Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
GCC countries are caught up in Chinese-U.S. competition over tech infrastructure. A failure to appease both powers risks endangering critical relationships.
The shifting relationships between armies and civil society are revealing new balances within defense structures.
A renewed NATO-Middle East cooperation can strengthen the security architecture of the Middle East.
Sada launches its first eBook, a collection of essays that explores the region’s deep political changes since the Arab uprisings.
Amid rising terror threats, meaningful security sector reform risks being delayed indefinitely.
Falling government revenues are pushing Bahrain’s government to implement economic reforms, but it will need to make political concessions to pursue long-term changes.
Upcoming elections in Bahrain are likely to prompt more opposition protests, rather than providing a means of channeling and containing opposition activity.
The recent efforts to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization puts Bahrain’s leadership at odds with its domestic ally against the Shia opposition.
Bahrain remains mired in a political stalemate with little serious progress toward reconciliation and reform, but few signs of a return to the acute instability of 2011. Why has reconciliation been elusive, and will it remain so? Four experts on Bahrain weigh in.
The responses of Gulf Cooperation Council countries to the 2011 uprisings only reinforce a culture of state dependency.
Restoring trust amid Bahrain's highly polarized society will need a much more substantial approach to the country’s problems.
The crackdowns have only increased, but human rights defenders have gained significant political capital.
Bahrain’s Shi‘a-led demonstrations were quickly followed by Sunni-led counter-protests. Do these new movements represent a genuine shift in the political landscape?
Whispers of a Bahraini-Saudi union have long abounded. Yet only recently has the matter been discussed realistically—most visibly during May 14’s GCC meeting. Is such a union possible?
The media and the state are fighting to control the narrative both at home and abroad.
The opposition is splitting up—but so are supporters of the regime.
Bahrain’s Independent Commission of Inquiry has confirmed virtually every criticism of the regime that surfaced in the past ten month. As the opposition is emboldened to demand sweeping changes, the regime shows no signs that more moderate figures will reassert themselves.
In the wake of the region’s political tremors, Gulf monarchies are claiming reform of their security sectors. But are the changes enough—and are they genuine?
By continuing repressive tactics and assigning the National Dialogue’s leadership to a figure outside the royal family, Bahrain’s monarchy alienates not only the moderate Shi’i opposition group al-Wefaq, but its traditional supporters in the community as well.
Since protests began in Bahrain, the island’s rulers have employed harsh measures in order to silence all opposition and create an uncontested narrative of events.