Current Analysis Yemen's Imposed Federal Boundaries With the war in Yemen well past its hundredth day, confusion persists as to the underlying causes of the conflict. Far from a sectarian proxy war [http://www.merip.org/mer/mer273/breakdown-gcc-initiative] between Shafi‘is under the patronage of Saudi Arabia and Zaydis backed by Iran, as the mainstre Tobias Thiel • 4 min read
Current Analysis Tunisia's Rotten Compromise Since the 2011 Arab uprisings gave way to the dreadful combination of civil war and terrorism that has spread from Syria to Libya and Yemen, analysts and political actors from both the Arab world and West have felt an acute need for at least one success story in the region. Tunisia has provided such Nadia Marzouki • 18 min read
Current Analysis Yemen Is Starving, and We're Partly to Blame Twenty million people in Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, are at risk of dying from hunger or thirst. That’s 80 percent of the country’s population, which according to UN agencies badly needs emergency supplies of food and water, along with fuel and medicine. This almost unimaginable c Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis Youth in Turkey’s 2015 Elections On June 7, Turkish citizens went to the polls [http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/election/default.htmlhttp://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/election/default.html] to elect the 550 members of the Grand National Assembly. Although the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 41 percent of the vote, it Aydin Özipek • 3 min read
Current Analysis The Multiple Wars in Yemen With UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva involving the usual suspects and only a few new faces, it is time to raise the question of Yemen’s future as a state. The talks involve exiled President ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the Houthi movement Ansar Allah and minor figures from the long-time ruling Gener Anne-Linda Amira Augustin, Susanne Dahlgren • 5 min read
Current Analysis Yemen Talks in Geneva On June 8, Yemen’s (self-)exiled president, ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, conveyed his ideas about UN-sponsored talks in Geneva, due to start on June 15, and downplayed their scope. The conversations are to take place mainly between politicians handpicked by him and his Saudi hosts, on the one hand, and Gabriele vom Bruck • 4 min read
Current Analysis Conflict, Forced Migration and Property Claims Amidst widespread fighting in Iraq and Syria, millions of distressed civilians have fled their homes. In Yemen as well, war has led to mass displacement as people try to escape threats to their lives and livelihoods. These instances of forced migration create overwhelming immediate problems such as Sandra Joireman, Jon Unruh • 3 min read
Current Analysis Matariyya, Egypt's New Theater of Dissent On June 6, two police officers will stand trial for torturing Karim Hamdi, a 27 year-old lawyer, to death on a cold February evening inside the Matariyya police station in eastern metropolitan Cairo. The identities of the officers are protected by a gag order, but the widely publicized images of the Amira Howeidy • 16 min read
Current Analysis Letter of Support by Colleagues and Personal Friends of Emad Shahin For those familiar with even the barest facts of the case, the provisional sentence of Emad al-Din Shahin to death seems appalling. Professor Shahin is a widely respected and accomplished academic who has taught at Notre Dame, Harvard, Georgetown, the American University in Cairo and George Washingt (Author not identified) • 3 min read
Current Analysis Jordan's Longest War More than any other Arab country, Jordan was linked to nearly every major twentieth-century war in the Middle East. War in the Arabian Peninsula propelled the kingdom’s future rulers, the Hashemites, to come to British-controlled Transjordan in the 1920s. The Palestinian Arab revolt in the 1930s and Pete Moore • 3 min read
Current Analysis Breaking Even, Breaking Down or Going for Broke? As of mid-May 2015, crude oil prices had fallen to the lowest level in recent years, under $60 a barrel for US domestic benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and about $66 a barrel for the international Brent benchmark [http://www.oil-price.net/]. These market prices are compared to several types Karen Pfeifer • 6 min read
Current Analysis The Lessons Algeria Can Teach Today's Middle East As we witness today the escalating horrors across the Middle East—acute insecurity, combined with varying degrees of violence, death and destruction, from Libya and Egypt, to Syria, Iraq and now Yemen, we may want to recall the Algerian experience of the 1990s and consider some lessons to be drawn f Miriam R. Lowi • 4 min read
