It’s been five years since Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire outside the municipal building in Sidi Bouzid, a small town in the heart of Tunisia. While his act had profound international repercussions at the time, some residents say little has changed in their town. Read Here – Al Monitor
A coalition of Muslim nations will form a joint operations room in Riyadh to combat terrorism in Islamic countries, in the first coordinated Muslim military effort to combat extremism. Read Here – Bloomberg
In history, a hegemon is largely associated with the presence of international economic infrastructure. In the 19th century, the British hegemon underwrote the liberal international order in the form of free trade and gold standard. The liberal order was later re-established by the American hegemon, which has overseen the Bretton Woods system from 1945. By […]
America’s tentative return to the battlefields of Iraq, however reminiscent it is of unfinished American business there, is also a deadly reminder that the Arab world is still trying to sort out the unfinished business of the Ottoman Empire, a century after it collapsed. Read Here – The New York Times
The oil boom of the second half of the twentieth century brought modern technology to Saudi Arabia, but the aesthetic refinement of classical Islamic architecture began to disappear. Starting in the mid-seventies, the old houses were replaced with drab towers. Modern Mecca feels as if it were built by a people without history or tradition—a […]
The map of the modern Middle East, a political and economic pivot in the international order, is in tatters. Syria’s ruinous war is the turning point. But the centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and ethnicities — empowered by unintended consequences of the Arab Spring — are also pulling apart a region defined by European […]
Blithely ignoring the fact that his presidential predecessor ordered the invasion that plunged Iraq into its current chaos and instability, Obama seems to hold the Iraqis at fault for their present U.S.-induced predicament., argues Yuram Abdullah Weiler. Read Here – Tehran Times
The smoke rising from the Iraqi city of Baiji—so dark and thick that it’s visible from U.S. weather satellites—is evidence of one thing: The jihadist conflict engulfing Iraq is fueled by oil. Read Here – Businessweek
The roots of the current violence go at least as far back as Iraq’s 2006-2007 civil war, which didn’t so much end as get put on hiatus. The spate of sectarian violence pitted the Shiite-majority government against Sunni militias and al-Qaeda in Iraq (a group from which ISIS emerged). The U.S. troop “surge” halted the […]
It was a massacre. Most of the carnage occurred not in the Square or right around it, but in the western-approaching streets that led to the Square. I viewed the videotapes of bloody bodies that came in with camera crews, and I made phone calls to local hospitals and to the Chinese Red Cross. We […]
looking beyond borders 