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This report reviews Algerian public confidence in the army based on the results of the Arab Opinion Index from 2011- 2019/2020 and places the respondents’ opinions in their historical context, which roughly spans the second half of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s rule and the rise of the Hirak popular movement in February 2019. It concludes that the army still enjoys the confidence of the majority of respondents, and that levels of confidence are governed by the societal perception of a role played by the army in the transition process, in addition to the absence of repression. Comparing trust in the army with other institutions, the report reveals that respondents express a lack of confidence in political parties, elected institutions, and the government in contrast to high confidence in the judiciary.

Beginning in 1995, Qatar underwent a major transformation in its foreign policy, adopting an independent and neutral foreign policy as a result of being located in an important vital, geopolitical and economic region, with tensions between the influential regional powers. Given the importance of mediation in resolving disputes and bringing peace to a region raging in conflict, Qatar adopted a foreign policy approach of dialogue, good offices, mediation, and preventive diplomacy, and worked to settle disputes and crises peacefully, remaining impartial and independent, in accordance with the provisions of international law and the Charter of the United Nations. This study explores Qatar policy and experience in mediation and dispute settlement and highlights its active role and contribution over the past twenty years, by clarifying the features of its foreign policy, strategy, and principles, and highlighting case studies of previous Qatari mediation.

​The Muslim response to colonialism has varied country to country and region to region. The dawn of colonialism created ruptures in Muslim political reasoning, forcing them to find and reconfigure an Islamic response to the changing political realities. The Indian subcontinent never came under an Islamic Caliphate of the Umayyad or Abbasid Empires. Most military expansionist ambitions in India stemmed from the volatile Central Asian Khanates who played a major strategic role between the Caliphate and Indian subcontinent, preventing the Caliphate from controlling India directly and maintaining an advanced independent politics. This paper profiles the political context of Muslim political thought and its response to the rise of nation-state, which was shaped more of political realism, setting aside the Islamic vocabularies of Dar al Islam or Dar al Harb. This paper concludes that, the South Asian Muslim mind had accepted nation-state either in its composite or in a distinctively Muslim format which resulted in the two nation-states of India and Pakistan. Both formats have evolved within a strong Islamic context that challenges Pakistan's "Islamic credentials" against India.

​The Muslim response to colonialism has varied country to country and region to region. The dawn of colonialism created ruptures in Muslim political reasoning, forcing them to find and reconfigure an Islamic response to the changing political realities. The Indian subcontinent never came under an Islamic Caliphate of the Umayyad or Abbasid Empires. Most military expansionist ambitions in India stemmed from the volatile Central Asian Khanates who played a major strategic role between the Caliphate and Indian subcontinent, preventing the Caliphate from controlling India directly and maintaining an advanced independent politics. This paper profiles the political context of Muslim political thought and its response to the rise of nation-state, which was shaped more of political realism, setting aside the Islamic vocabularies of Dar al Islam or Dar al Harb. This paper concludes that, the South Asian Muslim mind had accepted nation-state either in its composite or in a distinctively Muslim format which resulted in the two nation-states of India and Pakistan. Both formats have evolved within a strong Islamic context that challenges Pakistan's "Islamic credentials" against India.

Given the unrest boiling in the region, this paper considers the possibility of partitioning the countries of the Levant. Given the state of affairs and current political indicators in Syria and Iraq, which suggest the Kurds have started to regain their national unity and awareness, the group is now the only faction in the Levant fighting on nationalist or ethnic bases. What makes it easier for them to establish a viable Kurdish entity, at the local level, is the fact that they have huge economic, political, human, and military potential. This paper examines local and international contexts and obstacles to the establishment of a Kurdish state. It also argues that it will be unlikely, meanwhile, that sectarian entities could be created in Syria and Iraq given current local and international circumstances. Indeed, sectarian tension is nothing more than social tension that is the result of imbalance in the distribution of wealth and power, and the result of political authoritarianism. Therefore, the warring groups are not part of the framework of separatist tendencies; though they are liable to turn into sectarian nationalisms due to foreign intervention and agendas.

The notions of superpower and unipolarity are seriously questioned by heavy trends: non-fungibility and dissemination of power; complexity of transnational interactions and interdependencies. The article argues that because of these mutations, China's rise, achieving the rank of "emerging potential superpower", and the narrowing of the gape on global power resources, the United State, who still have unmatched capacity, will probably be the last superpower in a Cold war era sense. The article concludes that unipolarity is not challenged because the operating interstate dynamics, in which involved actors which are supposed to work for building a multipolar world, contribute in fact to reproducing unipolarity.

This paper seeks to uncover the roles played by truth commissions in Latin America in establishing transitional justice, in a comparative study that draws upon three main experiences: Argentina, Chile, and Peru. It highlights the contexts that allowed these experiences to adhere to the democratic transformation and absorb its complexities, by questioning the dynamics that accompanied the establishment of truth commissions, and identifying the roles of actors in managing tension between the demands of victims and the requirements of reconciliation and civil peace. The paper demonstrates that the establishment of truth commissions was linked to the nature of the challenges faced by Latin countries undergoing democratization and transcending the legacy of previous violations. Inasmuch as these challenges reduced the crisis of legitimacy that ravaged these systems and led them to engage in this transformation, they also highlighted the potential that these committees have provided for actors to manage the sequence of this shift.

This paper adopts the assumption that the series of foreign interventions which served to transform the Syrian crisis from a domestic revolution into a regionalized, and later globalized, conflict were not the result of factors intrinsic to the revolution itself, but rather the consequences of dramatic changes sweeping across the entire Middle East following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The fallout from 2003 included the collapse of the former tripartite of Arab regional powers: Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. For the first time, the non-Arab regional powers of Turkey and Iran came to be directly involved in intra-Arab affairs. The latter effectively had an overland border tying it to Syria's Mediterranean coast once the US withdrew the bulk of its military forces from Iraq in 2011. While the Syrian regime had worked to strengthen its ties to both Ankara and Tehran in the wake of its losses following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Syria would fall victim to regional power politics between its two regional neighbors. Once the Syrian revolution was militarized, in response to the Damascus regime's iron-fisted approach to peaceful popular protests, Turkish-Iranian rivalry over the future of Syria quickly became bloody. In an attempt to limit the extent of influence not only by Turkey but also its ally Iran, the Syrian regime resorted to seeking out additional foreign support, latterly from Russia.

This study examines the features of the political reconciliation in Sudan following the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir's rule. It analyses the interim constitutional declaration in terms of content, outcome, context, and the forces involved in writing it. The study argues that the success of a consensus-based transition depends on the ability of elites to overcome a number of challenges, the most important of which are establishing peace, strengthening the alliance between coalition forces, overcoming the economic impasse, and managing public expectations. The study traces the most prominent milestones of the negotiations from the announcement of al-Bashir's dismissal in April 2019, until the declaration was signed in August 2019. Then, it proceeds to analyse the most important bands of the document, and the institutions that have implemented these, and assesses the extent of the declaration's ability to facilitate the democratic transition.

This is the second section of a study examining the application of good governance in Egypt and Tunisia. The first section, published in issue 42 of the Siyasat Arabiya journal, provided an in-depth theoretical framework for assessing the dynamics of administering governmental affairs, establishing the prerequisites of effective governance, and combatting corruption. This second section argues that administrative corruption is an important obstacle to the quality of public services provided by central government in Egypt and Tunisia, despite various laws and codes calling for tackling corruption and corrupt individuals. This study recommends governmental decentralization; gradually permitting legislative bodies to review the work mechanisms of public administration; adopting organizational philosophies that can serve to improve the process of providing public services; and finally, activating e-government and information and communications technology to achieve more effective public administration operations and services provision and thereby contribute to expanding economic growth.