The Conflict Management and Humanitarian Action Program along with the Politics and International Relations Program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, in cooperation with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, organized a panel discussion entitled: "Markets and Conflicts: War Economics in the Middle East." on Wednesday, February 15, 2023.
The discussion was held at the Institute and was co-hosted by Catherine Chiniara Charrett, Senior Lecturer in Global Politics at the University of Westminster, Mary Noryack, Postdoctoral Fellow at CMI, and Rahaf Al-Daghly, Director of Studies at the Hermon Center for Contemporary Studies.
The session aimed to provide a platform for critical and thought-provoking discussions on the subject of war and conflict economics in the Arab region during the last decade, and to provide an opportunity for researchers to meet and discuss political and economic phenomena related to war. It also aimed to encourage more research in the growing interest of this field regionally and internationally, in order to promote the exchange of ideas and viewpoints between participants encouraging knowledge-sharing interdisciplinarity.
The session touched on the complexities of war economies in the region, by examining the role of the state, non-state actors, and transnational networks that contribute to shaping conflict patterns, in addition to discussing the effects of war on local and regional economies and on the lives of ordinary people, as well as the impact of foreign countries on war economies in the region.
Among many other topics related to the economics of war and of conflict in the Middle East, the participants discussed economic/social transformations in the context of war and crises, and the emergence of new social and economic structures that feed on the continuity of the conflict, in addition to searching for the role assigned to Arab and Islamic countries in order to ensure the enforcement of Just to the law and contribute to the achievement of international justice.
Enriching the discussion on the main topic of the session, the participants discussed the intertwined relationships between internal and external actors, external funding channels, and their impact on the continuity or shifts in the dynamics of wars, in addition to cross-border networks associated with informal trade, the shadow economy, private security companies, mercenary fighters, organized crime organizations and human trafficking.
The discussion session was followed by presentations of interventions and questions about the war economics literature in the region, the role of external financing channels in the continuation of wars, and other questions and ideas that would contribute to advancing the research on this subject a step forward.