By James M Dorsey Long banned, Christmas has finally, at least tacitly, arrived in Saudi Arabia; just don’t use the name in marketing or be ostentatious about your tree. Coffeeshops serving beverages in red cups with snowflakes on them are ok. So is the sale of soap bars named ‘Tis the Season and Vanilla Bean Noel. Christmas trees that sell at up to US$3,000 a piece are slightly […]
By James M Dorsey Footballers with diametrically opposed views on homosexuality and alcohol consumption have sparked heated controversy about Islamic mores and human and workers’ rights in Qatar’s final stretch in the run-up for next year’s FIFA World Cup. Two things stand out in the controversy beyond the specific arguments put forward by opposing camps. First, some fault lines cut across community lines rather than pit one […]
By James M Dorsey The crown jewel of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increasingly looks like a powder keg that has exploded. Mass protests have for the past month swept Gwadar, a Chinese-dominated Pakistani port city 90 kilometres from the border with Iran that has long been plagued by intermittent protests and Baloch nationalist attacks on Chinese nationals and targets. Making things worse from China’s perspective, a […]
By James M Dorsey Increasingly, compliance with US sanctions against Iran could emerge as a litmus test of the United Arab Emirates’ close ties to the United States. At the sharp edge of a potential rift between the allies is a reportedly recently concluded agreement by a private UAE company to build gas-fired thermal, solar, and wind power plants with a total capacity of 300 megawatts in Iran’s hydrocarbon-rich […]
By James M Dorsey The United States has signalled in advance of next week’s Summit for Democracy that it is unlikely to translate lip service to adherence to human rights and democratic values in the Middle East into a policy that demonstrates seriousness and commitment. In a statement, the State Department said the December 9-10 summit would “set forth an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle […]
By James M Dorsey Russia hopes to blow new life into a proposal for a multilateral security architecture in the Gulf, with the tacit approval of the Biden administration. If successful, the initiative would help stabilise the region, cement regional efforts to reduce tensions, and potentially prevent war-wracked Yemen from emerging as an Afghanistan on the southern border of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Aden and at the […]
By James M Dorsey It has been a good week for United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Headline-grabbing, fast-paced moves reinforce the UAE’s position as a regional power. They highlight the UAE’s willingness to chart a course that increasingly competes with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s regional behemoth; is at times at odds with US policy; and scoffs at assertions of human rights abuse by activists […]
By James M Dorsey, When seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton wore a helmet this weekend featuring the colours of the LGBTI Pride Progress Flag during the debut Qatar Grand Prix, he was challenging more than the Gulf state’s failure to recognise rights. So will the Danish Football Union (DBU), Denmark’s governing soccer body, that announced that its commercial sponsors had agreed to surrender space on training kits […]
James M Dorsey The family of nations is balancing on the edge of an abyss as mushrooming religious and ethnic intolerance becomes the norm. Western as well as non-Western societies have helped paved the road towards the abyss: the West by abandoning the post-World War Two principle of ‘Never Again’ and the non-Western world by never embracing it and failing to adopt the principle of ‘forgive but […]
By James M Dorsey Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki AlFaisal Al Saud must have gotten his tenses mixed up when he asserted in a recently published memoir that no one should underestimate the political importance of Muslims’ commitment to helping other Muslims. Prince Turki’s memoir is focused on Afghanistan, a major preoccupation during his tenure as head of the General Intelligence Department (GID), the kingdom’s foreign intelligence […]
James M Dorsey It may not have been planned or coordinated but efforts by Middle Eastern states to dial down tensions serve as an example of what happens when big power interests coincide. It also provides evidence of the potentially positive fallout of a lower US profile in the region. Afghanistan, the United States’ chaotic withdrawal notwithstanding, could emerge as another example of the positive impact when […]
James M Dorsey Gulf states are in a pickle. They fear that the emerging parameters of a reconfigured US commitment to security in the Middle East threaten to upend a more-than-a-century-old pillar of regional security and leave them with no good alternatives. The shaky pillar is the Gulf monarchies’ reliance on a powerful external ally that, in the words of Middle East scholar Roby C. Barrett, “shares the […]
James M Dorsey Societal struggles and reform often take unexpected turns in vast swaths of land stretching from the Middle East into Central Asia. Take education for example. The Taliban have yet to fulfil their promise to allow girls to return to school but primary and secondary Afghan textbooks appear to be a relative bright spot amid all the doom and gloom about the group’s rule. It’s a bright […]
James M Dorsey On their way from Tel Aviv airport to Jerusalem in 1977 then Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin asked President Anwar Sadat, the first Arab leader to ever officially visit Israel, why the Egyptian military had not moved deeper into the Sinai during the 1973 Middle East war. “You have nuclear arms. Haven’t you heard?” Mr. Sadat replied. Mr. Sadat’s strategic calculations in the war, the […]
James M Dorsey For at least the last two decades, the United Arab Emirates, aided by some of the world’s foremost consulting and public affairs companies, has waged one of, if not the Middle East’s most successful nation branding campaign. The campaign has been supported by cutting edge technological and economic initiatives; a bold and assertive foreign policy backed by the UAE’s financial and military muscle; a […]
James M Dorsey A year of diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel has proven to be mutually beneficial. The question is whether the assumptions underlying the UAE’s initiative that led three other Arab countries to also formalise their relations with the Jewish state will prove to be correct in the medium and long term. UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed laid out the strategic […]
James M Dorsey Indonesian religious affairs minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas set the bar high for President Joko Widodo as well as Nahdlatul Ulama, the religious backbone of Mr. Widodo’s government when he laid out the agenda for his country’s presidency of the Group of 20. The G20 groups the world’s largest economies. Speaking to the G20 Interfaith Forum in Bologna as Italy prepared to handover its presidency to […]
James M Dorsey The Taliban’s record in recent weeks on making good on promises to respect human and women’s rights as well as uphold freedom of the press is mixed at best. Afghanistan’s neighbours and near-neighbours are not holding their breath even if some are willing to give the Central Asian country’s new rulers the benefit of the doubt. A litmus test of Taliban willingness to compromise […]
James M Dorsey The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan may help Iran reduce its international isolation. At least, that’s what the Islamic Republic hopes when leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) gather in Tajikistan next weekend. Members are admitted to the eight-member China-led SCO that also groups Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, by unanimous consensus. Iran, unlike its rivals in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the […]
James M Dorsey The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan perpetuates a paradigm of failed governance in the Muslim world based on a centuries-old alliance between Islamic scholars and the state that, according to scholar Ahmet T Kuru, explains underdevelopment in many Muslim-majority states and authoritarianism in most. The takeover also highlights that, in a twist of irony, a majority of competitors for Muslim religious soft power, leadership of […]
James M Dorsey The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will likely clarify what the Gulf’s security options are. Gulf states are likely to monitor how Russia and China handle the perceived security vacuum and security threats in the wake of the US withdrawal and abandonment, for all practical matters, of Central Asia. It will tell Gulf states to what degree Russia and China may be viable alternatives for […]
James M Dorsey Pakistani efforts to exploit the Taliban victory in Afghanistan threaten to reinforce ultra-conservative inclinations in Pakistan itself, the world’s second-most populous Muslim majority country, long accused of supporting militant religious groups. The notion that religious ultra-conservatism may not remain contained to Afghanistan may be one reason why US President Joe Biden decided to effectively abandon Central Asia with his withdrawal of US forces from […]
James M Dorsey Afghanistan is showing the United Arab Emirates the downside of being a haven for deposed leaders and exiled politicians whose wealth is reportedly parked without question in Emirati financial institutions. The latest arrival in the UAE, former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, denied this week allegations by Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan, Zahir Aghbar, that he had stolen US$169 million from state coffers and an assertion by the Russian […]
By James M Dorsey Abu Omar Khorasani was taken from Kabul’s Pul-i-Charkhi prison and unceremoniously shot. The first and only person to have been executed since the Taliban gained full control of Afghanistan, Mr. Khorasani was the head of the Islamic State in South Asia until he was arrested by government forces last year. The precise circumstances of his execution are not known. His killing was, however, […]
By James M Dorsey Having taken control, the Taliban want the world to believe that they have become more pragmatic and inclusive in the twenty years since they brutally ruled Afghanistan. Whether true or not, will be determined by the group’s attitudes towards jihadists and other militants, ethnic and religious minorities, women, and governance. To be fair, the Taliban despite controlling all of Afghanistan since Sunday, including […]
James M Dorsey Taliban advances in Afghanistan shift the Central Asian playing field on which China, India and the United States compete with rival infrastructure-driven approaches. At first glance, a Taliban takeover of Kabul would give China a 2:0 advantage against the US and India, but that could prove to be a shaky head start. The potential fall of the US-backed Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani […]
James M Dorsey Israel’s first post-Netanyahu government is seeking to rebuild fractured relations with the Jewish Diaspora and rebrand the country as a liberal rather than an illiberal democracy against the backdrop of uncertainty about future US policy towards the Middle East and continued unconditional backing of the Jewish state. Uncertainty about US reliability has been reinforced by the US negotiation with the Taliban and subsequent withdrawal […]
James M Dorsey This month’s indictment of a billionaire, one-time advisor and close associate of former US President Donald J. Trump, on charges of operating as an unregistered foreign agent in the United States for the United Arab Emirates highlights the successes and pitfalls of a high-stakes Emirati effort to influence US policy. The indictment of businessman Thomas J. Barrack, who maintained close ties to UAE Crown Prince […]
James M Dorsey A recent unprecedented alliance between Muslims and Evangelicals takes on added significance in a world in which human rights are on the defensive, religious groups tend to forge political as well as ideational partnerships, and the role of the clergy in multiple Muslim-majority countries has come under scrutiny. The alliance potentially could create a platform for voices in the Muslim world, particularly the Middle East, […]
James M Dorsey A major Muslim and Evangelical organization joined forces this week to significantly advance hitherto state-backed ceremonial inter-faith dialogues that seldom go beyond platitudes and lofty statements. This week’s launch at a Washington DC mosque of an inter-faith alliance and a book published by the Institute for Humanitarian Islam and the Germany-based World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) as well as the Center for Shared Civilizational Values constitutes an […]
