... feel victims of new austerity policies, mainly engineered by the IMF. Millions in the region deserve better political regimes than toxic combinations of neoliberalism and autocracy.
All in all, a crucial way to stabilise the region and oil prices, win terrorism, and lift people out of economic woes, has to do with some democratisation in the key players, Saudi Arabia and Iran above all. Cosmetics or economic reforms alone won’t work much. Democracy and participation can and should be interpreted differently in different regions; this is true for the Middle East as well; however, some form of inclusion ...
... released a statement in May that called upon Muslims worldwide to make Ramadan “a month of calamity everywhere for non-believers”.
A string of attacks carried out by Islamic State fighters throughout the Middle East rocked Turkey, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the final days of the holy month of Ramadan. The devastating suicide bomb attack in a predominantly Shia area of Baghdad that took 292 lives was shocking in its barbarity but was not surprising in its nature. The Islamic State that claims ...
... clear-cut even from the beginning. Understandably, all the regional powers were keeping a close look on the events even before the first shots had been fired. That was almost a given when considering the strategic position of Yemen at the border with Saudi Arabia and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, a crucial passage for the maritime oil trade through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Photo from: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/yemen4.htm
To continue to the more interesting angles,...
... since WWI, what will America do now?
Going forward, here’s what we can expect:
1.) America will try very hard to distance itself from the Gulf.
It’s amazing that it’s taken us so long to realize how much our money going into Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states comes back to haunt us: though Joe Biden recently got in trouble for saying so, support for ISIS and other Islamic extremists and terrorists from very wealthy individuals motivated by the Saudi state-sponsored ...