Tag: Middle East
17 Results
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UK to send largest, most powerful aircraft carrier to Pacific on first operational mission
"The UK is a global power with truly global interest... We must be prepared to compete for our interests and our values far, far from home," UK Defence Minister Gavin Williamson said.
February 12, 2019 -
US troops pullout from Syria likely to begin in weeks, says Pentagon commander
The US-led multinational coalition has been engaged in an operation to drive out the Islamic State (IS) militants from their last stronghold in the eastern Euphrates region in eastern Syria.
February 11, 2019 -
Assad, not Syria, will be rehabilitated in 2019
The rehabilitation of Syria does not seem to be a realistic outcome for 2019. The rehabilitation of Bashar al-Assad looks rather more likely.
January 4, 2019 -
As Opec’s power wanes, Saudis tie up with Russia
OPEC is in the midst of a major crisis made more evident by Qatar’s announcement that it would be leaving OPEC, partly to protest Saudi dominance over the group.
December 17, 2018 -
Opec minus Qatar
News of the country leaving Opec is unnerving for the oil market and the market participants are yet to digest the full import of this development.
December 8, 2018 -
Top US naval commander in Middle East found dead
Vice Adm. Scott Stearney was found dead on Saturday, but officials have said that there was no evidence of foul play at this time.
December 2, 2018 -
100 years on, their war rages
There was something gruesomely familiar about the way we commemorated the supposed end of the First World War a hundred years ago. Not just the waterfalls of poppies and the familiar names – Mons, the Somme, Ypres, Verdun – but the almost total silence about all those who died in the First World War, whose …
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November 18, 2018 -
Flirting with religion-based parties
Religion-based parties have a canny method of making political space for themselves and becoming a part of the mainstream political system eventually. This has been the trend since the germination of religion-based groups in the Middle East with political aspirations, in the early 20th century following the end of the caliphate. The idea was transmitted …
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November 16, 2018 -
Mideast on the boil
The cauldron bubble of the Middle East has flared up yet again this week, and the risk of war is dangerously real. The outbreak of violence is reckoned to be the worst since the 2014 conflict and the situation remains ever so fragile. The question that is now of greatest importance is whether the ceasefire …
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November 16, 2018 -
Twitter suspends 486 more accounts linked to Iran, Russia
Fewer than 100 of the 770 suspended accounts claimed to be located in the US and many of these were sharing divisive social commentary.
August 28, 2018 -
About time someone took on Erdogan
President Trump’s head-on confrontation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson and other points of contention is a marked departure from his predecessors’ approaches to U.S.-Turkey relations. It is also welcome and long overdue. Washington’s relations with Ankara have deteriorated over the past 20 years, in particular since …
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August 25, 2018 -
It can’t all be about a pastor
It needs a stroke of genius to soften the heart for poor old Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Those of us who have always believed that Erdogan is a bit off his rocker must still be appalled that a US president infinitely more cracked than the Turkish variety is trying to impoverish Nato’s second largest military ally. …
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August 18, 2018 -
Panchayat approach needed to resolve Indo-Pak dispute
The Pakistan-India conflict has been raging for 70 years and there have been many international attempts to get the countries to sit down and work out their differences. All have failed because they have not properly assessed the psychological nature of the problem and have largely ignored traditional conflict resolution systems in the subcontinent. If …
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August 3, 2018 -
Nation and State
The Middle East is in turmoil yet again, verily opening a new chapter of discord if not bloody ferment and literally so. Thursday’s declaration of Israel as a “nation-state” in the contentious law adopted by Knesset (parliament) is bound to whip the racist sentiment within the country’s Arab minority, almost akin to apartheid. The “nation …
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July 21, 2018 -
The destruction of its land and heritage
The mass plundering of rock and sand to build monstrous high-rise apartment blocks and private villas, and the subsequent violation of the country's landscape is down to the greed and hypocrisy of the Lebanese alone.
July 1, 2018 -
Donald Trump claims ‘a lot of progress’ made in Middle East
US President Donald Trump has said there has been a lot of progress in the Middle East since he announced last month that he would withdraw his country from the international accord on Iran's nuclear programme.
June 26, 2018 -
The world and Thucydide’s trap
The likely reenactment of the Athenian historian’s account of the 27-year-long Peloponnesian War which Graham Allison draws his imagery from in his book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (war resulting from a dominant power’s fear of a rising power) by portraying equivalence between the US, the dominant power (Sparta), and …
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May 25, 2018