by News Decoder | 5 Apr 2017 | Africa, Europe, Islam, Middle East
By Filippo Sciacca Once renowned mainly as an idyllic tourist attraction with beautiful beaches, the Italian island of Lampedusa is now widely known as a European entry point for desperate migrants and refugees escaping from nearby Africa — many of whom meet a...
by Alistair Lyon | 22 Mar 2017 | Human Rights, Islam, Middle East
Saudi-led intervention in Yemen’s civil war, now in its third year, has provoked a humanitarian catastrophe. The U.S. and Britain are making it worse. A woman holds her boy after he was weighed at a hospital malnutrition intensive care unit in Sanaa, Yemen, 27...
by Bernd Debusmann Jr | 10 Jan 2017 | Americas, Islam, Middle East, Syria, United States
Donald Trump has called for a ban on the entry of Muslims into the U.S. and conflated “Muslim” and “terrorist.” But many Arabs are hoping the next U.S. president will take a harder line on Iran. Donald Trump at a rally opposing the Iran nuclear...
by News Decoder | 22 Dec 2016 | Islam, Middle East, Politics, United States
By Alistair Lyon U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has casually hurled a diplomatic grenade into the Middle East. He has picked as his ambassador to Israel a fervent sponsor of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land and an enemy of any two-state solution to...
by Alistair Lyon | 24 Nov 2016 | Islam, Middle East, Politics, Syria, United States
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump suggested steps that could plunge the Middle East further into chaos. Once President, will he change tack? A staff member removes the Iranian flag after a meeting of foreign ministers and representatives of the U.S., Iran, China,...
by Nelson Graves | 22 Nov 2016 | Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Islam, Middle East, Syria, Terrorism, United States
By Nelson Graves Let’s take time out from digesting Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election to look at a critical issue that is helping to shape politics in that country and around the world: terrorism. Terrorism sends shock waves around...
by News Decoder | 18 Oct 2016 | Human Rights, Islam, Middle East, Syria
Five and a half years after its civil war erupted, Syria descends into the abyss as the world watches. What lessons can we draw from this tragedy? A Syrian man holding a girl surrounded by the rubble of houses destroyed by air strikes in Aleppo, Syria, 21 April 2014...
by Alistair Lyon | 10 Oct 2016 | Human Rights, Islam, Middle East
Yemen’s civil war has accelerated the collapse of a fragmented Arab state, but don’t hold your breath for international action to mitigate war horrors. A Yemeni woman strokes the arm of her malnourished infant, Sanaa, Yemen, 27 November 2014. (EPA/Yahya...
by Nelson Graves | 4 Oct 2016 | Islam, Middle East, Syria, Terrorism
By Nelson Graves The Islamic State movement will probably be destroyed militarily in the next year, but the roots of the radical group will survive unless Arab regimes promote social justice and economic growth. That was one of the key messages that Rami Khouri, an...
by News Decoder | 13 Sep 2016 | Islam, Middle East, Syria
By Alistair Lyon When Turkish tanks swept into Syria last month, their first objective was to drive Islamic State fighters from Jarablus, a border town whose strategic location has long attracted covetous eyes and the murky maneuvers of spies and statesmen. For...