Peace & Freedom: 2023 Fall/Winner issue

The Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan
Toward Peace, Human Security, and Women’s Empowerment
On October 1, 2022, nearly 3,000 people marched in Brussels, Belgium, for Mahsa Amini, who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
Viktoria Bykanova / Shutterstock.com.
By Valentine M. Moghadam
Boston Branch
The Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has
long been plagued by tensions, rivalries, and conflicts,
most of which have followed coercive or destabilizing
external interventions. A listing would include the
overlong Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the 2003 invasion and
occupation of Iraq; the 2011 NATO attack on Libya; the
assault on Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the UAE; and the Trump
administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 international
agreement on Iran’s nuclear capacity and application of “maximum
pressure sanctions.” In recent years, there has been a
cycle of protests in Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and
Egypt over unemployment and rising prices, and in Lebanon
over that country’s financial crisis and political incompetence
and corruption. Such tensions, conflicts, and citizen protests
predate the 2022 Russia-Ukraine-NATO war, which itself has
exacerbated regional and global tensions through increased
militarization, shortages, and high prices of food, fuel, and
fertilizer. Most recently, the outbreak of war between Israel
and the Hamas leadership of Gaza – after years of bulldozed
homes, violence, and expanded illegal settlements – threatens
regional and global stability even further, not to mention
the lives and livelihoods of Palestinians and Israelis. Instead
of peace and cooperation, the peoples of the Middle East
experience more militarism and conflict.
The fallout from the 2003 invasion of Iraq and weakening
of its institutions, and the destabilization of the Syrian state
a decade later, included the emergence of the murderous
“Islamic State” (also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL,
and Da’esh in Arabic). The 2011 NATO bombing of Libya to
effect regime change produced a fragmented and weakened
state that became a conduit for human trafficking and women’s
physical insecurity. Of all the countries that experienced
the 2011 Arab Spring, only Tunisia embarked on a widely
celebrated democratic transition – only to find itself bereft
of the necessary financial and economic assistance from the
“international community” for sustainable democratic development.
The ensuing political dysfunction brought about a
presidential maneuver in July 2021 that prevented democratic
consolidation. The European Union’s decision this summer to
allocate funds to Tunisia is focused on keeping Tunisian and
international migrants at bay. 1
After a 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan, the
United States and NATO withdrew in 2021, leaving behind
rubbish, ruin, and bitter memories, as well as frightened and
bewildered women and men who had benefited from employment
or schooling. The Taliban, now in control, proclaim an
end to crime and narcotics production, but they also have
PEACE & FREEDOM FALL/WINTER 2023 | 5