Introduction Libya’s higher education sector has suffered from various crises since the 2011 revolution, particularly during the past several years of war, as a result of the deteriorating security situation. One of the most significant crises has been the horizonal expansion of universities without any attention to quality standards, a phenomenon which has reduced the […]

Introduction The leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has recently amplified its critique of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), and in particular of the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Mazloum Abdi. The old guard in the PKK are also increasingly demonstrating a clear inclination towards co-existence with the […]

Introduction The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, met Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on 9 November 2021. A visit by the most senior Emirati official to Syria in a decade signals the consolidation of relations between Damascus and Abu Dhabi. From 2015, the UAE has shifted from supporting the Syrian opposition, […]

The armed escalation that began in April 2019 with the General Command of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces’ (LAAF) attack on Tripoli led to an escalation in the Sirte area and risked international confrontation in the broader Sirte region. Sirte is pivotal in the conflict and has local, regional and international dimensions.[1] [2] [3] Therefore, […]

Within a year of the Covid-19 epidemic starting in Tunisia, the North African country has turned from a widely praised example of efficient crisis management to the “bad boy” of the Arab region and of the African continent. While the lightning spread of the virus in the country is putting a strain on an already […]

As part of its efforts to provide a nuanced understanding of the conflict’s dynamics and trends, the ‘Wartime and Post-Conflict in Syria’ (WPCS) team of the Middle East Directions Programme has collectively reflected on the mass of research on Syria produced in the past decade. For the purposes of this blog, we defined ‘research’ in […]

On 2 February 2021, the Middle East Directions Programme hosted Giovanni Romani, Sanam Vakil, Tytti Erästö, and Mahsa Rouhi as part of its Regional Security Initiative. Moderated by Luigi Narbone and Abdolrasool Divsallar, the event (see more details here) explored the possibility of military de-escalation measures in reducing tension between the US and Iran. This […]

Place de le République, Paris, 21 February 2021. As they have done every Sunday in the last year, Algerians and French-Algerians gathered in solidarity of the Hirak Movement in the French capital. Last Sunday, however, was different from the others. Among the many Algerian and Amazigh flags there were several banners recalling  with renewed emphasis […]

The international community, a longtime supporter of the Lebanese government, is adopting a new modality to channel reform-inducing aid to the country after the complete erosion of domestic and foreign trust in its state institutions. After the explosion at the Beirut port on 4 August 2020, the country’s largest donors rallied their support for the […]

Returning to the JCPoA Iran-US relations might witness a turnaround. The main challenge for the Biden administration will be to recreate trust in the Iranian government. The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal has left a deep sense of mistrust which is likely to persist given the lack of guarantees that a new deal would […]