Greater Middle East

Syria: civil wars in the civil war

As the Free Syrian Army now battles jihadist rebels as well as the regime, the two biggest jihadist factions are fighting each other for control over oilfields in Syria’s north.

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: ‘sectarian cleansing’ on both sides?

A Syrian rebel offensive targeting Alawite villages in the coastal governorate of Latakia has seen some 200 people killed and left nearly 3,000 families displaced this month.

Greater Middle East

Yemeni pro-democracy leader barred from Egypt

Egypt banned Yemeni activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman from entering the country for “security reasons”—to protest from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iran

Iran: protest conviction of Sufi activists

Human Rights Watch called upon Iran’s judiciary to drop charges and quash the verdicts against 11 members of a Sufi order convicted in what the rights group called unfair trials.

Europe

France: whither the hijab intifada?

The on-again/off-again Parisian intifada has exploded once more—this time over the arrest of a man whose wife was ticketed for wearing a face veil in the suburb of Trappes.