February 8, 2010

"Peace-making Requires Applying the Law"

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- Of the many long-running conflicts that see two communities competing for the same piece of land, three in particular have always caught my attention: Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Palestine-Israel. The first is on the way to being resolved through peaceful political negotiations, with another advance this week in the areas of police powers and administration of justice. The Cyprus conflict has long lost its military edge, and shows signs of moving towards a breakthrough, due to both internal leadership changes and external pressures and inducements.

February 3, 2010

"A Bad Spell of Big Power Behavior"

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- This has been a revealing but worrying few days for the exercise of power by some of the world's strongest countries. China showed the world that it could be just as silly as other powers in trying to use economic sanctions as punitive diplomatic tools. Hilary Clinton showed that a woman can be just as idiotic as a man when articulating foreign policy principles that also relate to the use of sanctions to change the behavior of other countries. The worst moment of the week, however, was the sight of the snake-like Tony Blair once again showing us how otherwise intelligent, articulate leaders can also comfortably splash around in the underbrush of human deceit and political arrogance.

February 1, 2010

"Arab Society and Men with Guns"

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

AMMAN -- Every time I go to a conference or workshop on civil society and non-governmental organizations in the Arab world, I come away with the same mixed feelings of despondency and pride. I am despondent because decades of work and tens of millions of dollars of local and foreign money that have been spent on strengthening civil society have had very limited impact on the quality of life of ordinary citizens in our region. Civil society institutions continue to be almost totally at the mercy of state power and controls.

January 27, 2010

Signals of Change from Syria

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

DAMASCUS -- I have been traveling to Syria regularly for 40 years, and every time I visit Damascus I make time to go to the old city and the spectacular early 8th Century AD Umayyad Mosque. The timeless beauty and power of the place are always dazzling, no matter how many times you experience it.

January 25, 2010

The Arab Quest for Freedom and Democracy

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- The epic story of the modern Arab world -- largely untold in our societies and unappreciated around the world -- has been the quest by ordinary men and women for reforms that would allow our societies to break the chains of three predominant trends that have plagued us: autocratic political regimes, a seemingly permanent state of post-colonial distortion and dependence, and an inability to tap our human and natural resources to match the Western or Asian developmental bursts that have left us coughing in their dust.

January 20, 2010

Low Marks for Obama’s Year One

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- The first anniversary of Barack Obama’s presidency is a good time to review his performance in the Middle East, and the Middle East’s performance vis-à-vis the United States. The exercise is depressing, but useful, especially on the Arab-Israeli conflict that remains the central destabilizing factor in the wider region. It is unfair only to measure Obama’s performance, and ignore the Israeli and Arab principal players in this prolonged drama of stalemate and stagnation.

January 18, 2010

Will European Action Follow Rhetoric?

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- Just as the United States apparently is gearing up for phase two of its foray into Arab-Israeli peace-making diplomacy, some Europeans seem to be awakening from their long slumber on the issue. Several symbolic or rhetorical gestures in recent weeks indicate that the European Union wants at least to raise its voice and its profile on Arab-Israeli peace-making. Their approach is intriguing, given Europe’s potential to play a more activist role in promoting the rule of law as the basis for any negotiated agreement.

January 13, 2010

Students and Smoothies on Huntington Avenue

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BOSTON -- I am often asked why I maintain the slightly naïve expectation that the United States will one day pursue policies in the Middle East that are fair to all in our region, and also comply with international law and core American values. My answer is, in part: Professor Denise Horn’s Globalization and International Affairs class INTL 1101 at Northeastern University in Boston.

January 11, 2010

The US Media’s Misconception of Terrorism

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- It has been depressing this week to watch mainstream American television networks cover Yemen and wider issues related to tensions and terrorism in our region. It is depressing because -- with very few exceptions -- the mass media that provides the majority of Americans with their news and views of world events is covering the Yemen story with a shocking combination of amateurism, ideological distortion, and selectivity. If the mass media is a mirror of the political system in the United States -- and I believe it is -- then it is no wonder that the past two decades have seen a steady expansion of two related and symbiotic problems: the spread of terrorism in and from the Arab-Asian region, and the spread of the American armed forces and covert operations in the same region.

January 6, 2010

Wisdom in Yemen

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared a few days ago that the United Kingdom and the United States would soon convene a special summit on “stabilizing” Yemen in order to reduce the threat of terrorism emanating from there, I cried in my heart for Yemen. My fears were exacerbated when I read the following day that the US’ top military commander in the region had visited Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to offer support, and pledged more financial and military assistance to defeat the growing presence of Al-Qaeda’s operation in the Arabian Peninsula that is domiciled in Yemen.

December 30, 2009

"From Yemen to Detroit, A Grim Year Ends"

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

VILNIUS, Lithuania -- In my desire to get a fresh perspective on the Middle East and also enjoy a white Christmas and New Year's eve full of snow, my wife and I traveled to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and succeeded in achieving both aims, along with seeing some dear old friends. The view of Vilnius in the snow is enchanting, but the view back towards the Middle East is frightening. An end-of-year glance around the region suggests that -- hard as it may be to believe -- political conditions have deteriorated to a large extent in many parts of our region, and very few countervailing improvements can also be noted.

December 7, 2009

Is Turkey the Only Real Country in the Middle East?

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

ISTANBUL -- Every time I visit Turkey I ask myself what is it that makes me marvel at the many political and economic developments that make it stand out as the most impressive country in the greater Middle East. Watching Turkey's significant foreign policy initiatives these days to cement good relations with its neighbors, I think I understand why: This is the only country in the Middle East region that acts like a normal, mature country.

December 2, 2009

Crisis Brings Dubai a Political Challenge

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

DUBAI -- The recent opening of an exhibition of contemporary art at Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island arts and culture complex aptly captured the core issue related to the financial stress that sister emirate Dubai is experiencing. The exhibition is entitled "Disorientation II," which is a good description of what is going on in Dubai these days as it struggles to regain investor confidence while delaying repayment of tens of billions of dollars of debt.

AP Photo

November 29, 2009

"Towering Dubai Was Sure to Topple"

Sunday Herald

By Azeem Ibrahim, Research Fellow, International Security Program

"...Abu Dhabi is likely to at least help prevent Dubai from defaulting on its debt again. Over the next ten years or so, it is unlikely that Dubai will regain its record of unsteady unsupported growth. Rather, it is likely to grow at a slower but more sustainable rate. And maybe by the time the investors return in a few years time, the Government will have built some roads to those speculative skyscrapers now stranded in the sands of the Arabian desert."

November, 2009

The Cross-Border Financial Impact of Violence

By Mohamad M. Al-Ississ, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

This paper argues that violent events have two economic effects: a direct loss from the destruction of physical and human capital, and a reallocation of financial and economic resources. It documents the positive cross-border impact that follows violent events as a result of this reallocation. Thus, it reconciles the two existing perspectives in the literature on whether violence has a small or large economic  effect.  Our results show that, in globally integrated markets, the substitution of financial and economic activities away from afflicted countries magnifies their losses. This study evaluates certain factors affecting the impact of violence in non-event countries. Geographic distance from the event country is not monotonic in its effect on the valuation of equities of other countries. Also, the safer a non-event country is perceived to be relative to the event country, the greater the positive impact on its financial market. Finally, event countries with deeper financial markets are less susceptible to capital reallocation following an event.

November, 2009

Applying For-Profit Principles in Water Management and Agricultural Policy in the Middle East and North Africa

By Mohamad M. Al-Ississ, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

Through its partnerships with the government, the agricultural sector in the MENA has long engaged in dubious accounting practices to raise its reported profits through artificially suppressing its costs. This has led to the current unsustainable exploitation of the scarce water resources in the region.

November, 2009

Private Higher Education in the GCC: Best Practices in Governance, Quality Assurance and Funding, Executive Summary

By Rasmus Bertelsen, Former Research Fellow, Dubai Initiative, 2008–2009; Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy, 2006–2008.

The Gulf region has for the last 15 years seen a vast expansion of private higher education in an effort to increase higher education capacity beyond national systems, develop human resources, and diversify national economies away from oil and gas resources. The examples of classical American- and French-system private universities in Beirut and Cairo and their contribution to human and socioeconomic development are strong reasons for supporting private higher education. However, there are important shortcomings in the governance, quality assurance and funding of especially for-profit higher education, which must be overcome for this sector to positively contribute to development. This policy brief outlines the strengths and weaknesses of private higher education, best practices in governance, quality assurance and funding: non-profit, independence and commitment to academic excellence; the consequences of Western accreditation; and non-profit and endowment-based finance.

November, 2009

Oil, Labor Markets, and Economic Diversification in the GCC: An Empirical Assessment

By Tarek Coury, Associate, The Dubai Initiative and Chetan Dave

In a bid to reduce their dependency on oil and natural gas revenues, GCC governments have recently invested considerable resources to diversify their economies.This paper provides an empirical assessment of economic diversification in the GCC for the period 1980-2005. In particular we assess whether oil and natural gas revenues, government policies and foreign flows of labor have contributed to greater economic diversification, proxied by real growth in non-hydrocarbon GDP per worker. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that analyzes economic diversification in the Gulf using panel data techniques that explicitly treat the GCC as an economic block.

We find that lagged hydrocarbon revenue is the only variable consistently associated with subsequent economic diversification; this is in contrast to government expenditures whose impact on diversification is negative, large, and significant. We also find that population growth has little impact on either growth of overall GDP per worker or non-hydrocarbon GDP per worker; we present an economic growth model that takes into account features of the labor market structure in the Gulf to explain this finding. Finally, we present some empirical evidence consistent with claims of greater macroeconomic and financial integration within the GCC.

November, 2009

The Ties that Bind: the Dolphin Project and Intra-GCC Relations

By Justin Dargin, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

Qatar was the force behind the creation of the Dolphin Project (Dolphin), a much reduced form of the pan-GCC pipeline, envisioned at the November 1989 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit meeting as the most ambitious domestic Middle Eastern gas project ever undertaken. As originally conceived, a transnational pipeline was to weld the national gas grids of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE into a single integrated bloc. Qatar's enormous North Field, the largest associated natural gas field in the world, became the centerpiece of this vision.

November, 2009

Securing the Peace: The Battle over Ethnicity and Energy in Modern Iraq

By Justin Dargin, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

This article examines the legal and political impediments to the Kurdish Regional Government's (KRG) exploration and production contracts, which the central government in Baghdad has refused to recognize. The newly established Iraqi national constitution significantly opened as many petroleum-control questions as it resolved. Negotiated in 2005, the constitution not only separated branches of government, but established Federalism as its lodestar. When faced with unresolved issues over regional and national control over petroleum resources, however, International Oil Companies (IOCs) function in an ambiguous legal environment that fails to clearly distinguish between federal and regional powers.

November, 2009

Export Control Development in the United Arab Emirates: From Commitments to Compliance

By Bryan Early, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

The swiftness with which the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has launched its civil nuclear program presents a number of challenges for policymakers in seeking to ensure the program's safety and security. At the onset of its efforts, the UAE government consulted with a set of the world's leading nuclear suppliers to develop a framework that would help its nuclear program conform to the highest standards in terms of safety, security, and nonproliferation. The UAE drew on these consultations in making a sweeping set of international commitments in April 2008 to ensure that the sensitive nuclear materials and technologies it would acquire as part of its nuclear program would be securely controlled.1 While the UAE has been widely praised for the depth and breadth of the nonproliferation commitments it has made, it will be the UAE's efficacy at complying with them by which its success will be judged.

November, 2009

Strategies for Acquiring Foreign Nuclear Assistance in the Middle East: Lessons from the United Arab Emirates

By Bryan Early, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

The path to acquiring a peaceful civilian nuclear program is fraught with challenges for countries in the Middle East. Given Israel's proactive policies in preventing the proliferation of its neighbors and nuclear supplier states' consternation about the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region, Arab states face  a number of unique obstacles in acquiring foreign nuclear assistance. Yet as the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) recent success in courting the assistance of a number of nuclear supplier states demonstrates, these obstacles are not insurmountable. This piece explores the UAE's strategies in obtaining foreign nuclear assistance to uncover the generalizable insights that may be of use to other Middle Eastern countries seeking to develop peaceful nuclear programs.

November, 2009

Health Financing and Health Outcomes in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

By Marwa Farag, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

This policy brief is based on analysis conducted in the paper entitled "Health Financing and Health Outcomes in the Eastern Mediterranean Region". An overview of health financing and health outcomes in the region using crosscountry and over-time comparisons (1995-2006) shows that, as expected, there is great variation among countries in the region in terms of health spending, health inputs, and health outcomes, with one extreme being Afghanistan, which spent less than 50 constant international dollars on health per capita per year, and the other being Qatar with a per capita health spending exceeding 2,500 constant international dollars in the period 1995 to 2006. This variation in health spending is echoed in health outcomes with more than 250 under-5 deaths per 1000 live births in Afghanistan, while it is less than 10 per 1000 live births in the United Arab Emirates. This pattern of health spending and health outcomes clearly demonstrates the very different stages at which health care systems in the region operate, and hence the different nature of challenges and health issues facing these countries.

November, 2009

Health Financing and Health Outcomes in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

By Marwa Farag, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

This paper presents an overview of health spending and health outcomes in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region over the time period 1995-2006, using cross-country and over-time comparisons. Overall, the region experienced improvements in health outcomes measured in terms of reductions in infant, under-5 child mortality and maternal mortality. However, there are notable exceptions to this trend of declining mortality in countries such as Afghanistan. In addition to providing an overview of changes in health outcomes and health spending over the 12-year period, the paper examines the following two issues:

1) The responsiveness of health care spending to changes in a country's income, and

2) The impact of spending on health care services on health outcomes.

November, 2009

An Enhanced Engagement Moving Beyond Security Training for the Palestinian Authority

By Naseem Khuri, Former Executive Director, The Dubai Initiative

As part of its ongoing campaign to facilitate the development of a Palestinian state, the United States has made strides in empowering security forces within the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). Yet without further training in key areas of diplomacy, governance and public communication, the U.S. cannot adequately address growing concerns of factional strife, increased suspicion of trainee behavior in the West Bank and the perception of excessive American interference in internal Palestinian affairs. Beyond ongoing negotiations with Israel and security training, U.S. policy must address core capacity-building needs within the P.A. in its struggle to govern effectively a future Palestinian state.

November, 2009

The Blueprint: A History of Dubai’s Spatial Development Through Oil Discovery

By Stephen J. Ramos, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

While oil discovery brought revenue to Dubai and would change the city's physiognomy, moving it beyond the initial three settlements along the creek, it is clear that Dubai's status as a dynamic entrepôt for international trade and transshipment, its foundational infrastructure projects, and its "free port" policies to attract merchant communities from throughout the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, along with licit and illicit trade for re-export to Persia/Iran and India, were solidly established before "black gold" was struck in Fateh field.

November, 2009

What Accounts for the Success of Islamist Parties in the Arab World

By Michael Robbins, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

Islamist organizations are generally considered to be the strongest and most credible opposition to incumbent regimes throughout the Arab world. Fear of Islamic takeovers has led regimes and outside powers to justify the suppression of free elections by citing the Algerian election of 1991, the Iranian Revolution, the AKP victory in Turkey, and the perceived popularity of Islamist opposition groups throughout much of the Arab world (Brumberg 2002). Yet, other analysts have questioned the actual strength of Islamist movements, noting that although Islamists may be the main challengers, few have actually been successful in taking power (Roy 1994).

November, 2009

What Accounts for the Success of Islamist Parties in the Arab World

By Michael Robbins, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

Islamist organizations are generally considered to be the strongest and most credible opposition to incumbent regimes throughout the Arab world. Fear of Islamic takeovers has led regimes and other outside powers to justify not holding free elections, citing examples that include the Algerian election of 1991, the Iranian Revolution, the AKP victory in Turkey and the perceived popularity of Islamist opposition groups throughout much of the Arab world (Brumberg 2002). Yet, other analysts have questioned the actual strength of Islamist movements within the Arab world, noting that although Islamists may be the main challenger, few have actually been successful in taking power (Roy 1994).

October 30, 2009

Iran: Reform of Energy Subsidies

Monthly Review

By Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

At long last and after decades of talking about doing something about the subsidies, there is a bill before Iran's majlis to target (but not remove) subsidies.  I could not locate the bill itself but my impression is that it only addresses energy subsidies and not other subsidies such as food and medicine.  So far only 5 of the bill's 14 articles have been passed, but the government already has the mandate to raise prices on energy products over the next five years

Jeannie Sowers

October 21, 2009

Damietta Mobilizes for Its Environment

Middle East Report Online

By Jeannie Sowers, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative and Sharif Elmusa

In 2008, Egypt's Mediterranean port city of Damietta saw escalating protest against EAgrium, a Canadian consortium building a large fertilizer complex in Ra's al-Barr. Ra's al-Barr sits at the end of an estuary, where the Damietta branch of the Nile River joins the Mediterranean. It is a prime destination for vacationing Egyptians in the summertime and the location of the year-round residences of the Damiettan elite. Fishermen ply the waters offshore. When plans for the fertilizer complex were announced, a coalition of locals feared that all three sources of income -- tourism, real estate and fishing -- would be jeopardized by emissions into the air and water. As summer temperatures climbed and the protests mounted, the government found itself caught between its contractual obligations to international investors and a well-organized local movement opposed to the project on both environmental and developmental grounds.

September 30, 2009

Partnering for Progress in the Middle East

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- At almost every international or regional gathering these days on how to fix the assorted problems and deficiencies in the Middle East, a common theme keeps popping up: What is the most effective and legitimate way for foreign parties -- governments, international agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities or companies -- to help achieve advances in areas like human rights, economic growth, social protection, democratization, or technological advancement?

AP Photo

September 30, 2009

Iran Sanctions: Who Really Wins?

The Brookings Institution

By Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

US and Iranian representatives meet this week at a time when trust between the two countries is at a low ebb following the revelation last week of a previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear facility under construction and the test firing of Iran's long-range missiles on September 28. Meanwhile, the Obama administration's policy of engagement with Iran has emerged as little more than the old policy of "carrots and sticks."

September 21, 2009

Souvenir Photo at the UN

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

BEIRUT -- No concrete results are expected from the September 22 meeting at the United Nations among US President Barack Obama, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (I write this the morning of the 22nd in Beirut, before the meeting takes place). This marks the end of phase 1 of Obama’s intriguing foray into Arab-Israeli peace-making.

September 21, 2009

Climate Change in the Arab World

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

COPENHAGEN -- The amount and quality of available scientific data on the global impact of climate change is staggering -- as I rediscovered at a seminar organized by the Danish foreign ministry in Copenhagen this week. The debate that swirled around the issues of climate change and global warming just two or three years ago has vanished. There is much more certainty now on the nature and extent of the changes to the Earth’s climate that can be attributed to the impact of human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

September 16, 2009

Going All the Way with Iran

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

NEW YORK -- The United State is juggling four critical and increasingly linked foreign policy issues in Palestine/Israel, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, but seems to be making little headway as we approach critical junctures in all four. A different approach seems worth pondering.

September 14, 2009

Thoughts While Flying to New York on September 11, 2009

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

NEW YORK -- I marked the eighth anniversary Friday of the 9/11 terror attack in the United States by flying from Beirut to New York -- apt symbols of their wider American and Arab societies that in so many sectors are locked in an ongoing confrontation that includes the use of violence by both sides. This day of remembrance occurred at a time when the United States was refocusing seriously on waging the hitherto inconclusive “global war on terror” in Afghanistan.

September 9, 2009

Work to Do on West-Middle East Relations

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

HAMBURG, Germany -- I had the pleasure in Hamburg this week of sharing a panel discussion with two impressive people -- Iranian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, and former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer. The gathering, sponsored by the Korber Foundation to discuss "The Future of the Middle East,",confirmed that we have much work to do on the issue of when, and whether, powerful Western countries have the responsibility and/or the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Third World countries.

September 2, 2009

Nothing to Celebrate in Libya Today

Agence Global

By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative

If there is a moment, a place, a person, and a legacy that come together to bring sadness to all Arabs, they are upon us this week in the 40th anniversary of the September 1, 1969 revolution that brought Col. Muammar Gaddafi to power. There is nothing to celebrate today in Libya, other than a colossal waste of that country's human and natural resources over four decades.