Patrick Cockburn Alend Shoresh is a Kurdish farmer and teacher from north-east Syria who was conscripted into fighting Islamic State in 2018: he joined the Syrian Democratic Forces…
Najmeh Bozorgmehr This time last year, Mohammad could still just about afford fruit and chicken for his three children. But as US sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic have…
MEE and agencies Desperate to help his family displaced by Syria’s war, pro-Turkey rebel fighter Abu Ahmad is waiting to be deployed to Azerbaijan, hoping to earn almost 80…
Alex MacDonald In the year since Iraqis took to the streets en masse to protest against unemployment, corruption, foreign interference and a creaking political system, the country has…
Julie Simon, Theo Bass, Victoria Boelman, Geoff Mulgan This paper shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place…
Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Ammar Maleki, Tilburg Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was a defining event that changed how we think about the relationship between religion and modernity. Ayatollah Khomeini’s…
Ramzy Baroud Protests against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have raged on for weeks, turning violent sometimes. Israelis are furious at their government’s mediocre response to the coronavirus…
Simon Watkins Two key questions logically arise from last week’s announcement from Iran’s Petroleum Ministry that it has awarded a US$1.3 billion development deal to more than double…
Farnaz Fassihi and Steven Lee Myers Iran and China have quietly drafted a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of…
Salena Fay Tramel It has not been an easy year for Palestinians, if there ever was such a thing. With the turn of a new decade in January,…
Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade ME4Change is posting this report, despite the fact that it is outside its geographic remit, because it is an interesting example of self-organisation in…
James Hamblin In May 1997, a 3-year-old boy developed what at first seemed like the common cold. When his symptoms—sore throat, fever, and cough—persisted for six days, he…
I WAS PAYING my bill at the hotel when they came. There were seven of them, stiff and formal in plain-clothes. “Mr Pelham?” asked the shortest one and…
Esen Uslu The ever increasing expansionist policies of Turkey have recently extended across the Mediterranean Sea and reached to the shores of North Africa. The Turkish bourgeoisie, especially…
Robert Fisk I’ve always wanted to find out where the guns came from. Who were the ‘willing accomplices’ to the wars I witnessed? In 1996, I traced to…
Yassamine Mather Over the last five days, tens of thousands of Iranians have protested against the hike in the price of oil, following an official statement issued by…
Robert Fisk The Saudis are taking a pasting. Video pictures from the Houthis of Saudi soldiers and their allies killed or surrendering inside the Saudi border town of…
Mustafa Habib. The process to install new governors in Basra and Baghdad is proving almost as chaotic as the formation of the federal government. In Basra last weekend,…
Michael Safi and Greame Wearden. What happened on Saturday morning? Saudi pipelines, oil installations and tankers have occasionally been attacked over the past two years, but analysts say…
Leïla Ouitis When in early February Algeria’s ailing octogenarian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his intention to run for the presidency for a fifth term, millions of Algerians took…
Michael Snyder Are we about to see World War 3 erupt in the Middle East? Over the past several days, Israel has attempted to prevent attacks by Iranian…
Cesar Chelala. Gender violence, manifested essentially as violence against women, is one of the most significant epidemics in the Middle East today. This kind of violence occurs in…
Kourosh Ziabari. Iran is a country in which many aspects of public life: governance, education, foreign relations and even people’s lifestyles are peculiarly determined by ideology. The authorities…
Hamidreza Azizi Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi issued a decree July 1 obliging the overwhelmingly pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) to fully integrate into the Iraqi armed…
Fariba Amini. May this year was a very pleasant time in Tehran when it comes to the weather. The abundant rain had cleared the pollution for a while,…
Pat Fry. It was 7 AM April 30th in Caracas when I awoke to hear gun shots outside my hotel. Our group, seven US citizens and one Canadian,…
Tony Greenstein. In most western countries, political parties compete in general elections over issues such as taxation, nationalisation/privatisation, poverty, etc. Those in most European countries, with the exception…
Robert Fisk. After all the headlines about the supposed defeat of Isis, anyone who doesn’t believe a word of it may seem a bit of a spoilsport. But whenever…
Tony Greenstein. In 1984 rabbi Meir Kahane of the ultra-nationalist Kach party entered the Israeli parliament (knesset), having received over 25,000 votes. Kach stood on a programme which,…
Jonathan Cook. You might imagine that a report by a multinational observer force documenting a 20-year reign of terror by Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers against Palestinians, in…
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