Atlantic Council

Arguments that the West should avoid arming Syrian rebels in order to forestall wholesale slaughter or forced exile of Alawites, such as that advanced recently by Joshua Landis, deserve careful consideration and also need to be placed into proper context.

Early this week, the world looked to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for a response to the bombings in Reyhanli that killed 47 people and left more than 100 wounded. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Turkey since the 2003 Istanbul bombings, shocking the nation and fueling anxiety over the war in neighboring Syria.

It is difficult to understand, at least from the outside, what is happening in Libya right now. The past several weeks have highlighted the danger and difficulties the country’s feeble political institutions face to manage day-to-day affairs, let alone resolve the most pressing political issues.

Tunisia’s constitution-drafting process has reached another milestone: the committee coordinating the drafting of the country’s post-authoritarian constitution presented its third and final draft to the National Constituent Assembly on April 22.

For the third time this year, Israel was able to carry out air strikes in Syria earlier this month without prompting an immediate military response. The reactions of all parties directly affected—Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah—indicated little appetite for a conflict with Israel. This should be of little comfort to US policymakers and the international community, however.

Leaders in the Middle East and North Africa appear to be increasingly sensitive to criticism by their citizens and more inclined to pursue legal action against critics. Numerous cases have been brought against critics who employ social media, but traditional media is also under pressure.

Two years after the Arab Spring transformed the social and political realities in the Middle East, it appears that Jordan has thus far weathered the wave of revolutions that toppled the authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen.

Analysis of Libya’s security crisis has largely centered on the country’s northern coastal cities, where the issue of rogue militias challenging the government is well known. What is often overlooked—and much less understood—is the security situation in the south. This vast, underpopulated territory has become a gateway for many of the security problems Libya and the region face today. Well-documented infiltration of jihadist terrorists; illegal weapons and mercenaries; criminal organizations smuggling drugs and other goods; and human trafficking all pass through Libya’s southern border.

The recent passage of a political isolation law in Libya’s General National Congress (GNC), under pressure from armed militants, represents the most significant development during its tenure and threatens to derail the government of Prime Minister Ali Zidan. 

US Secretary of State John Kerry's visit to Moscow produced a surprising result: a US-Russian agreement to convene an international conference as soon as this month, one that would "bring representatives of the [Syrian] government and the opposition together" to determine how to implement the Syrian political transition agreement reached at Geneva on June 30, 2012 by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. What was particularly surprising—and pleasantly so if true—was Kerry's observation that Washington and Moscow have a "very similar" understanding of what was actually agreed nearly a year ago in Geneva.