Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Israel-Palestinian peace process is effectively dead, argues Carnegie's Nathan Brown in his new commentary. If the international community wishes to revive the two-state solution, a much longer-term strategy is required, focusing in part on rebuilding a stronger Palestinian leadership.
WASHINGTON, June 7--Sufism—a mystical form of Islam that has flourished in the Muslim world for centuries—has enjoyed a strong revival in Central Asia.
Without strong secular parties, political competition in the Arab world could be reduced to a dangerous head-on confrontation between Islamist parties and the incumbent governments. Yet secular parties are clearly facing a crisis in the Arab world as they struggle for influence, relevance, and in some cases, survival.
Algeria’s May 17 parliamentary election is just one week away. The ruling party is expected to maintain its majority, and the results will reflect rather than alter the real balance of forces within the executive branch of the state. The key issue is the power relationship between the civilian and military branches of the ruling elite.
The role of Islam in the formally secular state of Uzbekistan remains a potentially volatile issue. Critics of President Karimov often cite his hard-line stance on radical Islam as a cornerstone of his authoritarian regime. It remains vitally important that both domestic and international actors understand the influence of Islam in Uzbekistan.
In a new Carnegie Paper, "Evaluating Political Reform in Yemen," Sarah Phillips, a specialist on Yemeni politics, assesses the significance of Yemen’s limited democratic reforms since national unification and recommends steps that Yemeni and foreign actors can take to promote more meaningful reform.