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Russia also leases a naval facility at the Syrian port of Tartu

Moscow also signed a $550 million deal with Syria for combat training jets

value of Russian arms sales to Syria at $162 million per year in both 2009 and 2010

Russia's key policy goal is blocking American efforts to shape the regio

Russia doesn't believe revolutions, wars and regime change bring stability and democracy

It believes humanitarian concerns are often used an excuse for pursuing America's own political and economic interests.

Putin's existential fear for his own survival and the survival of the repressive system that he and al-Assad represent

not only driven by the need to preserve its naval presence in the Mediterranean, secure its energy contracts, or counter the West on 'regime change

al-Assad cannot lose because it means that one day he, Putin, might as well

The West handles the Islamic world the way a monkey handles a grenade," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted

Russia is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. It has the power to veto Security Council resolutions against the Syrian regime and has done so repeatedly over the past two years

religion and strategy.

Islamic Republic has provided technical help such as intelligence, communications and advice on crowd control and weapons as protests in Syria morphed into resistance

The last thing Iran wants now is a Sunni-dominated Syria -- especially as the rebels' main supporters are Iran's Persian Gulf rivals: Qatar and Saudi Arabi

proxy through which Iran can threaten Israel with an arsenal of short-range missiles

Iran counted on Syria as its only Arab ally during its eight-year war with Iraq. Iraq was Sunni-dominate

war between the front of hegemony and the front of resistance

Syrian government is a victim of international plots

Iran says the main objective of this plot is to make the region safer for Israe

Many believe Iran is Washington's greatest threat in the region, especially with its nuclear potential

the Americans will sustain damage like when they interfered in Iraq and Afghanistan

Syria's third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission

maintain its financial tie

indicates that China sees Syria as an important trading hub

China has said foreign countries shouldn't meddle in Syria's internal affairs

Rather than siding with either Assad or the opposition and standing aside to 'wait and see,' Beijing is actively betting on both

China said it is firmly opposed to the use of chemical weapons and supports the U.N.'s chemical weapons inspectors.

It also said it wants a political solution for Syri

China is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. And like Russia, China has repeatedly blocked sanctions attempts against the Syrian regime

Iraq’s oil production has fallen only 10 per cent this year.

the rapid ascent of Isis has raised questions about the country’s security, adding to international companies’ concerns about regulatory, environmental and budget problems.

Poor roads and transport infrastructure were adding to security concerns and hence costs, he added.

Mr Birol said it was highly unlikely that US crude production could meet the expected increase in global demand, even if shale oil production continued to outpace forecasts as it has done in recent years.

part of their dissatisfaction came from the distribution of oil revenues. 

The mismanagement of oil revenues is also manifest in Iraq's poor infrastructure

Though currently the Iraqi government has reserves and surplus funds, mounting expenditures and falling oil prices has economists to project that Iraq will run a deficit next year.

it is running a self-sustaining economy, making it the world's richest terror group.

Thankfully, 6 of 8 Iraq’s major oil fields lie in the Shia South, which is unlikely to come under ISIS control.

It sells crude at a steep discount, at a rate of USD $30 per barrel

Turkey runs a huge trade surplus with Iraq, which is likely to slow down dramatically due to lower demand from Iraq.

Jordan and Lebanon, which have both absorbed a large number of refugees.

Iran’s position seems to be the trickiest of all in that its interests align with those of the US in its fight against ISIS

Falling oil prices have definitely curtailed Iran’s ability to intervene without serious consequences for its economy. Iran needs oil prices well above USD $100 for it to balance its budget,

Any cooperation between Iran and the US over ISIS could lead to a gradual withdrawal of sanctions, which would allow Iran to sell its oil on the open market and generate revenue. The flip side is that Iran’s oil would surely depress oil prices further.

Saudi's allegiances have become muddled.

it finds its interests are aligned with those of Iran, a traditional foe, both of which are against ISIS.

Russia needs oil prices near USD $100 to balance its budget and Iran needs high oil prices to support its nuclear program.

Regionally, ISIS will disrupt and degrade the economy of several states, and that in turn may lead to further political chaos -- which is precisely ISIS's goal.

Syrian opposition figures have good reason to be skeptical of Moscow's diplomatic moves

they provide weapons and advice to the Assad regime and they have taken an approach of cherry-picking who they talk to and who the regime talks to

The U.S. is not pressuring the opposition groups it supports to go to Moscow. Instead it's suggesting they should think about it so that Russia can't blame the opposition for the diplomatic stalemate

"If there are no guarantees as to the end state, that is, a movement towards a transitional government with full executive powers without Assad, then there is really no reason to go

meant to revive the peace process that started in Geneva in 2012

Russians aren't in a position to decide who will take part in future negotiations. And this has been the whole problem with their approach.

He says the Russian job has always been to deliver the regime to the negotiating table, but the Syrian government only wants to talk about fighting terrorism, not discuss a political transition.

We are hoping, more than expecting, that it will be a success," he says.De Mistura describes Syria as the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II

They all agree that we need to do something to avoid that the Syrian conflict goes into a back burner and that movement towards some type of political solution should take place this year,"

He says that's because Assad thinks he's winning — and U.S. plans to train and equip 5,000 moderate rebels a year won't help level the playing field.

The rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State and the U.S.-led airstrikes against that group in both Syria and Iraq now top the U.S. agenda.

war in Syria has been raging for nearly four years and it's been challenging for diplomats to get warring sides to agree on even temporary truces.

In terms of sheer devastation, Syria today is worse off than Germany at the end of World War II

ven as the fighting continues, a movement is brewing among planners, activists and bureaucrats—some still in Aleppo, others in Damascus, Turkey, and Lebanon—to prepare, right now, for the reconstruction effort that will come whenever peace finally arrives.

In a glass tower belonging to the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, a project called the National Agenda for the Future of Syria has brought together teams of engineers, architects, water experts, conservationists, and development experts to grapple with seemingly impossible technical problems

It is good to do the planning now, because on day one we will be ready,”

The team planning the country’s future is a diverse one. Some are employed by the government of Syria, others by the rebels’ rival provisional government. Still others work for the UN, private construction companies, or nongovernmental organizations involved in conservation, like the World Monuments Fund

As the group’s members outline a path toward renewal, they’re considering everything from corruption and constitutional reform to power grids, antiquities, and health care systems.

Aleppo is split between a regime side with vestiges of basic services, and a mostly depopulated rebel-controlled zone, into which the Islamic State and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front have made inroads over the last year

The population exodus has claimed most of the city’s craftsmen, medical personnel, academics, and industrialists

It took decades to clear the moonscapes of rubble and to rebuild, in famous targets like Dresden and Hiroshima but in countless other places as well, from Coventry to Nanking. Some places never recovered their vitality.

Of course, Syrian planners cannot help but pay attention to the model closest to home: Beirut, a city almost synonymous with civil war and flawed reconstructio

We don’t want to end up like Beirut,” one of the Syrian planners says, referring to the physical problems but also to a postwar process in which militia leaders turned to corrupt reconstruction ventures as a new source of funds and power

Syria’s national recovery will depend in large part on whether its industrial powerhouse Aleppo can bounce back

The city’s workshops, famed above all for their fine textiles, export millions of dollars’ worth of goods every week even now, and the economy has expanded to include modern industry as well.

Today, however, the city’s water and power supply are under the control of the Islamic State

Across Syria, more than one-third of the population is displaced.

A river of rubble marks the no-man’s land separating the two sides. The only way to cross is to leave the city, follow a wide arc, and reenter from the far side.

Parts of the old city won’t be inhabitable for years, he told me by Skype, because the ground has literally shifted as a result of bombing and shelling

The first and more obvious is creating realistic options to fix the country after the war—in some cases literal plans for building infrastructure systems and positioning construction equipment, in other cases guidelines for shaping governanc

They’re familiar with global “best practices,” but also with how things work in Syria, so they’re not going to propose pie-in-the-sky idea

If some version of the current regime remains in charge, it will probably direct massive contracts toward patrons in Russia, China, or Iran. The opposition, by contrast, would lean toward firms from the West, Turkey, and the Gulf.

At the current level of destruction, the project planners estimate the reconstruction will cost at least $100 billion

Recently a panel of architects and heritage experts from Sweden, Bosnia, Syria, and Lebanon convened in Beirut to discuss lessons for Syria’s reconstruction—one of the many distinct initiatives parallel to the Future of Syria project.

“You should never rebuild the way it was,” said Arna Mackic, an architect from Mostar. That Bosnian city was divided during the 1990s civil war into Muslim and Catholic sides, destroying the city center and the famous Stari Most bridge over the Neretva River. “The war changes us. You should show that in rebuilding.”

Instead, Mackik says, the sectarian communities keep to their own enclaves. Bereft of any common symbols, the city took a poll to figure out what kind of statue to erect in the city center. All the local figures were too polarizing. In the end they settled on a gold-colored statue of the martial arts star Bruce Lee

“It belongs to no one,” Mackic says. “What does Bruce Lee mean to me?

is that it could offer the city’s people a form of participatory democracy that has so far eluded the Syrian regime and sadly, the opposition as well.

“You are being democratic without the consequences of all the hullabaloo of formal democratization

A great deal of money has been invested in Syria’s destruction— by the regime, the local parties to the conflict, and many foreign powers. A great deal of money will be made in the aftermath, in a reconstruction project that stands to dwarf anything seen since after World War II.

Ansar al-Shariah, the hard-line Islamist group involved in the assault on the American diplomatic Mission in Benghazi in 2012

Their opponents, including the militias stocked with former Qaddafi soldiers

The ideological differences are blurry at best: both sides publicly profess a similar conservative but democratic vision.

an escalating war among its patchwork of rival cities and tribes.

Motorists wait in lines stretching more than three miles at shuttered gas stations, waiting for them to open. Food prices are soaring, uncollected garbage is piling up in the streets and bicycles, once unheard-of, are increasingly common.

Tripoli, the capital and the main prize, has become a battleground

The fighting has destroyed the airport

Constant shelling between rival militias has leveled blocks

Storage tanks holding about 25 million gallons of fuel have burned unchecked for a month

with daily blackouts sometimes lasting more than 12 hours.

many Libyans despaired of any resolution

In Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, the fighting has closed both its airport and seaport, strangling the city.

the rush toward war is also lifting the fortunes of the Islamist extremists of Ansar al-Shariah, the Benghazi militant group.

The United Nations, the United States and the other Western powers have withdrawn their diplomats and closed their missions

“We cannot care more than you do,” the British ambassador, Michael Aron, wrote

Until now, a rough balance of power among local brigades had preserved a kind of equilibrium, if not stability

the transitional government scarcely existed outside of the luxury hotels where its officials gathered, no other force was strong enough to dominate. No single interest divided the competing cities and factions.

But that semblance of unity is now in tatters, and with it the hope that nonviolent negotiations might settle the competition for power and, implicitly, Libya’s oil.

In May, a renegade former general, Khalifa Hifter, declared that he would seize power by force to purge Libya of Islamists, beginning in Benghazi. He vowed to eradicate the hard-line Islamists of Ansar al-Shariah, blamed for a long series of bombings and assassinations.

General Hifter also pledged to close the Parliament and arrest moderate Islamist members

he has mustered a small fleet of helicopters and warplanes that have bombed rival bases around Benghazi, a steep escalation of the violence.

moderate Islamists and other brigades who had distanced themselves from Ansar al-Shariah began closing ranks, welcoming the group into a newly formed council of “revolutionary” militias

a broad alliance of Benghazi militias that now includes Ansar al-Shariah issued a defiant statement denouncing relative moderates like the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood. “We will not accept the project of democracy, secular parties, nor the parties that falsely claim the Islamic cause,”

the general’s blitz has now stalled, it polarized the country, drawing alarms from some cities and tribes but applause from others.

the loudest applause came from the western mountain town of Zintan, where local militia leaders had recruited hundreds of former Qaddafi soldiers into special brigades

the rival coastal city of Misurata, where militias have allied with the Islamists in political battles and jostled with the Zintanis for influence in the capital

the Misurata and Islamist militias developed a reputation for besieging government buildings and kidnapping high officials to try to pressure the Parliament. But in recent months the Zintanis and their anti-Islamist allies have stormed the Parliament and kidnapped senior lawmakers as well.

the newly elected Parliament, led at first, on a seniority basis, by a member supportive of Mr. Hifter, announced plans to convene in Tobruk, an eastern city under the general’s control.

About 30 members, most of them Islamists or Misuratans, refused to attend,

Tripoli’s backup airport, under the control of an Islamist militia, has cut off flights to Tobruk, even blocking a trip by the prime minister.

a spokesman for the old disbanded Parliament, favored by the Islamists and Misuratans, declared that it would reconvene in Tripoli

In Tobruk, a spokesman for the new Parliament declared that the Islamist- and Misuratan-allied militias were terrorists, suggesting that Libya might soon have two legislatures with competing armies

Each side has the support of competing satellite television networks financed and, often, broadcast from abroad, typically from Qatar for the Islamists and from the United Arab Emirates for their foes.

Hassan Tatanaki, a Libyan-born business mogul who owns one of the anti-Islamist satellite networks, speaking in an interview from an office in the Emirates. “We are in a state of war and this is no time for compromise.”

Fighters and tribes who fought one another during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi are now coming together on the same side of the new fight, especially with the Zintanis against the Islamists. Some former Qaddafi officers who had fled Libya are even coming back to take up arms again.

“It is not pro- or anti-Qaddafi any more — it is about Libya,” said a former Qaddafi officer in a military uniform

Beneath the battle against “extremists,” he said, was an even deeper, ethnic struggle: the tribes of Arab descent, like the Zintanis, against those of Berber, Circassian or Turkish ancestry, like the Misuratis. “The victory will be for the Arab tribes,”

is a radical departure from current EU policy, which forces asylum seekers to apply for asylum in their first country of entry, under legislation known as the Dublin law.

We need to convince them that it is better to go legally, that there is an alternative to months of suffering

More than 3 million people are estimated to have fled the country in the past four years, and although the vast majority have remained in neighbouring countries – Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan – thousands have tried to make the perilous journey to Europe.

Most of those who survive the Mediterranean crossing – and more than 3,000 died last year – end up in Italy and Greece

42,000 Syrians ended up in Italy in 2014 alone

apply for asylum in their country of arrival. But only a tiny minority do. In practice, many migrants simply slip through the net and move, vulnerably, around Europe.

Syrians who chose to move irregularly across Europe could be reduced if people were allowed to legally travel onwards to join family or move to countries where they have language skills or work opportunities

Syrian conflict has exacerbated a refugee crisis in north Africa and the Middle East

The proposed relocation, which would start as a one-year pilot programme, would focus only on Syrians who have been recognised as refugees in Italy and Greece and would depend on an initial voluntary commitment from member states

previous attempts to reform the Dublin law have been met with fierce resistance during internal EU discussions

UK and other northern European countries have fought in both domestic and European courts to defend the right to return asylum seekers to their first country of entry

arguing that protection and accommodation conditions in Italy and Greece are inadequate

stressed the importance of states upholding the Dublin regulation

the commission is discussing with the member states on how to ensure a more balanced distribution of resettled refugees among all member states. We wil

Cochetel acknowledged that only a significant interest in building a new system would create a change in behaviour among desperate migrants

Last month Turkey become the largest country of asylum in the world

massive irregular secondary movements feeding trafficking, leading to human suffering and exploitation

In addition, the benefits of female education for women's empowerment and gender equality are broadly recognized:

While 53 percent of the women said that the decision should depend on the children's capabilities, 39 percent said that the son should go to the university, compared with only 8 percent who said that the daughter should go. The survey also found that mothers of children who had never attended school were more likely to cite the cost of education as a reason for not educating their daughters than for not educating their sons.

As women's educational attainment in MENA countries has increased, more women have moved into the job market. But women's participation in the labor force is still low: Only 20 percent of women ages 15 and older in MENA countries are in the labor force — the lowest level of any world region.

But those rates are lower than rates found outside the region. In France, for example, women make up 45 percent of the labor force; in Indonesia, which is home to the world's largest Muslim population, women make up 38 percent of the labor force.16

Women in MENA countries are twice as likely to be illiterate as men are and make up two-thirds of the region's illiterate adults. The gender gaps in education vary greatly across countries in the region but are generally wider in countries where overall literacy and school enrollment are lower. In Yemen, for example, the illiteracy rate among young women (54 percent) is triple that of young men (17 percent). But countries that make political and financial commitments to reducing illiteracy, as Jordan and Tunisia have, generally see significant improvements in reducing illiteracy and narrowing the gender gap (see Figure 6).

lack of female teachers is one of the factors resulting in low enrolment and retention of girls in schools, particularly in higher grades when parents tend to object to male teachers

The sector also suffers from a lack of efficiency and effectiveness in using limited financial resources and weak management capacity.

DA has provided assistance for development of all education system sub-sector

both building on the success of the Basic Education Expansion Project of 2001-2007

The Secondary Education Development and Girls Access Project provides a platform to address broader sector governance and management issues by bringing together the Ministries of Planning, Finance, Civil Service and Insurance and Local Officials to jointly sign a Protocol of Participation in this Project.

men is also part of the Education For All Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI). FTI focuses on increasing access of children to primary education in line with the MDG target of achieving universal primary education, and its interventions target the most remote areas in the country where no other IDA project, government intervention or donor project has gone before

Increase in enrolment in primary education to 87 percent in 2008-09 from 68 percent in 1998-99.Gains in girls’ enrolment were even higher with an increase to 78% in 2008-09 from 49% in 1998-99, reducing by half the gap with male enrolment

The Education sector in Yemen is one of oldest and largest sectors of IDA investment in Yemen.

otal Bank financing for the five projects amounts to US$133 million, comprising Basic Education Development Project (US$68.66 million), Secondary Education Development and Girls Access project (US$20 million), Fast Track Initiative – Phase III (US$20 million), Second Vocational Training Project (US$ 15 million), and Second Higher Education Project (US$13 million).

he basic education sector in Yemen is characterized by a high degree of donor harmonization. Education receives a large share of the comparatively small amount of Official Development Assistance per capita recipient (just US$13 in 2006).

The Yemen Country Status Report set the stage for the development of a national vision for education. The national vision is to be developed in coordination with line ministries and aims to develop the foundations for a national education system that is linked to the labor market