Bahrain seeks to build affluence for its national ‘employees of choice’

Bahrain’s ongoing labour market reforms are attracting increasing attention from the media and policymakers in neighbouring Gulf Co-operation Council countries. In a region where expatriates account for over 50% of the labour force – more than 90% in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – increasing national employment is seen as a policy priority.
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Deadlock is broken, but Kuwait’s MPs remain in combative mood

In a major breakthrough for Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, Kuwait’s combative MPs have approved a national five-year development plan, the first for decades, and the creation of a Capital Market Authority (CMA).
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Qatar’s sponsorship system once again under international spotlight

While Qatar is no stranger to negative stories in the more scurrilous regional papers, British media, including Euromoney magazine, have picked up the case of senior British banker David Proctor, who has reportedly been unable to leave for nearly a year after his all-powerful sponsor refused to sign his exit visa.
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Copenhagen tests Saudi Arabia’s resistance to climate change

For long a staunch opponent of the climate change agenda, Saudi Arabia’s resistance to a new deal on the environment will be put to the test as representatives of 190 countries hammer out an agreement on global energy policy in Copenhagen.
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Qatar always has Paris as Al-Thanis consolidate at home and abroad

Foreign journalists seem unable to mention the phrase ‘Qatari foreign policy’ without including the adjective ‘maverick’. But there is much more to the peninsula’s unusually prominent role in international relations than mere game-playing.
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Southerners work to outflank Saleh in Yemen’s other conflict zone

The Saudi bombing of targets in Yemen has underlined the potential for the crisis in the poor and populous southern Arabian state to flare into wider conflict
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Egypt’s diplomatic star splutters in last years of Hosni Mubarak’s reign

Egypt’s role in the alliance gathered behind Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s efforts to crush the Houthi rebellion suggests the ‘sleeping giant’ of Middle East politics has not entirely withdrawn from its central role in regional diplomacy
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Encouraged by Washington, GCC builds up ‘five pillars of deterrence’

It is not just through trade and financial controls that the United States and its allies are gradually encircling Iran in an effort to throttle the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions. And the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states are playing a larger role in this process than seemed likely earlier this decade, when Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz led a move towards rapprochement with Tehran.
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