Group items tagged

Persian Gulf has been used throughout history, in maps, documents and diplomacy, from the ancient Persians, whose empire dominated the region, to the Greeks and the British.

The push to call it the Arabian Gulf gathered steam during the Pan-Arab nationalist movement of the late 1950s, propelled by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, the historian Lawrence G. Potter wrote in the “The Persian Gulf in History.” In the 1960s, Arab countries made Arabian Gulf compulsory, and the Gulf Cooperation Council uses it.

“It’s deeply emotional; it’s not simply semantic,” said Frederic Wehrey, an expert on gulf politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Google Maps shows both terms, with Arabian Gulf in parentheses. But Google will show either Arabian or Persian Gulf to local users, depending on geolocation and language settings.

Under King Abdullah, who died in January and who announced in 2011 that women would be able to vote in this election, steps were taken for women to have a bigger public role, sending more of them to university and encouraging female employment.

country's Grand Mufti, its most senior religious figure, described women's involvement in politics as "opening the door to evil".

Only 1.48 million Saudis from a population of 20 million registered to vote in the election, including 131,000 women, the widespread apathy partly the product of a poll with no political parties, strict laws on campaigning, and in which only local issues are at play.

The Islamic Prophet Muhammad started preaching a monotheistic faith called Islam in his hometown of Mecca from 610 CE onwards.

Equality, egalitarianism, equal rights for women (who had been hitherto considered “property” by the Meccans), and the prospect of heaven attracted many towards Islam.

Despite putting forth strict persecution of the new religion and its preacher, Meccans failed to contain the Muslim community.

Medina offered Prophet Muhammad sovereignty over the city, making him the first ruler and king (r. 622-632 CE) of what was later to become the Islamic or Muslim Empire. The city-state of Medina soon came into conflict with Mecca, and the latter was conquered, after years of warfare, in 629/630 CE.

At the morrow of Prophet Muhammad’s death, the Islamic Empire slid to the brink of disintegration, as many advocated pre-Islamic home-rule system. This threat, however, was averted when Abu Bakr (r. 632-634 CE) proclaimed himself the Caliph of the Prophet and the first supreme ruler of the Islamic realm.

Abu Bakr now sought to expand his realm beyond the Arabian Peninsula. The Muslim Empire bordered two superpowers: the Byzantine Empire (330-1453 CE) and Sassanian Empire (224-651 CE) to the north-west and north-east respectively. These two colossal powers often clashed violently in prolonged wars, had exhausted their resources, and severely repressed Arabian tribes living in the Middle East in the course of pursuing ultimate power. For Abu Bakr, this was an opportune moment, although he may not have known that.

Never content with wasting an opportunity, the Caliph sent Khalid, who had now distinguished himself as a war hero, to raid Iraq (633 CE). The duo stuck to the western side of the Euphrates, where they enjoyed much success, employed eager locals in their ranks, and countered Sassanian advances towards the conquered territory.

Abu Bakr died in 634 CE, and his successor Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634-644 CE) took charge as the second caliph of the Islamic Empire and the "commander of the faithful". Caliph Umar reinforced the Iraqi front with fresh troops under the command of a reputable companion of the Prophet: Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas (l. 595-674 CE).

With this defeat, Sassanian control over Iraq was shattered, the Rashidun troops soon swept over the land and even took Ctesiphon – the Persian capital, ironically located far off from their power base in Khorasan, the eastern province – located in modern-day Iran.

Umar’s successor Uthman (r. 644-656 CE) continued the military expansion undertaken by his predecessors. Yazdegerd III, who had escaped to the eastern parts of his kingdom, was murdered by a local at Merv in 651 CE.

Abu Bakr sent four divisions under Shurahbil ibn Hasana (l. 583-639 CE), Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan (d. 640 CE), Amr ibn al-As (l. c. 573-664 CE), and Abu Ubaidah (l. 583-639 CE) to raid Syria and the Levant.

The Rashidun forces continued to advance northwards in the Levant and Syria. They took Damascus in 634 CE, either through an assault or treason, defeated the Palestinian imperial division in the Battle of Fahl (Pella; 635 CE).

Honed for their shipbuilding skills, the Syrians were employed to create a formidable Rashidun fleet to challenge Byzantine authority in the Mediterranean. After defeating the Byzantine fleet attempting to retake Alexandria (646 CE), the Muslims went on the offensive. Cyprus fell in 649 CE, followed by Rhodes in 654 CE, and in 655 CE, the Byzantine naval authority was crushed with a victory at the Battle of the Masts. Muslims held uncontested control over the Mediterranean and sent raiding parties as far as Crete and Sicily.

At its peak, the realm of the Rashidun Caliphate spread from parts of North Africa in the west to parts of modern-day Pakistan in the east; several islands of the Mediterranean had also come under their sway.

The Byzantines and Sassanians were superpowers of their time but years of warfare had weakened the two colossal titans

Moreover, Arabs were never expected to pose any threat to them, these disunited desert dwellers did not have the numbers or the will to face an empire. This, however, changed as the Arabian Peninsula was united under the banner of Islam by 633 CE. Freed from the infighting that had plagued them for centuries, the Arabs directed their potential towards their neighbors. They considered a just war as a holy struggle and if death was to embrace them, they would be immortalized as martyrs.

Such a strong resolve, however, was lacking in their foes. Both empires employed mercenaries, and these men did not feel similar passion for their client state as the Arabs did for the Caliphate. Moreover, a multiethnic army lacked the coherence imparted by a single faith and unified national sentiment, but perhaps the most destructive penalty that these empires faced was because of how they treated their people in their provinces.

“In this case both the Kouachis and A.Q.A.P. insist that A.Q.A.P. financed this operation, trained the brothers for it and formulated the target,” he said, using the acronym for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. “Rather than being suggestive of a sleeper cell that sat and waited for three years, some subsequent contact seems likeliest although at this point not definitely proven.”

Saudi Arabia is the only country in which women cannot drive and a woman's male "guardian", usually a father, husband, brother or son, can stop her traveling overseas, marrying, working, studying or having some forms of elective surgery.

Under King Abdullah, who died in January and who announced in 2011 that women would be able to vote in this election, steps were taken for women to have a bigger public role, sending more of them to university and encouraging female employment.

However, while women's suffrage has in many other countries been a transformative moment in the quest for gender equality, its impact in Saudi Arabia is likely to be more limited due to a wider lack of democracy and continued social conservatism.

For now, according to some of the women voting on Saturday, apart from the symbolic nature of casting a ballot, their hopes for change resulting from their votes are limited to purely local issues.

The pace of social reform in Saudi Arabia, while ultimately dictated by the Al Saud, is also strongly influenced by a tussle between conservatives and progressives over how the country should marry its religious tradition with modernity.

Only 1.48 million Saudis from a population of 20 million registered to vote in the election, including 131,000 women, the widespread apathy partly the product of a poll with no political parties, strict laws on campaigning, and in which only local issues are at play.

At the King Salman Social Centre in north Riyadh, where men and women went into different parts of the building to cast their ballots, voters of both sexes were greatly outnumbered by both election officials and journalists.

Before Abdullah announced women would take part in this year's elections, the country's Grand Mufti, its most senior religious figure, described women's involvement in politics as "opening the door to evil".

"I believe women want more parks, libraries for their children, health and fitness facilities for women. And just to be part of the decision," said Ahmed, the physiotherapist.As she spoke, a military transport plane flew low overhead from the nearby airbase, a reminder of the momentous policies from war in Yemen to management of plunging oil prices on which Saudi citizens - men and women - still have no formal say.

n both the 2014 and 2015 reports, just over half of all attacks took place in five countries

The Taliban replaced the self-proclaimed Islamic State as the number-one global perpetrator for terrorism attacks, with 1,093, which represents an alarming increase of 69 percent since 2013.

The biggest surprise was the removal of the Somali group al-Shabaab from the top-five list of perpetrators, that outfit having been responsible for the third-most attacks in 2014

The most consequential and troubling revelation is the reach and estimated size of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). According to the State Department, “AQAP has since consolidated its control over Al Mukalla and has expanded its reach through large portions of Yemen’s south,

owever, this is still fewer than the average number that have tragically been killed each year since 9/11, 27. The location of international attacks on U.S. citizens increased from six countries to 11, with the new countries being Bangladesh, France, Jordan, Jerusalem, Libya, and Mali.

Even the relatively favored areas had rainfall of just 20 to 40 centimeters (8 to 15 inches)—where 20 centimeters (8 inches) is regarded as the absolute minimum to sustain agriculture—and the national average was less than 10 centimeters (4 inches)

Considering only “agricultural Syria,” the population is about five times as dense as Ohio or Belgium, but it does not have Ohio’s or Belgium’s other means of generating income.

Syria is not just a piece of land; it is densely populated. When I first visited Syria in 1946, the total population was less than 3 million. In 2010, it reached nearly 24 million.

The bottom line is that the population/resource ratio is out of balance. While there has been a marginal increase of agricultural land and more efficient cropping with better seed, neither has kept up with population growth.

During Ottoman rule the population was organized in two overlapping ways. First, there was no “Syria” in the sense of a nation-state, but rather provinces (Turkish: pashaliqs) that were centered on the ancient cities. The most important of these were Damascus, which may be the oldest permanently settled city in the world today, and Aleppo.

throughout its centuries of rule, the Ottoman Empire generally was content to have its subjects live by their own codes of behavior. It did not have the means or the incentive to intrude into their daily lives. Muslims, whether Turk or Arab or Kurd, shared with the imperial government Islamic mores and law. Other ethnic/religious “nations” (Turkish: millet) were self-governing except in military and foreign affairs.

the same groups also moved into mainly Muslim cities and towns, where they tended to live in more or less segregated neighborhoods that resembled medieval European urban ghettos or modern American “Little Italys” or “Chinatowns.”

Since this system was spelled out in the Quran and the Traditions (Hadiths) of the Prophet, respecting it was legally obligatory for Muslims. Consequently, when the Syrian state took shape, it inherited a rich, diverse, and tolerant social tradition.

the French created a “Greater” Lebanon from the former autonomous adjunct provinces (Turkish: sanjaqs) of Mount Lebanon and Beirut. To make it their anchor in an otherwise hostile Levant, they aimed both to make it Christian-dominated and big enough to exist as a state. But these aims were incompatible: the populations they added, taken from the pashaliq of Damascus, were mainly Muslim, so the French doomed Lebanon to be a precariously unbalanced society.

the French reversed course. They united the country as defined in the mandate but attempted to change its social and cultural orientation. Their new policy aimed to supplant the common language, Arabic, with French, to make French customs and law the exemplar, to promote Catholicism as a means to undercut Islam, and to favor the minorities as a means to control the Muslim majority. It was inevitable that the native reaction to these intrusions would be first the rise of xenophobia and then the spread of what gradually became a European style of nationalism.

When French policies did not work and nationalism began to offer an alternate vision of political life, the French colonial administration fell back on violence. Indeed throughout the French period—in contrast to the relatively laissez-faire rule of the Ottoman Empire—violence was never far below the outward face of French rule.

the “peace” the French achieved was little more than a sullen and frustrated quiescence; while they did not create dissension among the religious and ethnic communities, the French certainly magnified it and while they did not create hostility to foreigners, they gave the native population a target that fostered the growth of nationalism. These developments have lingered throughout the last 70 years and remain powerful forces today.

in the years after the French were forced out, coup leader after military dictator spoke in nationalist rhetoric but failed to lead his followers toward “the good life.”

for three and a half years, Syria became a part of the United Arab Republic.

Union did not work, so in 1961 Syrians were thrown back on their own resources. A fundamental problem they faced was what it meant to be a Syrian.

The more conservative, affluent, and Westernized nationalists believed that nationhood had to be built not on a religious but on a territorial base. That is, single-state nationalism (Arabic: wataniyah) was the focus of Syria’s statehood.

Their program, however, did not lead to success; its failure opened the way for a redefinition of nationalism as pan-Arab or folk nationalism (Arabic: qawmiyah). As it was codified by the Baath Party, it required that Syria be considered not a separate nation-state but a part of the whole Arab world and be domestically organized as a unified, secular, and at least partly Westernized state. This was a particularly difficult task because the dominant Muslim community, initially as a result of French rule and later as a result of domestic turbulence and foreign interference, regarded the members of the minority communities, particularly the Jewish community, as actual or potential turncoats.

as Syrians struggled for a sense of identity and came to suspect social difference and to fear the cooperation of minorities with foreigners, being an Alawi or a Christian or a Jew put people under a cloud. So, for Hafez al-Assad, the secular, nationalist Baath Party was a natural choice

Their answer was to try to bridge the gaps between rich and poor through a modified version of socialism, and between Muslims and minorities through a modified concept of Islam. Islam, in their view, needed to be considered politically not as a religion but as a manifestation of the Arab nation. Thus, the society they wished to create, they proclaimed, should be modern (with, among other things, equality for women), secular (with faith relegated to personal affairs), and defined by a culture of “Arabism” overriding the traditional concepts of ethnicity.

The “Resurrection” (Arabic: Baath) Party had its origins, like the nationalist-communist Vietnamese movement, in France. Two young Syrians, one a Christian and the other a Sunni Muslim, who were then studying in Paris were both attracted to the grandeur of France and appalled by the weakness of Syria. Like Ho Chi Minh, they wanted to both become like France and get the French out of their nation. Both believed that the future lay in unity and socialism. For Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar, the forces to be defeated were “French oppression, Syrian backwardness, a political class unable to measure up to the challenge of the times,”

After Assad’s assault in 1982, the Syrian city of Hama looked like the Iraqi city of Fallujah after the American assault in 2004. Acres of the city were submerged under piles of rubble. But then, like Stalingrad after the German attack or Berlin after the Russian siege, reconstruction began. In a remarkable series of moves, Hafez al-Assad ordered the rubble cleared away, built new highways, constructed new schools and hospitals, opened new parks, and even, in a wholly unexpected conciliatory gesture, erected two huge new mosques. He thus made evident what had been his philosophy of government since he first took power: help the Syrian people to live better provided only that they not challenge his rule. In his thought and actions, his stern and often-brutal monopoly of power, he may be compared to the ruling men, families, parties, and establishments of Chinese, Iranian, Russian, Saudi Arabian, Vietnamese, and numerous other regimes.

Hafez al-Assad did not need to wait for leaks of documents: his intelligence services and international journalists turned up dozens of attempts by conservative, oil-rich Arab countries, the United States, and Israel to subvert his government. Most engaged in “dirty tricks,” propaganda, or infusions of money, but it was noteworthy that in the 1982 Hama uprising, more than 15,000 foreign-supplied machine guns were captured, along with prisoners including Jordanian- and CIA-trained paramilitary forces (much like the jihadists who appear so much in media accounts of 2013 Syria). And what he saw in Syria was confirmed by what he learned about Western regime-changing elsewhere.

As Iraq “imploded” in coups beginning in 1958 and morphed into Saddam Husain’s regime, the Syrians came to regard it as an enemy second only to Israel.

During the rule of the two Assads, Syria made considerable progress. By the eve of the civil war, Syrians enjoyed an income (GDP) of about $5,000 per capita. That was nearly the same as Jordan’s, roughly double the income per capita of Pakistan and Yemen, and five times the income of Afghanistan, but it is only a third that of Lebanon, Turkey, or Iran

In 2010, savaged by the great drought, GDP per capita had fallen to about $2,900, according to UN data. Before the civil war—and except in 2008 at the bottom of the drought, when it was zero—Syria’s growth rate hovered around 2 percent,

In social affairs, nearly 90 percent of Syrian children attended primary or secondary schools and between eight and nine in 10 Syrians had achieved literacy. On these measures, Syria was comparable to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Libya despite having far fewer resources to employ.

Like his father, Bashar sought to legitimize his regime through elections, but apparently he never intended, and certainly did not find, a way satisfactory (to the public) and acceptable (to his regime) of enlarged political participation.

The lack of political participation, fear of public demands, and severe police measures made the regime appear to be a tyranny

This and its hostility to Israel led to large-scale, if covert, attempts at regime change by outside powers including the United States. These acts of subversion became particularly pronounced during the second Bush administration.

between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabitants were reduced to “extreme poverty.”  

Four years of devastating drought beginning in 2006 caused at least 800,000 farmers to lose their entire livelihood and about 200,000 simply abandoned their lands, according to the Center for Climate & Security. In some areas, all agriculture ceased. In others, crop failures reached 75 percent. And generally as much as 85 percent of livestock died of thirst or hunger. Hundreds of thousands of Syria’s farmers gave up, abandoned their farms, and fled to the cities and towns

Syria was already a refuge for a quarter of a million Palestinians and about 100,000 Iraqis who had fled the war and occupation. Formerly prosperous farmers were lucky to get jobs as hawkers or street sweepers. And in the desperation of the times, hostilities erupted among groups that were competing just to survive.

And so tens of thousands of frightened, angry, hungry, and impoverished former farmers were jammed into Syria’s towns and cities, where they constituted tinder ready to catch fire.

Instead of meeting with the protesters and at least hearing their complaints, the government saw them as subversives. The lesson of Hama must have been at the front of the mind of every member of the Assad regime. Failure to act decisively, Hama had shown, inevitably led to insurrection. Compromise could come only after order was assured. So Bashar followed the lead of his father. He ordered a crackdown. And the army, long frustrated by inaction and humiliated by its successive defeats in confrontation with Israel, responded violently. Its action backfired. Riots broke out all over the country. As they did, the government attempted to quell them with military force. It failed. So, during the next two years, what had begun as a food and water issue gradually turned into a political and religious cause.

we don’t know much about the rebels. Hundreds of groups and factions—called “brigades” even when they are just a dozen or so people—have been identified. Some observes believe that there are actually over 1,000 brigades. A reasonable guess is that, including both part-time and full-time insurgents, they number about 100,000 fighters.

In Syria, quite different causes of splits among the brigades are evident. To understand the insurgency there, we must look carefully at the causes. The basis is religion

During the course of the Assad regime, the interpretation of Islam was undergoing a profound change. This was true not only of Syria but also of understanding, practice, and action in many other areas of the world.

tens of thousands of young foreigners flocked to Syria to fight for what they see as a religious obligation (Arabic: fi sabili’llah).

in Syria, while many Muslims found the Assad regime acceptable and many even joined its senior ranks, others saw its Alawi and Christian affiliations, and even its secularism and openness to Muslim participation, insupportable.

The foreign jihadists, like the more recent nationalists, put their emphasis on a larger-than-Syria range. For them, it is a folk nationalism not only to the Arab world but also to the wider world of Islam, affecting a billion people across the globe. What they seek is a restored Islamic world, a Dar ul-Islam, or a new caliphate.

the aims of the two broad groups—the Syrians and the foreigners—have grown apart in a way similar to the split that occurred in Arab nationalism. The Syrians focus on Syria and seek the overthrow of the Assad regime much as their fathers and grandfathers focused on the task of getting the French out of their country—their watan. Their nationalism is single-country oriented

all the rebels regard the conflict in Syria as fundamentally a religious issue. Particularly for the native rebels, as I have pointed out, the religious issue is overlaid by ethnic complexities.

It would be a mistake to regard the Syrian war, as some outside observers have done, as a fight between the forces of freedom and tyranny. If the opponents of the regime are fighting for some form of democracy, they have yet to make their voices heard.

as in Afghanistan, they have fought one another over territory, access to arms, leadership, and division of spoils as bitterly as they have fought their proclaimed enemy. This fracturing has made them impossible to defeat—as the Russians experienced in Afghanistan—but also, so far at least, incapable of governing on a national scale. But they are moving in that direction.

All observers agree that the foreign-controlled and foreign-constituted insurgent groups are the most coherent, organized, and effective. This is little short of astonishing as they share no common language and come from a wide variety of cultures.

Paradoxically, governments that would have imprisoned the same activists in their own countries have poured money, arms, and other forms of aid into their coffers. The list is long and surprising in its makeup: it includes Turkey; the conservative Arab states, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia; the EU member states; and the U.S.

The United States has a long history of covertly aiding insurgents in Syria, and has engaged in propaganda, espionage, and various sorts of dirty tricks. The rebels, naturally, have regarded the aid they’ve received as insufficient, while the government has regarded it as a virtual act of war. Both are right: it has not been on a scale that has enabled the rebels to win, but it is a form of action that, had another country engaged in it, seeking to overthrow the government, any American or European administration would have regarded as an act of war under international law.

Such covert intervention, and indeed overt intervention, is being justified on two grounds, the first being that the Syrian government is a tyranny. By Western standards, it is undoubtedly an authoritarian regime

However, the standards Western nations proclaim have been applied in a highly selective way. The EU and the U.S. enjoy cordial and mutually beneficial relations with dozens of tyrannical governments including most of the countries now attempting to regime-change Syria.              

Senior rebels have publicly threatened to carry out a genocide of the country’s main ethnic/religious minority, the Alawis. Scenes being enacted in Syria today recall the massacres and tortures of the wars of religion in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.

Most urgent in the minds of the EU and the U.S. is the second justification for intervention: the Syrian government is charged with using illegal chemical weapons. This is a very serious charge. However, doubts remain about who actually used the weapons. And, more importantly, even though the weapons are indeed horrible and are now generally considered illegal, several other states (the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and Iraq) have used them. Terrible as they are, they are only a small part of the Syrian problem—more than 99 percent of the casualties and all of the property damage in the war have been the result of conventional weapons. Getting rid of chemical weapons will neither in and of itself stop the war nor create conditions favorable to a settlement.

the cost of the war has been immense. And, of course, it is not over. We have only guesses on the total so far. One estimate is that the war has cost Syria upwards of $150 billion. Whole cities now resemble Stalingrad or Berlin in World War II. More than 2 million people have fled abroad while more than 4 million are internal refugees, remaining in Syria.

Lebanon. Even though there is little fighting there, the conflict in Syria is estimated to have cost that little country about $7.5 billion and doubled unemployment to 20 percent. About 1 million Lebanese were already judged by the World Bank as “poor,” and an additional 170,000 are now thought to have been pushed into poverty. The Syrian refugee population in the country has reached at least 1 million, making Syrians now almost a third of the total Lebanese population.

In Jordan, the story is similar. Half a million refugees are camped out there. One refugee encampment in the country houses over 100,000 people and has become Jordan’s fifth-largest city

However reprehensible the Syrian government may be in terms of democracy, it has not only given refugees and minorities protection but also maintained the part of Syria that it controls as a secular and religiously ecumenical state.

Tragic as these numbers are—the worst for nearly a century—factored into them is that Syria has lost the most precious assets of poor countries: most of the doctors and other professionals who had been painstakingly and expensively educated during the last century

Even more “costly” are the psychological traumas: a whole generation of Syrians have been subjected to either or both the loss of their homes and their trust in fellow human beings. Others will eventually suffer from the memory of what they, themselves, have done during the fighting. Comparisons are trivial and probably meaningless, but what has been enacted—is being enacted—in Syria resembles the horror of the Japanese butchery of Nanjing in World War II and the massacres in the 1994 Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda.

How the victims and the perpetrators can be returned to a “normal life” will be the lingering but urgent question of coming generations in Syria and elsewhere.

one in four or five people in the world today are Muslim: roughly 1.4 billion men, women, and children. That whole portion of the world’s population has its eyes on Syria. What happens there is likely to have a ripple effect across Asia and Africa. Thus, even though it is a small and poor country, Syria is in a sense a focal point of world affairs.

Unlike the Iraq and Afghan wars, the Syrian conflict will also have a “blowback” effect on the countries from which the Muslim fundamentalist insurgents come. It is in recognition of this fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to intervene in the Syrian war.

Even if fighting dies down, “lasting and bitter war,” like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—regardless of what American and European politicians say or even hope—will necessarily involve “boots on the ground.” That is, it will be fought with guerrilla and terrorist tactics on the rebel side against the now-typical counterinsurgency methods on the other side.

The claim surfaced as Charlie Hebdo's new issue -- featuring the Prophet Mohammed on the cover -- sold all 3 million copies, in a sign of defiance against the terrorists. More copies are coming, the magazine said.

"When the heroes were assigned, they accepted. They promised and fulfilled," al-Ansi said.

“I suspect that Chérif Kouachi did engage AQAP members in Yemen, but that he was not fully brought into the organization,

The statement by the Qaeda branch in Yemen called the Kouachi brothers, who were shot to death by police on Friday, “two heroes of Islam.” But it referred to the actions of Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked a police officer the day of the assault on Charlie Hebdo and was shot to death by police after holding hostages in a kosher supermarket, as a coincidence and did not take responsibility for them.

Salma bint Hazab al-Otaibi won a seat in the Madrika district of Mecca, the holiest city of Islam

In Qassim, traditionally the most conservative part of the country, two women were elected but their names were not immediately released.

The capture occurred as the spacecraft soared 250 miles above the Arabian sea, skirting the coast of Oman. Three hours later, the capsule was bolted into place. The door was to remain shut until Thursday, though, given the crew's busy schedule.

The supply ship, dubbed Cygnus after the swan constellation, rocketed into orbit Sunday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA's commercial shipper, Orbital ATK, used another company's rocket for the launch. Orbital supply runs had been on hold ever since a launch explosion last year. The other U.S. supplier, SpaceX, meanwhile, has not made a delivery since April because of a launch accident.

Orbital flight controllers, based at company headquarters in Dulles, Virginia, applauded and shook hands once the Cygnus made contact with the space station Wednesday morning. They wore retro-style white shirts, black slacks and skinny black ties in honor of the Mercury astronaut for whom the capsule had been named, Deke Slayton, a commercial space pioneer before his death in 1993.

The previous Cygnus also bore Slayton's name, but ended up being destroyed seconds after liftoff in October 2014. Orbital christened this capsule the S.S. Deke Slayton II.

NASA is paying billions of dollars to Orbital and SpaceX to stock the space station. The pantry got a little too empty for NASA's taste over the past year; besides the two lost commercial shipments, Russia also endured a failed supply run. The Russian Space Agency didn't take long, however, to resume flights; another shipment is scheduled for just before Christmas.

Two of the six-man crew — space station commander Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko — are three-quarters of the way through a one-year mission. They're especially eager to see the Cygnus contents, since they won't be back on the planet until March.

The Cygnus will remain at the space station for a month, before being filled with trash and cut loose for a fiery re-entry.

While Gulf states cautiously welcomed last year's nuclear deal, they are deeply suspicious of Iran's activities, particularly on the Arabian Peninsula.

The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has taken to Twitter in recent days to criticize Iran and poke fun at his Iranian counterpart. "Don't torch, take over or ransack embassies and consulates. Don't take diplomats hostage. #DiploMaturity101," read one post.

Chalk it up to Beijing’s shifting global agenda or a diplomatic coming-of-age.

At a lackluster late-October forum on energy cooperation in Beijing this year, trade officials said Arab counterparts had to “restructure their economies,”

one of Saudi Arabia’s chief competitors in the race to quench China’s thirst for energy.

The tables had turned and Saudi Arabia now seems more eager to pursue the relationship.

Arab politicos and intellectuals have long decried a precarious U.S

The implications are clear: China has long represented an alternative in the global market for influence once dominated by Washington;

, UAE enterprise Dubai Ports World pulled out of a plan to manage six U.S. ports after U.S. legislators attacked the deal as a potential security risk.

China surpassed the United States as the Middle East’s largest export market and also as the largest importer of Middle Eastern oil.

In the meantime, China built a flurry of projects designed to show its embrace of the Arab world.

the longest highway in the entire continent of Africa. Corruption allegations over the highway are ongoing.

The reasons are manifold. An absence of venture capital and innovation in Arab economic planning are among the reasons why the infrastructure didn’t revolutionize the Middle East/North Africa region.

Beijing appears to have abandoned its principles of noninterference on the way to the top.

the Middle East and North Africa enjoyed a marketplace with options.

But as China ascends, the promise of a rising Eastern power is no more. As far as Arabs are concerned, Beijing has done little but reinvent the U.S. model of global dominance.

Moses and the Israelites found that the water in Marah was bitter.

In the 8th century A.D., an Arabian chemist called Gerber suggested the use of wick siphons as a way to purify water.

This method employed the use of three pairs of sand filters, each of which had an upward-flow filter and a downward-flow filter.

His system included a covered and elevated cistern, which could prevent the growth of moss and freezing.

Nonetheless, slow sand filtration used up a lot of land, and it could not keep up with rapid population growths. In the 1880s, the rapid sand filtration method was introduced in the United States.

After the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, water around the world became more and more polluted, and new and more sophisticated water treatment systems are being developed to ensure that everybody will have safe and clean water to drink.

But Trump increased that number to roughly 44 percent, which included posts in some countries that usually went to career diplomats, such Thailand and Kenya.

John McCain; longtime Biden friend and former Sen. Chris Dodd; and Comcast executive David Cohen. Richard Perkins, a donor and former speaker of the Nevada Assembly, told POLITICO that he is lobbying to be the top U.S. diplomat in Canada.

There are some who do a lot for the campaign and they don’t have a lot of experience in government and you want to take care of them and what the fuck else are you going to do with them?”

Instead, the White House has been focused on pushing Covid legislation through Congress and compiling lists of nominees for judgeships and attorneys general. Biden has named only one ambassador thus far: Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a former State Department official and ambassador, to the United Nations.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a Democratic fundraiser who served as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, said he’s received calls from about a dozen donors in recent weeks trying to determine their next steps.

On Wednesday, Biden will meet virtually with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, though no ambassador is expected to be named.

We continue to engage in conversations with the White House and we've been gratified that our counterparts understand and value the importance of career professionals in senior roles, including ambassadorships,” a senior State Department official said when asked about the status of the situation.

“When you talk to [donors], get them in a private room and off guard, they’ll be real open to the fact that they’re looking to get something out of it,” according to a donor. “Is it openly spoken about? No, but it’s pretty clear.”

“He is a guy who has come through the long Democratic tradition, but unlike Trump, I think he’s going to pick career people for very important posts,” a Biden ally said.

They also hope the administration considers placing career appointees in high-profile but challenging ambassadorships in Russia and China.

Saudi Arabian officials, for example, have often preferred having a political appointee because such figures are more likely to have a direct line to the president. But given the Biden administration’s efforts to de-emphasize the U.S.-Saudi relationship, placing a career diplomat in Riyadh could essentially tell the Saudis that they won’t get backchannels to Biden or special favors.

“No other country has nearly half its ambassadorships vacant, or ever has. This hurts our ability to defend our national interests and pursue our national objectives,” said Eric Rubin, president of the American Foreign Service Association, the diplomats’ union.

Muhammad's message was especially well received by the poor and slaves.

Central to Islamic beliefs are the Five Pillars of Faith, which all followers of Islam — called Muslims — must follow:: There is only one universal God: Allah. Followers of Islam (Muslims) are expected to pray five times each day while facing Mecca. All Muslims are expected to pay a yearly tax that is mostly intended to help the poor and needy. For the entire month of Ramadan, Muslims must not eat, smoke, drink, or have sexual relations from sunrise to sunset. All able Muslims must make a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca at least once in their lifetimes.

In 622, fearing for his life, Muhammad fled to the town of Medina. This flight from Mecca to Medina became known as the Hegira

Muhammad fought a number of battles against the people of Mecca. In 629, Muhammad returned to Mecca with an army of 1500 converts to Islam and entered the city unopposed and without bloodshed. Before his death two years later, he forcefully converted most of the Arabian Peninsula to his new faith and built a small empire.

Unfortunately, Muhammad had not designated a successor. The struggle over leadership that followed his death has divided Muslims to this day, creating a division in Islam between the Sunnis and Shiites.

Despite these problems, a vast Islamic empire was created over the next 12 centuries that would build a base of worshipers unrivaled by any other religion.

For dissidents living outside the Kingdom, the American election has personal as well as political implications. On one side is an incumbent who has boasted he “saved [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s] ass”

On the other is Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who last year said he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” singled out the kingdom for “murdering children” in Yemen, and said there’s “very little social redeeming value in the present Saudi leadership.”

Saudi Arabia was the destination for Trump’s first trip overseas in May 2017, a visit that set the tone for the strong alliance that has persisted ever since.

“but what I’m sure of is that a Biden Administration would not be as compliant and affectionate with Saudi Arabia as Trump has been.”

Al-Odah is one of hundreds detained or imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for activism of criticism of the government. He was arrested only hours after he tweeted a message to his 14 million followers calling on Saudi Arabia to end its blockade of the tiny Gulf Emirate of Qatar, Alaoudh says.

Court documents list al-Odah’s charges as including spreading corruption by calling for a constitutional monarchy, stirring public discord, alleged membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, and “mocking the government’s achievements.”

For some, like Alaoudh, those words offer a glimmer of hope that relatives detained in the kingdom might have improved prospects of release should Biden win in November

ranging from 450,000 to “a million,” (the actual total is between 20,000 to 40,000, according to May report by the Center for International Policy.)

But subsequent behind-the-scenes meetings between Trump’s special advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s and King Salman’s son Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) proved at least as significant as the President’s headline announcements.

the historic ties between the U.S. and the Al Saud that date back to 1943, or business interests in the region is unclear, says Stephen McInerney, Executive Director at the non-partisan Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). What is clear, he says, is that “Trump and his family—and in particular Jared Kushner—have close personal ties to Mohammed Bin Salman.”

That closeness has translated into a reluctance to confront Saudi Arabia over its human rights abuses.

“at times there has been real bipartisan frustration or even outrage with him.”

Trump publicly mulled the possibility he was killed by a “rogue actor” — in line with what would become the Saudi narrative as outrage grew.

“I have no doubt that Donald Trump did protect and save whatever part of MBS’s body,”

Callamard says she would expect a Biden administration, “at a minimum, not to undermine the U.S.’s own democratic processes,” as Trump did in vetoing bipartisan bills pertaining to the Khashoggi murder and the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia that were used in the Yemen war.

President Biden to not “justify violations by others or suggest that the U.S. doesn’t care about violations because of its economic interests.”

“end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.” The statement adds that Biden will “defend the right of activists, political dissidents, and journalists around the world to speak their minds freely without fear of persecution and violence.”

“I think there would be some international debate between those who want a very assertive change in the U.S.–Saudi relationship and those who would be more cautious,” says McInerney. “The more cautious approach would be in line with historical precedent.”

Saudi authorities tortured and sexually abused al Hathloul while she was in prison, her family says. On Oct 27, Hathloul began a new hunger strike in protest at authorities’ refusal to grant her a family visit in two months.

The only thing that allows them to ignore all the international pressure is that the White House has not talked about it, and has not given a clear message to the Saudis telling them that they don’t agree with this,” Hathloul says.

If Trump is re-elected, then experts see little chance of him changing tack—in fact, says Callamard, it would pose “a real test” for the resilience of the democratic institutions committed to upholding the rules-based order.

“Just the fact that we are filing the lawsuit here in Washington D.C. is a sign that we still have faith that there are other ways to pressure the Saudi government,”