Iran is facing a water shortage potentially so serious that officials are making contingency plans for rationing in the greater Tehran area, home to 22 million, and other major cities around the country. President Hassan Rouhani has identified water as a national security issue, and in public speeches in areas struck hardest by the shortage he is promising to “bring the water back.”

Iran’s water troubles extend far beyond Lake Urmia, which as a salt lake was never fit for drinking or agricultural use. Other lakes and major rivers have also been drying up, leading to disputes over water rights, demonstrations and even riots.

Dam construction was given renewed emphasis under Mr. Rouhani’s predecessor as president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who as an engineer had a weakness for grand projects. Another driving force is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which through its engineering arm, Khatam al-Anbia Construction, builds many of the dams in Iran and surrounding countries.

American and NATO military planners, facing continued political uncertainty about whether foreign troops will remain in Afghanistan after December, have drawn up plans to deploy a force this summer that is tailored to assume a training mission in 2015 but is also small enough to withdraw if no deal for an enduring presence is reached, alliance officials said.

With President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan refusing to sign security agreements approving a presence for American and NATO troops after 2014, allied military planners have been forced to prepare for both sudden success and abject failure of proposals for a continuing mission to train, advise and assist Afghan forces after combat operations officially end this year.

In preparing the mechanics of this summer’s regular troop rotation, American and NATO military commanders have set in motion a plan intended to give the alliance’s political leadership maximum flexibility, according to senior NATO officials.

With billions of dollars in American aid increasingly flowing straight into Afghan government coffers, the United States hired two global auditing firms three years ago to determine whether Afghanistan could be trusted to safeguard the money.

The findings were so dire that American officials fought to keep them private.

But the money has continued to flow, despite warnings from the auditors that none of the 16 Afghan ministries could be counted on to keep the funds from being stolen or wasted.

Islamist rebels and extremist groups have seized control of most of Syria’s oil and gas resources, a rare generator of cash in the country’s war-battered economy, and are now using the proceeds to underwrite their fights against one another as well as President Bashar al-Assad, American officials say.

control of them has bolstered the fortunes of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and the Nusra Front, both of which are offshoots of Al Qaeda. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is even selling fuel to the Assad government, lending weight to allegations by opposition leaders that it is secretly working with Damascus to weaken the other rebel groups and discourage international support for their cause.

The Nusra Front and other groups are providing fuel to the government, too, in exchange for electricity and relief from airstrikes, according to opposition activists in Syria’s oil regions.

Egypt’s military-backed government put the deposed President Mohamed Morsi in a specially designed glass cell as he appeared in a court in Cairo on Tuesday, only his second public appearance since his ouster last July.

The soundproof cage, previously unheard-of in Egyptian courts, demonstrated the extraordinary measures that the new government is using to silence Mr. Morsi

“I have been absent from the world since the fourth of July and haven’t met anybody from my family or my defense. I’m the legitimate president of Egypt.”

The ones that really nettle them come from Syrians.

Opposition activists and citizen journalists pop up everywhere: in hotel lobbies, on sidewalks, even at a breakfast table overlooking snowcapped mountains.

Here in neutral and secure Switzerland, Syrian government delegates used to meeting journalists only inside a government-controlled bubble are finding that almost anyone can come up to them anytime, anywhere, and ask anything.

A guillotine used to execute thousands of people during the Nazi era, including a brother and sister who led a group of Munich students known as the White Rose in resistance to Hitler, has been provisionally identified in a storage area belonging to Bavaria’s national museum, museum officials said Friday.

Sophie and Hans Scholl, and another member of their White Rose group, Christoph Probst, were executed on Feb. 22, 1943, just four days after they were spotted by a guard at the University of Munich as they distributed the sixth edition of their fliers, which from the summer of 1942 had reported intermittently on Nazi crimes, including the mass killing of Eastern Europe’s Jews.

This was in keeping with a revival of beheading under Hitler, who “personally ordered a good number of guillotines to be built,” said Jud Newborn, the co-author of a 2006 book about Sophie Scholl.

The Obama administration is considering the resumption of nonlethal military aid to Syria’s moderate opposition, senior administration officials said on Thursday, even if some of it ends up going to the Islamist groups that are allied with the moderates.

The United States suspended the shipments last month after warehouses of equipment were seized by the Islamic Fron

some of the Islamists fought alongside the Free Syrian Army in a battle against a major Al Qaeda-affiliated rebel group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

South Korea’s president proposed Monday that the two Koreas improve their tense relations by resuming the reunions of families separated since the Korean War, a humanitarian program that seemed close to being renewed last year but was scuttled as negotiations soured.

President Park Geun-hye’s overture came five days after the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, urged that Seoul and Pyongyang create “a favorable climate for improved relations” in a New Year’s Day speech.

Ms. Park, a conservative, made two other conciliatory gestures toward the North, offering to increase humanitarian aid to the impoverished country and to let South Korean civic groups provide assistance to its farmers and ranchers. But she expressed skepticism about the prospect of meeting with Mr. Kim, whose government has until recently exhorted South Koreans to overthrow her “fascist dictatorship.”

Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Sunday that Iran might play a role at the peace talks on Syria that are scheduled to take place this month.

But Mr. Kerry also made clear that there would be limits on Iran’s role if Tehran did not formally accept that the goal of the conference would be to work out arrangements for a transitional authority that would govern Syria if President Bashar al-Assad could be persuaded to give up power.

Russia has argued that Iran should be present at the peace conference, as has Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy. But France and the United States previously insisted that Iran first make clear that it supports the goal of the meeting: a transition to a governing structure that would exclude Mr. Assad.

BUT should Mr. Hong be recognized as a war hero?

BUT should Mr. Hong be recognized as a war hero?

That memo proved crucial to winning the retrial that cleared Mr. Hong’s name. In its February verdict, the Seoul district court praised his “long struggle to shed light on the Korean War and prove his innocence.”

The second deadly car bomb to strike the Beirut area in less than a week exploded on Thursday in a southern suburb of residential apartment buildings that is home to top Hezbollah offices and heavily populated with the group’s supporters.

Despite the attack’s apparently political nature, it struck civilians hardest.

The explosion came six days after a car bomb killed a prominent member of the Future Movement, Hezbollah’s main political rival, who had openly criticized the group. And it came a day after reports of the arrest of a Saudi militant who leads a Lebanon-based affiliate of Al Qaeda, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in November near the Iranian Embassy in Beirut.

On the eve of negotiations to end the conflict in South Sudan, rebel forces on Wednesday seized major sections of the city of Bor, giving them a strategic foothold for a possible march toward the capital and transforming the banks of the White Nile into an impromptu camp for the tens of thousands of people who have fled the fighting.

With estimates of as many as 70,000 people seeking refuge here, the area outside Bor has quickly become a focal point of the humanitarian crisis enveloping the country.

Miyong G. Kuon, news media coordinator for Mr. Machar, said in a telephone interview that forces loyal to Mr. Machar were “fully in control of Bor.”

The family did not consider staying in Zaatari, which, as the refugees agency itself has acknowledged, is lawless in many ways, with criminal and rebel groups operating beyond the control of agency officials.

As the United Nations and regional governments work on the assumption that Syria’s civil war will last years and are ready to open new camps or expand existing ones, many worry that the worst camps are becoming incubators of despair and Islamic extremism. “If I were in Zaatari, I’d become a jihadist,” said Hassan Abu Hanieh, a Jordanian expert on Salafist jihadism.

Tightly controlled by the Turkish government, which backs the rebel movement against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, they effectively serve as rear bases for Syrian rebels and have few, if any, Alawites, members of the Shiite offshoot who tend to support Mr. Assad.

With more than 2 million Syrians already living outside their war-torn country and 1 million more expected to flee in the coming months, there is a growing protection gap. Indeed, a report (PDF) released in November by Harvard University shows that even Canada, which prides itself on being hospitable to refugees, has been systematically closing its borders to asylum seekers. Without a doubt, development-related aid is an important incentive to host countries, and providing sanctuary for vulnerable populations is just as vital, but what refugees need most is a legal status, which can be achieved only through a regional framework of protection and national asylum policies. The Bangkok Principles are a good start because they highlight the commitment among these states to develop a regional framework and national solutions to protect refugees, with the support of the international community. The U.S. must do its part and encourage the Middle East to build on these principles. Syrians deserve an organized and effective framework, and the risk of turning our backs is that Syrians, along with the Palestinians, will be wandering without a homeland. Galya Benarieh Ruffer is the founding director of the Center for Forced Migration Studies at the Buffett Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University and a public voices faculty fellow with the OpEd Project.  The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy. 180401 Join the Conversation Post a new commentLogin   c

Although the cause of Syrians fleeing their homeland today differs fundamentally from the flight of Palestinians in 1948, one crucial similarity is the harsh reception they are experiencing in neighboring countries. The tragedy of the Syrian refugee crisis is palpable in news stories and in the images of those risking their lives in rickety boats on Europe’s shores. More than one-third of Syria’s population has been displaced, and its effects are rippling across the Middle East. For months, more than 1,500 Syrians (including 250 children) have been detained in Egypt. Hundreds of adults are protesting grotesque conditions there with a hunger strike. Lebanon absorbed the most refugees but now charges toward economic collapse, while Turkey will house 1 million Syrians by the year’s end.

The surge of Syrians arriving in urban centers has brought sectarian violence, economic pressure and social tensions. As a result, these bordering countries, having already spent billions of dollars, are feeling less hospitable and are starting to close their borders to Syrians.

Syria is likely to miss its year-end deadline for getting its most deadly chemical weapons out of the country despite an international effort to mobilize the resources needed to do so

They said that volatile security in Syria had “constrained planned movements” and that logistical problems and bad weather had contributed to the delay.

Once movement of the chemicals gets underway, the mission can be conducted quite quickly, but it appears that Syria has not yet started transporting any chemicals, according to observers familiar with the mission, who spoke on the condition they not be identified publicly because of the sensitivity of the issue.

According to antigovernment activists in the town and others familiar with the deal, government security officials had promised in return to bring cooked meals into the town, where doctors and activists say at least half a dozen people have died of malnutrition.

But in an indication of the difficulty of striking and keeping such pacts in an atmosphere of deep mistrust, by Thursday evening no food had been delivered, rebels in the town were being accused by comrades elsewhere of striking a deal for money, and the planned 48-hour cease-fire appeared to be threatened by clashes between government and rebel fighters.

The government in recent months has stepped up a strategy of pursuing small-scale local cease-fires even as it continues to bombard rebel-held areas and as prospects for a comprehensive peace settlement appear remote.

Frustrated by the United States’ reluctance to sell Apaches, the Iraqis have turned to Russia, which delivered four MI-35 attack helicopters last month and planned to provide more than two dozen more. Meanwhile, cities and towns like Mosul, Haditha and Baquba that American forces fought to control during the 2007 and 2008 surge of American troops in Iraq have been the scene of bloody Qaeda attacks.

Using extortion and playing on Sunni grievances against Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government, the Qaeda affiliate is largely self-financing.

The terrorist group took advantage of the departure of American forces to rebuild its operations in Iraq and push into Syria.

Three Turkish cabinet ministers resigned on Wednesday in an intensifying corruption scandal that has challenged the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and polarized the country.

Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan and Interior Minister Muammer Guler, both of whose sons have been arrested in the anticorruption investigation, stepped down.

Hours later, Erdogan Bayraktar, the environment and urban planning minister, announced his resignation in an interview with the private NTV television network. Mr. Bayraktar’s son was detained as part of the corruption probe but later released.

Of the 200 people he was held with, fewer than 10 survived, he said. Small groups were led away, followed by gunshots. Mr. Wang said he had seen several graves with “dead bodies, yes, so many.” He credited his survival to the fact that he speaks Dinka and did not have any of the markings on his face associated with the Nuer ethnic group.

In the town of Akobo, armed Nuer youths overran a United Nations base, killing Dinka civilians who were taking shelter there along with two of the peacekeepers trying to protect them. United Nations officials have said Dinka workers have been killed at oil facilities.

On Tuesday, the South Sudanese government said it had retaken Bor, a city where an estimated 17,000 people have sought refuge at a United Nations compound.