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The Saudi crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), finds himself in a difficult place, fighting three very different sorts of wars. The first — and the longest running — is the Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen that on 25 March passed its fifth...
As COVID-19 continues to impact markets and national and global economies, it is worthwhile noting that Gulf economies were already slowing before the virus hit the region. A comprehensive assessment by London-based Capital Economics, released on February 25 but based on statistics up to...
On Friday, the media reported that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), had arrested two powerful members of the royal family, Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, the sole remaining full brother of King Salman, and the former crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef. Al Jazeera describes the...
Recent developments in Turkish politics have left many baffled. More and more Kurdish parents in southeast Turkey are now rising up against the secessionist the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its political wing, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), to reclaim their children the PKK...
Two important facts emerged from the Iran elections on 21 February. The first is that the country actually held elections — a rarity in that region. The second is that the outcome was almost wholly negative for the regime. The candidate list had been purged of anyone not loyal to...
In today’s world, where refugee crises are exacerbated by xenophobic border policies, where the global north refuses to engage in burden sharing, where people’s freedom of movement is ruthlessly repudiated, the ability to travel is a particularly salient privilege. As Dallen Timothy and Victor...
To the extent that people know anything about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), they reasonably assume that they have something to do with the economy (development), and with the environment (sustainability). They’re only partly right. The bigger challenge, especially for countries in...
As the entire world knows, Jared Kushner has been working very hard over the past two and a half years at crafting a deal with so much cash in it ($50 billion) that no reasonable Palestinian could refuse. To his deepest consternation, when he finally revealed its contents to the public at...
Following President Donald Trump’s long-awaited unveiling of his “deal of the century” Middle East peace plan on January 28, the Palestinians now confront an existential moment: find a way to make it work or begin wrestling with how to accommodate a single state. The optics of Trump’s...
The long-awaited “deal of the century” crafted by Jared Kushner and presented by his father-in-law, US President Donald Trump, finally saw the light of day on January 28. Playing the role of the most brazenly dishonest of “honest brokers,” Trump, accompanied by legally (and morally)...
The hardest part of publishing articles in the news is drafting the story’s headline. Headlines serve two essential purposes: to give a general idea of the subject that the article exposes and to trigger the reader’s curiosity or interest. Because the headline must be pithy, the second...
