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Oman remains vulnerable to both foreign and domestic sources of instability as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates seek to expand their regional influence. Potential causes of domestic unrest—including high unemployment, budget deficits, and dwindling oil reserves—lack clear-cut solutions. Sultan Haitham faces multiple challenges even without the threat of foreign meddling, yet Oman’s neighbors may view the death of Qaboos as a unique opportunity to advance their own expansionist agendas.

Oman resisted Saudi Arabia’s attempts to use the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as a tool to serve the Saudis’ foreign-policy agenda, most visibly when Oman’s minister of state for foreign affairs publicly rejected King Abdullah’s plan to deepen the GCC into a Gulf Union in 2013, and was the only GCC state to not participate in the Saudi-led military incursion against Yemen that began in 2015.

Sultan Haitham comes to power at a time when the Trump administration has repeatedly signaled its support for Saudi Arabia and antipathy toward Iran. The belated naming of low-ranking U.S. officials to attend the official ceremony honoring Sultan Qaboos was widely interpreted as a slight against the Omanis; the U.K., in contrast, sent both Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to pay their respects.

“They just want to see your visa,” a British embassy official told me on March 18, passing on a message from Egyptian security officials at the country’s visa and immigration office. I knew what that meant: Other journalists had been called to the same authority to have their visas revoked. Later that day, the British official called me again as I sheltered in a hotel room, after a lawyer advised me to flee my apartment in case it was raided by police. The security services had spoken to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had passed a second message to the British embassy. “They’re asking you to leave,”

I dodged the meeting at the visa authority by sending a lawyer in my place, after officials at the German embassy in Cairo—I’m a dual national—warned me I could be arrested or deported there. We think it’s best you get on a plane, they said. 

I’d reported for the Guardian that Egypt likely had more coronavirus infections than the country’s official total

Recent changes to British law make it harder to fight for some of the most important causes of our time. Take the Policing Bill: whether you care about climate change, institutional racism, fuel costs, or just the state of your local schools, it is now easier for the government to silence your voice. After all, the 2021 U.S. capitol riots serve as an important reminder of what can happen if you allow threats to democracy to go unchallenged.

In a move that UK representatives would criticize if it happened in Africa or Asia, politicians have been given greater control over how the Commission works. In particular, the Bill hands the government the authority to issue a “Strategy and Policy Statement” setting out its electoral priorities, which the Commission is expected to follow.

The reactionary nature of the legislation is clear from some of the specific measures it contains, which are intended to criminalise #BlackLivesMatter and Extinction Rebellion protests. Following the changes, toppling a statue – like the one of slave trade Edward Colston that was destroyed in Bristol – could lead to 10 years in prison. That is three years more than the minimum sentence for rape.

The delegation’s request to meet with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood was however turned down by the Organization of Arab Peoples and Parliaments, state-run daily newspaper Al-Ahram reported.

The organization said the meeting was out of the question as the Brotherhood has been declared a terrorist organization and that the UK, as a democracy, should not send its delegates to meet with members of terrorist groups.

the delegation also met with Amr Moussa, head of the 50-member committee that drafted the new constitution, to whom they emphasized the importance of protecting constitutional rights and freedoms. According to state-run daily newspaper Al-Akhbar, the delegation is in Egypt at the invitation of business tycoon Mohamed Farid Khamis. 

the United Kingdom’s messy divorce from Europe, sold as an effort to reclaim parliamentary sovereignty, has instead delivered its opposite. Last Monday, the House of Commons voted in the early stages of the European Union Withdrawal Bill to give the government sweeping powers to make laws without parliamentary scrutin

If the withdrawal bill is passed as it stands, May will be able to make laws by decree and reverse and adapt primary legislation without consulting Parliament. It is the greatest attack on the British constitution in at least a century. Parliamentary sovereignty—the very thing that Brexiteers said they were voting for in leaving the E.U.—may be about to be vastly reduced by a cabal of right-wing Conservatives who say they are obeying the people’s will. Such power grabs, of course, are always done in the name of the people.

even more alarming is that there is so little concern expressed by the majority of the press and the generally acquiescent BBC. The point is that after the referendum last year, and despite the poor result in the General Election, the right-wing of the Conservative Party has continued traveling in an increasingly undemocratic direction and has, so far, swept all before it. The normally rather sober Hansard Society, an organization dedicated to promoting and strengthening democracy, has called the “broad scope of the powers in the Bill, the inadequate constraints placed on them, and the shortcoming in the proposed parliamentary control of them” a “toxic mix” that will undermine Parliament’s ability to hold May to account or to meliorate the most damaging policies arising from Brexit.

Kuwait's constitutional court Wednesday overturned a law that criminalises "imitation of the opposite sex" in a move Amnesty International said was a breakthrough for transgender rights in the region.  Kuwaiti lawyer Ali al-Aryan, who filed a lawsuit to overturn Article 198 of the penal code two years ago, confirmed that the law had been overturned, saying it violated personal freedoms, which are stipulated in the constitution. 

Fuelled by populist politics, a nationalistic press and the apparent desire to confront complex problems with ‘red meat’ and increased nationalism, Tunisia’s President has steered his country on a dark course.

rather than address the core problems facing Tunisia, its President – buoyed by a supportive media – has embarked on a populist witch-hunt of his political opponents and now one of the country’s most vulnerable groups. 

many acknowledge their fresh of support for the President since his crackdown.  Asked about the 21,000 or so black migrants residing in Tunisia, no one here is racist, they say – they simply want to distinguish between those who are here legally and illegally. It sounds reasonable enough. In fact, it could probably pass for small talk at a Conservative Party fundraiser. However, at least in Tunisia, that reasonableness fades when pressed. “They’re selling cocaine, they’re selling their wives and their girlfriends to each other,” Bassem, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler, told me. “They’re even buying boats and taking still more migrants to Europe.” In this part of Ariana, every Tunisian has a lurid tale, always experienced at one remove, which they reel off as ‘proof’ of the criminality of the country’s black migrant population.

The British government has admitted it funded training that taught Bahraini police how to "command and control" demonstrators, after its denials were exposed by a human rights group.Rights organisations warn that the UK’s support for the Bahraini police force, which is frequently accused of abuses and using excessive force to quell peaceful pro-democracy protests, risks "helping arrest and execute people who are guilty of nothing more than calling for reform."

the strategy of supporting authoritarian rulers in an effort to combat the threat of Islamic extremism had been a failure

"I see increasing radicalisation in this area of the world, and I understand the reason. People feel repressed by their own governments, they feel unfairly treated by the outside world, they wake up in the morning and who do they see – they see people being shot and killed, all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur."

where do you find this regime change in international law? And if it is a violation of international law, who is accountable for that?

With each political transition—from the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) to the Transitional Administrative Law—the first wave of Shia diasporic elites (as well as the Kurdish parties) supported and often encouraged the U.S.-UK coalition’s calamitous political decisions. These included “de-Baathification” and the disbanding of the army—two policies that would forever change the course of Iraqi politics. Both policies effectively dismantled existing state institutions and human resources instead of strengthening and building on them. And with the removal of the police force came the loss of law and order that could have prevented the wide-scale looting and violence that began in 2003. More destructive still was the exclusion of thousands of Sunnis from state and society and the resulting unleashing of a resentful public, whose vengeance would later manifest in violent reprisals throughout Iraq’s 2006 civil war and the formation of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

By the time Iraq’s first democratic elections took place in December 2005, Shia political leaders who came to power through the IGC and were supported by the U.S.-UK coalition had already gained a significant advantage, so it was unsurprising that the United Iraqi Alliance, an alliance of Shia political parties, dominated the elections. Iraq’s first democratically elected prime minister was Jaafari, a British Iraqi Dawa Party member. Many more Shia returnees would later assume ministerial and parliamentary positions, including Maliki, whose rule would epitomize the sectarian-diasporic dynamic. This legacy of Shia diasporic transnational networks used for recruiting political staff throughout Iraq’s political system continues to this day

there is no such thing as a homogeneous Shia diaspora; as with any community, there are multiple layers of categorical difference and division. While in the pre-2003 era the Shia diaspora may have been united in their political stance against Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, in the post-2003 era, Iraqi Shia politics has been divided along clerical and political lines, echoing the situation in Iraq and the new power brokers ruling the country

Egyptian authorities have forced a Guardian journalist to leave the country after she reported on a scientific study that said Egypt was likely to have many more coronavirus cases than have been officially confirmed.

She cited a study accepted for publication in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, which had analysed flight records, traveller data and infection rates to estimate that Egypt could have had 19,310 coronavirus cases by early March, with the lower end of the range about 6,000 cases. The Egyptian government’s official count at the time period covered by the data was that three people were infected.

On 17 March, Michaelson’s press accreditation was revoked. The Guardian offered the Egyptian authorities the chance to write a letter for publication rebutting its report or the Canadian study, but received no response to the offer.

Gay men in Morocco have been living in terror for the past fortnight, after beauty influencer Naofal Moussa, also known as Sofia Talouni, instructed her hundreds of thousands of followers to use gay dating apps to identify them.

Moussa, whose verified Instagram account had 627,000 followers before it was deleted, used a series of Instagram Live videos to encourage straight women in Morocco to create fake accounts on Grindr and Planet Romeo.

gay dating apps were flooded with fake accounts and images of gay men’s profiles began circulating online. Homosexuality is illegal in Morocco and any form of same-sex intimacy – including kissing – is punishable by up to three years in prison. Violent homophobia is also rife.

Since Kais Saied's assumption of the Tunisian presidency in 2019, the number of African migrants who have arrived in Tunisia without being stopped or registered has dramatically increased. “Officially, 10,000 irregular migrants have crossed the borders from Libya to Tunisia during the first half of 2022”, M.E., a former UNHCR employee in Medenine revealed. In reality, the numbers are much bigger.

it is believed foreign migrants in Tunisia far exceed a million. 

Since the start of his tenure, Saied has put the army and the police at the behest of his political project. After his referendum on a new constitution, Saied sacked and replaced nine high-ranking police officers. Furthermore, Saied's Interior Minister Taoufik Charfeddine has been appointing his own friends to key positions in the police and the National Guard.

Seven out of ten young Moroccans say they would be happier if they moved abroad, according to a study published by the National Human Development Observatory, a Moroccan organisation, in partnership with the UN's Development Programme (UNDP). 

Morocco the Arab country with the highest percentage of youth seeking to emigrate.

seven in ten Moroccans were reluctant to marry and start families