International Politics of the Middle East

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This 67-page report documents a wide-reaching campaign of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and torture of gay men that began in early 2009. The killings began in the vast Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, a stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, and spread to many cities across Iraq. Mahdi Army spokesmen have promoted fears about the "third sex" and the "feminization" of Iraq men, and suggested that militia action was the remedy. Some people told Human Rights Watch that Iraqi security forces have colluded and joined in the killing.

theAmerican MidEast Leadership Network’s Virtual Scrapbook, a daily events blog and online collection of photographs and audio-visual clips gathered by participants of AMLN’s United States-Syria Grassroots Diplomacy Program. Now in its third year, the three-week cultural exchange run by the New York- based nonprofit organization affords American students and young professionals the opportunity to meet face-to-face with their Syrian counterparts to address misconceptions between them and to form a bridge of understanding at the citizen level.

"These declarations [of an Islamic emirate] are aimed towards incitement against the Gaza Strip and an attempt at recruiting an international alliance against the Gaza Strip. "And we warn those who are behind these Israeli Zionist declarations: the Gaza Strip only contains its people." Jund Ansar Allah (Army of the Helpers of God) gained some prominence two months ago when it staged a failed attack on a border crossing between Gaza and Israel. The group is very critical of Hamas, which governs Gaza, accusing the Islamist group of not being Islamist enough.

Borzou Daragahi, writing in the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Iran's president has conducted a purge of the nation's intelligence ministry," but he makes a very weak case for Ahmadinejad actually being in charge. Daragahi also wrote that "officials in the Revolutionary Guard" have replaced the intelligence officials who were suspected of disloyalty. The moves could just as easily support the argument that the military has actually taken power.

the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq

intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies.

Syria’s opposition movement is in shambles. Obama’s victory changed the calculations of the opposition in exile. US government supplied MEPI money, which sustained some, has dried up. But mostly, Syrians, who had hoped that President Bush would “reform the greater Middle East” as promised, understood it was not to be. President Assad is firmly in control at home; the Iraq fiasco has re-legitimized authoritarianism in the Middle East, at least tmeporarily; and Obama has little choice but to engage with America’s erstwhile enemies in the region, as he is now doing.

the market power of the very few oil-producing countries that hold substantial reserves of oil – mostly in the Middle East – would increase rapidly as the oil crisis begins to grip after 2010

Many people think there will be a recovery in a few years' time but it will be a slow recovery and a fragile recovery and we will have the risk that the recovery will be strangled with higher oil prices.

demand after 2010 is expected to exceed dwindling supplies

Iraqi security forces have taken control of the base camp of an exiled Iranian militia group, after a two year campaign by Tehran to persuade Baghdad to expel them.Police officers used water cannons and tear gas to seize the base, known as Camp Ashraf and pledged today to evict up to 3,500 people living there. All are members of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) militia, which has in the past been prescribed by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist group.

two decades ago, Boyd, who is a U.S. citizen, trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan and fought against the Soviets for three years before returning to the United States.

Boyd's beliefs did not concur with his Raleigh-area moderate mosque, which he stopped attending and instead began meeting for Friday prayers in his home

the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam