First Independent Mena Newspaper
No one can deny that Arab dictatorships have protected religious minorities across the Middle East and North Africa region for decades as a result of tactical decisions meant to win the political backing of Western powers and the financial support of funding agencies. The nomination of Jewish and Christian leaders to cabinet posts in many […]
In many ways, it appears as if Algeria is weathering the Arab Spring fairly well. Despite its sheer size, it has dodged the cycle of demonstrations and upheaval, even though the Arab Spring started right in the next door Tunisia. Its long-term president Abdelaziz Bouteflika has maintained a façade of democracy, though his tenure has […]
Simon Kuznets’ inverted U-shaped curve representing the hypothesis that with economic growth country’s inequality level initially increases and then decreases after reaching certain average income level has not yet found much support among the MENA economies. The MENA region has traditionally belonged to the most equal parts of the developing world as supported by the […]
Africa had its fair share of military power-grabs – actually, it had a good deal more than that. Throughout the Cold War, military coups were the rule, not the exception. And Egypt, the bridge between the African and Arab worlds, was no stranger to coups. After all, it was a coup by the Free Officers […]
In 2010, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) accounted for approximately 68 billion USD, as compared to 2001, when China invested only 911 million USD overseas. The rapid increase in FDI between 2001 and 2010 was also facilitated by China’s ‘going global policy’ of 2002 that promoted competition for the share in global markets and natural […]
The war in Syria is well into its third year, while the number of casualties has sky-rocketed, though, of course, nobody can say for sure how many lives the war has really claimed. Hezbollah, Iran and Russia have all heavily invested in the survival of the Syrian regime. Having thus turned the tide of the […]
The National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) report ‘Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds’ has outlined three global trajectories, or development in the interactions among world’s states, during the next 15-20 years. Under the ‘Reverse Engines’ scenario, mercantilism and protectionism could lead economic globalization to go into reverse, constraining technological breakthroughs required to manage scarce global resources. The […]
While the French newspaper Le Figaro was reporting lengthily on the arrest of an opponent to the wedding for everyone, a 23 years old student “still dressed in his hooded Manif for everyone sweatshirt”, the daily missed the 2 millions people who were marching against Monsanto. And so did almost all other French Medias. Commonly […]
Many security pundits have repeatedly warned that the political unrest, the eroding security situation and the flourishing weapons, human and drug trafficking in the Sahel/Sahara region have made of the area a terrorism breeding ground, an exploding powder keg, or what some have called ‘an arc of instability.’ The warning has just been echoed in […]
The popular uprisings and political turmoil rocking the region of North Africa and the Middle-East since 2011 have dealt a hard blow to the sector of tourism that suffered losses going up to $ 15 billion, according to Arab Tourism Organization (ATO). At a meeting held lately in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), ATO president Bandar Al-Fuhaid […]