West Asia and North Africa is a region of immense complexity and accelerating transformation, whose prevailing policy landscapes have often been framed through exclusively Western lenses and frameworks. Fiker Institute’s West Asia & North Africa Program aims to support the region in decolonizing its own narratives, positions, and priority agendas globally. Long‐running wars, sovereign‐debt distress, foreign intervention, demographic pressure, and climate extremes are converging to unravel many of the political bargains that once defined the region’s geopolitics. Still, these same challenges are incubating alternative futures. European, African, and Asian middle powers are courting capitals through green‐hydrogen corridors, critical‐mineral supply chains, and digital‐infrastructure deals. The expansion of BRICS, rise of new development banks, and Gulf sovereign‐wealth funds offer fresh, if conditional, lifelines for debt‐strapped states. The program sets out to explore questions along three core lines of enquiry: How can regional states build sustainable, independent institutions and inclusive economies? Which internal coalitions and external partners are poised to fill emerging governance, security, and investment vacuums and on what terms? What can lead to increased regional multilateralism, and what can translate common visions into durable, regionally-led security guarantees?
Gendered Spaces In Arab Women’s Writing: Comparing the Works of Fatema Mernissi & Soraya Altorki

Gendered Spaces In Arab Women’s Writing: Comparing the Works of Fatema Mernissi & Soraya Altorki

INTRODUCTION The imaginary construction of the West’s need to ‘save’ women outside its borders, backed by military power and political legitimization across decades, is what Edward Said invited us to reconsider in his seminal work Orientalism. Instead of focusing on how people in the Middle East are represented or misrepresented, he calls for us to consider the power-knowledge nexus […]

Mariam Elashmawy
Syria: Shifting Identities & Rewriting the Social Contract

Syria: Shifting Identities & Rewriting the Social Contract

INTRODUCTION The downfall of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024, closed a painful chapter in Syria’s history, ending more than half a century of Assad family rule which shaped political, social, and economic spheres for all Syrians. From Ba’athification to Assadification,1 the Syrian state revolved around the Assad persona and the country became what was dubbed Souriyya […]

Ola Rifai
On Asmahan Elfergani: Within the Margins of History

On Asmahan Elfergani: Within the Margins of History

Libyan artist Asmahan Elfergani’s work is largely absent from the formal record of art history, but she is remembered in oral histories and private collections. This Essay seeks to establish a preliminary biography of the artist and her work as it endures through homes, conversations, and the quiet persistence of remembrance.

Lubna Rages
Ceasefires in Crisis: Geopolitical Implications from Syria and Lebanon

Ceasefires in Crisis: Geopolitical Implications from Syria and Lebanon

The architecture of ceasefire governance in contemporary conflicts has shifted from universal institutions toward selective coalitions of powerful states with profound implications for global security: Enforcement becomes selective, violations are interpreted asymmetrically, and the objective transforms from sustainable peace to strategic advantage.

Sarah El-Abd