Iran-backed hackers dwelled for 8 months in Mideast governments system, report says

In a region with so much conflict, such budgets are significant – offering substantial gains for corrupt actors. Additionally, in the World Bank’s 2021 Digital Maturity Report, Saudi Arabia ranked among the top countries in providing digital government services and interaction with https://www.metadialog.com/government/ citizens. In 2022, Saudi Arabia’s Digital Government Authority (DGA) launched an inclusive government program to provide integrated digital services to the government sector, accelerating sustainable digital government transformation and increasing data sharing among agencies.

Additionally, the digital service offering in the UAE has been met with a positive response, with 62% of UAE respondents mentioning that they use digital government services at least once per week. In 2022, Oman ranked fourth in the United Nations ESCWA’s Government Electronic and Mobile Services (GEMS) Maturity Index, which measures the relevant maturation of e-government services. As part of the government’s digital transformation program 2021–2025, a tender has been announced to study, design and implement a unified national portal for electronic services. Efforts to intensify the digitalization of government services in Kuwait are in place following the confirmation of the Director-General of the Central Agency for Information Technology (CAIT), Haya Al-Wadani. This is aligned with the government’s work program for the 16th legislative term (2022–2026), which the CAIT was assigned to oversee and accomplish. Without a doubt, effectively deploying e-government services will secure the public’s trust and improve the country’s competitiveness across the global landscape.

Gender Attitudes in MENA 2022

The country went on to elect its first democratic president, a leader of the long-banned political Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood. But soon thereafter discontent began to grow—over the country’s plummeting economy, the encroaching role of Islam in government, and even mass fuel shortages. Just one year later, revolution returned to Egypt as the military overthrew the government. Today, the military still controls power, with a president who has cracked down on dissent and changed the constitution to allow himself to remain in power until 2030. Like in much of the Middle East, initial Arab uprising optimism faded in the face of entrenched authoritarian power structures. Habib Zafarullah is Adjunct Faculty at the University of New England, Australia, where he served as Chair of Public Policy.

The US naval buildup is risking another regional conflict and drawing America into another Middle East war, despite Biden’s commitment to end forever wars. In the last year, cybersecurity firms have identified several campaigns against the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and more. An Iranian cloud provider was accused of providing infrastructure services to APT34 in August. Dubai has also achieved outstanding marks in the UN’s Local Online Service Index (LOSI) 2022. As part of the UN’s biannual E-Government Survey, the city is hailed with a “Very High” rating, ranking first in the Arab region and fifth globally in the list of the world’s best-performing digital governments.

Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa

Industries of the Middle Eastern region include oil and oil-related products, agriculture, cotton, cattle, dairy, textiles, leather products, surgical instruments, defence equipment (guns, ammunition, tanks, submarines, fighter jets, UAVs, and missiles). Banking is also an important sector of the economies, especially in the case of UAE and Bahrain. The modern Middle East began after World War I, when the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with the Central Powers, was defeated by the British Empire and their allies and partitioned into a number of separate nations, initially under British and French Mandates. Other defining events in this transformation included the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the eventual departure of European powers, notably Britain and France by the end of the 1960s. They were supplanted in some part by the rising influence of the United States from the 1970s onwards. Unlike previous editions of The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa, Professor of Political Science at Tulane University Mark Gasiorowski served as the sole editor of the seventh edition.

Hamas’s tactical daring and Israel’s powerful response cannot mask the way that long-term drift by key actors has produced an atmosphere friendly to atrocities. No significant political player has had a strategy or even a clear policy for anything more than daily management of the problems posed by Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal over a decade and a half ago. No peace initiative has existed since 2014, when then U.S. secretary of state John Kerry abandoned his efforts to start a political process. Meanwhile, the international community has limited its political involvement by expressing nominal support for a two-state solution without any plan to implement it. The world can no longer ignore the fact that as long as the Israeli occupation continues, more blood will be unnecessarily spilled by both sides.

Chapter 11: Republic of Lebanon

Back then, attacks were limited to missile launches that did not inflict casualties on the Israeli side. Today, this is not the case, and the attacks are reminiscent of the conflict intensity in the 1990s, leading to the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000. As the conflict in Gaza progresses, Hezbollah and its allies can either continue these attacks or upgrade their scale to inflict more casualties on the Israeli side.

The UAE remains the highest scorer in the region, but has begun to show worrying signs of decline. While its government has taken steps to increase efficiency in public administration, there is still little transparency, and mechanisms to protect against corruption and other abuses are lacking. Citizens are afraid to criticise the government due to harsh restrictions, and media often self-censors to avoid crackdowns. This makes it difficult for citizens to get information on the ruling family’s activities, as well as government processes. Lamentably, a series of rights restricting legal reforms by the government begun in late 2021 have only made the situation worse. All of this has fuelled instability in Jordan, which has repercussions beyond its borders.

A More Nuanced Policy Needs Better Coordination

Since early last year there has been a surge in drug-related assassinations in Syria’s southwestern Daraa Province, adding a new layer to the region’s persistent violence. The regime’s complicity, driven by financial and political motives, has fostered a climate where drug networks operate with impunity, spurring locals to take matters into their own hands. MEI’s Strategic Foresight Initiative examines key drivers and dynamics at work in the region, thinks strategically, creatively and rigorously about various scenarios, risks and opportunities, and uses methodologically sound approaches to help decision-makers chart a course forward. The Program on Economics and Energy seeks to advance understanding of the impact of a global energy transition away from hydrocarbons for those traditional oil and gas exporters of the Middle East. The program also investigates the relationship between oil and gas exporters and importers across MENA, in the role of financial aid and investment, remittances, and labor markets. MEI’s scholars draw on deep ties and decades of experience working in the region to build better understanding of Middle East policy.

Power structures have continued to allow those at the top to retain control and hinder political integrity. This has caused pervasive civil unrest – and violent conflict – as people fight for their rights and voices to be heard. The instability and consolidation of power in turn fuels political corruption, feeding the vicious cycle of authoritarianism, corruption and conflict across the Arab world. Middle East, 12 October 2023 – Deloitte Middle East announced the launch of the “Future of Government,” a think-tank Middle East Government to support governments to enhance their services and improve the lives of their citizens. The Deloitte initiative brings together the best government and digital transformation experts to re-imagine the future of governments in areas of finance, human resources, procurement, technology, and decision-making. Among its recognitions, the 2022 UN e-Government Development Index ranked the Kingdom 31st worldwide and first in the MENA region for the availability and development of digital government services.

CPI 2022 for Middle East & North Africa: Corruption fuels ongoing conflict

On Saturday, the Algerian government “strongly condemned” Israel’s actions, which it described as “barbaric Zionist aggression” and expressed “full solidarity with the Palestinian people.” Algeria has long been vocally against normalization with Israel. So the Moroccan government’s relatively muted response to the war should not be surprising. King Mohammad VI called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League, which Morocco currently chairs, and the Moroccan Foreign Ministry has pushed for de-escalation and condemned the targeting of civilians on all sides. But the Moroccan government has failed to issue the full-throated rhetoric against Israel’s actions coming out of its North African neighbors.

A total of 50 new services were launched last year in Bahrain, reaching over 600 e-services in total. The Threat Hunter Team is a group of security experts within Symantec whose mission is to investigate targeted attacks, drive enhanced protection in Symantec products, and offer analysis that helps customers respond to attacks. On September 4, the attackers executed three different variants of the joper.ps1 script on Web Server 2. They then turned their attention back to Computer 1, where a new variant of the Backdoor.Tokel malware was installed on the computer. A few hours later, a suspicious net.exe command was executed to mount the c$ share of another machine using stolen credentials. After this, net.exe was used to list all mapped drives, before WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) was used to execute Plink in order to open port-forwarding on the compromised host, allowing for remote RDP access.

This widespread access to technology has made it possible for governments as well as private entities to expand learning opportunities even to populations previously unreached or to address difficult to reach sectors of the population. At the same time, the population itself has not only increased in numbers but in diversity. Maintaining quality through digital and other means of quick expansion of educational opportunities continues to be challenging if not problematic.