Arab World

Palestinians Mount Blood Donation Drive for Earthquake Victims, as one Artist tells European Islamophobes, ‘Turkey is Strong and Will Rise Again’

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas authorized the Palestinian foreign ministry to send a 30-member rapid response team to Malatya in southern Turkey. They were split into two teams and are paired with Turkish colleagues combing collapsed buildings for survivors. About half of the delegation were members of Palestinian Civil Defense, 10 […]

Bashar al-Assad

Turkey-Syria earthquake: Assad blames west as agencies struggle to get aid to his desperate people

The Conversation

By Scott Lucas, University College Dublin | – (The Conversation) – It didn’t take long for Syria’s Assad regime to seek political and economic benefit from the devastation of an earthquake. As emergency services were reaching victims of the 7.8-magnitude tremor on February 6, regime-linked organisations demanded governments “immediately end the siege and unilateral coercive […]

Displaced and Refugees

Syria bears Brunt of economic Devastation caused by Quake

Michael Jansen

( Irish Times ) – The death and devastation wreaked by Monday’s massive earthquake is greatest in Turkey, but that country is in a far better position to deal with the aftermath than Syria, due to warfare and sanctions. The civil conflict and proxy interventions have left Syria divided, with 70 per cent of territory […]

Houthi

Houthis Violating Women’s and Girls’ Rights in Yemen: UN Experts Highlight Widespread Harm

Human Rights Watch

By Niku Jafarnia, Bahrain and Yemen Researcher, Middle East and North Africa Division | – ( Human Rights Watch ) – Several United Nations human rights experts recently sent a letter to Ansar Allah – also known as the Houthis – the de facto authority in much of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, detailing the […]

Featured

With Thousands Dead or Wounded, Will earthquake Aid for Syria be Impeded by US Sanctions?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A 7.8 earthquake that struck south-central Turkey and northwest Syria early on Monday morning. Although over two thousand are being reported dead in Turkey at midnight on Monday and more than a thousand in Syria, the death toll will grow a great deal as the rubble is combed by rescue […]

Houthi

Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War (Review)

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War (London: Hurst and Co., 2022). Greifswald, Germany (Special to Informed Comment) – In a context of war, do accountability and justice need to wait until the end of the conflict? In her well-researched and original book Yemen in the Shadow […]

Authoritarianism

Yemen: Authorities Failing to Protect People’s Basic Rights: Dire Conditions, Bureaucratic Barriers to Aid

Human Rights Watch

( Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Yemeni authorities are failing to meet their international legal obligations to protect socio-economic rights for millions of Yemenis, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing a submission to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. After more than seven years of protracted conflict, the Yemeni […]

Saudi Arabia

Mike Pompeo, seeking White House, runs interference for the Saudis, Trashing murdered Journalist Khashoggi

Michael G. Roskin

Nashville – (Special to Informed Comment) – Mike Pompeo asserts that murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi was no mild critic of the Saudi regime but a dangerous radical trying to subvert it. This, I suspect, has been the Saudi line fed to Washington since Kashoggi’s 2018 dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Trump […]

Corruption

In Unusual Search for Accountability, Lebanese PM charged with Homicide over 2020 Beirut Port Explosion

The Conversation

By John Nagle, Queen’s University Belfast | – The investigation into the Beirut port explosion has taken a new turn, with the judge overseeing the probe charging a former prime minister and two other former ministers with homicide with probable intent. The explosion in August 2020, which happened in a massive silo in the port […]