AP Photo
April 29, 2009
"Ending Arab Corruption"
Agenda
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
The Arab Anti-Corruption Organization (AACO) is one of several institutions in the Arab world working to break through -- or at least chip away at -- the steel wall that protects the prevailing centralized, autocratic power structures.
February 11, 2011
“Egypt is Free!”: The Post-Mubarak Future
In the News
By Ashraf Hegazy, Former Executive Director, The Dubai Initiative and Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
Ashraf Hegazy, Executive Director of the Dubai Initiative, and Senior Fellow Rami Khouri participate in a special roundtable broadcast with NPR On Point's Tom Ashbrook about the post-Mubarak
Mudsi
December 29, 2007
"Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? We All Did"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Globe and Mail
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
"The tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto has engulfed Pakistan in grief and turmoil. But her death symbolizes the wider calamity that envelops us all - throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the United States. The real significance of this killing - and the others sure to follow - is not their surprise, but rather how common, almost inevitable, this sort of event has become in our part of the world. If we wish to end this horror show engulfing more Arab-Asian regions, and increasingly sucking in American and other Western armies, we should get serious about what it means and why it happens."
AP Photo
October 29, 2007
"U.S.-Iran Relations Feel Coming Frost"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Metro Boston
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
The United States has acted unilaterally once again and hit Iran with sanctions against three of that nations state banks and, by proxy, its military and Revolutionary Guard. Now what? According to Rami Khouri, it's too soon to tell. In the short term, Khouri says the U.S. may succeed in bolstering support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ruling regime and fueling criticism of U.S. policy toward a Revolutionary Guard it has labeled a terrorist group. In the long run, U.S.-Iranian relations and relationships between Iran and its neighboring countries may hang in the balance.
AP Photo
October 21, 2007
"Filling out Forms and Arab State Stability"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
The improvement in citizen services shown in Arab state bureaucracies buys time for these governments to improve parliamentary elections, economic openness, and other important democratic changes -- at least for a while.
October 17, 2007
"Arabs Won't Be Rice's Rabbit-in-the-Hat"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
Despite Condoleezza Rice's sudden earnestness, the Arabs will not come to Annapolis to resolve magically all the disastrous policies and actions perpetrated on the Middle East by the United States and Israel during the Bush years.
October 15, 2007
"Hizbullah's New Horse-trading"
Magazine or Newspaper Article
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
The status of Hizbullah has become central to any discussion of events in Lebanon, which in turn instantly takes you -- like clicking on a political hyperlink -- to other sites in the region, given its linkages with Syria, Iran, Hamas, Palestine in general, Israel, other Shiites populations, and various Islamist and nationalist movements.
October 7, 2007
"Avoiding the Mistakes of Camp David"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
In preparation for the November peace talks in Annapolis, President Mahmoud Abbas should listen to the Palestinian people and come with a prepared agenda of some consensus. This is how to overcome being seen as an Israeli-American puppet -- an avoidance that is the minimum for the possibility of successful peace negotiations.
October 1, 2007
"Why Myanmar’s Monks Mix Religion and Politics"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
Why am I not surprised that the latest spontaneous popular revolt against an authoritarian government -- in Myanmar -- has been sparked and led on the streets by religious figures? Because men and women of organized faith have regularly taken the lead in populist movements for political change throughout the world in recent decades. Myanmar should help clarify parallels in the Middle East and other regions, where religious and political forces are at play simultaneously in society. The people and institutions of religion are usually the last resort available to ordinary men and women who find themselves degraded by their own autocratic systems or foreign oppression. Prominent examples in our lifetime include Martin Luther King and the American civil rights movement, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Bishop Desmond Tutu and the end of the South African Apartheid regime, Jaime Cardinal Sin who helped overthrow the Marcos regime in the Philippines, Hamas and Hizbullah's challenge to the Palestinian and Lebanese authorities, respectively, the Muslim Brotherhood's challenge to the Egyptian regime, and the collective role of the Catholic Church in overthrowing repressive regimes throughout Latin America and Eastern Europe.
September 26, 2007
"Transforming Weakness into Magnificence"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner a few days ago offered a very apt, very French, comment on the real significance of the Middle East peace conference the United States hopes to convene this Fall, calling it “a very light, weak, magnificent possibility." US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the matter slightly more interesting a few days ago when she announced that the United States would hope to invite the members of the Arab follow-up peace committee to participate, among whom are Syria and Lebanon. September 24, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel welcomed Syrian participation, as long as Syria played by the rules established by the United States and the international Quartet’s “road map” for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
