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On October 21, groups of Polisario Front’s supporters blocked the highway at Guergarat, in the extreme southwest of the Western Sahara. This is in the buffer zone between territory controlled by Morocco and the land claimed by the Polisario — the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia...
America may well be divided about Donald Trump, but the rest of the world isn’t. The soon-to-be-former president has gotten high marks in the Philippines and Israel, a passing grade in a couple of African countries and India, and dismal reviews pretty much everywhere else. US allies in...
A recent ceasefire agreement and ongoing political reconciliation negotiations between Libya’s warring factions have significantly de-escalated tensions. A flurry of diplomatic engagement, with significant international support, has raised hopes that the Libyan conflict is about to enter a new...
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a man on a mission. The goal: to make Turkey great again. Making Turkey great again, I guess, means wiping history clean of a series of humiliations, from the ignominious decline of the Ottoman Empire, dismissed as the “sick man upon the Bosporus” in the late 1800s, to...
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now in its 72nd year. Israel has been given renewed impetus after agreeing to the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates on August 13, when the two states announced the normalization of diplomatic relations. Bahrain soon followed in Abu...
Despite all the obstacles, Americans are voting in huge numbers prior to Election Day. With a week to go, nearly 70 million voters have sent in their ballots or stood on line for early voting. The pandemic hasn’t prevented them from exercising their constitutional right. Nor have...
On September 29, Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah passed away after ruling for 14 years. Messages of condolences flooded from all over the world to mourn a statesman who will be remembered as a respected mediator in a troubled region. After serving for 40 years as foreign minister,...
Addressing months of speculation over the future of US policy toward Tehran, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on September 22 at the UN General Assembly, “We are not a bargaining chip in the US elections and domestic policy.” Earlier this year, Democratic presidential nominee Joe...
In France, Samuel Paty was beheaded on October 16 near Paris. He was a history teacher who had shown caricatures of Prophet Muhammad to his students in a lesson on freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Paty’s killer, Abdullakh Anzorov, is an 18-year-old of Chechen origin. He arrived in...
On October 23, the Trump administration announced the agreement between Israel and Sudan to normalize relations. Ordinarily, such an agreement would be good for both countries. But for Sudan, still struggling with imposing democratic norms after decades of brutal dictatorship, it could come at a...
My parents used to say, “Eat with your mouth and not your eyes.” This may be good advice for newly-minted Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. He is clearly unable to resist trying once again to raise Lebanon from its deathbed, and this time the consequences may be more disastrous than just a...
