Ten years after anti-government protests rocked the Middle East, instability continues to plague Yemen — yet even while the will of the Yemeni people remains largely forgotten, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
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European leaders and heads of state are willfully ignoring the plight of refugees and migrants suffering at the border between Croatia and Bosnia to avoid the domestic political fallout that undertaking real migration reform would cause.
Trump's recognition of Moroccan control over Western Sahara in exchange for Moroccan recognition of Israel was an unnecessary U.S. concession and a loss for the Sahrawi’s independence movement — but could prove an opportunity for the Biden administration.
The Assad regime’s ineffective, stunted, and selective response to the coronavirus is exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Syria and threatens to upend what little stability the country has achieved since ISIS’ defeat.
In a great irony, the COVID-19 pandemic might be a harbinger of peaceful times for Yemen. After more than 5 years of war and a severe humanitarian crisis, multiple ceasefire declarations by the Saudi-led coalition, plummeting oil prices, and a significant redirection of funds towards the domestic healthcare sector might finally convince the warring parties to agree to a durable peace accord.
ITS’ own Amanda Löwenberg saw the destruction wrought by the Beirut explosion firsthand. This is her story.
Libya has become a chessboard for regional and foreign powers as Europe stands by, risking the creation of another geopolitical and refugee crisis in Northern Africa. There is a clear alternative path for Brussels and other European capitals to take.
The April 9th election will not only decide who will lead Israel as Prime Minister, but it also has the potential to make drastic changes to Israeli policies towards the Palestinian Territories. Netanyahu’s victory may strike the deathblow to the two-state solution. His defeat could herald the rebirth of the Palestinian peace process. Israeli voters must now decide: to gamble on Gantz’s promise of diplomacy under fresh leadership or to defend Netanyahu’s narrative of an Israel under siege.
Header for the Column on the Libyan Civil War
This thread is meant to periodically capture the complexities of this conflict, and to provide up-to-date information about the latest movements on the political front as the nation enters a key year, when it is scheduled to have a series of UN mandated elections to determine the actual government of this war-torn nation that has seen its highs and lows since 2011.
On June 5th, a number of Middle Eastern countries, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, separately announced an end to diplomatic ties with Qatar. Both Qatar and the Saudi-bloc have sought to promote their narrative of the conflict to officials in Washington. While all of this might seem to simply be “politics as usual”, there are a number of reasons to be concerned about the way the Gulf rivalries are playing out in Washington.
Algeria may seem like the best candidate to lead military security efforts, but the country faces a number of daunting obstacles in its bid for supremacy. With rapidly diminishing oil and hydrocarbon resources, competition with its neighbor Morocco, and the threat of economic and political chaos on the horizon, Algeria will have to make some tough choices.
In the wake of the Iraqi Kurdish referendum on independence the international community has predictably come out in opposition to both the vote and the results. Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdistan’s neighbors have forcefully opposed the referendum, with Ankara considering cutting off Kurdish access to a lucrative oil pipeline, Tehran threatening further blockade and isolation, and Baghdad contemplating military action. Given this intense opposition from its neighbors, it is difficult to imagine the landlocked Iraqi Kurdistan functioning as an independent state.
Amidst an already-tangled web of governance and security problems, the 2017 merger of four terrorist groups presents an ever-growing threat to French, UN, and local forces in Mali, who have struggled since 2013 to extinguish the fire of militant insurgency in the north. Despite considerable foreign military intervention, Mali’s terrorist threat is expanding and its humanitarian crisis grows more desperate every day.
By overplaying its hand in sanctioning Qatar, Saudi Arabia is playing straight into the hands of its longtime regional enemy, Iran. Qatar has necessarily had to turn to Turkey and Iran for day-to-day goods and services it can no longer depend upon in the GCC block. Iran would rather sit back and allow Saudi Arabia to continue its self-defeating policy. The question remains; Is Saudi Arabia losing at its own game?