Syria

( 48hills.org ) – For the first time, the Biden Administration ordered a cross-border military attack in the Middle East. On February 26, seven US missiles slammed into a facility used by Iranian-backed militias in Syria. Washington was retaliating for the February 15 attack on a US base in northern Iraq. Biden is siding with […]

Bashar al-Assad

Is it still possible to prevent the collapse of Syria?

Middle East Monitor

By Marwan Kabalan | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Syrian intellectuals and activists from across political and intellectual spheres are busy searching for a way out of the disastrous situation their country has reached after ten years of violent conflict. The issue is not straightforward, and the exit is unclear, with everyone trying […]

Iraq

The US has dropped 326,000 bombs on people in other countries since 2001, Most Recently in Syria

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink) – On February 25th, President Biden ordered U.S. air forces to drop seven 500-pound bombs on Iraqi forces in Syria, reportedly killing 22 people. The U.S. airstrike has predictably failed to halt rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over […]

Kurds

How Facebook Suppressed Kurdish Site for sake of its Business in Turkey

ProPublica

By Jack Gillum and Justin Elliott | – ( ProPublica ) – As Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish minorities in neighboring Syria in early 2018, Facebook’s top executives faced a political dilemma. Turkey was demanding the social media giant block Facebook posts from the People’s Protection Units, a mostly Kurdish militia group the […]

Donald Trump

Trump targeted innocent Muslims with Visa Ban on phony pretext of ‘Terrorism,’ then unleashed real White Terrorism on Capitol

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Muslim visa ban that Trump got through on his third try, and in which the Supreme Court to its everlasting shame acquiesced, is no more. President Biden abolished it with a stroke of his pen on his first day in office. That isn’t enough. Congress needs to legislate explicitly […]

Featured

Time for Biden to end the Forever Wars and bring Iran in from the Cold

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although former president Trump claims to have avoided starting any new wars, he in fact put the US on a war footing in the greater Middle East, and significantly increased the number of US troops in the region. He tried to strangle Iran economically and assassinated one of its foremost […]

Displaced and Refugees

In Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestinian territories: Refugee camps contain the hidden victims of Covid-19

Ramzy Baroud

( Middle East Monitor) – With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, interest in the plight of the world’s most vulnerable populations, refugees, began to wane. A year later, and it is as if the refugee crisis has disappeared completely. It hasn’t, though. In fact, the world’s erstwhile leading humanitarian crisis has […]

censorship

Exiled Turkish journalist Can Dündar sentenced to 27.5 years in prison for Reporting on Ankara’s aid to Syrian Fundamentalist Rebels

Committee to Protect Journalists

( Committee to Protect Journalists) | – The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned a Turkish court’s conviction and sentencing of exiled journalist Can Dündar. On December 23, the 14th Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes announced that Dündar, who lives in Germany, had been sentenced to 18 years and nine months in prison for an espionage […]

Donald Trump

Peril in the Middle East, Peril at Home: Our Top 10 Stories of 2020

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 2020 was a monster of a year, leaving three million Americans dead (a record), probably nearly half a million of them of Covid-19 once everyone is counted. The fecklessness of the outgoing Trump administration was responsible for a good deal of this national catastrophe, one that did not strike our […]