284 Items

Taliban fighters patrol on the road

AP/Abdul Khaliq, file

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Affairs

Should the United States Normalize Relations with the Taliban?

| Aug. 21, 2023

Foreign Affairs has recently published a number of articles on how the United States should engage with the Taliban government in Afghanistanextremist forces within the regimehow the West can help ordinary Afghans, and the fate of the country’s women. To complement these essays, Foreign Affairs asked a broad pool of experts for their take. As with previous surveys, Foreign Affairs approached dozens of authorities with expertise relevant to the question at hand, along with leading generalists in the field. Participants were asked to state whether they agreed or disagreed with a proposition and to rate their confidence level in their opinion. Two Belfer Center experts participated, International Security Executive Editor Jacqueline L. Hazelton and Future of Diplomacy Project Senior Fellow Paula Dobriansky.

Clients wearing masks to help protect themselves from the coronavirus wait to use ATM machines outside a closed bank in Beirut, Lebanon.

(AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Analysis & Opinions - Lebanese Center for Policy Studies

The Twin Crises and the Prospects for Political Sectarianism in Lebanon

| Apr. 04, 2020

LCPS solicited the opinion of key experts to answer one question: “Will the financial crisis, exacerbated further by COVID-19, strengthen or loosen the power of Lebanon’s governing political parties?” 

University students hold Lebanese flags as they chant slogans against the government, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019.

AP Photo/Bilal Hussein

Analysis & Opinions

The Lebanese Intifada: Observations and Reflections on Revolutionary Times

| Nov. 10, 2019

On Thursday 17 October 2019, thousands of exasperated Lebanese citizens took to the streets of Beirut in protest. The spark was the government’s latest plan to impose taxes on the popular and free based application, WhatsApp. Yet the protests were in fact the consequence of a series of ongoing and related crises: a fiscal crisis of insufficient revenues; a debt crisis; a foreign currency shortage crisis; a developmental crisis of stagnating growth compounded by rising unemployment and cost of living. One can certainly add to this list an infrastructural crisis—most popularized by the 2015 garbage protests, but part and parcel of people’s everyday lives as experienced in the problematic provisioning of electricity, water, and more. Such crises are largely homegrown, in that they are the result of decades-long mismanagement of public funds, rampant corruption, and political polarization. They are however exacerbated by regional and international players.

 In this April 4, 2018 file photo, a U.S-backed Syrian Manbij Military Council soldier passes a U.S. position near the tense front line with Turkish-backed fighters, in Manbij, north Syria.

AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

The International Community Must Stop Turkey’s Ethnic Cleansing Plans in Northern Syria

| Oct. 11, 2019

For years, Turkey’s government allowed Islamic State fighters to cross its territory into Syria. But, before Monday, there were no Islamic State fighter elements along Turkey’s border with Syria because Kurds, Arabs and Christians expelled them with help from the U.S. military. Today, these U.S. allies are running for their lives.

A fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, stands inside a post where U.S. troops were based, in Tel Abyad town, at the Syrian-Turkish border, Syria, Monday, Oct. 7, 2019. 

AP Photo/Ahmad Baderkhan

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Impacts of U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Syria

Following President Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria, Belfer Center experts discussed the impact on America, our allies and adversaries, and the region.

(AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

(AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Analysis & Opinions - Agence Global

Mohammad Morsi in Life and Death Mirrors Wider Arab Agonies

| June 17, 2019

BEIRUT — The death today of former elected President Mohammad Morsi of Egypt should be seen as perhaps the single most iconic moment of modern Arab political history. For he represented everything that is good and bad about political authority and governance in the past century of Arab statehood. Yet his legacy will only be fully clarified in the decades ahead when the fate of the ongoing Arab uprisings is also clear.