Summary: with the final volume of the report on the Manchester Arena bomber now released, many questions were raised and some answers delivered but the big question wasn’t asked.
Summary: the Libyan people have been abandoned to political and military elites that control the country with Mafia-style fiefdoms; their success in entrenching themselves in the state apparatus and in UN-sponsored peace talks means that unless bold initiatives are undertaken, the country’s future remains bleak.
Summary: authoritarian regimes continue a relentless campaign against independent media with little or no criticism from their Western allies.
Summary: the fighting in Libya may have all but ended in 2022 but that may be the calm before a coming storm as contestation grows over gas rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
Summary: the fighting may have all but ended in 2022 but that may be the calm before a coming storm as Washington prepares to challenge the Wagner group in Africa and contestation grows over gas rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
Summary: 2023 promises to be a very difficult year for many MENA countries with only the Gulf states escaping the long shadow of a deep economic slowdown.
Summary: with candid and often brutal honesty the Lebanese writer Amal Ghandour digs deep into her own past, all the while excavating the landscape of a failed state, seeking answers for why Lebanon has abandoned its people to the invidious greed of an entrenched elite.
Arab Digest editor William Law asks Libya expert Tarek Megerisi to give his assessment of the current situation. His diagnosis is that yes the country remains in a downward spiral but with a new UN special representative in place there is some reason to believe that this seemingly intractable conflict may, possibly, be heading into a more positive space.
Summary: a book just out takes a fresh look at the Benghazi attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya and became a political cudgel rather than an object lesson in the failures of US foreign policy and diplomacy.
Summary: in Libya current events, peace processes and diplomats all seem to be caught in a cyclical game and the country appears to have now gone the full circle, returning to the environment which existed just before the start of the war on Tripoli in 2019.
