In The News

Making Education the Focus of Gulf-Europe Ties

Dr. Christian Koch September 28, 2005
The annual ministerial meetings of the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council have, in recent years, been mostly oriented towards addressing pressing security and trade concerns. Over recent years, the dialogue between the two regions has mostly dealt with Iran’s nuclear program, human rights issues in the Gulf, the training of Iraqi security officials and expanding economic ties. But, according to...

Time For a Saudi "New Deal"

Fahad Nazer September 27, 2005
The ascent of King Abdullah to the Saudi throne represents a great opportunity for domestic political reform, writes Fahad Nazer. As an absolute monarchy with almost no accountability to its citizens, the Saudi government will prove increasingly vulnerable to the demands of internal reformers – as well as growing global criticism over the radical Islam preached by its Wahhabist clerics. Any...

Workers' Protest Spurs Arab Emirates to Act

Hassan M. Fattah September 25, 2005
More than half of Dubai's one million people are poor immigrants from South Asia and the Philippines. Eight hundred of those residents, dissatisfied workers who have not been paid in five months, recently marched on the emirate's Ministry of Labor. It was a rare show of labor unrest in a city-state that tolerates much in the name of business and little in the way of dissent. Even more...

Osama's Endgame Approaches

John R. Bradley August 26, 2005
What goes around may, indeed, come around in Osama bin Laden's ongoing terrorist campaign, whose past and future boil down to one Middle Eastern nation. "Osama's descent into specifically anti-American global terrorism can, in fact, be traced back to his falling out with the Saudi ruling family," writes John R. Bradley. And, he continues, due to the failure to establish...

The Breaking Point

Peter Maass August 22, 2005
As world oil prices continue to surge past $US60 per barrel, and as Chinese companies aggressively pursue acquisition of energy assets, anxiety is growing in many quarters about global energy security. Focusing his inquiry on the world's largest exporter, Saudi Arabia, Peter Maass uncovers some unsettling realities about the global oil supply. Maass reports on the difficulties in...

Tehran Is Using Iraq to Steadily Penetrate the Arab World

Kamran Taremi August 18, 2005
Relations between Iran and Iraq have been marked for decades by hostility, erupting most drastically in the infamous and bloody war following the success of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution. Now, with a Shiite victory in the Iraqi elections, the two countries have found common ideological ground and have taken steps towards cooperation. An alliance with Iraq would provide Iran with...

Is Iraq War Fueling GCC's Economic Boom?

Emilie Rutledge August 12, 2005
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have experienced high levels of economic growth, and the price of oil has doubled. Although the "Iraqi factor" can partly account for this upward trajectory in the price of oil, Emilie Rutledge writes that the unprecedented rise in global demand and lack of spare capacity are the more...