A call for foreign intervention is a cry for help by an embattled opposition walking a shaky tightrope with a tough choice ahead.
Since 2011 three failed strategies have been attempted, with weapons provision bringing up the rear. The regional politics of the conflict make the dangers of massive escalation imminent: it is time to find a transition acceptable to both sides.
The new regime in Libya claims the capacity and the will to see those who perpetrated atrocities under the old regime brought to justice. If the International Criminal Court reacts in favour of Libya's challenge, it will be complicit in the revenge of the new regime against the old.
By mid-2012, those demonstrators supporting a unified democratic Yemen were out-manoeuvred by separatists who now dominate the southern movement both in Aden and in Mukalla, the other main southern city. What are their plans?
Two other fault lines, unrelated to the sectarian issue, need to be taken into account in order to understand the multi-dimensional Syrian conflict.
People whose lives have been decimated by conflict should receive as much assistance as we can give them. Yet Palestinian refugees from Syria, escaping the same violence, destruction and dangers and seeking the same protection, relief and refuge as their Syrian counterparts, are being excluded on
Turkey’s cooperation with the Gulf states, reportedly establishing a secret shared command centre in southern Turkey to coordinate rebel attacks, may be designed to contain the influence of others and control which groups get arms. But Turkey’s recent regional resurgence in the Middle East is at r
The Israeli government has taken advantage of the unstable political and security conditions in Syria and in the town of Jibata al-Khashab to extend its control within Syrian territory.
The military and security apparatuses of these Gulf states plays a role in keeping the peace, but the best way forward is to build a civil society that is bound by a unifying mechanism such as a functioning, representative, elected parliament.
