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sought to align themselves with a long and venerable tradition of internal domestic opposition to the abuses of imperial power abroad, not only but quite often issuing from the left. But they do not rightfully belong in that company. No one who explicitly or implicitly aligns themselves with the malignant Assad government does. No one who selectively and opportunistically deploys charges of “imperialism” for reasons of their particular version of “left” politics rather than opposing it consistently in principle across the globe—thereby acknowledging the imperialist interventionism of Russia, Iran, and China—does.

The evidence that US power has itself been appallingly destructive, especially during the Cold War, is overwhelming. All across the globe, from Vietnam to Indonesia to Iran to Congo to South and Central America and beyond, the record of massive human rights abuses accumulated in the name of fighting Communism is clear. In the post-Cold War period of the so-called “War on Terror,” American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have done nothing to suggest a fundamental national change of heart. But America is not central to what has happened in Syria, despite what these people claim. The idea that it somehow is, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, is a by-product of a provincial political culture which insists on both the centrality of US power globally as well as the imperialist right to identify who the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are in any given context.

erasure of Syrian lives and experiences embodies the very essence of imperialist (and racist) privilege. These writers and bloggers have shown no awareness of the Syrians, including signatories to this letter, who risked their lives opposing the regime, who have been incarcerated in the Assads’ torture prisons (some for many years), lost loved ones, had friends and family forcibly disappeared, fled their country—even though many Syrians have been writing and speaking about these experiences for many years.

the religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity that characterized their territories in the Middle East and Eastern Europe no longer chimed with the new world order being organized around nation-states

Designing measures such as the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923, the League of Nations legitimized demographic engineering policies and made migration an intrinsic part of nation-building. With international encouragement, the states with Muslim minorities in the Balkans devised multipronged policies to push out the citizens they saw as undesirable. Turkey became the only destination for Balkan Muslims, even when they were not Turkish.

in 1938 Belgrade and Ankara concluded a little-known agreement to transfer 200,000 Yugoslav citizens to Turkey. The transfer did not materialize because of the start of World War II, but the migrations did eventually take place and continued into the 1950s. For both Yugoslavia and Turkey, new states created in the aftermath of World War I, migration was an important part of nation-building.

a sweeping historical recalibration that centers on the importance of 14th-century trade routes that crossed the Sahara Desert and drove the movement of people, goods, and culture. As one flyer exclaims: “Weaving stories about interconnected histories, the exhibition showcases objects and ideas that connected at the crossroads of the medieval Sahara and celebrates West Africa’s historic and underrecognized global significance.” This is ambitious. The show doesn’t aim for less than decentering the idea that the medieval epoch should only be envisioned through a European lens, which are typically stories of feudalism, war, chivalry, and the Bubonic plague. These European sagas are the ones I grew up with, saw dramatized on television, and valorized in film. Caravans of Gold also seeks to put Islam at this reconstructed world’s fulcrum and regard it as a force which impelled cultural advance, rather than to associate it with iconoclastic destruction of historical patrimony — stories we know too well. Even more, it subtly raises up the entire African continent, which becomes through this retelling, a force of profound socioeconomic change at the global level. As their handout highlights: “Journey to a medieval world with Africa at its center.”

“Between the eight and the 16th century, an epoch that corresponds with the medieval period, the Saharan region was the site of world-shaping events.”

Partnering with institutions and researchers in Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria was the only way that Berzock could, in the first instance, begin to understand the significance of scattered bits and pieces of commercially traded items left centuries ago in those once thriving cities and towns encompassed by the Saharan trade networks

“We must begin by recognising that letting people drown is not a negative by-product for many, it is an objective. A way of signalling across the sea that your kind is not wanted here. This is a battle about cultural not economic values.” 

While most discussions are about so-called "irregular" migrants, who arrive in the European Union (EU) without a visa, most migration is actually "regular" – in other words legal

90% of migration is regional, with people seeking refuge or opportunities in neighbouring countries

The 180-mile stretch of the Mediterranean sea that separates Sicily from Libya has been a diplomatic battleground in Italian-Libyan relations for years

allowed Libya to quietly claim a bigger portion of the Mediterranean: a controversial move that has put the lives and livelihoods of Italian fishermen at greater risk for almost a decade

The maritime dispute dates back to the 1970s, when Libya began using force to protect its self-proclaimed fishing waters off the Gulf of Sidra from foreign fishing vessels, 12 miles from its coast. But it worsened in 2005, when then-Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi unilaterally extended the country’s waters from 12 to 74 miles offshore. Those claims were always formally rejected by main EU member states, and according to Stefano Marcuzzi, a Libya analyst at the NATO Defense College Foundation in Rome, many maritime law experts still consider them illegitimate. “Territorial waters can be extended up to 74 miles, according to the 1982 Montego Bay Convention, but that refers to oceans,” Marcuzzi said. “The extension of that principle to the closed waters of the Mediterranean basin is debatable.”

During our many meetings at LAF headquarters my colleagues and I never ceased to be impressed by the professional excellence – scientific, legal, and diplomatic – of the Lebanese team.

Hariri designated his foreign policy adviser and the former ambassador to the United States, Mohamed Chatah, as my most senior governmental point of contact. Mohamed was cordial, but tough in insisting that Lebanon would stand up for its rights. A kindly and decent man, Mohamed shared with me his view that the Lebanese political establishment would seek to steal future hydrocarbon revenues, and he therefore favored the “Alaska approach,” whereby such income would be distributed directly to every Lebanese adult. No doubt it was that kind of thinking that got Mohamed assassinated in 2013.

Lebanon desperately needed hydrocarbon revenue, but the prospect of a confrontation with a militarily superior Israel was dictating caution among global energy firms

Competition over gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean has combined with bitter regional rivalries to fuel dangerous tensions between Turkey and its neighbours in recent months. Many fear this could lead to direct military confrontation between Turkey and Greece, as the two Nato members and their allies square up over control of the seas.

the Turkish Cypriot self-declared state is not recognised by the international community, which views the government on the Greek Cypriot side as the legitimate authority for the whole island. Cyprus was contentiously admitted to the EU in 2004

Turkey believes that the government that sits in southern Cyprus should not have the right to auction blocks of its surrounding seabed to international energy companies until Turkish Cypriots can share the benefits. But peace talks have failed multiple times in the past 45 years

the impacts of hardening European Union border policy, which forces refugees back to a dangerous country where they live at the mercy of Libyan militias

UNHCR said it had heard allegations of detainees being used as forced labor in the Gathering and Departure Facility, but it could not verify them.) In the months afterward, Alex returned to detention only for his meetings with UNHCR staff. He was interviewed and fingerprinted, and finally given good news: He would be evacuated to Rwanda.

2,427 people last year got the option to go with UNHCR either directly to European countries or to a transit country where their cases can be considered for resettlement to Europe or North America. In contrast, nearly 1,000 refugees and migrants were returned to Libya in the first two weeks of 2020 alone.

Italy’s colonial past is largely absent from public debate in the country.

Last month, an anti-racist group in Milan asked for the removal of a statue of the journalist Indro Montanelli, pointing out that he bought a 12-year-old Eritrean girl as a “temporary wife”—that is, a sex slave—when he was a young colonial soldier in the 1930s. It was no secret. Montanelli, a celebrity conservative journalist who also enjoyed a following among the left, repeatedly bragged about the episode until his death in 2001. He resorted to overtly racist tropes, describing the girl, whose name was either Fatima or Destà, as “a docile tiny pet” and stressing that he was repulsed by her smell. He dismissed the charges of pedophilia, claiming that African girls are different from Europeans: “At 14, they’re women; at 20 they are old.”

During Italy’s occupation of the Horn of Africa, it was fairly common for Italian soldiers to take local girls as temporary wives, a practice known as “madamato” (from the word “madama,” or mistress), which Italians authorities considered legal—and even encouraged—until 1937, when the Fascist regime outlawed it in the name of racial purity. Obviously the only possible union was between Italian men and African women: The local male population wasn’t even allowed to have contact with white women.

The 40-year-old car carrier named Bana that plied the waters of the Mediterranean was unremarkable in almost all ways, except a dramatic one: the Lebanese-flagged vessel’s shipment of weapons from Turkey to Libya in January 2020 placed it squarely in a whirlwind of international intrigue

the European Union on Sept. 21 sanctioned the ship’s operator, Med Wave Shipping SA, a company that L’Orient Today has learned is owned by a Lebanese shipping magnate’s relative who ran for Parliament in 2018

Little is as it seems on the surface of the complex world of maritime shipping. A trail of documents, public statements and other information sheds light on the kaleidoscopic history of Med Wave Shipping SA and the Bana, one that is bookended by sanctions, marked by arms shipments and has passed through Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Libya and Italy.

The Eastern Mediterranean has been stuck in an infinite loop of unilateral sovereign decisions on maritime demarcations by the countries on three of its coastlines since the early discoveries of the massive hydrocarbon wealth in the seabed about two decades ago. The domestic political troubles in most Eastern Mediterranean countries, the uneven geo-political intricacies of the region, and the long-term conflicts between the neighboring countries have added extra layers of complications to the growing tensions over maritime rights.

geo-economic threats posed by these conflicts have generated unexpected collaborations between the southern countries of the Eastern Mediterranean. Prominent examples include the recent Israel-Lebanon maritime border deal and the five years of cooperation between Egypt and Israel on extracting, liquifying, and exporting natural gas to Europe

unresolved long-term conflicts between Turkey and Greece are still setting the region on fire

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.