Greater Middle East

PKK announces deal with Turkish state

Turkey and the Kurdish rebel movement announced a landmark political deal that calls for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to lay down arms and join the civil political process.

Greater Middle East

ISIS and the neocons: fearful symmetry?

The map that ISIS has drawn up of its proposed "caliphate" has internal borders closely mirroring the new borders that neocons seek to impose on the Middle East.

Southeast Asia

Harsh abuses seen in Burma opium war

Despite a democratic opening and hopes for peace with ethnic insurgencies, horrific accounts of rights abuses continue to emerge from Burma's opium-producing hinterlands.

Europe

Mineral struggle in new Kosova violence

Street-fighting in Kosova's capital Pristina was portrayed as more Serb-Albanian "ethnic hatred," but it came as workers occuiped the Trepca mining complex to resist privatization.

Greater Middle East

Yemen’s Houthi rebels: Iran’s proxies?

Claims that the Houthi uprising in Yemen is an Iranian plot ignore that the Houthis' brand of Shia is heretical to Iran's ayatollahs—and that Yemen's Shi'ites have real grievances.

Iraq

Kurdish forces open new front against Assad

Fighting broke out between Assad regime troops and Kurdish forces in Syria's divided northern city of Hassakeh, signalling an end to a pact established to keep ISIS at bay.

Palestine

Fatah under attack over statehood proposal

A Hamas leader said that the draft resolution for Palestinian statehood presented to the UN Security Council is "disastrous," and has "no future in the land of Palestine."

South Asia

India: Bodo militants massacre tribal people

National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) militants shot dead at least 50 adivasis, or tribal people, in a wave of coordinated attacks across India's northeast state of Assam.

Africa

ICC halts Darfur probe; Bashir threatens rebels

The International Criminal Court suspended its Darfur investigation, citing UN inaction in the case, as President Omar al-Bashir accused rebel leaders of being foreign "agents."