Stalled cooperation and the destabilisation of the Maghreb

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Saudi Arabia, Iran and the complexity of conflict mediation

Simon Mabon

In early March 2023, years of back-channel diplomatic efforts reached a zenith as Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to normalise relations with each other. Seven years after relations were suspended following the fallout from the execution of the Saudi Shi’a cleric Nimr al-Nimr, the normalisation agreement set out a process of re-opening diplomatic missions and create the conditions for greater collaboration.1 Reached after years of track II efforts, the agreement was heralded as a major step towards building peace across the Middle East. Yet it is not a panacea for conflict, but rather is a necessary part of a portfolio of moves to improve regional relations. In this short essay I reflect on the ways in which the normalisation agreement may contribute towards peace-building and mediation efforts across the Middle East.

Simon Mabon is Professor of International Politics at Lancaster University, where he directs SEPAD (Sectarianism, Proxies and Desectarianization Project). He is the author and editor of 12 books including The Struggle for Supremacy in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2023); Houses built on sand: Sectarianism, revolution and violence in the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2020); British Foreign Policy Since WWII (Routledge, 2016); The Origins of ISIS (IB Tauris, 2016); and Saudi Arabia and Iran: Soft Power Rivalry in the Middle East (IB Tauris, 2013). He has published 45 articles and book chapters in a range of Middle East and International Relations journals, including: Review of International Studies; Middle East Journal; Middle East Policy; British Journal of Middle East Studies; Politics, Religion and Ideology; and Third World Quarterly. From 2016 to 2017, he served as academic advisor to the House of Lords International Relations committee report into the UK’s relations with the Middle East. He regularly consults with governmental agencies and for international news outlets, including the BBC, CNN, CNBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiyya, France 24 and Deutsche Welle.

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Third-party mediation and peace-making processes in Yemen: Issues and challenges

Ibrahim Galal Fakirah

The legacy of third-party mediation and peace-making in Yemen has not succeeded in holding long. Between 2000 and 2023, there have been more than ten third-party mediation initiatives in Yemen, by both regional states and multilateral organisations. None of these third-party mediation efforts, nor ensuing peace or de-escalation agreements, have been durable or contributed to a durable peace agreement lasting longer than three years. The longest surviving deal was the GCC initiative, which lasted for less than three years and delayed the outbreak of full-scale violence in the country due to short-termism, poor management of spoilers, flaws in agreement design and ambitious implementation timelines and regional interference, among other reasons. The fall of each process has contributed to a gradual increase in structural violence and a deepening of grievances and the intensity of regional interference. While the Yemeni government has been key to all processes, the protracted nature of the conflict has expanded the scope of parties, with the rise of regionally-backed new hybrid groups that continue to shape conflict and peace trajectories at a sub-national levels. It is interesting that the overlap of mediation and facilitation efforts pursued by regional states and multilateral organisations have complicated negotiation dynamics, creating greater manoeuvre room for armed groups than for the Yemeni government but also weakening the credibility of the UN when uncoordinated.

Ibrahim Galal Fakirah is a Non-Resident Scholar with the Middle East Institute’s (MEI) Arabian Peninsula Program and a senior consultant. He has worked with donors and international organisations such as the United Nations, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Sussex University's Institute of Development Studies in research and advisory capacities, occasionally briefing audiences – including think tanks, diplomatic corps, UN officials, the private sector and humanitarian organisations – and taking part in Track II events related to Yemen and the MENA region. His research examines third-party-led peace and dialogue processes in Yemen, the proliferation of armed non-state actors and their implications for the implementation of peace agreements, post-war security orders and stabilisation efforts, the politics of social assistance in fragile and conflict-affected states, violent extremism and the foreign and defence policies of the Gulf and Western states in Yemen. Prior to joining MEI, Ibrahim was a Visiting Scholar at Macquarie University’s Department of Security Studies and Criminology in Australia.

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Resolving the Libyan conflict: Twelve years of failure

Youssef Mohammad Sawani

This article sheds light on the mediation that the international community and the United Nations have been attempting in Libya ever since the Arab spring reached this Arab North African country in 2011, only to be plagued by conflict and episodes of civil war, violence, human rights violations and foreign meddling. The author examines these efforts and assesses the role of the supranational organisation in conflict mediation, drawing lessons and conclusions that are valid for the entire MENA region and beyond. While mediation efforts continue unabated, the Libyan crisis seems to defy resolution. Reasons behind the failure could easily be identified by resorting to cliches that echo the orientalist tradition referring to the crisis and the failures to Libya’s lack of state and national identity. However, this article argues that the various mediation efforts failed because of their inherent deficiencies and the destructive effect of foreign powers’ rivalry, particularly between UNSC permanent members. At both the national and international levels, consensus has most frequently been hindered by conflicting foreign interests.

Youssef Mohammad Sawani is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the Department of Political Science at the University of Tripoli, Libya, where he has been engaged in teaching, research and other academic activities since 1985. For years, he was Director General and Director of Studies at the Center for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut, and was the editor-in-chief of its Al Mustaqbal Al-Arabi monthly journal. Between 2016-2021, he worked as the editor of Contemporary Arab Affairs, a peer-reviewed journal published by University of California Press. He is affiliated to a number of international entities, NGOs and research centres, and works as a consultant for a number of local and international institutions. He has also participated in and organised many seminars and conferences, and frequently publishes in the English and Arabic languages. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.

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The role of Gulf states in conflict in Sudan

Umer Karim

Sudanese engagement with the Arab Gulf states has seen various ups and downs since the country’s independence, yet the relationship encountered serious challenges when the General Omar Hassan al-Bashir-led Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation assumed power after a military coup in 1989, advancing a foreign policy based on the ideological contours developed by the Sudanese Islamist politician Hassan Al-Turabi. The steps taken by the regime soon created tensions with the Arab Gulf states, in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. There were three main points of friction that impacted upon the country’s relationship with these Gulf states: Sudan’s support for Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; its close relationship with the revolutionary regime in Iran, Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival; and the hosting of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. This article traces the development of the role of Gulf states in the security environment in Sudan since then and how the Sudanese ruling elites have attempted to develop extensive political, cultural and economic connections with different Arab Gulf states, before and after the security apparatus removed President al-Bashir on 11 April 2019, when he was replaced by the Transitional Military Council as the collective head of state of Sudan.

Umer Karim is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Birmingham, focusing on Saudi foreign policy and decision-making, and its implications for the politics and security of the Middle East. His broad research interests also include Middle Eastern politics and international relations as well as peace and conflict studies. Additionally, Umer Karim is Associate Fellow at the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies and Fellow at the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation (SEPAD) project, based at Lancaster University's Richardson Institute.

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Prospects of rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran

Aditya Anshu

The MENA region has long been marred by geopolitical tensions and conflicts, with the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran standing out as a prominent and enduring source of instability. This article explores the prospects of rapprochement, shedding light on the potential for reconciliation and its implications for regional peace and stability, reviewing the key drivers motivating rapprochement, including economic interests, shared security concerns and the desire for increased regional influence. It also considers the role of external factors, such as the United States and Russia, in facilitating or obstructing potential reconciliation efforts and examines the potential consequences and challenges associated with a thaw in relations. The strained bilateral relationship, characterised by proxy conflicts, religious divides and regional power struggles, has had profound consequences on the region. However, recent developments and shifts in regional dynamics have sparked cautious optimism about the possibility of improved relations between these two influential nations. The implications of a Saudi-Iran rapprochement could be far-reaching, impacting not only the geopolitical landscape of the MENA region but also global energy markets, the resolution of regional conflicts and the broader prospects for peace and stability. In conclusion, the prospects of rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the MENA region present a complex and evolving dynamic with significant implications. By analysing the factors driving this potential reconciliation and assessing the potential outcomes, this article offers insights into a critical issue that has the potential to reshape the future of the MENA region.

Aditya Anshu is an Assistant Professor of International Relations, Dept of International Relations, Abu Dhabi University, UAE. He earned his Ph.D. in international relations from JNU, New Delhi, India. Previously, he has worked with Bennett University and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, India. His rich experience of internships and study includes the Embassy of India in the United States and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea.

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Post-invasion Iraq: An impossible task, poorly executed

Marina Ottaway

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime and to replace it with one based on democracy. The regime was defeated quickly, but twenty years later it is clear that the United States has failed to re-engineer Iraq into a democratic country. This is not surprising because the occupation was poorly planned and executed. More fundamentally, however, it failed because nation-building, that is the deliberate re-engineering of a society, is an impossible task even authoritarian regimes have failed to accomplish.

Marina Ottaway is a Middle East Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a long-time analyst of political transformations in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East. She is working on a project at the Wilson Center about the countries of the Arab Spring and Iraq, having joined after 14 years at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she played a central role in launching the Middle East Program. Prior to that, she carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East for many years and taught at Georgetown University, the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, the American University in Cairo, the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the University of Zambia and Addis Ababa University. Her extensive research experience is reflected in her publications, which include nine authored books and six edited ones. Her most recent include Getting to Pluralism, co-authored with Amr Hamzawy, and Yemen on the Brink, co-edited with Christopher Boucek. While at Carnegie, she supervised its Guide to Egypt’s Transition, a website that provides background and analysis on issues that will shape Egypt’s political future, and Iraqi Elections 2010, an online guide to Iraqi politics. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.

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Political economy of modernisation in Iraq: Challenges and consequences

Ebrahim Abbassi, Adel Nemati and Mohsen Shokri

Post-Saddam American modernisation in Iraq, which was supposed to implement an example of a new Middle East based on the liberal democracy model in this country, effectively led to the establishment of a weak elected government against anti-modernisation forces after 2003. The formation of this government and the cessation of modernisation led to the tendency of socially disillusioned Iraqi forces to experience the defeat of Iraqi democracy facing with discourse of ISIS or the victory of pro-traditional forces (Al-Ketletol Sadriyah) in 2021 elections. The answer to the main question of this article, which is the reason for the failure of American nation-building in Iraq, should be found in three factors: "the nature of the fundamental history of Iraq in the modern order," "the historical nature of American nation-building policy after World War II," and "the hybrid nature of the Islamic religious state or traditional classes discourse, which was able to establish itself as a liberating force among the disenfranchised social forces in post-2003 Iraq." The result of this process was the cessation of modernisation and modern nation-building in Iraq. This article examines the reasons for the failure of these projects in Iraq by examining three models of modernisation: "modernisation from above or British colonial modernisation" in monarchial regimes; "army-centred" modernisation, which resulted from a military coup and the Ba'ath party; and "American liberal democracy modernisation".

Ebrahim Abbassi is Associate Professor in political sciences at Shiraz University. He holds a BA (1998), an MA (2001) and a PhD (2009) in Political Science from University of Tehran. He has been Director of the Persian Gulf Center for Strategic Studies (2013-2016) and Dean of the School of law and Political Sciences at Shiraz University (2018-2022). His current research interests include political and social developments in Iran, Persian Gulf studies and terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Adel Nemati is a PhD student. in Political Sciences at Shiraz University. His research focuses on the history of Iran and the Middle East.

Mohsen Shokri is a PhD student in Political Sciences at Shiraz University. His research focuses on the political economy of the Middle East.

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Re-imagining Babylon: Epistemic violence and Iraqi discourse

Ruba Ali Al-Hassani

For two decades, White people have been dominating English-language literature and discourse on Iraq, Orientalising, dehistoricising and sectarianising it. White men in government, non-government think-tanks and academia expect to lead the conversation instead of humbling themselves to pluralistic Iraqi voices. Despite effort by some Iraqis in the diaspora to guide the conversation, it is geared back to a dominating West-centric perspective. Iraqis are marginalised and Iraqi women are tokenised. Iraqi women academics are especially excluded from the conversation. So much so that a nascent Iraqi Women Academics Network now draws attention to the pluralistic voices and experiences of Iraqi women scholars. When Iraq’s October Spring emerged in 2019, I was part of a small network of Iraqi bloggers who shared instant, verified news of the protests to foreign journalists to ensure Iraqis’ voices and stories reached a global audience. Western media covered the protest movement and focused on Iraqi voices. Within a year, those journalists became Iraq experts, invited to speak on think tank panels discussing Iraq. The only Iraqi women invited to speak were presumed to represent a monolithic idea of what Iraqi women think. Iraqi women experts of minoritised ethnoconfessional backgrounds continue to be overlooked. While European and Western subjectivities are often interpreted as global objectivity, this has become more obvious in the Iraqi context. Two decades after the invasion, Western journalists and analysts continue to discuss Iraqis’ stories on their behalf, and their experiences are deemed objective reflections on Iraqis’ lived experiences. In my paper, I discuss my experience and analyse what went wrong by discussing how White Ignorance has been useful in upholding the epistemic violence that sits at the core of media coverage and policy analysis of Iraq. I also borrow from the counterfactual method to expose "blind spots" and contingencies in Iraq epistemology that extend the Iraq invasion’s violence. This paper invites the reader to imagine how different things could have been and how much richer Iraq discourse would have been had it included Iraqi women academics’ pluralistic voices and scholarly contributions.

Ruba Ali Al-Hassani is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at lancaster University’s Department of Politics, Philosophy & Religion, and a Research Consultant with King's College london. An interdisciplinary sociologist, she focuses on state-society relations & social movements in Iraq, law & social control, and transitional justice & collective trauma. She co-founded the Canadian Association for Muslim Women in law and the Iraqi Women Academics Network, and has taught at York University and Trent University, Canada. Ruba holds a B.Sc. in Psychology & Sociology, a M.A. in Criminology, an ll.M. in transitional justice, and a forthcoming PhD in law.

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China and the GCC: A developing strategic partnership

Heinrich Kreft

In December 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping travelled to Riyadh for the first summit between China and GCC leaders, officially sealing what has become a strategic partnership in just a few years. Oil and gas exports to China remain the backbone of economic relations between the GCC and China, but these have deepened and diversified over time. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are China's most important partners in the GCC and have received the bulk of Chinese investment and awarded large construction contracts – mainly for industrial parks and port facilities – to Chinese companies. The GCC countries' "visions" of transforming their economies away from fossil fuels and China's "Belt and Road Initiative" a strategy to achieve economic opportunities and political influence abroad have led to a classic "win-win" situation between the two sides. So far, China has shied away from challenging the US as the main security provider in the region but has started supplying arms to its main partners Saudi Arabia and the UAe, which want to hedge against a possible US withdrawal from the region. China is trying to reconcile its relations with the GCC countries with its relations with Iran, the arch-enemy of the Arab states. It is doubtful whether this can work in the long run and whether China can avoid becoming embroiled in the various conflicts in the region. The US-Chinese rivalry could endanger the fragile stability in the region.

Heinrich Kreft is a German career diplomat and academic. Since September 2020 he is the Director of the Center for Diplomacy at Andrássy University in Budapest, Hungary, where he also holds the Chair for Diplomacy and is directing the International Relations and european Studies program. He has published extensively on major power political and economic relations; on international security; the Arab world; european, American and Asian political and economic affairs. Most recent publications on US-China relations; transatlantic relations; Islam in Germany; geopolitics and culture and on German and european foreign policy after Russia´s attack on Ukraine.

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Money trees in the Gulf: The power of sovereign wealth funds in shifting GCC international politics

Alexis Montambault-Trudelle

Gulf sovereign wealth funds (SwFs), large state-owned investment funds, have historically been known as quiet global investors deploying capital through a long-term approach, mainly in western financial markets. More recently, however, Gulf ruling elites have been leveraging them to proactively drive nation-building projects, deepen strategic international partnerships and claim a more prominent role on the world stage. why is that the case? The article argues that Gulf SwFs are now pivotal agents in the region’s shifting international politics. A new generation of leaders is using them to pursue elite-based interests and economic development goals that induce deeper economic and political influence in a regional sphere of influence. They also drive Gulf governments' attempts to boost alternative revenue streams through significant investments in disruptive technologies and low-carbon projects, simultaneously expanding the rentier monarchies' international reach beyond their role as fossil fuel producers. The article delineates the rise of SwFs as alternative mechanisms of regime maintenance; they enable incumbent elites to advance foreign policy ambitions and maintain shared expectations about the appropriate organisation of a political economy by harnessing the impending energy transition and the impact of the climate crisis.

Alexis Montambault-Trudelle is pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of edinburgh. His research focuses on Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund to explore the effects of internal political dynamics on sovereign wealth management. He investigates how intra-elite dynamics, regime structures and state-society relations in the post-2015 Saudi political landscape shape the sovereign wealth fund's institutional design and behaviour, whether in the kingdom or across the global financial market. He is particularly interested in the political economy of Gulf states and the multiple facets surrounding the relationship between states and the financial market.

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Stalled cooperation and the destabilisation of the Maghreb

ORIENT IV 2023: Conflict mediation and rapprochement across the MENA region

ORIENT IV 2023: Conflict mediation and rapprochement across the MENA region

ORIENT III 2023: The invasion of Iraq: 20 years on

ORIENT III 2023: The invasion of Iraq: 20 years on

ORIENT II 2023: Changing international relations of the GCC states

ORIENT II 2023: Changing international relations of the GCC states