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Book Title: US policy and the Management of International Crises (Iran—Iraq—Syria—Lebanon as examples) [Arabic] Author: Abada Mohammed Tamer Year of publication: 2015 Publisher: ACRPS Pages: 288

This study explores the concept of "deep cultural genocide" in the context of the Israeli war on Gaza in 2023 - 2024. It seeks to expand this concept to encompass tangible cultural genocide, which includes the systematic destruction or appropriation of heritage and cultural symbols, the erasure of identity, and dehistoricization. In addition to the deep cultural genocide aimed at depriving one party in the conflict of narrating events and presenting its narrative to the world, The study examines how this narrative facilitated the genocide, attempted to justify it, and contributed to the prolonged silence surrounding its continuation for many months.Utilizing a critical perspective grounded in cultural and media studies, the study incorporates the concepts of "c ultivation," "c ultural bias," and "m anufacturing consent." The findings reveal that during this war on Gaza, Israel transitioned from practicing slow cultural genocide, a method driven by colonial powers for over a century, to executing a "deep cultural genocide." This approach not only involved the systematic and direct destruction of Palestinian heritage and culture but also extended to efforts to extinguish the Palestinian narrative and prevent its dissemination to a global audience.

Academic studies on Somalia lack focus on analyzing the gaps and problems facing the state-building project. Drawing on an in-depth literature review of post-war and conflict state-building frameworks and models, this study highlights the structural gaps that continue to hinder Somalia's state-building project by seeking to identify and describe them, in addition to discussing their root causes and impacts on the future of the state-building project. The study concludes that these gaps can be summarized into three categories: 1 -Political: As a result of the problematic aspects of both the tribal quota system 4. 5 and the federal system, 2 -Social: represented in the weakened role of civil society in the process of state-building, and 3 -Economic: driven by the controversial business interests of influential businessmen, and the impact of foreign assistance on economic recovery. Thus, the success of the state-building project in Somalia depends on all relevant actors' abilities to deal with these structural gaps.

This article discusses the challenges facing the government of Haider al-Abadi in Iraq, and outlines what ought to be expected in the coming stage, particularly after the fall of Mosul to ISIL. The paper reviews the failure of the regime post 2002 to insure equal participation of all segments of Iraq in the institution of power following the sectarian polices adopted by Nouri al-Maliki who exercised control over all the levers of the political regime and the public political institutions, and systematically harassed other politicians and parties – Sunnis in particular. The paper also reviews the American position, the intervention of the international coalition, and the establishment of the national guard. It looks at the other challenges facing the effort to keep Iraq together and help it emerge from its problems, including the threat of ISIL, sectarian division, the security situation, and the economy. The paper also reviews the regional overlap with the Iraqi situation, particularly the Iranian aspect, and what is transpiring as a new regional equation.

The paper studies the Iraqi-Syrian-Turkish conflict over the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, from a geopolitical perspective. It argues that this conflict has historical and political roots, not solely tied to the natural availability of water in the Tigris and Euphrates, but rather connected to the policies of different parties in managing water resources. The paper includes three essential elements. The first examines the geographical and hydrological characteristics of the Tigris and Euphrates. The second explores the political and academic discourse in the 1990 s regarding the "water war" theory. The third and final element analysed the characteristics of the new conditions that have distinguished the three countries since the beginning of this century, imposing on Syria and Iraq the need to devise a new vision for managing their available water resources. The research concludes with the inevitability of negotiation for the joint management of the Tigris and Euphrates water resources as it is not in Turkey's interest to ignore the interests of downstream countries. Moreover, Syria and Iraq cannot achieve any results without negotiation and water diplomacy.

​Qatari foreign policy presents a challenge for students of international relations. Whereas major theories within the field tend to privilege structural factors in explaining the action of states, and particularly small states, in the case of Qatar, the quality of leadership and the strategies that leadership employs to navigate through the structural constraints—primarily geography—are equally important. One of the main findings of this paper is that the strategies adopted by the Qatari elite since 1995 did alleviate many of the structural constraints which the country would otherwise have faced. Moreover, during the short-lived Arab Spring of 2011-2013, Qatar tried to reshape the political landscape in the Middle East to its favor, challenging the two regional hegemons Saudi Arabia and Iran, in Egypt and Syria respectively. Yet, the paper concludes, geopolitical factors and the relative capabilities of states remain instrumental in assuring a state’s sustained capacity to continue playing a key role. This is particularly true in a region where elite thinking continues to be defined by realpolitik.

Despite the sharp and often uncompromising rhetoric that accompanies it, Iran's foreign policy is deeply pragmatic and is guided by practical, strategic considerations and objectives. Especially after the end of the war with Iraq in 1989 , successive administrations in Tehran have pursued foreign policies that have been largely nonideological, guided more by the logic of national interests as dictated by evolving circumstances rather than by the principles of the 1978 - 79 revolution. Constitutionally, while the Supreme Leader is technically in overall charge of the country's international relations, Ayatollah Khamenei's guiding principles for conducting foreign policy – dignity, wisdom, and expediency – are broad enough to include a wide range of potential policy options. With the Islamic Republic seemingly embroiled in one regional and international crisis after another, pragmatism has become its default backup policy. A legacy of the war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988 , this hard realism is only likely to be reinforced as the lingering consequences of the Twelve-Day War shape Iranian foreign and security policies in the years to come.

This article deals with the post-2003 consociationalist experiment in Iraq. It examines the reasons why this experiment has failed in producing a reasonably coherent governing formula. It argues that, because of their emphasis on identity politics and not on making mutual concessions in the interest of serious statebuilding, the main players in this experiment (Shia, Sunni and Kurdish political elites) failed to appreciate the complexity of the consociationalist arrangement, let alone use it for public interest. The article focuses on the central role that the Shia Islamist parties played in making this failure happen, highlighting, as reasons, their insistence on an essentially sectarian rhetoric and their attempt to enforce it as a national identity. The article finally proposes a different rhetoric that can accommodate Iraq's ethnic and religious diversity.

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) offered a significant and puzzling turning point in the Arab region, casting a large shadow over public debate. Since 2014, the Arab Opinion Index has sought to better understand Arab public attitudes towards ISIL. This paper explores findings from the 2016 survey to understand the drivers of positive views of ISIL among a small group of respondents, and to compare those findings with results from earlier surveys. The main conclusion is that, the miniscule subset of respondents who have positive views of ISIL are not inspired by shared values or religiosity. No statistically significant correlation could be found between respondents' self-identified religiosity or their attitudes towards the role of religion in the public sphere and their views of ISIL. In contrast, attitudes towards ISIL could be attributed to respondents' views on a number of political issues affecting the Arab region.

This study explores the origins of Qatari-US relations, the foundations on which they are based, and the rules that govern them. It begins by examining relations between the two countries from the 1970s up until the Trump era. The paper finds that Qatar's need for US security assurances did not prevent it from adopting independent policies that occasionally contradicted US strategy. Accordingly, the Qatari-US relations have been upended, and exposed to crises due to diverging interests, concerns and challenges. While Qatar has embraced a foreign policy independent of Washington, it has also tried not to alienate it and has established itself as an asset for the US, both in terms of the military facilities it provides and the unique role it plays through maintaining ties with parties that the US cannot communicate with directly. Mutual dependency has enabled Qatari-US relations to overcome all the challenges they have faced over the past three decades, including those that emerged under the Trump administration.