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in title, tags, annotations or urlThe complicated legacy of Qatar's World Cup - The Washington Post - 0 views
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perhaps the biggest test case for what happens when a Middle Eastern nation intent on using oil money to enhance its influence through sports emerges on the global stage.
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Can sports help bring societal progress to a region that has long resisted change? Or are those countries rewarded with reputational prestige despite human rights abuses that they have little intention to address?
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“FIFA has a human rights policy that guarantees press freedom, women’s rights and nondiscrimination,” said Minky Worden, the director of global initiatives for Human Rights Watch. “What the Qatar World Cup showed is that, if you have enough money, you can absolutely ignore those requirements.”
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'A mass assassination factory': Inside Israel's calculated bombing of Gaza - 0 views
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The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals
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The investigation by +972 and Local Call is based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.
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The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,”
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Are the Abraham accords over? - 0 views
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Gulf states had hoped this would be a year of de-escalation in the region. They wanted calm to focus on ambitious plans to diversify their economies. Now the region’s oldest conflict has roared back to life. For one Gulf monarchy, Qatar, which has supported Hamas, the immediate goal is self-preservation. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, however, want to weaken Hamas, forestall a wider confrontation with Iran and somehow keep alive their vision of an autocratic but more peaceful and prosperous region. It is a delicate and dangerous balancing act.
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Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned news channel, aired a tough interview with Khaled Meshaal, the former head of Hamas. Rasha Nabil, the presenter, asked him repeatedly how Hamas could expect support from other Arab countries after it made a unilateral decision to go to war, pressed him to condemn the murder of Israeli civilians and needled him on whether Iran’s help had “lived up to your expectations”. It was an interview the likes of which Hamas officials are almost never subjected to on Arabic-language channels. Mr Meshaal seemed rattled. Clips of the interview were widely shared on social media and even on Israeli television.
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Muhammad bin Salman (pictured), the Saudi crown prince and the country’s de facto ruler has called for the creation of a Palestinian state along the region’s pre-1967 borders. Talks with Israel will continue, albeit more quietly than before, but the price for Israel will now be higher
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U.S. presses Tunisia, once a bright spot of Arab Spring, on democracy - The Washington Post - 0 views
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The Biden administration is pressing Tunisia’s leaders to reverse steps weakening the country’s democracy, exposing friction with a nation once seen as the most promising of those who experienced Arab Spring revolutions.
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talks between Saied and Barbara Leaf, the State Department’s top official for the Middle East. During a visit to Tunis last month, Leaf conveyed worries about a new constitutional framework “that weakens Tunisia’s democracy and how crucial going forward an inclusive and transparent reform process is to restore confidence of the Tunisian people,”
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U.S. officials have sought to forcefully nudge Tunisia while avoiding a total rupture with a nation whose cooperation on counterterrorism is seen as a crucial element of U.S. strategy for North Africa. Tunisia, with a population of nearly 12 million, for its part values U.S. military support and needs America’s backing as it seeks a deal with the International Monetary Fund.
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Turkey strikes Syrian regime outpost, kills three - L'Orient Today - 0 views
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Turkish raids in northern Syria on Sunday struck outposts operated by the Syrian army and Kurdish-led forces, killing three
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The three casualties were wearing Syrian army uniform
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Several other fighters were wounded, and some are in critical condition
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King Charles III's Admiration for Islam Could Mend Divides | Time - 0 views
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Almost 30 years ago, then-Prince Charles declared that he wanted to be a “defender of faith,” rather than simply “Defender of the Faith,” to reflect Britain’s growing religious diversity. It created a bit of a storm in a teacup, as he had clearly not meant that he would be changing the traditional role so much as adding to it. The new King is a particular type of Anglican: one that on the one hand, is incredibly tied to the notion of tradition; but on the other, has shown a great deal of affinity for both Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Islam, two religions clearly outside the Anglican fold that he must now titularly lead.
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the King has been quite public about his admiration for Islam as a religion, and Muslim communities, both in Britain and abroad.
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Privately, he’s shown a lot of sympathy for where Muslims are in difficult political situations, both in Europe and further afield. Robert Jobson’s recent Charles at Seventy claims that the King has significant sympathies for the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, for example. It’s also claimed that he disagreed with dress restrictions imposed on Muslim women in various European countries.
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British Leaders' Fateful Fascination With the Middle East - New Lines Magazine - 0 views
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Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan provided the clearest demonstration that Britain had never really withdrawn from east of the Suez or abandoned its role in the Middle East. Most fascinating of all was the way that Blair’s framing of the wars as an existential struggle for the preservation of Western civilization mirrored the warnings delivered by another British prime minister, Anthony Eden, over Suez half a century earlier
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The Suez operation was halted, with British forces already fighting their way up the canal on Nov. 6, 1956, because of economic and political pressure from the United States, Britain’s closest ally. But, as recently released sources regarding intelligence exchanges between Britain and the U.S. reveal, this U.S. opposition was the oddest twist of all. Odd because a top-secret, British-American intelligence working group meeting in Washington at the beginning of October had already agreed on the central British goal of overthrowing the Egyptian leader. The only remaining differences between Britain and the U.S. were over timing and method. Should they pursue a strategy of economic and political warfare designed to topple Nasser as the Americans preferred, or would they instead opt for a military coup as the British wanted?
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If only the British had toppled Nasser quickly, and without interfering in the U.S. presidential election timetable, there would have been no British-American breakdown over Suez.
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A New History for a New Turkey: What a 12th-grade textbook has to say about Turkey's future - Nicholas Danforth : ΕΛΙΑΜΕΠ - 0 views
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Rather than simply serving as crude propaganda for Erdoğan’s regime, Contemporary Turkish and World History aspires to do something more ambitious: embed Turkey’s dominant ideology in a whole new nationalist narrative. Taken in its entirety, the book synthesizes diverse strands of Turkish anti-imperialism to offer an all-too-coherent, which is not to say accurate, account of the last hundred years. It celebrates Atatürk and Erdoğan, a century apart, for their struggles against Western hegemony. It praises Cemal Gürsel and Necmettin Erbakan, on abutting pages, for their efforts to promote Turkish industrial independence. And it explains what the works of both John Steinbeck [Con Şıtaynbek] and 50 Cent [Fifti Sent] have to say about the shortcomings of American society.
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Turkey has long had competing strains of anti-Western, anti-Imperialist and anti-American thought. In the foreign policy realm, Erdogan’s embrace of the Mavi Vatan doctrine showed how his right-wing religious nationalism could make common cause with the left-wing Ulusalcı variety.[5] This book represents a similar alliance in the historiographic realm, demonstrating how the 20th century can be rewritten as a consistent quest for a fully independent Turkey.
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Ankara is currently being praised for sending indigenously developed drones to Ukraine and simultaneously criticized for holding up Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership. Contemporary Turkish and World History sheds light on the intellectual origins of both these policies
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Leaders Of US, Israel, UAE And India Scheduled To Attend I2U2 Virtual Summit Next week: White House - 0 views
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Biden’s visit will also focus on Israel's increasing integration into the region, both through the Abraham Accords with the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain; through deepening ties between Israel, Jordan and Egypt; and also entirely new groupings of partners, including Israel, India, the UAE, and the United States -- what they call I2U2, said the official.
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a virtual summit with the I2U2 heads of state for discussions of the food security crisis and other areas of cooperation across hemispheres where the UAE and Israel serve as important innovation hubs
Turkey, Romania work to defuse sea mines possibly floating from Ukraine - The Washington Post - 0 views
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Turkey and Romania have scrambled in recent days to neutralize potentially explosive mines amid concerns that the weapons may be drifting across the Black Sea from Ukraine’s shores toward neighboring countries.
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Turkey’s government had said previously that it was in contact with both Moscow and Kyiv about the weapons, but did not specify which side, if either, was responsible for the mines
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Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, claimed on March 19 that poor weather had caused more than 400 naval mines to become disconnected from the cables that were anchoring them, and warned that the mines were “drifting freely in the western part of the Black Sea,” which includes the territorial waters of Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
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Our Oligarch - 0 views
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Abramovich is perhaps the most visible of the “oligarchs” surrounding Putin, who are widely perceived as extensions of the Russian president and keepers of a vast fortune that is effectively under the Kremlin’s control. Much of this wealth was extracted from Russia’s enormous energy and mineral resources, and is now stashed in secret bank accounts in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, in empty mansions and condos from London to Manhattan to Miami, and in yachts and private jets on the French Riviera.
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as much as 60% of Russia’s GDP is offshore
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The reserved, gray-bearded Abramovich is notoriously litigious toward critics who seek to detail his close ties to Putin. Last year, he successfully sued the British journalist Catherine Belton, who claimed in her 2020 book Putin’s People that the Russian president dictated Abramovich’s major purchases, including his decision to buy Chelsea. He also extracted an apology from a British newspaper for calling him a “bag carrier” for the Russian president.
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The Ukraine War: A Global Crisis? | Crisis Group - 0 views
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The Ukraine conflict may be a matter of global concern, but states’ responses to it continue to be conditioned by internal political debates and foreign policy priorities.
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China has hewed to a non-position on Russian aggression – neither condemning nor supporting the act, and declining to label it as an invasion – while lamenting the current situation as “something we do not want to see”. With an eye to the West, Beijing abstained on rather than vetoing a Security Council resolution calling on Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, and reports indicate that two major Chinese state banks are restricting financing for Russian commodities. Beijing now emphasises the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty in its statements, a point that had either been absent from earlier statements or more ambiguously discussed as “principles of the UN Charter”.
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the worldview that major powers can and do occasionally break the rules
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How Africa will become the center of the world's urban future - Washington Post - 0 views
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by the end of this century, Africa will be the only continent experiencing population growth. Thirteen of the world’s 20 biggest urban areas will be in Africa — up from just two today — as will more than a third of the world’s population.
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Set to become the world’s most populous city, Lagos faces all the challenges rapid growth poses, which can be boiled down to one: planning. Can solutions outpace the weight tens of millions of new inhabitants will place on a city that is low-slung and dense, situated on polluted lagoons and rivers, and short on public services?
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Khartoum, Sudan: Unstable states like Sudan crumble first in their hinterlands, and in those moments of crisis, cities are beacons of safety, places for people to regroup, build new identities and forge political movements — even revolutions — that aim to bring peace back to places they had to abandon.
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Turkey pledges 15 million Covid vaccine doses for Africa in goodwill gesture - 0 views
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Ankara has invested heavily in developing trade and diplomatic ties with the world's poorest continent during Erdogan's rule as prime minister and then president since 2003.Speaking to dozens of attending leaders and ministers, Erdogan said Turkey would ship 15 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Africa, where cases are rapidly rising and vaccination rates are low.
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Erdogan said Turkey wanted to strengthen relations with Africa in a wide range of areas including health, defence, energy, agriculture and technology.
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Turkey and African countries agreed to strengthen cooperation in several fields, including health "through further health sector investments".
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Turkey's Erdogan pivots to Africa for trade - 0 views
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enters this weekend's G20 summit in Rome fresh off an African tour aimed at cementing lucrative partnerships during another spell of tensions with the West.From mining to health, energy to infrastructure, Turkish businesses are popping up across the resource-rich continent and signing deals hailed as a "win-win".
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This pivot away from traditional European markets has already seen Turkey's trade with Africa balloon from $5.4 billion when Erdogan came to power in 2003 to $25.4 billion last year.
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Erdogan once described Turkey as an "Afro-Eurasian" nation and has visited the most African countries -- 30 out of 54 -- of any non-African head of state.
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Egyptian officials: Sisi's visit to Djibouti part of East Africa 'charm offensive' | MadaMasr - 1 views
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The visit, which is the first by an Egyptian head of state to Djibouti, is part of what two officials in Cairo familiar with the arrangements say is a “charm offensive” in the Horn of Africa, where Egypt has been at loggerheads with Ethiopia over the filling and operation of the mega dam project on the Blue Nile and has been concerned over its relative lack of influence in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, an area it considers its backyard both for potential resource management along the Nile and commercial trade in the waterway leading into the Suez Canal.
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Cairo’s image in the region took a hit when it sided with ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, according to two Egyptian officials, a move they say in retrospect was a mistake
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The Djibouti visit comes after a flurry of defense cooperation agreements with Nile Basin countries since the start of the year, including Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Sudan. These build on the framework provided by the Red Sea Council, of which Egypt formally became a member in November. The charter was signed by the foreign ministers of Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen in January 2020. Egypt and Sudan held joint military drills in Khartoum this week.
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Implications of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's New Leadership - Newlines Institute - 1 views
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While al Qaeda does not recognize national borders or flags, AQIM recently has increasingly involved itself in local Algerian and Malian dynamics, with leaders appearing in front of national flags and publicly endorsing local causes
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Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the group that united several jihadist factions under the banner of AQIM to operate in Mali and the Sahel in 2017.
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the recruitment reach of jihadist groups in the Sahel, which now goes beyond the ethnic Arab, Tuareg, and Fulani communities that mostly make up JNIM
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After Soleimani | Newlines Magazine - 0 views
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The Trump administration assassinated Soleimani to compel change in Iran’s behavior and to throw a wrench in the gears of Iran’s expansive regional influence. Twelve months is too short a period to measure its impact in the realms of longstanding policy and force posture. Outside of some signs of disunity among some of Iraq’s Shiite militias, not much has changed. The impact of Soleimani’s death is therefore impossible to accurately gauge. What we can say is that his death unleashed an emotional and political wave that has surged from his legacy. It is driven almost entirely by his benefactors in Tehran and clients across the region and it is fueled by their desire to shape the memory of the man, myth and legend they helped create.
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To some, his death was small justice, an emphatic ending to the life of a man who served as the backbone of Assad’s brutal war against the Syrian people and facilitated the empowerment of corrupt, coercive militias in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon. To others, particularly his supporters and patrons, Soleimani was a hero: a leader in the war against ISIS and a champion of the Shiite Muslim minority.
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To appreciate the complexity threaded throughout varying perceptions of Soleimani, it’s essential to understand what he symbolizes to Iran, to his military, and to the foreign groups he worked so closely with.
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UAE offers to mediate Nile dam dispute in name of Red Sea security - Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views
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On March 26, the UAE formally offered to mediate the dam dispute and on March 31, the UAE invited the foreign ministers of Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt for talks on the dam in Abu Dhabi. The UAE wishes to facilitate a deal that would allow Ethiopia to fill the dam and simultaneously ensure that the downstream countries, Egypt and Sudan, maintain sufficient access to Nile River water.
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The UAE’s offer to mediate between conflicting parties in the dam dispute reflects its commitment to Red Sea security and a growing reliance on crisis diplomacy as a tool of power projection
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the Saudi Arabia-led Red Sea security coalition that was inaugurated in January 2020.
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