Amy Zalman We humans have a relentless desire to create narratives. We do so out of the random material of our daily lives. As the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner noted many years ago, this storytelling impulse pervades our daily existence. And yet, most of the time we barely …

It is not a reform or a renewal of our mind that we need. It is in fact a migration – a hijra – from an old model to a new one In 1994 Nelson Mandela declared a new era in South Africa. The rainbow nation was born, …

By Katherine Zimmerman, Jennifer Cafarella, Harleen Gambhir Executive Summary The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute conducted an intensive multi-week planning exercise to frame, design, and evaluate potential courses of action that the United States could …

Ambitions of Turkey’s President Erdoğan are damaging the nation’s standing with regional and international partners. By Mohammed Ayoob* The Turkish political system, touted only a few years ago as a model for other Muslim countries in the Middle East to emulate, lies in tatters. The parliament’s May 20 …

by James M. Dorsey We have been given the impossible task of telling you in the words of Hollywood director and actor Woody Allen everything about the Middle East that you want to know and never dared to ask and all of that in 15 minutes. So what …

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL/ISIS is a covert western army designed to carve out a Sunni mini-state in a chaotic Middle East, which is to be fractured along artificial sectarian and ethnic lines. Iraq has been plunged into a further state of chaos over …

Nabih Bulos , W.J. Hennigan and Brian Bennett Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners …

As President Obama prepares to travel to Saudi Arabia for a regional summit, several of the rulers he will meet are contending with dramatic changes at home. Plunging oil prices and soaring deficits are compelling Gulf countries to upend their decades-old social contract. In a region where government …

Brian Michael Jenkins Five years ago, U.S. special operations forces killed Osama bin Laden in a raid on his hiding place in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Although al Qaeda had been dispersed from its bases in Afghanistan and its support networks had been largely dismantled, nearly 10 years after the …