أرشيف الوسم : syria

The Syrian opposition late on Thursday sacked the military command of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) over allegations of corruption, several hours after US President Barack Obama asked US lawmakers for $500 million in aid for moderate rebels. In his statement, opposition chief Ahmad Tohme said that the opposition had “decided to disband the Supreme Military Council and refer …

The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its Global Peace Index report for the year 2014, and several North African and Middle Eastern nations performed poorly owing to the violence in the region. Countries were graded peace scores based on 22 different indicators, with each of the different indicators weighted according to importance. According to the report, global peace …

On Thursday, UN Under-secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos accused Syria of putting more effort into obstructing the UN than providing aid to millions of needy people. Amos, presenting the fourth UN report on humanitarian access in Syria, stressed that around 10.8 million are in critical need of humanitarian aid, and that workers could not reach …

The United States on Thursday said that it is opposed to a Syrian role in resolving the turmoil in Iraq after the Syrian government had carried out air strikes against the militants. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is facing insurgents from Syria who are sweeping across his nation, told the BBC that the Syrian air force had, earlier in …

Russia on Monday commended the “successful” completion of the international mission to ship out chemical agents in Syria, under a Russia-US brokered deal that helped avert any potential Western air strikes on the middle-eastern country. In a statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said, “Russia greets the successful end of a large-scale and unprecedented international operation to ship all components of chemical …

By Robert Naiman At this writing, President Obama has neither the legal nor the political mandate to conduct airstrikes in Iraq or Syria. On Thursday night, 182 Members of the House voted yes on Representative Barbara Lee’s amendment defunding the use of the 2002 Iraq Authorization for the Use Military Force. Among those 182 Members were 151 Democrats – 81 …

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that extremists belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) would have reached Beirut if it were not for his party’s decision to send fighters to Syria. During a meeting of al-Mahdi Scouts Association on Sunday, he said, “Had we not interfered in Syria at the appropriate moment, ISIL would …

The startling developments in northern Iraq, where the militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) has taken control of Mosul and other cities, highlights several troubling trends that have been evident across much of the Arab World for years. ISIS moved into Mosul and other cities swiftly and without any real combat because these underlying trends …

US-based consultant company Gallup this week released a new study which ranked negative emotions in 138 countries in the world for 2013. According to the study, Iraq has the “highest negative emotions” in the world; five of the top 10 nations were from the Muslim World, with four of them being Arab countries. Gallup’s method for measuring negative emotions was …

The recent string of “elections” across the Arab world raises profound questions about the Arab world’s apparent difficulty in adopting institutions and practices of liberal pluralistic democracies. But is the problem really about the ability of Arab social values to accommodate democracy, or is there a deeper problem related to the clumsy nature of statehood that has emerged in this …