Analyses
Yassin al-Haj Saleh: After Assad, Syria Must Free Itself from Sectarianism
Riccardo Cristiano 12 December 2024
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, born in 1961, is one of Syria’s foremost intellectuals and a long-standing dissident against the Assad regime. He spent sixteen years in prison for “political reasons,” including time in the maximum-security facility of Tadmur, also known as Palmyra. With the onset of the Syrian Spring, he immediately emerged as an opponent of the regime.
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    Once Upon a Time There was a Model of Free Political Debate
    Mujibur Rehman 29 January 2024
    On January 26, 2024, India celebrated its Republic Day – the day India adopted its current Constitution – with great fanfare, with French President Emmanuel Macron as the guest of honor. “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ is the major political ideal for France, though each of these terms has little meaning for Indians in the context of rapidly expanding Hindu majoritarianism.
  • Houthi Strikes: A Regional Escalation?
    An Interview with Hussein Ibish
    Giancarlo Bosetti , Alessandra Tommasi 19 January 2024
    The war in Gaza has expanded to include a new and dangerous flashpoint: the Red Sea. In recent weeks, Yemen’s Houthis have targeted “Israeli” cargo ships – and attacked others – in support of Hamas. The US and the UK have retaliated by bombing a number of Houthis’ targets in Yemen. ResetDOC interviewed Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, about the stakes for the Houthis and the risks of a wider high-intensity conflict.
  • Understanding the Stakes in Taiwan’s 2024 Elections
    Alessandra Tommasi 12 January 2024
    Most people in Taiwan support maintaining the status quo in the island’s political dispute with mainland China for now (28.6 percent) or indefinitely (32.1 percent). Less than 8 percent support either unification with the PRC as soon as possible or maintaining the status quo while moving toward unification. Nearly 63 percent of the population feels “Taiwanese” and an even larger majority (84.3 percent) opposes a “one country, two systems” model, especially after Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong. Given these data, and that the PRC views the island as a “rogue” province and has vowed to eventually bring it back under control – not excluding military intervention – it is no surprise that mainland affairs and the relations with China are absolutely key to Taiwan’s upcoming elections.
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    Entrenching Extremism: The Taliban’s Radicalization
    Agenda in Afghanistan
    Ali Kosha 11 January 2024
    Afghanistan is the only country in the world where women and girls are completely banned from education and from working in most sectors, including NGOs. While the restrictions on women and girls have rightly received some international attention, an important aspect of the Taliban’s oppressive regime that has not received enough attention is their systematic indoctrination of boys, and more recently young girls in some provinces, through the education system.
  • Qatar’s Role in the Hamas-Israel Crisis:
    Diplomatic Triumph or Double Dealing?
    Claudia De Martino 10 January 2024
    Qatar is a small Gulf state that has recently returned to the spotlight as a mediator in the hostage crisis between Hamas and Israel. This is due to its good relations with both Washington and Tel Aviv, as well as its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood movements in the Arab world. Doha serves as the main sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region. To date, Qatar has successfully facilitated the only prisoner exchange between Israel and Gaza, resulting in the release of 121 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian political prisoners. In addition, a seven-day truce was achieved, which benefited Hamas and facilitated the entry of much-needed humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. However, Doha remains an unscrupulous player in international relations, detached from the logic of inter-state loyalty and multilateral alliances, and continues to act as a free agent (or, if anything, aligned with Erdogan’s Turkey), lacking any normative approach in the international community.
  • Looking Ahead: 2024 Prospects for the Visegrad Group
    Fabio Turco 22 December 2023
    2023 saw a major shakeup in Central and Eastern Europe. Two elections reshuffled the board in the Viségrad group, where Viktor Orban’s Hungary now remains the only constant for the last ten years. Let’s take a look at what happened and what the prospects are for the coming year. The biggest turnaround comes from the region’s most important country, Poland. Elections on 15 October saw the end of the conservative, nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government, which was replaced by a center-liberal-progressive coalition led by Donald Tusk. His return to government – he previously served as prime minister from 2007 to 2014 – marks a 360-degree turn in Warsaw’s politics, which is re-aligning with Brussels after eight years of troubled relations.
  • When the Music is Stopped: the Disappearance of Festivals
    and the Strangulation of Public Space in Turkey
    T. Deniz Erkmen 21 December 2023
    In the summer of 2023, an ominous phenomenon spread like wildfire from province to province in Turkey: the cancellation of music festivals and concerts. Just days before they were supposed to take place and generally at the request of public authorities such as mayors or governors, concerts and entire festivals were cancelled one by one. These repeated and continuous acts of cancellation, which started in the summer of 2022 and continued in 2023, generally do not make it to the international news.
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