IRBIL / MEXICO CITY: On a recent morning, as Sahar Ayoub gently turned the pages of her Bible, she contemplated the trauma that her family experienced when Daesh militants seized the northern town of Qaraqosh in the Nineveh governorate almost seven years ago. Originally published by Arab News She and her husband Ameer Bahnam were forced […]
Read morePope Francis’ visit to give hope and comfort to Iraqis of all faiths
ROME / MEXICO CITY: Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, will become the first pontiff ever to set foot in Iraq, where he hopes to encourage the dwindling Christian community to remain in their ancient homeland while also extending a hand of friendship to the Islamic world. Originally published by Arab News […]
Read moreWhat next for children of Daesh detainees confined in Syrian camps?
LONDON: Al-Hawl and Al-Roj, two squalid, vastly overcrowded detention camps in northeast Syria, are home to some 70,000 people — around 80 percent of them women and children — all in some way associated with Daesh, the terror group that dominated a third of the country and whole swathes of neighboring Iraq between 2014 and […]
Read moreErdogan’s two-state demand puts the jinx on planned UN-led Cyprus meeting
RIYADH/LONDON: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent assertion that the only way to resolve the Cyprus dispute is a two-state solution may have just muddied the waters further, rather than helping resolve Europe’s longest-running frozen conflict. By rejecting the reunification of Cyprus under a two-zone federal umbrella, long favored by Greece and the UN, the […]
Read moreMyanmar coup changes little for persecuted Rohingyas: expert
LONDON: Four years have passed since Myanmar’s military crackdown drove more than 742,000 mostly women and children of the Rohingya minority over the border into Bangladesh — a mass displacement which UN investigators say amounts to genocide. Now, in the wake of the Feb. 1 coup, the Rohingya are again left wondering what lies in […]
Read moreAre Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis firing warning shots across Biden administration’s bows?
LONDON: Was the object sighted high above Riyadh on Tuesday a stray projectile with no evident target or a warning shot across the bows of the Biden administration? That was the question uppermost in the minds of defense experts and political analysts, just three days after a “hostile air target” — assumed to be a […]
Read moreHow Yemen’s Houthis’ well-deserved terrorist label gives Biden important leverage
LONDON: Joe Biden, the newly inaugurated US president, is using his first days in office to review many of his predecessor’s policies and executive orders. How his administration handles its strategic inheritance, particularly with regard to Iran and its proxies, notably the Yemeni Houthi militia, could well shape the Arab region’s opinion of his nascent […]
Read moreIran’s strategy of state piracy menaces Middle East oil lanes
LONDON: Iran dialed up tensions in the Gulf this week when its troops stormed a South Korean-flagged tanker as it transited through the strategic Strait of Hormuz — a choke point through which a fifth of world oil output passes. The incident is only the latest in a long line of Iranian acts of “state […]
Read moreThe empire that Kuwaiti retail pioneer Abdulaziz Mohammed Al-Shaya built
LONDON: Abdulaziz Mohammed Al-Shaya, widely regarded as a titan of Kuwait’s economic and commercial renaissance, has died at the age of 94, local media reported on Saturday. He leaves behind a legacy that underpins the emirate’s reputation as the Gulf’s retail industry pioneer. Many of those paying tributes to Al-Shaya have described him as a […]
Read moreUK’s vaccine approval raises world’s hopes for COVID-19 fight
LONDON: The news that Britain has approved the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech has raised expectations that other countries could also begin immunizations in the near future and slowly bring the curtain down on a pandemic that disrupted the global social and economic order like no other event in living memory. Trials have shown that […]
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