Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed to enforce a nationwide truce in Syria, in the hopes of paving the way for a future political solution to the crisis, but both the Syrian government and opposition have their doubts about the truce. (More…)
Politics
The dawn of the Trump Era was met with the sort of damp squib that might have suggested to a more thoughtful individual the brute realities of his situation. Habituated as he is to basking in the glow of the approbation outsized personal deference, the underwhelming crowd at his inauguration had the potential to act as a corrective (More…)
In six months, federal elections will be held in Germany. The right-wing AfD, party which in recent months has been polling consistently well above 10%, will almost certainly enter federal parliament. Barring any unforeseeable catastrophic event, Merkel will remain in power, but the rise of the far-right has already shaken Germany’s politics. (More…)
Foreign intervention and the many proxy groups fighting on all sides of the conflict in Syria have further polarized the war and complicated the rules for accountability when it comes to civilian protection. (More…)
Lale Colak died upon release from Kartal Prison, Istanbul, on December 20, 2000. She couldn’t speak, her mouth was ulcerated, and her hair had turned white after 222 days without solid food. Lale’s mother says that she didn’t want to die, but was militantly devoted to a wave of prisoner hunger strikes that took aim at the expansion of Turkish mass incarceration. (More…)
The Syrian government’s new and unprecedented volunteer-based military unit is a window into the current state and the future of the Syrian military, explains Syrian journalist Abdulrahman al-Masri. (More…)
Remember the funeral of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama stood before the South African people to pay tribute to Madiba. “He makes me want to be a better man”, the American president confided with his audience. (More…)
Located in the middle of the Eastern Mediterranean, but historically dominated by foreign powers, Cypriots are making a last-ditch attempt to reunite their divided, sun-drenched island. (More…)
It gave plenty of people giggles when Csanad Szegedi, a high-ranking official in the Hungarian far-right and explicitly anti-Semitic party Jobbik, found out in 2012 that he was Jewish. After some soul searching, he revealed to Israeli newspapers Ma’ariv, and The Jerusalem Post, in the fall of 2016 that he had become a committed Zionist, would relocate to Israel, and enter politics. (More…)
There is a painful episode in the Afghan war, which perhaps can be introduced in no place more fitly than in this. Whilst the prisoners, who surrendered themselves on the march between Caubul and Jellalabad, were suffering such hardships in a rude and inhospitable country, British officers were enduring unparalleled sufferings in the dungeons of an Oosbeg tyrant, far beyond the snowy mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh. (More…)
Farah is a young woman living in Syria’s capital, where she faces the daily struggles of maintaining a normal life in a country being ripped apart by war. (More…)
The year was 1942 and I was eighteen years old. I was in Cairo on holiday arranged by my mother. She ran a hostel for the expats in Cairo. If I go into detail about mother’s job, I’ll never get to tell how I encountered King Farouk. (More…)