Greater Middle East

Egypt: independent unions under attack

Egypt’s new government has launched the most serious set of attacks on workers’ rights since the days of Mubarak, with several activists sacked or prosecuted for organizing.

Greater Middle East

Jihad against the phantom menace hits Sinai

The jihad against a non-existent “film” produced by non-existent “Jews” continues to claim lives, with the latest attack launched by militants in Egypt’s Sinai on Israeli border troops.

Afghanistan

From Afghanistan to Tunisia: back to GWOT?

Both imperialism and political Islam see in the current crisis the opportunity to revive the dystopian dialectic of jihad-versus-GWOT—and reverse the gains of the Arab Spring.

Greater Middle East

Will provocateur film derail Arab Spring?

In the wave of protest over a provocateur-produced "film" dissing the Prophet Mohammed, jihadists could be seizing back the initiative from secular revolutionaries in the Arab world.

Greater Middle East

Egypt: court sentences 14 Islamists to death

A court in Egypt sentenced 14 Islamists members of the jihadist organization al-Tawhid wal-Jihad to death for their roles in a series of attacks in northern Sinai.

Greater Middle East
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Talk about strange bedfellows! This week witnessed the surreal spectacle of US National Security Adviser John Bolton, the most bellicose neoconservative in the Trump administration, visiting Turkey to try to forestall an Ankara attack radical-left, anarchist-leaning Kurdish fighters that the Pentagon has been backing to fight ISIS in Syria. "We don't think the Turks ought to undertake military action that's not fully coordinated with and agreed to by the United States," Bolton told reporters. Refering to the Kurdish YPG militia, a Turkish presidential spokesman responded: "That a terror organization cannot be allied with the US is self-evident." Bolton left Turkey without meeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who then publicly dissed the National Security Adviser's stance as a "serious mistake." YPG spokesman Nuri Mahmud, in turn, shot back: "Turkey, which has been a jihadist safe-haven and passage route to Syria since the beginning of the conflict, has plans to invade the region end destroy the democracy created by blood of sons and daughters of this people." (Photo: ANF)