Rouba al-Fattal

The Myth of Non-Intervention in Syria

By Rouba al-Fattal on October 26, 2011

The crackdown on Syrian demonstrators continues, despite growing international condemnation of the Syrian government. More than 2000 civilians have been killed and approximately 3000 have been reported missing. But why is the international community not threatening military intervention as it did in the case of Libya?

Chaos theory for political order in the Arab world

By Rouba al-Fattal on June 10, 2011

As a Board Member of the EuroArab Forum in Brussels and a “specialist” on the Arab world, I am asked daily of what I think is going to happen in the Middle East. Let me be frank, as much as I wish I could predict the future to my own satisfaction, nobody knows what the final outcomes will be. Political analysts and pundits may quench the public thirst for information by providing their sophisticated forecasts, but their chances of getting it right at this early stage are as good as playing the roulette.

Obama’s Recovery from Ahmadinejad’s Politics

By Rouba al-Fattal on December 27, 2010

Two are not fit for a political office: the religious man, if he is sincere, and the true intellectual. The religious system is based on sacred constants, while the political system is chaotic based on constantly changing variables. No compromise can exist on religious dogmas, but politics is the art of negotiation and settlement. Policy maneuvers are not void of plots and deceptions, while bargaining is off-limits to the true religious, either you accept all of God’s commands or you exit the circle of the pure faithful. So, how could a dogmatic cleric turn into a professional politician?

While the Arab League Slept: The EU and cooperation

By Rouba al-Fattal on September 9, 2010

There is no denying that the EU lacks a clear strategy when it comes to the Mediterranean in particular and the Arab world in general, as Abdullah Baabood posits. EU’s strategy has indeed oscillated over the past fifteen years between promoting free-trade and democracy multilaterally, to fostering bilateral cooperation with attached conditions, to lifting the conditionality all together and scraping the human rights and democracy questions off its wish-list in what can be described as a series of reactive policies in response to the oil crisis, EU’s own enlargement, and terrorism threats. It is also true that the EU’s policy towards the region was a factor in deepening divisions between the Mediterranean and the Gulf states, and that there is “much to gain by linking the EU’s various policy threads with different Arab countries”, even more in fostering a Euro-Arab agenda instead of the exclusive and divisive EU-Mediterranean vision. 

Visa to paradise

By Rouba al-Fattal on October 30, 2008

I stood for inspection at the gates of heaven
‘Passport and visa please’, a full armed angel demanded...

Beyond the Veil

By Rouba al-Fattal on May 1, 2008