More than three years after burying the war hatchet, erstwhile Gulf rivals are moving in separate ways as they maneuver big power competition. Ironically, anti-Islamists like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have drifted towards greater independence from the United States while Qatar, long seen as a haven for the Muslim Brotherhood and other…
The new world order, based on equality of all its participants and initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is increasingly making its way in international relations. The results of the Arab summit, which just ended in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, are a vivid example of this. This year’s Summit came amid signs that the oil-rich kingdom…
After more than a year of behind-the-scenes diplomacy, Syria’s membership in the Arab League of States (LAS) was finally restored when Arab foreign ministers reached a consensus on an issue that has been causing sharp divisions since the start of the Syrian crisis 12 years ago. On May 7, the Arab League’s foreign ministers adopted a…
Last week, Saudi Arabia invited Syria, long excluded from multilateral formats in West Asia, to this week’s meeting of the Arab League. This was followed on Monday with the United Arab Emirates asking Damascus to attend the COP28 climate summit at the end of this year, giving the embattled country international recognition once again. Predictably, Western…
When a mere subplot overnight assumes habitation and a name, it becomes more fascinating than the main plot itself. Syria’s return to the Arab League after its decade-long exclusion can be regarded as a sub-plot of the China-brokered rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But then, China and Iran are not per se party to…
The question for liberal western democracies is, “Can democracy, religious extremism, and apartheid policies co-exist?” The Arab League met in Algeria for the first time in two years, and their final declaration called for freedom for the Palestinian people who have suffered under a brutal Israeli military occupation for almost six decades. The meeting of…
