The Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center will be holding its fifth annual conference on Wednesday, December 8, and Thursday, December 9, 2021, to delve deeper into what to expect in 2022.

Amid a region beset by civil wars and terrorism, the Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council are facing growing challenges from an increasingly youthful population, aging rulers, economic pressures, and a new information environment.

Upcoming elections in Bahrain are likely to prompt more opposition protests, rather than providing a means of channeling and containing opposition activity.

Scholars, analysts, and activists from across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States will examine the forces at work in the Gulf.

It is almost one year since al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, Bahrain’s largest legal opposition group, ended its boycott of parliament and won seventeen of forty seats in November 2006 elections. Compared to the repressive era of the 1990s, it is a remarkable achievement--for the group and for King Hamad’s program of gradual political liberalization.