gulf42By Glen Segell

(University of Cambridge, Visiting Professor and Research Fellow in the Department of Political Studies and Governance at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He is also Research Fellow at the Ezri Center for Iran & Gulf States Research, University of Haifa, Israel, and Editor of The Middle East Tracker and The London Security Policy Study. He is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Western Galilee College and serves as an Executive Advisory Board Member of the International Political Studies Association Research Committee on Armed Forces and Society. He holds the rank of Brigadier-General (Reserves) and is an expert for NATO STO)

Copyright: @ 2024 Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 26 May 2024

Introduction

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as a region has some characteristics that have remained consistent for over a century. These include that change is cataclysmic and not slow or evolutionary. Rather change is revolutionary.

Most countries have an authoritarian political system where leadership changes in monarchies and dictatorships comes only with the death of the incumbent. Most wars have religious elements where conflict resolution is uncompromising by their very nature of individual and communal absolute beliefs. Violent confrontations are explained as a manifestation of the deities will (Islamic Allah), and as a situation in which the believer’s (warrior’s) faith is put to the test....Read more

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