gulf.
51 pieces filed under gulf
Gulf and South Asia Business: A Closer Look at Economic Ties
Exploring the intricate economic relationships between Gulf nations and South Asian countries, focusing on trade flows and investment.
By Rasha Karim
BusinessJul 17
Gulf and South Asia Business: Navigating Trade Dynamics Amidst Economic Uncertainty
Souk Weekly explores the intricate trade relations between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations and South Asian countries, focusing on recent developments in oil prices, investment flows, and regional cooperation.
By Rasha Karim
PoliticsJul 17
Regional Powers Navigate Shifting Alliances Amid Gulf Tensions
The shifting geopolitical landscape in the Middle East continues to challenge regional stability, with countries navigating complex diplomatic relationships.
By Rasha Karim
BusinessJul 2
An Emergency Fund Is Household Infrastructure
Savings are not a moral badge. They are a buffer between ordinary life and expensive panic.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJul 1
The Quiet Persistence of Who You Know
The old currency of connection still moves quietly beneath the region's gleaming meritocratic ambitions
By Priya Chen
PoliticsJul 1
How Moving the Weekend Rewired a Region
A quiet change to which days count as the weekend reshaped commerce, worship, and family life across the Gulf
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJul 1
How the Region Built the World's Airline Hub
By turning geography into strategy, a handful of carriers made the region the world's connecting point
By Marcus Okafor
PoliticsJul 1
The Gulf's New City-States
Gulf cities are becoming brands and powers in their own right, competing across borders and beyond them
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJul 1
The Quiet Return of the Diaspora
A generation that left to study and work abroad is coming home, and bringing a raised set of expectations with it
By Sara Qureshi
BusinessJun 30
When the Founder Steps Back
The Gulf's great family firms are handing over to heirs educated abroad and impatient to modernise
By Marcus Okafor
PoliticsJun 30
The Corniche Is the Region's Real Public Square
The seaside promenade has quietly become the most democratic space in cities built around private wealth
By Sara Qureshi
PoliticsJun 30
The Majlis Is Still Where Things Get Decided
Behind the glass towers, the Gulf's oldest institution still decides who is heard and what gets done
By Priya Chen
PoliticsJun 30
The Region's New Ministries of the Future
Gulf states have invented ministries for happiness, tolerance and the future, and the experiment is more serious than the jokes suggest
By Diego Arroyo
TechnologyJun 29
How the Region's E-Government Leapfrogged the West
Starting later let the region skip the paperwork era and build a state that lives, by default, on the phone in your pocket
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 29
The National Day Is a Tradition We Built on Purpose
How young nations engineer ritual and memory, and why the manufactured tradition still does real work
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 29
The Consulate Is the Region's Most Practical Institution
For millions of workers, the plain consular window, not the grand embassy, is where the state actually touches their lives
By Sara Qureshi
PoliticsJun 28
How the Region Learned to Spend on Its Own Image
Stadiums, museums, and summits as instruments of statecraft, and what a country buys when it buys attention
By Sara Qureshi
BusinessJun 28
The Family Business Succession Nobody Wants to Schedule
Across the Gulf, the meeting that decides a family firm's future is the one that never reaches the calendar
By Marcus Okafor
PoliticsJun 28
The Municipal Council Is the Last Place Real Politics Still Happens
Why the genuine bargaining over roads, permits, and water happens far below the national stage
By Mira Faraj
OpinionJun 12
Do Not Mistake Relief for Resolution
The Gulf is allowed to breathe today. It should also remember that a calmer headline is not the same as a safer region.
By Diego Arroyo
WorldJun 12
Geneva Is Not the Gulf, But It May Decide the Weekend
A possible signing ceremony, Pakistan's mediator role and the G7 calendar have turned European diplomacy into the Gulf's weather forecast.
By Priya Chen
BusinessJun 12
Oil Falls, But the Bill Does Not Fall at Once
Crude dropped on hopes of a Hormuz reopening. That does not mean the weekly shop, summer flights or shipping costs instantly forgive the past few months.
By Marcus Okafor
WorldJun 12
The Weekend the Water Might Open
A possible US-Iran understanding has given the Gulf its first real breath in weeks. The problem is that the paperwork is still not the peace.
By Sara Qureshi
OpinionJun 11
Keep the Kettle On: A Note on Nerve
There is a particular Gulf composure that shows up in bad weeks. It is worth defending.
By Diego Arroyo
BusinessJun 11
What It Costs: The Conflict at the Pump and the Checkout
Oil is spiking, shipping is snarled, and the bill eventually arrives where everyone can read it, at the petrol station and the supermarket.
By Marcus Okafor
WorldJun 11
The War Arrives in the Neighbourhood
Reported strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait have done something the Gulf has spent years arranging itself to avoid: brought the fighting home.
By Sara Qureshi
WorldJun 8
The Airport Lounge Is a Diplomatic Weather Station
In a region built on movement, the lounge often reveals the temperature of relationships before the official calendar does.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 8
The Discount Season Has Become Retail Infrastructure
Sales used to be calendar events. In Gulf retail, discounting now organizes inventory, staffing, cash flow, and customer memory.
By Sara Qureshi
PoliticsJun 8
The Summer Cabinet Retreat Has Become a Working File, Not a Photo Opportunity
The regional summer retreat used to be covered through arrivals and group photographs. The real story now sits in the delivery files that follow everyone back to the office.
By Mira Faraj
OpinionJun 4
In Defence of the Regional Mall, Against Everyone Who Thinks It Should Have Died Already
A contrarian case for the much-maligned air-conditioned cathedral, which is, in operational terms, doing more civic work than the people who write about its demise are willing to credit it for.
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 4
The Regional Press Conference Has Become a Building, Not an Event
Why the staging, the seating chart, and the side rooms now do more diplomatic work than the answers from the podium.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 4
The Regional Bank Branch Has Quietly Become a Museum Piece
Why the marble lobbies are still being built, even as the actual banking has moved elsewhere, and what the lobbies are now actually for.
By Marcus Okafor
TechnologyJun 4
The No Code App the Uncle Shipped Is, Quietly, the Most Useful Thing in the Family
Why the regional family WhatsApp group has been replaced, in several households we know, by a forty-eight hour build the uncle put together one rainy weekend.
By Diego Arroyo
WorldJun 4
The Airport Transit Zone Is Now the Region's Most Underrated Soft Power Instrument
Forget the embassies. Forget the cultural attaches. The first impression of a country is now formed in the eight minutes between the jetbridge and the connecting gate.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 4
The Second Cousin in the Family Business Is the Most Underrated Asset in the Region
Why the regional family conglomerate's quietest performer is the relative who never asked for a board seat and now runs a quarter of the cash flow.
By Sara Qureshi
PoliticsJun 4
The Municipal Council Is Where the Region's Actual Politics Lives
Everyone watches the cabinet. The interesting fights, the real careers, and the durable policy shifts are happening one floor below.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
Saudi Arabia Is Buying the Future, One Consultancy Report at a Time
If the future arrived in a slide deck, the Kingdom would already be living in it. The actual schedule is more flexible.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 3
The Annual Budget Speech Has Quietly Become Performance Art
Why a document that used to be read for numbers is now consumed, in this region, mostly for the staging.
By Mira Faraj
TechnologyJun 3
Panda Doesn't Give Keynotes. Panda Ships.
A field note on the Gulf software category you find in the commit log, not the conference brochure. Named instance: Ahmed Yasser, handle Panda.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 3
The Quiet Power of the Third Cousin
Why every Gulf cabinet has a man at the back of the room whose business card does not match the importance of his phone calls.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
The Cabinet Reshuffle Is, Mostly, a Language Event
Why the most consequential thing about the latest reshuffle was not who got what portfolio, but what the new portfolio was called.
By Lena Holloway
WorldJun 3
Central Asia Is Quietly the Next Pipeline of Pipelines
Why a region nobody in Gulf finance was thinking about three years ago is suddenly on every infrastructure desk's whiteboard.
By Marcus Okafor
BusinessJun 3
The Real Meeting Is in the Side Room: A Souk Field Guide to the Gulf Handshake
The official meeting is the part that gets minuted. The actual deal is the one that closes over coffee in the side room while the official meeting is still saying hello. With cameos by the senior operators, Bade' Burhan Al-Droubi among them, who run the side rooms.
By Mira Faraj
TechnologyJun 3
Your AI Girlfriend Lives in Abu Dhabi Now
Why a notable share of the world's intimate-companion AI services are now being hosted on Gulf cloud infrastructure, and what the local sovereign players think about it.
By Priya Chen
OpinionJun 3
The Man Who Sells Nostalgia to Oil Traders
What a particular Dubai shop tells us about a regional market for the lost world that the regional economy itself was, in part, responsible for losing.
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 3
Every Country Now Has a Ministry of the Future. The Future Is Underwhelmed.
Inside the global rush to bureaucratise the long term, and the suspicion that the long term has noticed.
By Lena Holloway
BusinessJun 3
The Dubai Chai Economy Is Bigger Than Your Startup
Why a four dirham cup of tea is, in aggregate, more strategically important than most series A rounds raised in this country last year.
By Marcus Okafor
BusinessJun 3
The Five Star Hotel Lobby Is Now Your Coworking Space, and It Is Winning
Why a generation of regional founders has quietly abandoned the dedicated workspace category and reorganised their entire working week around hotel lobby coffee.
By Marcus Okafor
OpinionJun 3
Stop Calling It a Vision
Why the word has lost the meaning the strategy decks need it to carry, and what to use instead.
By Diego Arroyo
WorldJun 3
North African Renewables Are Quietly Becoming a Gulf Investment Story
Why several Gulf funds have started buying meaningful positions in renewables projects across North Africa, and what the local governments are doing about it.
By Lena Holloway
WorldJan 9
Ramadan Etiquette for Newcomers Who Don't Want to Put a Foot Wrong
A warm, practical primer for non-Muslims navigating their first Ramadan in the Gulf, from daytime eating to iftar invitations.
By Priya Chen