Yemeni government forces took back AQAP’s major stronghold towns after a month-long offensive. But al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has grown along with US drone strikes—from a handful of militants to a widespread insurgency.
“Anti-war” voices are cynically seeking to exculpate Bashar Assad in the Houla massacre. At best, they express far greater outrage at supposed Western arming of the Syrian rebels than at Assad’s slaughter of his own people.
An Egyptian court found former president Hosni Mubarak guilty of complicity in the killing of protesters during last year's uprising and sentenced him to life in prison. But his sons and top security officials were cleared of wrongdoing.
Egypt’s secular progressives see a choice between “Islamic fascist” Mohammed Mursi and “military fascist” Ahmed Shafiq in next month’s run-off. Washington connived in isolation of the secularists, because this bloc includes socialists and Nasserists.
As the Assad regime is accused of a new horrific massacre, Damascus and Moscow charge that the US and NATO are backing the uprising. And as harsh repression continues in US-backed Bahrain, the monarchy makes identical charges against Iran.
Demonstrators marked Jordan’s 1949 independence from British rule by demanding reform and rejecting government plans to hike commodity prices and taxes to offset a $3 billion budget deficit.
A court in Bahrain sentenced Zainab al-Khawaja, the daughter of jailed pro-democracy activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja to one month in prison for trying to organize an anti-government protest.
As the Friends of Yemen meeting in Riyadh concentrates on security issues, the economic chaos of the past year of unrest and revolution, coupled with diminishing oil stocks, has created a humanitarian crisis, with 44% of the population undernourished.
An Egyptian court convicted five police officers for the death of protesters last year and sentenced each to 10 years. Nearly 200 officers have been charged in the deaths of at least 846 protesters, but acquittals have been common.
An AQAP suicide bomber killed more than 90 Yemeni troops as they practiced for a parade in the capital Sana’a, two days after a US drone strike killed two presumed AQAP operatives. Fighting in southern Yemen has killed hundreds over the past week.
After a week of clashes in Tripoli between pro- and anti-Assad Sunni factions, fighting spread to Beirut when a Sunni cleric and anti-Assad opposition leader was killed by government troops at a checkpoint.
The US is to resume military sales to Bahrain, suspended due to human rights concerns during last year’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the State Department announced. Rights groups says arbitrary arrests and torture continue.
