.” He claimed that the growth of state led developmentalism has been significant since the 1980s. Such phenomenon is not solely ostensible in Iran, but across the Arab Middle East as well. However, the lack of up-to-date data on the entire state bureaucracy remains an issue worth exploration. Tajbakhsh also alluded to the importance of studying performance and effectiveness of the state in economic growth, service delivery, human development, etc. This discussion led to the question: How state-bureaucracy is designed at different scales? Finally, Tajbakhsh argued that there is also a need to conduct a comparative analysis with other countries in the region to understand the impact of Iran’s theocratic system on the country’s economic system, and which other state bureaucracies in the region are operating under similar paradigms.

In sharpening the discussion on Iran, Esfandyar Batmanghelidj discussed “Currency and Black Market Manipulation.” Batmanghelidj claimed that the Riyal has lost around seventy percent of its value. Such devaluation raises the questions: To what extent is such devaluation a result of sanctions or development policies? And what are the relationships between trade exchange rate and inflation in Iran? In addition, given that oil revenue contributes substantially to Iran’s foreign currency reserves, which is important for imports heavy industrialization, sanctions on Iran’s sales of oil and gas has had an impact on foreign exchange, and hence on the prices of goods in Iran. Germane to this discussion, Batmanghelidj claimed that the Iranian Riyal is worthwhile for poor people. While for middle classes, the pasture of currency exchange is much higher as they seek purchases of imported electronics, automobiles, etc. There is an assumption that devaluation can boost exports. However, this does not hold under sanctions. Exporting of goods despite their low prices is not possible under sanction regimes. Batmanghelidj also highlighted that there are three different foreign currency exchange rates as result of the limited foreign currency reserves: one for essential goods, another for other goods, and third for hard currency at exchange shops. In addition to that, rent seekers have manipulated this system to generate profit, hence posing more challenge to importers. Finally, Batmanghelidj concluded his presentation with two questions: How do sanctions put pressure of Iran’s foreign currency reserves? And how do domestic rent seekers respond to the depletion of foreign currency reserves?

Yousuf Al Balushi focused his presentation on “Development Policies in the Post-2011 GCC.” He argued that the GCC countries face a number of issues in implementing developmental policies. Among such issues are: the consistency of public policy to achieve development goals; weak economic leadership in the GCC; the economic structure in the GCC states and size of government; and rent-seeking behavior. Al Balushi argued that other structural impediments also have an impact on development policies in the GCC, including: the state-business-society relations model, government tenders and societal expectations; the lack of business-led development. Al Balushi concluded his presentation with emphasizing the need to empower that private sector through strategic partnership with the state. Such endeavor would increase production and exports, which are fundamental to move toward more sustainable FDI mechanisms in the GCC.

Building on Al Balushi’s presentation, Ashraf Mishrif discussed “The Shifting Boundaries of Economic Integration in the GCC.” Mishrif kicked off his presentation by asking: Are we heading back towards globalization? With Brexit, the failure of NAFTA to remain intact, and the cracks in the GCC in light of the on-going crisis, there is a need to re-examine the global economic structure. In this regard, Mishrif raised the questions: Is the theory of regionalism still valid on the global scale? And what factors contribute toe the retreat of regionalism? There have been consistent setbacks in regionalism efforts in the GCC. This is ostensible in the common market endeavors. Inter-regional trade in the GCC suggests that regional integration in the GCC is marginal. It never amounted more than ten to eleven percent. In addition, there have not been attempts to use common markets to enhance regional integration in the GCC. It was the United Arab Emirates that was defined as the gateway to the GCC, leaving out other GCC member states. Hence, the implementation of regional integration in the GCC is worth exploring. Mishrif argued that one problem with the GCC integration is the hierarchal structure of the organization, starting with the General Secretariat that does very little in forming strategies. As for bureaucratic structure, it has failed to claim supranational mandate that could drive economic cooperation among the member states.

Anastasia Nosova concluded the working group discussion with her presentation on “Changes and Continuities in State-Business Relations Post-2011 Arab Uprisings: The Case of the GCC.” Nosova claimed that across the GCC, there is a class of merchant elite that has disproportionate privileges, and depends on the state. This class does not influence policies, with exception of Oman and Kuwait to an extent. It also competes with the rest of society over resources. Since 2017, state-business relations have appear to have gone through major transformation, particularly evident in the case of Saudi Arabia. There is a transformation in the nature of business in the GCC from being in the hand of business families and few members of the ruling families to a state instrument of development. For the past two years, contracts have been distributed on the basis of merit while previously these were awarded more on the basis of networks and connections between the state and business elites. Further studying this emerging trends in state-business relations in the GCC is critical and will be included in this project moving forward.

To view the working group agenda, click hereTo read the participants’ biographies, click hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Abdullah Al-Arian, Georgetown University in QatarYousuf Al Balushi, Central Bank of OmanAlanoud Al Maadeed, Qatar UniversityZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarEsfandyar Batmanghelidj, Bourse & Bazaar, IranImad El-Anis, Nottingham Trent University, UKAhmed S. Hashim, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, SingaporeIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarShir Hever, The Real News NetworkAngela Joya, University of Oregon, USMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarNatalie Koch, Syracuse University, USSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarAshraf Mishrif, Qatar UniversityAnastasia Nosova, The Risk Advisory Group, UKAbdul Rehmaan Qayyum, Georgetown University in QatarKhushboo Shah, Georgetown University in QatarMumtaz Hussain Shah, University of Peshawar, PakistanKian Tajbakhsh, Columbia University, USElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

A Local East African Newspaper v. the State and Market Forces
2019-03-11 12:45 - 13:45
Phoebe Musandu, professor of History at GU-Q and a scholar of African history, was invited to discuss her research on Kenyan newspapers in the colonial and post-colonial periods during a CIRS Focused Discussion, titled “Serve . . . as Best as We Can:” A Local East African Newspaper v. the State and Market Forces,” on March 11, 2019. Musandu began by providing some historical background, explaining that Kenya had been a protectorate as well as a colony of the British from 1895 to 1963. The country was subject to drastic structural reforms from the 1960s, with the press, in general, and newspapers specifically, playing an important role in shaping the narrative of the day.

In her research, Musandu examines the extent to which mass media are vehicles for public opinion. In order to study “not just the information, but who produces the information, how they disseminate it, and the power inherent in the ability to disseminate information and influence people,” she focused on the first African-owned newspaper in post-colonial Kenya, the Nairobi Times, which was established by Hilary Ng’weno in the 1970s. At the time, two pro-government, foreign-owned newspapers dominated the market, the East African Standard and The Nation.

Musandu argued that the odds were against the Nairobi Times from the beginning. This was largely due to a restrictive political environment and to the meager capital base of its owner, Ng’weno. In the colonial era, she explained, Africans had started and successfully managed newspapers, but the market had changed in the post-colonial era, such that a significant amount of capital investment was necessary to establish a newspaper. Musandu argued that “this was another challenge Africans faced in the transition to independence, and in the early years of independence—international banks did not want to give loans to Africans.”

However, despite these structural setbacks, Ng’weno was able to obtain loans from the Industrial Development Bank and from the National Bank of Kenya, which was a parastatal—a business partially controlled by the state. This put Ng’weno in the delicate position of having to report on the government, even as it was the newspaper’s primary funder, Musandu said. Repayment of these loans required that the Nairobi Times generate significant income from advertising, which put it at a great disadvantage to its established competitors.

Musandu contextualized the environment of news reporting in Kenya in its transition to independence. One of the oldest newspapers was the East African Standard, founded by influential British settlers and sold to Lonrho—formerly the mining company London Rhodesia—in 1967. The CEO of Lonrho, Roland Rowland, had a great sphere of influence in the UK and in Kenya, which included members of the Parliament, and President Jomo Kenyatta and his family. Rowland strategically invested in business opportunities through Lonrho, and every investment he made, and his interactions with the president and his family members, were covered extensively in the Standard. This served to increase Rowland’s visibility and power.

“The newspapers for them, I argue, were not about public opinion, they were not an end—they were a means to an end. The end being the protection and consolidation of economic interests outside of the newspaper itself.”

The other major daily, the Daily Nation, was primarily owned by the Aga Khan—the spiritual leader of the Ismaili branch of Shiite Islam. At a turbulent time when racial minorities, including many Asians, were migrating from Kenya due to political and economic uncertainty in the years immediately before and after independence, the Aga Khan urged Ismailis to remain and make the country their permanent home. He led the way by investing his personal/Ismaili funds in profitable ventures to improve investor confidence in the country and in a bid to contribute to the stabilization of the economy. Musandu said, “He used this newspaper to essentially communicate to the state the necessity of preserving a political and economic environment that was favorable to everyone—the majority and the minority.”

The East African Standard and the Daily Nation both allied themselves with the state, Musandu said. “They were very afraid of contradicting the government, and I think this was done precisely because they were using their publications to defend their investments.” This behavior revealed a continued trend of newspaper owners engaging centers of power in the interests of capital that dates back to the British colonial era, she said. “The newspapers for them, I argue, were not about public opinion, they were not an end—they were a means to an end. The end being the protection and consolidation of economic interests outside of the newspaper itself,” Musandu contended.

Furthermore, opposing the government narrative had drastic repercussions, according to Musandu. She gave an example of a highly regarded newspaper editor who was fired after publishing an article that was critical of government detention of university professors and students. Subsequently, the newspaper ran a public apology to the government on the front page. Musandu found numerous documents in the archives that showed how the government would summon the editors and owners of different publications in order to interrogate them when they stepped out of line.

The title of Musandu’s talk, “Serve as Best as We Can,” comes from the first edition of the Nairobi Times, in which Ng’weno outlined his goals for the publication. Musandu argued that he used those words because he understood the political environment in which he was operating, noting that Ng’weno was intent on taking on the established newspapers. “He wanted to raise the level of political discourse in the country, and wanted it to be fiercely independent,” she said. In conclusion, Musandu argued the prevailing political environment, in which the dissemination of news was secondary to vested interests in other sectors of the economy, meant that Ng’weno’s experiment with a free press was short lived, and he was forced to shut down his newspaper due to bankruptcy. The government bought the newspaper from him and re-branded it as the Kenya Times.

Article by Khansa Maria, CURA Publications Fellow

Phoebe Musandu is a scholar of African history. She has research interests in African historical methodology, mass media and has published papers in women and gender history. Her last major research project resulted in a manuscript she is preparing for publication that examines the establishment and operations of various secular newspapers in East Africa between 1899 and 1990. As a consequence of working on this project, she has also developed an interest in the history of other forms of mass media as well as African commercial history which she intends to cultivate in the long-term. She is the author of Pressing Interests: The Agenda and Influence of a Colonial East African Newspaper Sector (McGill 2018).

Healthcare Access for Single Male Laborers (SML) in Qatar: Research Roundtable II
2019-03-13 09:00 - 14:00
As part of the partnership between CIRS, and Qatar-based institutions to investigate the current state of healthcare provision to single male labors (SML), a second working group for this project was held on March 13, 2019. Scholars, practitioners, stakeholders, and government entities participated in the working group with the aim to examine SML’s access to healthcare in Qatar, and formulate policy recommendations for improvements of the state of migrants’ health.

The one-day working group served as a follow-up to the April 2018 preliminary brainstorming session. The discussion was divided into four broad themes: overview findings from the first working group, government services to SML, challenges and industry-led interventions; and the healthcare perspective. Experts presented their research and insights to provide a better understanding of migrant workers’ health conditions and healthcare delivery within Qatar.

CURA Seminar: Science and Scientific Production in the Middle East
2019-03-14 12:30 - 13:30
On March 14, 2019, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held its second CURA Seminar for the 2018-2019 academic year. Coinciding with the second working group meeting on “Science and Scientific Production in the Middle East,” CURA fellows participated in the seminar discussing two submitted articles as part of the research initiative. Islam Hassan, CIRS Research Analyst, started the seminar welcoming the attendees and providing a brief overview of the research initiative then giving the floor to the CURA fellows to summarize and critique their assigned articles. Irakli Gobejishvili (class of 2022) and Khushboo Shah (class of 2022) served as presenters of the two articles, and Shaza Afifi (class of 2022), Khansa Maria (class of 2021), Riham Mansour (class of 2019), Abdul Rehmaan Qayyum (class of 2021), and Chaïmaa Benkermi (class of 2021) served as discussants.

Gobejishvili presented Tariq Dana’s paper titled: “A Cruel Innovation: Israeli Military and Security Production.” The paper studies the military-industrial complex in Israel as a field of technological advancement, a source of revenue, and as a “security apparatus.” The paper problematizes Israel’s arms trade with world regimes accused of committing atrocities, as the author claims.

Shah presented Abdelkader Djeflat’s paper titled: “Science, Technology and Socio-Economic Inequalities: What Inclusive Model for Arab Countries?” Throughout the different sections, the paper answers the questions: how have social inequalities hampered access to science and technology? How does the elitist access to science and technology work in the region? To what extent has the elitist access been obstructive to the advancement of science and technology? And how could we build a more inclusive and sustainable science, technology, and innovation (STI) system?

Subsequent to the paper presentations, the discussants kicked off the group discussion with their critique on the papers’ arguments and structure, and possible improvements. Two CURA research fellows, Ameena Almeer (class of 2020) and Irene Promodh (class of 2021), served as ambassadors to the Science and Scientific Production in the Middle East working group, and shared the comments and critique brought up at the CURA seminar.

For the participants’ biographies, please click here

Article by Mohammed Al-Jaberi, CURA Publications Fellow

Science and Scientific Production in the Middle East Working Group II
2019-03-17 09:00 - 17:00
On March 17 2019, the Center for International and Regional Studies held the second working group under its research initiative on “Science and Scientific Production in the Middle East.” This was a one day meeting where the convened scholars presented and critiqued papers that tackled a wide array of issues, among which: access to science and technology in the Middle East; Islam and bioethics; consumerism and scientific innovation; the sanction regime in Iran; the inheritance debate in Tunisia; and the military-industrial complex in Israel.

Abdelkader Djeflat started the working group discussion with his paper, co-authored with Labo Clersé, on “Science, Technology and Socio-Economic Inequalities: What Inclusive Model for Arab Countries?” In his paper, the authors argues that minerals, such as oil and gas, have generated enormous wealth in Middle Eastern countries, particularly the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. However, inequality prevails and large portions of the populations in the Middle East live in poverty. While most of the scholarship on the rising economic inequality in the region focuses on income distribution, political regimes, and social fragmentation, there is a gap as far as inequality of access to science and technology is concerned. The paper fills this gap by tackling three main questions: first, how have social inequalities hampered access to science and technology? Second, how does the elitist access to science and technology work in the region? And to what extent has it been obstructive to the advancement of science and technology? And third, what would be the impact of a more inclusive and sustainable science, technology, and innovation system?

Hatem M’henni focused the discussion on “Economic Policies, Consumerism, and Scientific Innovation in the Middle East.” In his paper, M’henni clarifies the theoretical underpinning of the relationship between consumerism and innovation, and examines this relationship in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Based on his study, M’henni introduces five main arguments. First, he states that innovation in the MENA region is still linear in nature. Second, the Middle Eastern companies continue to treat the consumer as a customer. Third, successful innovation experiences are, for the most part, the result of individual initiative rather than state policies. Fourth, economic and social needs are the main drivers of innovation. Finally, as the average level of education in the region is improving significantly, consumerism will inevitably contribute to innovation in the MENA region.

Ayman Shabana shifted the discussion to “Reproductive Genetic Counseling and the Burden of Choice within the Islamic Context.” In his paper, Shabana examines the process of genetic counseling within the framework of assisted reproduction. The paper investigates the moral burden associated with the choices that modern genetic applications have made available in this area of medical practice from an Islamic perspective. Shabana suggests that the moral consequences of genetic testing have to be analyzed at two related yet distinct ethical-legal and theological levels. At the ethical-legal level these moral consequences have to be evaluated in light of important principles such as procurement of benefit and avoidance of harm. At the theological level, however, assessment must reach beyond mere notions of benefit and harm to include core theological concepts such as divine creation and decree. This two-way analysis may help explain and guide the process of genetic counseling within the Muslim context.

Sari Hanafi presented his paper, co-authored with Azzam Tomeh, on “Beyond Religion and Secularism: Gender Equality in the Inheritance Debate in Tunisia and the Formation of the Non-Authoritarian Reasoning.” The paper discusses the current debate about equal inheritance for both men and women in Tunisia. It challenges many clichés, such as the religious versus the secular discourse, and examines whether those binaries hold true in the Tunisian context. The authors argue that the mapping out of the inheritance debate has shown three different logics: jurisprudential/textual, sociological, and legal. The authors conclude the paper by highlighting that the discussion occurring in Tunisia over inheritance uses common language, which allows for the reduction of authoritarian tendencies and polarization through means of dialogue.

Elizabeth Wanucha presented Parviz Tarikhi’s article: “Sanctions and the Scientific Community of Iran.” Tarikhi’s article sheds light on the main operatives and interlinks of sanctions and the Iranian scientific community. Although it is hard to estimate quantitatively the impacts of sanctions on the Iranian scientific community, Tarikhi claims that sanctions, particularly those imposed in the recent decade, have negatively impacted the Iranian community and subsequently the scientific community. Sanctions have also contributed to the growth of the Iranian scientific community in diaspora fleeing restrictions at home. Tarikhi also claims that the sanctions regime strengthened extremism and stimulated totalitarianism in the Islamic Republic.

Islam Hassan presented Tariq Da’na’s paper entitled “A Cruel Innovation: Israeli Military and Security Production.” Da’na argues that the Israeli army, which is the main source feeding Israeli militarism, is by virtue an instrument of organized violence. Ever since the violent birth of the State of Israel in 1948, militarism constituted the backbone of its body politic, national identity, society, economy, culture, foreign policy and worldview. The institutionalization of Israeli militarism is rooted in Political Zionism. With the formal initiation of the Israeli state-building in 1948, Zionist leaders espoused a militaristic-nationalist paradigm to underlie the process of nation-building. Hence, the Israeli military is not solely an institution concerned with external security, defense, and war. It was designed to play multiple social and economic functions and promote the culture of militarism. As a result, Israeli society is a militarized one, where citizens are actively involved in military activities, and the military is actively involved in non-military activities. Da’na provides an overview of Israel’s military industries and technologies, highlighting the interrelationship between Israeli military industries and technological development. He then moves on discuss the characteristics of Israel’s military and security innovation focusing on the dependency on the American system, the development of unethical technology, the military industry, and the complicity in worldwide atrocities. He concludes the paper with a discussion on the testing of weapons on the Great March of Return.

For the working group agenda, click hereFor the participants’ biographies, click hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Ameena Almeer, Georgetown University in QatarZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarRana Dajani, Hashemite University, JordanTariq Da’na, Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, QatarAbdelkader Djeflat, University of Lille, FranceMohammed Ghaly, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, QatarSari Hanafi, American University of Beirut, LebanonIslam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarHatem M’henni, University of Manouba, Tunisia Suzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarIrene Ann Promodh, Georgetown University in QatarAyman Shabana, Georgetown University in QatarJackie Starbird, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarParviz Tarikhi, Space Science and Technology Specialist, IranElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

The Impact of Business and Political News on the GCC Stock Market
2019-03-24 12:45 - 13:45
Alanoud Al-Maadid, Assistant Professor of Economics at Qatar University, examined how politics and economics are intertwined in the relationships of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), an alliance founded in 1981 that includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. She explored these dynamics by looking at the effect of news on GCC stock market returns in a Focused Discussion, titled “The Impact of Business and Political News on the GCC Stock Market,” at CIRS on March 24, 2019.

Al-Maadid explained that the forces of supply and demand is a general rule in economics. However, she said, behavioral economics—the effects of psychological, emotional, cultural, and social factors on decision making—may often go against what is implied in the standard economic model. “In behavioral economics, people are sometimes irrational and unpredictable, and they can make unpredictable choices,” she said. Thus, the field of behavioral economics has many practical applications, and is often used by policymakers, diplomats, and marketers.

Al-Maadid focused her presentation on the financial performance of GCC stock markets, and the high degree of market integration between GCC countries. “GCC stock markets seem to have similar trends,” she said, “when oil prices go down, stock prices go down” across the region. At the start of the GCC crisis in 2017, in which Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt instigated a blockade against Qatar, most of the stock prices in the GCC went down.

“When the stock market goes up, the news does not affect the stock market so much. However, when the stock market is down, if there is negative news, it affects the stock markets more.”

In her research, Al-Maadid found that GDP in the GCC is affected by positive and negative news. She used a linear dynamic model to illustrate how returns of stock prices are affected by both business news and political news. Al-Maadid collected weekly data on GCC news from Bloomberg to create an index of negative and positive political and business news. Control variables such as oil prices, macroeconomic announcements, and interest rates were also utilized.

In the period surveyed (2010–2018), Al-Maadid found that negative political news never exceeded the twenty percent mark—meaning that news content in GCC newspapers is predominantly positive. There was, however, considerably more negative business news content. “Most of the news coming out of the GCC is positive, especially political news. In business news, there is more negative news, but it is still less than thirty percent” of the total news content, she said. As part of her investigations, Al-Maadid used a tool found in financial econometrics, the Markov switching model, to measure the dynamics of negative news. She noted that “When the stock market goes up, the news does not affect the stock market so much. However, when the stock market is down, if there is negative news, it affects the stock markets more.” Results further revealed that political news has less impact than business news, and the stock market does not react as much to political news.

In conclusion, Al-Maadid highlighted the GCC’s “cross-border effect,” arguing that “When there is news from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, the effects are not only domestic—it affects all the other countries,” in the GCC. This is attributed to stronger economies and more integrated stock markets. Thus, Al-Maadid argued, the impact of the blockade against Qatar has negatively affected all GCC countries. If the blockade is lifted, it will have a positive cross-boundary impact for all stakeholders involved, she asserted.

Article by Khansa Maria, CURA Publications Fellow

Alanoud Al-Maadid is the 2018–2019 CIRS Qatar University Fellow. She received a PhD in Economics and Finance from Brunel University London in 2016 with a dissertation on “Effects of Oil Prices, Food Prices and Macroeconomic News on GCC Stock Markets.” She is a recognized researcher in the fields of economies of time series, the GCC stock market, and behavioral finance, and has taught courses on the Principles of Macroeconomics and Monetary Policy, among others.

The Marib Puzzle: A Case of Stability and Economic Activity in War-Torn Yemen
2019-04-03 12:45 - 13:45
Mohammed Al-Jaberi, a GU-Q senior majoring in Foreign Service and Arab Studies, and a CURA Publications Fellow, presented his research on “The Marib Puzzle: A Case of Stability and Economic Activity in War-Torn Yemen,” at a CURA Focused Discussion on April 3, 2019. Al-Jaberi, a citizen of Yemen, returned to his country this past year to conduct research towards his academic thesis in which he addresses the complexity of the war in Yemen, the political symbolism of the city of Marib, and the war’s sociocultural and political impacts on the country.

Focusing his study at the local level, Al-Jaberi examined two cities: the port city of Aden, and the city of Marib in the center of Yemen. His primary research question was: “Why does Marib have more stability and economic activity compared to the temporary capital, Aden?” Al-Jaberi defined “stability” as the absence of local conflict, sustainable access to public goods and services, and the resilience of the local government. In order to answer the central research question, he examined trade, commercial activities (semi- and fully-legal), and the money injected into Yemen by coalition forces—especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Giving background to when the ongoing war in Yemen began, Al-Jaberi argued that there are two significant and contested dates: September 21, 2014, is when Houthi rebels took over the capital city of Sana‘a and overthrew President Hadi; and March 25, 2015, is when Saudi Arabia intervened militarily with a coalition force in Yemen. Coalition supporters assert that the war began on the former date, whereas Houthi rebels deny that the conflict is actually a civil war, claiming that it is a Saudi-led aggression. The answer to this debate, Al-Jaberi said, depends on how one classifies the current conflict, and he posed the following questions: “Is it a civil war? Is it a transnational aggression? Should we blame Saudi Arabia for it? Should we blame the Houthis?” Thus, he attempted to address the widespread tendency to oversimplify the war in Yemen by framing it in terms of only two sides.

“Corruption, poverty, patronage networks, the absence of a meaningful nation-state, and the fragility of the system have all compromised Yemen’s current standing.”

Al-Jaberi identified three major causes of the war: the failure of a transitional process after the 2011 Arab uprisings; the inability to resolve historical grievances in terms of North and South Yemen; and Yemen’s limited role in the international community. “Corruption, poverty, patronage networks, the absence of a meaningful nation-state, and the fragility of the system have all compromised Yemen’s current standing,” he said. Because of these issues, “Yemen has become a playground for international powers to exercise their influence and to enact their hegemony,” Al-Jaberi argued.

The reality in Yemen today is its division into three different states: the Sana‘a area is under Houthi control; Aden and the south are controlled by the UAE and its affiliated forces; and “the ‘Marib state’ is a center that contains political actors within President Hadi’s camp who want to maintain a unified Yemen,” Al-Jaberi argued. Of these three states, the literature, media coverage of the war, and the behaviors and actions of foreign delegations visiting the country conclude that Marib appears to be the only stable region in the country, he said. Though interviews, analyses, and time spent in Yemen, however, Al-Jaberi said, “I found that stability, and stable economic activity, in the two regions of Aden and Marib was not absolute, but a matter of relative reality.” The war in Yemen has become normalized, and is a “lucrative business,” he said.

Al-Jaberi concluded by highlighting the two outcomes of his research. He argued that stability in Yemen is being directly affected by two different systems: patronage networks operating in Marib, on the one hand, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia operating in Aden, on the other. The first concerns the shift from the historical center of Yemen—the capital Sana‘a—to Marib. He argued that this was not an example of successful local governance; rather, it is due to historical political elites “with their tribal, military, religious, technocratic connections” maintaining power by shifting to a different city. Those who operate and control the government of President Hadi “are part of a network of patronage that controls everything,” Al-Jaberi said. Thus, the increase of economic activity in Marib is due to redirecting resources, rather than the actual creation of new businesses. The second concerns how the economy of Yemen is being further politicized by the discrepancies between how the South is being influenced by UAE, and how the North is being influenced by the Saudi Arabian monarchy.

Article by Khushboo Shah, CURA Administrative Fellow

Mohammed Al-Jaberi (class of 2019) is graduating from Georgetown University in Qatar with a B.S. in Foreign Service and M.A. in Arab Studies. His research interests revolve around development, state-building, and political Islam. He is currently working on a documentary film on the economic and personal struggles of young participants of war in Aden. In addition to his role as a CURA Publications Fellow at CIRS since 2016, he has held internships at Teach for Qatar, the United States Embassy in Doha, and Qatar Foundation.

The GCC Crisis: Qatar and its Neighbors Working Group I
2019-04-07 09:00 - 2019-04-08 17:00
On April 7-8, 2019, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held the first working group under its research initiative “The GCC Crisis: Qatar and its Neighbors.” The two day meeting brought together several scholars to discuss a range of topics. These included, Qatar’s management of the crisis; the UAE’s perspective and position on the regional crisis; the roles of Oman, Kuwait, Iran, and Turkey during the rupture of GCC relations; the impact of maritime law in the lead up to and the immediate aftermath of the dispute; economic readjustments in Qatar during the embargo; the effects of the crisis on the Qatari stock market; reconfigurations of nationalism and national identity in Qatar; and, public opinion in Qatar after the blockade.

Mehran Kamrava commenced the working group with a presentation titled “Small State: Crisis Politics.” Kamrava highlighted the lack of nuanced, academic study of the GCC crisis and suggested that the current crisis needs to be contextualized within the context of broader and older tensions in regional relations, particularly those between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Such tension is a natural result of a small state being in proximity of a much larger state with regional ambitions. Much of the policymaking, state narrative, and perspectives of Qatari decision makers is driven by the fact that Qatar is a small state. Kamrava proposed several research questions, including: What does the crisis tell us about how small states manage their supply chains during times of crisis? Have Qatari nationalism and national identity gained greater salience over tribalism and kinship? What is it about Qatar’s decision-making process that has enabled the state to respond effectively to the current crisis? And, is there more to the notion of “subtle power?”

David Roberts followed with a presentation on “The Unhappy Neighbor: The View from the UAE.” Roberts applied the notion of “ontological security” in international relations to the ongoing GCC crisis. Roberts suggested that the ontological security concept can provide us with interesting insights into the UAE’s foreign policy, as well as the motivations behind Mohamed bin Zayed’s foreign policy objectives. Roberts argued that states may prioritize ontological security over physical security, and, as a result, often undertake specific actions in the foreign policy domain that may not meet any hard security concerns or interests. Ontological security could be applied to conducting an individual-level analysis by studying the moral principles of the UAE leadership and how these translate into the country’s assertive foreign policy, as seen in the country’s current leadership’s rise to power in 2004.

Muna Al-Marzouqi discussed “The Blockade of Qatar and Maritime Law,” highlighting four main research areas. First, Al-Marzouqi maintained, there is a need to examine how the maritime blockade on Qatar is contributing to the fostering of international maritime trade and strengthening maritime trade partnerships with countries such as Oman. Second, there is need for a legal analysis of issues related to disturbed shipping liability caused by the blockade. Third, there is the issue of the hijacking of Qatari fishing boats by the UAE. Finally, Al-Marzouqi posed the question of whether the maritime blockade can be considered as an act of aggression under international law.

Steven Wright focused his discussion on “Economic Readjustment in Qatar after the Blockade.” Wright highlighted five areas of potential research. To start, the shifting trade flows and changing economic linkages that have occurred since the rupture in regional relations need further examination. Wright asked: How has the loss of 40 percent of imports previously coming through Saudi Arabia and the UAE been addressed by Qatar? There was a spike in trade with Iran at the beginning of the blockade, as Qatar tried to quickly find new means of addressing its need for critical imports, particularly in food and agricultural products. However, more recently the percentage of trade between the two states has dipped to even lower than what it was before the blockade. New trade relations have been formed with a number of African and Asian countries, and the shift away from Iran may well be due to deliberate political considerations and a calculated desire of the Qatari leadership to limit its reliance Iran.

Also important, according to Wright, are the significant changes in the energy sector since the blockade, most noticeably in the behavior of the large state-owned oil and gas companies. Wright suggested that since the GCC crisis began, there has been an intensification in the role of Qatar Petroleum, and in particular its subsidiary Qatar Gas, in actively undertaking international engagements and building partnerships with international energy companies. These new developments, and how they impact Qatar’s long-term energy policy, can benefit from deeper examination.

Since the start of the crisis, Wright maintained, a strong narrative has appeared in Qatar around the need to develop self-sufficiency and to more actively involve the private sector towards this goal. Since the blockade, great emphasis has been placed on achieving self-sufficiency and security in food and agriculture. Two years on since the blockade, Qatar is now a net exporter of poultry products. Also, there has been a considerable upsurge in company registration in Qatar’s financial center. Wright proposed that there is a need to study whether this increase indicates anything significant.

Wright’s final point revolved around the question of how the Qatari economy has adjusted to the attack on the country’s currency? Following the blockade, there was threats of war, but a more significant threat was that of debasing the currency. However, Qatar has a strong credit rating, and there was a massive upsurge in the bond market, which made it easier for the country to secure its currency. Lastly, in-depth analysis of Qatar’s logistical supply management during the blockade merits further study.

Alanoud Al-Maadid led a discussion on the impact of the blockade on GCC stock markets. Al-Maadid focused on the financial performance of the stock markets, the high degree of market integration between GCC countries, and how positive or negative political and business news have impacted the performance of the regional markets since the Gulf crisis. Al-Maadid’s data demonstrates the most of the political news content in GCC newspapers leans towards the positive, while economic or business news reporting is often considerably more negative. She noted that when the stock market is in an upwards or strong position, the impact of negative news appears insignificant. However, when the stock market is in a weaker position, the impact of negative news seems to have a significant impact. Additionally, political news appeared to have less impact of on the stock market than business and economic news. Al-Maadid highlighted the GCC’s “cross-border effect,” arguing that the boycott of Qatar has negatively affected all GCC countries’ stock markets, and, if lifted, it will have a positive cross-boundary impact for all stakeholders involved.

Abdullah Al-Arian discussed the Muslim Brotherhood factor in the GCC Crisis. Al-Arian provided some insights into why the Muslim Brotherhood is so vigorously targeted by several GCC monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Al-Arian suggested that one of the primary reasons behind the distrust and dislike of the Brotherhood is the view that it cannot be “bought off” or co-opted by the Gulf states’ leadership. In addition, the Brotherhood’s transnational networks allow it to accumulate cross-border support and to potentially mobilize national populations across borders. The Brotherhood has frequently called for political reform, and its anti-monarchical stance instills unease in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Further complicating the matter is the different variations of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations in the Middle East, which makes it challenging to suppress the organization entirely or to it shut it down.

Al-Arian suggested that there are several potentially interesting areas of study to be undertaken. First, the overall impact of limited movement on the group due the blockade, needs to be studied. Second, the study of broader political order, needs in depth analysis. It is important to study whether Muslim Brotherhood groups are being used as proxies for political gains by the blockading countries. A third question to consider is whether the anti-Muslim Brotherhood stance is a form of regional Islamophobia being deployed by Gulf rulers in order to garner international support. Finally, it is important to have a deeper understanding of why Qatar has adopted a pro-Muslim Brotherhood position, and what benefit it perceives to accrue from its relationship with the Brotherhood.

Abdullah Baabood led a session on the role of Oman during the crisis. Baabood stated that Oman has been caught in the crossfire during the blockade, and while the leadership of Oman has tried to balance its relations with its various Gulf neighbors, the Omani public has demonstrated a more openly pro-Qatar stance in the midst of the crisis. While Kuwait played a more proactive role to play in mediating between the UAE/Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Oman has demonstrated an active interest in supporting a resolution of the ongoing dispute. Oman has a more complex and multicultural make-up than most of its GCC neighbours, as well as a different pattern of historical development, which has made its leaders more attuned to the need for compromise and peaceful accommodation. Oman is also suffering economic strains, which has been worsened by plummeting oil prices, and is facing increasing pressure from its own citizenry for better employment and financial conditions. Powerful neighbors like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have taken advantage of this and at times have further manipulated the situation to gain an upper hand. Economic concerns and domestic political stability are occupying most of the Omani leadership’s attention, which leaves it with little capacity to actively engage in resolving regional issues or taking a very strong stand in the matter.

Juan Cole focused on Iran’s role in the GCC crisis. Cole suggested that Iranian-Qatari relations are not usually of any great significance or importance to either state, but every once in a while relations are galvanized as was seen at the onset of the breakdown in GCC relations. Iran is not a militarily aggressive state, nor does it have hegemonic interests in Qatar, although occasionally there are tensions with Qatar in regards to the North Field gas reserves, which are shared by both states. In Syria, Iran and Qatar have been supporting opposite sides in the conflict, not due to ideological reasons, Cole suggested, but because Iran has critical, realist interests in the preservation of the Assad regime. Cole stated that it would be beneficial to the exciting literature to carry out a study on whether there is any long term traction to the Iran-Qatar relationship—will Qatar aim to strengthen and develop its economic and political relationship with Iran, or was the closeness early on in GCC crisis just a temporary marriage of convenience? Is there something significant in terms of the GCC crisis serving as a turning point in Qatar-Iran relations, or will this continue to be a relationship based on ambiguities?

Bulent Aras shed light on the role of Turkey during the crisis, and specifically its active support for Qatar as opposed to Saudi Arabia. It is important to study Turkey’s military presence, military cooperation, and joint defense arrangements with Qatar during the crisis, and what it signifies about Turkey’s expanding role in the region. Turkey’s deployment of military personnel to Qatar after the blockade directly provoked concern from NATO and European states. But whether the surge in Turkish military presence in Qatar was done out of genuine and strategic considerations or merely for symbolic reasons requires deeper analysis. Do Turkey’s growing military and economic relations with Qatar reflect the AK Party’s broader ideology of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, or have these relations expanded as a result of other strategic and realist interests? Aras adduced that it may be a combined reflection of both nationalism and ideology that is driving this relationship, while also remembering that perhaps the support to Qatar is being extended mainly by Erdogan and the AK Party rather than the country itself.

Jocelyn Mitchell discussed how the Gulf crisis has led to reconfigurations in Qatari national identity, as well as different forms of expressions of nationalism. Mitchell suggested that nationalism can be conceptualized and studied at many different levels. In one respect, nationalism is ideational and serves as an ideology of who belongs and who does not to a particular imagined political community. Civic nationalism is constructed and developed, comes with various legal criteria and legal instruments, and is based on rights and duties of states and citizens towards each other. Civic nationalism can be more exclusive or more inclusive, based on how it is legally defined. Ethnic nationalism tends to be innately more bounded, as is based on common language and shared cultural heritage, which means it is hard to include broader groups within it. The sorts of nationalism that emerge in different contexts and eras change. This change, Mitchell suggested depends on lived experiences of social groups, and the means by which states try to develop or integrate parts of both civic and ethnic nationalism.

Following on from the GCC crisis, Mitchell suggested three particular areas of research regarding Qatari nationalism. First, to what extent is nationalism and national identity in Qatar changing, especially from one based on a regional ethnic narrative to one that is local ethnic and/or local civic national narratives? Second, if the various Qatari social groups are being incorporated into a new form of nationalism, how is this being done, and what are the mechanisms for new inclusions? Lastly, if the forms of nationalism and national identity are changing in Qatar, in what areas are these changes occurring, especially in the political and legal realms, or in terms of new socio-cultural behavior and norms?

The working group’s final presentation was by Justin Gengler. Gengler discussed the importance of public opinion, especially as a powerful tool for gathering data. Although Qataris have remained politically supportive of their state, especially since 2017, research needs to be conducted on various aspects of public opinion, especially citizens’ negative response to the payment of taxes; how many people blame the state for the crisis; whether or not social relations between citizens and non-citizens have changed; and the changes in tribal differences within the society. Gengler believed that these questions would return interesting results and seeking answers to them is essential to understanding the blockade.

The scholars discussed a range of issues related to the blockade and also identified key gaps in research. The issues discussed at the working group included the role of various countries, their ties with Qatar, and the use of tools such as public opinion.

To view the working group agenda, click hereTo read the participants’ biographies, click hereRead more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Abdullah Al-Arian, Georgetown University in QatarAlanoud Al-Maadid, Qatar UniversityMuna Al-Marzouqi, Qatar UniversityIan Almond, Georgetown University in QatarBulent Aras, Sabancı University, TurkeyAbdullah Baabood, University of Cambridge, UKZahra Babar, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarChaïmaa Benkermi, Georgetown University in QatarJuan R.I. Cole, University of Michigan, USJustin Gengler, Qatar University Islam Hassan, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSuzi Mirgani, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarJocelyn Sage Mitchell, Northwestern University in QatarKhushboo Shah, Georgetown University in QatarJames Reardon-Anderson, Georgetown University in QatarDavid B. Roberts, King’s College London, UKElizabeth Wanucha, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSteven Wright, Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar

Article by Islam Hassan, Research Analyst at CIRS

The History and Evolution of American Torture and Secret Prisons (1898–2008)
2019-04-16 12:45 - 14:00
GU-Qatar senior Ritica Ramesh presented her thesis research at a CURA Focused Discussion on April 3, 2019, in a talk entitled “History and Evolution of American Torture and Black Sites (1898–2008).” Ramesh outlined the history of the US government’s use of torture as an official policy in its warfare, going back to the Philippine-American War of 1898. Her initial interest in this topic developed during a semester abroad at Georgetown’s main campus in Washington, DC, when she was researching the criminal justice system, prisons, and punishment in the US.

Ramesh takes the cases of the Philippine-American War (1898–1902), the Vietnam War (1965–1972), and the Global War on Terror (2001–present), to demonstrate how the US government has devoted massive resources to the study and development of torture, and how various techniques have evolved over the last century—including the construction of “the ideal physical space in which to conduct torture,” she said.

Ramesh explained that although the United Nations Convention against Torture includes the physical and psychological aspects of torture in its definition of the term, it is difficult to find a concrete definition of torture due to the political nature of the practice, and because the definition has changed throughout history. Another important term is “black sites,” which she said are “usually—but not always—classified facilities that operate in an extralegal capacity, where clandestine military or intelligence operations are carried out.” The definition of black sites is contested and does not constitute a legal term; this is important because the US government has used black sites extensively to carry out torture.

“After the abolishment of slavery in 1865, torture against African Americans became more institutionalized, and this continued in the form of convict leasing and chain gangs.”

While Ramesh’s primary thesis was on torture conducted by the US government abroad during wartime, the development of torture in early American history took place on American soil. “American torture is closely linked to the domination of Native Americans as well as African Americans,” she said. As part of a domestic imperial project, American military forces frequently targeted indigenous peoples through reservation policies imposed in the late 1700s. During this time, people were forced into concentration camps, starved for days on end, and torture was used as a form of punishment, she said.

Slaves, especially Africans, faced horrendous abuses throughout American history. Slavery was a form of torture, along with practices such as branding people with hot metal, brutal beatings, and rape. Ramesh reported, “After the abolishment of slavery in 1865, torture against African Americans became more institutionalized, and this continued in the form of convict leasing and chain gangs.” She pointed out that in the American south, African Americans “were arrested for pretty much just existing,” and were compelled to perform exhaustive labor without pay under the convict lease system. When that practice was banned, another exploitative scheme arose—that of chain gangs. These are examples of how “the use of torture very much existed in America much before the American colonial project moved abroad,” Ramesh said.

“When the American colonial project began in 1898, America brought with it a very punitive system of policing and punishment that it fully exploited in the Philippines,” Ramesh said. During the Philippine-American War, “local Filipinos were seen as savages who needed harsh methods in order to be civilized like the whites. This really drove much of the American ideology during the Philippine-American War,” Ramesh said.

Interrogators in the Philippines experimented with torture techniques, including stress positions and beatings, and many Filipinos were imprisoned in concentration camps, where overcrowding, starvation, and diseases were very common, according to Ramesh. One of the foremost torture techniques used for the purposes of obtaining confessions in the Philippines was the “water cure,” in which water was forced into a victim’s throat and nose to induce a sensation of drowning. It is extremely painful and known to cause severe psychological trauma. This was a precursor to the torture technique known as waterboarding today, which is illegal under US and international law. However, the Central Intelligence Agency was discovered using waterboarding in secret prisons following the 9/11 attacks, justified as “enhanced interrogation.”

By the Vietnam War, other torture methods had been developed, particularly psychological control. The US government created a program called MKUltra, which studied the usefulness of LSD and other drugs for the purposes of interrogation and torture. The Phoenix Program marked the first time in American history that the government recognized the importance of conducting torture in a specialized physical space. Additionally, Ramesh reported, the US Army and the CIA created interrogation manuals that were used in military training curricula beginning in the late 1980s, but especially after 9/11 to increase effectiveness of torture in places like Guantanamo Bay. “The practice of torture abroad as well as in the domestic sphere are closely interlinked and cannot be separated,” she said.

After 9/11, the CIA opened black sites all around the world, including in Thailand, Afghanistan, Cuba, and Iraq, Ramesh said. However, when these illegal sites were discovered, public anger over US torture practices drove the government to establish floating prisons, which allowed the military to evade international law as well as domestic law, and the practice of torture was continued.

President Trump was vocal about his positive views on torture during the election campaign and throughout his presidency. Although a US senate investigation found that torture is not actually effective, Ramesh said, Trump has openly said that he would bring back the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program and water boarding, because he believes that it works. The rise of international law and norms has not deterred the use of torture, Ramesh said, but it has only encouraged the US government to come up with new evasive strategies.

Ritica Ramesh (class of 2019) is a Georgetown University in Qatar senior majoring in International History with a certificate in American Studies. She served as president of the Human Rights Club and was a founding member of the Future is Female Program. Her main research interests are American history, and the US criminal justice system.

Article by Abdul Rehmaan Qayyum, CURA Research Assistant

Firat Oruc CIRS Faculty Publication Workshop
2019-06-10 09:00 - 17:00
On June 10, 2019, CIRS hosted a Faculty Publication Workshop for Firat Oruc, Assistant Professor of English and Humanities at Georgetown University in Qatar, to discuss his forthcoming book Petromodernity and Film: A Cultural History of the Moving Image in the Arabian Peninsula. Several cinema studies scholars were invited to read parts of the manuscript, and to share their critiques with the author and each other during the one-day meeting. The research pivots around a key, yet unanswered, question: in what ways is the moving image a key source for tracing the cultural and political history of the Arabian Peninsula in the aftermath of the discovery of oil? Although film emerged in the last century as one of the most pervasive forms of communication, its social, historical, and cultural role in the early formations of hydrocarbon modernity in the Arabian Peninsula is yet to be explored.

With the recent regional and global rise of the Arabian Peninsula as a financial and political power, the establishment of film industries has been a shared ambition across these countries. As emergent new players in the regional as well as global media landscape, these countries have not yet achieved a commercially successful and globally influential film industry but have begun laying the foundations for a more sustainable cinematic infrastructure. These efforts toward the development of a film industry not only vary from one country to another but also take place on a peculiar terrain, where financial capacity clashes with “cultural conservatism;” the backing of the rentier state with abrupt official interventions; commercial goals with the arthouse model of the festival circuits; and global ambitions with local constraints. This project places the current Gulf cinema phenomenon in a historical context. The historical dimension brings forth important genealogies of film culture that are rooted in the early formations of hydrocarbon modernity in the region.

This project traces the history of film and visual representation in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula—namely, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, and Saudi Arabia—in six stages: 1) The colonial emergence of cinema in the Arab Gulf in the 1930s under the regulation and monitoring of the British network of administrative personnel; 2) The use of film for publicity and propaganda purposes by the British Empire’s Gulf stations in the 1940s; 3) The production of documentary films by petroleum companies in the 1950s and 60s to represent (make visible) “the magic of oil;” 4) Visual ethnography and expedition films of the Arabian Peninsula by Western travelers, sailors, anthropologists, and archeologists; (5) The use of “militant filmmaking” to support left-leaning popular movements that emerged in the region in the 1960s and 70s; and 6) The emergence of indigenous filmmaking after independence. I argue that the history of the moving image through these stages and beyond offers us an important critical lens to analyze the modern development of Arabian societies and cultures.

The project’s primary objectives: The primary objective of the project is to analyze the historical development film and visual culture in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula; namely, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. The project will offer a narrative of the modern development of Arabian societies and cultures through their visual representation.

Scholarly impact: This project will be the first comprehensive study of the history of film and visual culture in the Arabian Peninsula. It will make a unique original contribution to the scholarship on the cultural history of Arabia, on the one hand, and to world cinema studies, on the other. As such, the project promises to be a key reference source for scholars specializing in these fields. The project is also directly relevant to Qatari society and furthers the priorities established in the Qatar National Vision by constructing a visual cultural history of Qatar (along with other Gulf countries).

Expected outcomes of the project: The project is planned as a monograph for publication with Cornell University Press Persian Gulf Studies series.

To view workshop agenda click hereTo view Participants biographies click here

Participants and Discussants:

Hend F. Alawadhi, Kuwait University

Dale Hudson, New York University Abu DhabiMehran Kamrava, CIRS – Georgetown University in QatarSheetal Majithia, New York University Abu DhabiBindu Menon, Delhi University

Negar Taymoorzadeh, New York UniversityAlia Yunis, Zayed University
