... Christians, rejects Russian commentators’ attempts to interpret the Syrian campaign in religious terms as a holy war, the Russian Orthodox Church’s religious mission, etc. Such statements not only revive the image of Western crusades in the Middle East but also echo with the offensive missionary rhetoric of George Bush Jr.
REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah
Salvatore Babones:
Russia Has Been the Voice of Reason – On Iraq,
on Libya, and Now on Syria
Russian domestic propaganda correlates poorly ...
...
Russian experts offer three basic explanations for the origins of the Yemen crisis.
The domestic narrative regards Yemen as the Middle East in miniature. On the one hand, Yemen is swept by famine afflicting
45 percent of the population
, catastrophic poverty ... ... gaining ground in this snowballing crisis.
The regional narrative suggests that Yemen presents a battlefield for the Iran-led Shiites and Saudi Arabia, the self-proclaimed Sunni leader. The two countries are generally seen by pundits as regional rivals ...
... Lebanon
[2]
, who have their own long-standing similar problems, have become the first victims outside of Syria to suffer from the religious conflict. However, this religious problem is affecting not only these states, but also countries beyond the Middle East.
Shiites and Sunnis: Neighbors and Even Relatives
Unlike other countries the mosaic of religious and ethnic composition in Syria will have a profound impact on the alignment of forces in the Middle East should the regime in the country change dramatically....
