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This paper presents an overview of Arab public opinion towards US policies in the Arab region at a turning point between two US administrations. The findings, taken from the 2016 Arab Opinion Index, show that the Arab public has a complete lack of trust in US policies towards their region. The paper explores the evolution of Arab public perceptions of US policies through successive polls of the Arab Opinion Index, and analyzes the factors driving negative Arab public perceptions of US foreign policy in the region, asking whether these are driven by religious, cultural, political or ideological reasons. With the Obama Administration handing over to Trump, the author examines the Arab public expectations of a change US foreign policy towards the region.

Fish Letters, Memoirs of General Hamdani: Iranian Patronage over Syria [Iranian]

​This report chronicles some of the most significant developments relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1/1/2016و to 29/2/2016.

This paper examines the relationship between democracy and active citizenship, an observed feature of states with a reasonably long established democracy. The question of how active citizenship takes hold in semi-tyrannical regimes with only a modicum of freedom of expression is also examined. The paper achieves these aims by asking survey respondents to answer a set of questions covering their involvement in the public sphere, including expressions of their own collective interests and rights. The results show that Arab public opinion is broadly supportive of democracy, which it prefers over other forms of government. Nonetheless, Arab support for democracy falls short when respondents are presented with specific questions related to practical steps, suggesting that a long standing lack of democratic experience has imprinted societal attitudes in the Arab world.

Forced migration from Iraq and Syria today are reminiscent of the Palestinian Nakba of the late 1940s, underscoring the need for a revision of Arab knowledge in the field of forced migration. This paper attempts to offer a starting point for researchers interested in the subject, and attempts to expand the specifically Sudanese experience across the Arab world. The paper also takes in those academic studies which explore the violent aspects of forced migration as well as the extent to which Sudanese government policy on refugees is tied to the social values of the Sudanese people. One conclusion made in this regard is the possibility that the integration of refugees can be used to address structural instabilities in Arab societies. The author highlights the importance of the interested parties—including governments, grassroots movements and returned refugees—to cooperate in effecting the integration of refugees who return to their home countries, a challenge more complicated than hosting refugees abroad.

​Five years prior, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies brought together a group of young activists whose dedication and courage gave ris eto what would become the Arab Spring. The group of activists, gathered again in Doha on January 15-16, 2016, appeared to have been completely changed by the intervening months. With the initial ecstasy of the fall of tyrants across the region now faded, the young revolutionary activists had matured ideologically and politically. It was a maturity born of suffering and setbacks, and revealed a realism towards the coming battle for freedom. One unchanging fact was their continued hope for freedom, and their belief in its possibility.

In association with the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies held a three-day conference (January 21-23, 2016) to study the developments associated with the Arab Spring in the intervening five years.

The major turning points of the Syrian revolution, beginning with the earliest public demonstrations on March 15, 2011, are here examined. The author revisits speeches made by President Bashar Al Assad in the early days of the uprising, in which he was quoted as discounting the likelihood of a revolution affecting Syria the way it did other Arab countries on the grounds that his government’s policies were in line with public sentiment. The paper then revisits the regime’s excessively violent repression of the first peaceful protests, which led to the militarization of the revolution. The author holds the international community, including the Arab League and the United Nations culpable for ensuing large scale slaughter of Syrian civilians, standing idly by even as it became apparent that Assad was mercilessly killing his own people. Meanwhile, Syria has become the site for a number of world and regional powers—including the United States, the United Kingdom, France Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, Iran and Russia—to advance their fundamentally incompatible policies. As a consequence of these competing foreign interventions, the author contends that the return of normalcy in Syria will be impossible for the foreseeable future.

This report chronicles some of the most significant developments relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict

This paper seeks to understand Arab public attitudes towards Turkey. The author goes beyond Arab perceptions of Turkey’s regional policies, taking in the general Arab perception of the Turkish people, and the evaluation of Turkey’s democracy and political advancement among Arab respondents. The author reports that one-third of the Egyptian public has a broadly positive view of Turkish society and of Turkish policies. The results also suggest that divisions in Arab attitudes towards specific issues, such as the conflicts in Iraq and in Syria and the Sunni-Shia divide, contribute to a similarly fractured Arab attitude towards Turkey across the wider region. Most Arab respondents voiced the view that Turkey treats the Arab peoples with dignity and respect, while acknowledging that Ankara used its regional policies to advance its own interests.