Bessma Momani

Last year, President Bashar al-Assad postponed Syria's parliamentary elections. This was an opportunity for him to take into account his proposed constitutional reforms that will allow political parties, other than his own Baath Party, to compete for votes.

Today is election day in Syria and...

Canada has made a sharp turn away from its tradition of multilateralism and advocating open, transparent, and merit-based leadership processes for international institutions. A few weeks ago, Robert Zoellick announced he was not going to run for another term as World Bank group president. At the close of...

Gulf Arab countries, led by Qatar's Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, have stepped up their criticism of the Syrian regime and recalled their observers from the Arab League mission to Syria. It is expected that they would favour a United Nations resolution advocating military intervention. But don't expect much to...

As Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, or "Merkozy," met this week in yet another round of shuttle diplomacy to stave off the meltdown of the eurozone, we were reminded that the euro crisis is much more than just an economic battle over currency intervention, debt, and deficits. This week, in...

The Greek tragedy of sovereign debt, the overlay of a potential for regional recession, social turmoil, perceptions of structural corruption, and political theatrics and brinkmanship is all too familiar. This is reminiscent of Argentina in 2002, which remains the largest sovereign debt default in economic history. This comparison should give...

The causes and determinants of the political revolutions sweeping the Arab world are still too complex and nascent to explain with the authority of an academic analysis. Yet there is an overwhelming belief that economic factors are a key part of the puzzle in searching for determinants.

The Arab Spring...

Syrian protesters have been emboldened and empowered by Moammar Gaddafi's death, stepping up their protests against the Assad regime while flashing signs asking for NATO to intervene as it did in Libya. And yet they and the Syrian opposition, which has asked for drones and aid to be...

The U.S. military killed al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike in the deserts of Yemen. While much of the American public discourse has focused on the dilemma of whether al-Awlaki's U.S. citizenship should have entitled him to due process of law before the assassination, there is...

As Egypt struggles to find its way in moving forward after its Jan. 25, 2011 revolution, there is great skepticism, pessimism and all out defeatism in this 80 million-strong country.

As a country dependent on tourism income in a period of tourism decline, the economic situation in...

As events unfold in the Arab world, there is a search for a common thread to explain why this Arab awakening is happening now.

For many political analysts, Egypt was easier to explain: a kleptocracy who ruled the government, in cooperation with Egypt's crony capitalists, had drained its 83...

As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the podium to announce the increased political censure and economic sanctions to be levied against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last week, she aptly noted that it was up to the Syrian people to determine their own political fate.

As...

Few people in the Middle East would have ever expected to see the day of Hosni Mubarak's trial for charges of corruption and murder. Indeed, many throughout Egypt and the region started to wonder if the revolution was all a fabricated rouse where Mubarak was relaxing on the beaches of...

Christine Lagarde has taken the top helm at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at one of the worst times in the Fund's history and this is not in reference to the widely publicized sex scandal and rape charges against former managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Lagarde, the IMF's first female managing...

We often believe that you can tell a lot about an organization, private or public, by the management style of its leaders. If that were true, then we would be quick to conclude that the IMF must be a sexist organization.

Irrespective of the rape charges against him, few...

The IMF was in the limelight for all the wrong reasons this past month. There is more to this story, however, than the charges laid against Dominque Strauss-Kahn.

From the early days of his appointment, state capitals were anticipating the departure of Strauss-Kahn to French politics and many had...