Middle Orient

More than two dozen Serbian women remain trapped in refugee camps in Syria, waiting so far in vain to be repatriated by the Serbian state. Whispered messages via banned mobile phones provide a chilling glimpse of their day-to-day plight.

Hamas leaders are not sitting among their people in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. It is easier and safer for them to call on the Palestinians to send their children to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel while they are relaxing in the comfort of their hotel rooms, …

Turkey’s six opposition party leaders held a critical meeting on February 12 announcing their collaboration against President Tayyip Erdoğan’s Presidential System, indicating a formation of an unprecedented opposition block. In the 2019 local elections, many metropolitan municipalities, including Istanbul and Ankara, were taken from the ruling Justice and Development Party …

Jihadis in Idlib believe that former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham played a role in the killing of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi during a US Special Forces operation in Idlib. The Feb. 3 US Special Forces operation that led to the death of Islamic State (IS) leader …

Australia will designate all of the Hamas organization, not just its military wing, as a terror group. “The views of Hamas and the violent extremist groups listed today are deeply disturbing, and there is no place in Australia for their hateful ideologies,” Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews announced on Thursday. …

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech Thursday that Iran needs atomic energy and is not pursuing nuclear weapons, as the nuclear talks with the world powers has reached its final stages. “We will sooner or later need peaceful nuclear energy. If we do not pursue …

The leader of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said for the first time on Wednesday that it has the ability within Lebanon to convert thousands of rockets into precision missiles and to produce drones. “We have been producing drones in Lebanon for a long time, and whoever wants to buy them, …

I’ve previously written concerning [Yemen, The War That Should Have Never Been And How To Achieve Peace: Countercurrents: 13/02/2022] the fact the War in Yemen should never have occurred in the first place and the what and how required to achieve peace; either by dividing Yemen in two, North and …

Turkey and Israel are not only seeking to repair their fractured bilateral relations, but see cooperation opportunities in Central Asia, said James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Middle East Institute in Singapore.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is still insisting on false economic premises, including a theory that higher interest rates cause inflation; a policy stance that has led to sharp losses for the lira, said Güven Sak, a former member of the Monetary Policy Council of the Central Bank of Turkey. …