The Project on Middle East Democracy congratulates the Egyptian people on this historic day. Their indomitable courage and resilience have been an inspiration to observers all around the world.  Following 18 days of protests that saw millions of Egyptians from all segments of society come together, the government has finally responded to the first of their clear demands: Hosni Mubarak has resigned. Through determined peaceful demonstrations, Egyptians ...

The United States Institute of Peace announced the release of "The Iran Primer: Power, Politics, and U.S. Policy" today. The primer includes pieces from over 50 foreign policy experts including Daniel Brumberg, Juan Cole, Haleh Esfandiari, Karim Sadjadpour, Steven Heydemann, Richard Haass, and Anthony Cordesman, among others. The book includes short sections by each author on a range of topics involving Iran, including the Islamic Revolution of 1979, opposition movements, ...

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has launched a new guide providing background and analysis to Egypt’s upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. The resource, which is published in both English and Arabic, draws on the assessments of experts from the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and the Carnegie Middle East Program in Washington. It will profile political actors and opposition movements, describe legal developments, analyze election monitoring and explore ...

Nader Hashemi writing at Democracy Journal argues that "Americans have a unique responsibility to support democracy in Iran" and calls for "a new U.S. policy toward Iran that finds a central place for democracy support." Hashemi proposes that Iran has been undergoing a significant intellectual transformation over the past two decades toward "post-Islamism" and pro-democracy philosophies. Pointing to the Green Movement as a manifestation of this transformation, he observes that ...

A new policy brief by The Heritage Foundation, entitled "A Conservative Foreign Policy," argues that "defending liberty should be the central goal of foreign policy and the organizing principle for the alliances, international institutions, and treaties we join," adding that "our role as leader of the free world will not endure unless others know that America still stands for liberty and justice for all." The brief calls for broad ...

The Daily Star presents excerpts from a recent book published in Iraq entitled, "Islam and Democracy." The book "provides the first serious scholarly assessment in the Middle East" and addresses issues of central vs. regional governance and socio-political constituencies. The Iraqi-born author of the book, Hasan Bahr al-’Ulum, spent time in Qom, Iran, as well as in London and Canada. Assessing the theoretical aspects of federalism and ...

Barry Rubin writing at the blog for the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center argues that the data in the recently released 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll reveal "the realities of the Arabic-speaking world: the hegemony of radicalism among the masses, passionate hatred for Israel and the West, and lack of sympathy for democracy or liberalism." Noting that participants in the survey registered ...

Will Inboden writing in Foreign Policy argues that while recent polling data indicates a troublesome drop in Arab public opinion of the Obama administration and U.S. policy, the significance of these statistics should not be overinflated. Inboden suggests that policy gains trump popularity increases, stating, "The task of statecraft is not to chase the whims of public opinion, but to pursue policies that serve the nation and that over time ...

Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm has run stories on two key policy decisions that occurred in Congress in recent weeks: the referral of a Senate resolution in support of human rights in Egypt to the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs; and the Senate Budget Committee's decision to reduce funds to be made available to the administration for democracy promotion in Egypt in FY11, from the $25 million requested to only ...

POMED's weekly newsletter, The Weekly Wire, is now available in Arabic. To follow the latest developments on democracy and human rights in the Middle East, click here to subscribe to the Arabic version. To receive the original English version of the Wire, click here, or follow the registration link on the left-hand side of our website.

(POMED's full notes continue below, or view them as a pdf.) Kenneth Pollack opened by explaining the purpose of the presentation, saying, “One of the things that we have been striving to do at Brookings is to help bridge the gap between the Arab and Muslim world and the United States of America.” To build an understanding of developments in the Middle East, the Brookings Institution has focused a great ...

The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings released the 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll today and held an event (full notes forthcoming from POMED) marking the publication of the results. The poll-- conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and the UAE from June 28-July 20 of this year, in conjunction with Zogby International -- recorded a striking drop in optimism among Arabs toward American policy ...

Lebanese MP Fouad Siniora, head of the Future Movement parliamentary bloc, chaired the first of a series of planned meetings yesterday in an effort to reach a unified stance among the parliamentary majority regarding the draft law to grant Palestinian refugees greater rights and improve their humanitarian situation. March 14 Secretariat Coordinator Fares Souaid, representatives from the Lebanese Forces, and several members of the Future Movement, as ...

A recent study carried out by the National Center for Social and Criminal Research reports that those in Egypt's socio-economic elite as well as its extreme poor do not have a strong sense of citizenship, due to a number of factors including the lack of democracy, political and civil rights, and basic freedoms in Egypt; the state media's failure to inculcate a sense of national citizenship; the absence of "civic ...

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) held a press conference yesterday to announce the completion of a 578-page report on torture, detention, and human rights abuse in Egypt. According to the annual report, in 2009, 12 people were tortured to death by Egyptian police; 63 cases of torture in detention occurred; 530 cases of mistreatment of prisoners were recorded; 113 people were detained arbitrarily; 20 “disappearances” occurred; the ...