Greater Middle East

Syria: minority peoples face cleansing

Armenians, Circassians, Mandaeans and other small ethnicities in Syria are being uprooted by jihadist terror, and increasingly see the Assad regime as the lesser evil.

Greater Middle East

Syria: Nusra Front attack Christian village

Jihadist forces of the Nusra Front launched an assault on the ancient Christian village of Maaloula, which is on the UNESCO tentative list of world heritage sites.

Greater Middle East

Are you ready for World War 5?

The fearful synergy of regional sectarian war and Great Power rivalries holds the menace of the looming Syria intervention setting off a new global conflagration.

Greater Middle East

Syria chemical attack: rush to judgement

Iran, Russia and conspiranoids left and right line up to call the Syria gas attack a "false flag" op—rushing to judgement before the facts are in, just like those who blame Assad.

South Asia

India: tribal people expel mining company

In a vote ordered by India's courts, the Dongria Kondh tribe overwhelmingly rejected plans by British mining giant Vedanta Resources for an open-pit bauxite mine on their lands.

Greater Middle East

Syria: Nusra Front cleanses Kurds

Up to 20,000 refugees have crossed from Syria into Iraqi Kurdistan, fleeing fighting between Kurdish militias and Salafist factions led by the Nusra Front. 

The Amazon

Peru: oil spill threatens rainforest reserve

Indigenous leaders in Peru’s Amazon protested that a leak from Pluspetrol’s oil operations is causing contamination within the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve.

Africa

Darfur: ethnic war exploding again

Efforts by pastoralist militias to bar refugees from returning to their lands in Darfur have sparked yet a new wave of fighting and displacement—with 250,000 uprooted this year.