Arab World

Beirut (AFP) – A string of suicide blasts and raids claimed by the Islamic State group killed more than 220 people in southern Syria on Wednesday, in one of the jihadists’ deadliest ever assaults in the country. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacks hit several areas of the largely government-held southern province […]

Saudi Arabia

Fearful of Prince Bin Salman, Wealthy Saudis seek to Invest Abroad

Middle East Monitor

Wealthy Saudis are uneasy about investing their millions in the Kingdom due to the policies of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. The purge ordered by the de facto ruler last year and the jailing of political opponents has frightened the very sector which the 32-year-old needs to woe in his ambitious plan to wean Saudi […]

UAE

Top UN Court Rebukes United Arab Emirates over Treatment of Qataris

AFP

The Hague (AFP) – The UN’s top court Monday ordered the United Arab Emirates to protect the rights of Qatari citizens, wading into a bitter year-long crisis triggered when Gulf countries snapped ties with Doha. Judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague narrowly ruled in a provisional but binding decision that […]

Iraq

Qatar plans Expansion of US-Leased Al-Udeid Airbase to Battle Extremists

AFP

Doha (AFP) – The US and Qatar plan to expand Al-Udeid airbase, the biggest military facility used by Washington in the Gulf as it battles jihadists, Qatari state media said Tuesday. The two countries have also discussed making Al-Udeid a “permanent” base, the official QNA news agency said, as Doha seeks to bolster ties with […]

Iraq

Iraq: New anti-Corruption Protests in South raise death Toll to 11

AFP

Baghdad (AFP) – Fresh protests hit southern Iraq Sunday as medical sources put at 11 the number of demonstrators killed in two weeks of unrest sparked by ire over corruption and lack of public services. Security forces remained deployed around the capital Baghdad after struggling Friday to disperse crowds of angry protesters who took to […]

Iraq

Massive South Iraq Protests move to Baghdad as Police use Water Canons; 1 Dead

Middle East Monitor

A security guard outside a branch of one Iraq’s most powerful paramilitary groups shot and killed a protester on Friday while trying to push back a crowd, police sources said, ratcheting up tensions over a lack of basic services sweeping southern cities. Two people were wounded when demonstrators throwing bricks and stones gathered outside the […]

Syria

Syria Rebels Surrender Zone Bordering Israeli-Occupied Golan

Rouba El Husseini

With Omar Haj Kadour in Al-Eis | – Beirut (AFP) – Syrian rebels have agreed to surrender a sensitive area bordering the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, a monitor and opposition source said Thursday, the latest in a series of deals expanding regime control over key territory. The agreement follows another deal that saw thousands of residents […]

Donald Trump

US Gen. Denies Change in US Syria Policy despite post-Summit Russian Announcement

AFP

Washington (AFP) – The top commander overseeing US military involvement in Syria said Thursday he’d received no new instructions to work with Russians since President Donald Trump met with his Russian counterpart in Finland. “No new guidance for me as a result of the Helsinki discussions as of yet,” General Joe Votel, who heads US […]

Donald Trump

US War on the Weak: Trump in Mideast helps Crush Palestinians, Yemenis

Rebecca Gordon

San Francisco (Tomdispatch.com) – My father and I always had a tacit agreement: “We will never speak of That Part of the World.” He’d grown up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Norfolk, Virginia. His own father, a refugee from early-twentieth-century pogroms in what is now Ukraine, had been the president of his local Zionist […]