Many evolving disputes in north Africa and the Sahara fuse religious language and political impulse to powerful effect, says Stephen Ellis.
Iran's strategic and ideological investment in the Assad regime may force smaller, unpalatable political compromises to secure a 'solution' in Syria.
Qatar refuses to allow its American airbase to be used as a launching pad for a strike against Iran should Israel or the US decide to go in. This certainly adds to the restrain factor that is so badly needed at this point in time.
Egyptian diplomacy could adopt a distinguished role in the coming period, by opening new doors and adopting new strategies in building foreign relations.
Many Syrian refugees have every intention of going home. Meanwhile, others don’t have homes to return to; their families have been all but obliterated.
An everyday story of life in Egypt.
The ministry's website was also temporarily hacked and a call went out on social media for the staging of a "mega Harlem Shake" in front of the ministry on Friday.
The hopes of peaceful transition to democracy in Tunisia have been dented by the murder of a leading secularist figure. The event poses urgent questions of the country's new political elite, says Valentina Bartolucci.
What Egypt’s revolutionary activists lack is a coherent organisational base. Only the Muslim Brotherhood manages to reach out to the electorate and by doing so easily grabs the levers of power.
The British Parliament is set to debate the political recognition of Saddam Hussein's campaign against the Kurds as genocide. With the threat of chemical weapons in Syria a declared 'red line', the need to properly understand and account for the legacy of the largest chemical attack against a civi
The biggest threat to the survival of the Islamic Republic might not come from sanctions imposed by the west, but from growing divisions that are disintegrating the regime from the inside.
Lebanon's plans to harnass the vast oil and gas reserves off its shores already reveal familiar echoes of past internal divisions and external conflicts. But is this finally a chance for Lebanon to remake its future?
