By Alastair Crooke | Huffington Post | 28 Aug 2014

BEIRUT -- The dramatic arrival of Da'ish (ISIS) on the stage of Iraq has shocked many in the West. Many have been perplexed -- and horrified -- by its violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth. But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia's ambivalence in the face of this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, "Don't the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?"

Source : World Bulletin / 13 Feb 2014

A German newspaper has claimed that the Egyptian army controls up to 45% of Egypt's economy.

Die Welt reported that the army has been increasing its control over the economy since the January 25 revolution ousted former dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The Grand Mufti of Syria preaches a message of forgiveness

‘I met those men who assassinated my own son – and they told me they didn’t even know whom they were killing.” Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria, sits in a straightbacked chair, his immaculate white turban atop a narrow, intelligent and very troubled face. His son Sania was a second-grade student at Aleppo University when he was shot dead getting into his car.

By Nadia Mayen / 3 June 2013

Sexual violence against women in Egypt has increased in the post-revolutionary Islamist rule, according to official reports and rights activists.

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality said in a report published on May 23 that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual violence.

Source : AFP / 3 May 2013

Almost 260,000 people, half of them young children, died of hunger during the last famine in Somalia, according to a UN report yesterday which admitted the world body should have done more to prevent the tragedy.

By Pepe Escobar | Asia Times | 06 Mar 2013

So Bashar al-Assad hath martially spoken - for the first time in seven months - predictably blaming the Syrian civil war on "terrorists" and "Western puppets".

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, he of the former "zero problems with our neighbors" policy, commented that Assad only reads the reports of his secret services. C'mon, Ahmet; Bashar may be no Stephen Hawking, but he's certainly getting his black holes right.

By Al Arabiya | 29 Dec 2012

A fire that Mohammed al-Bouazizi ignited two years ago continued to burn for the second year as the battle to break down the old regimes and their associates in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia continued unabated.

*President Bashar al-Assad made his first public speech in months, vowing to quash his opponents with an iron fist and denounced the uprising as a foreign plot.

By Jon Queally | Agencies | 13 Dec 2012

In a move that notches up the potential for a western military intervention in Syria, the US government on Tuesday formally recognized factions of the armed opposition group facing off against President Bashar al-Assad in what has been an escalating and bloody civil war in the Middle East country.

Source : AFP | 16 Oct 2012

Libya took a major step toward democracy this year by holding its first free elections but success has been marred by rising extremism, failure to disband militias and delays in forming state institutions.

And facing tribal conflicts, threats from former regime backers and high social demands, the new authorities seem not sure where to turn next, one year after deposed dictator Muammar Qaddafi was captured and killed in his home town.

Source : AP | 05 Oct 2012

Internal feuds are threatening to unravel the political party of Egypt’s ultraconservative Islamist Salafis, as pragmatists try to shake off the control of hardline clerics who reject any compromise in their stark, puritanical version of Islam.