With fresh anti-American sentiment growing in some parts of the Middle East and North Africa, Economist Intelligence Unit expert Robert Powell offers some thoughts on what President Barack Obama could do to counter the trend. Powell spoke with VOA’s Susan Yackee. Yackee: What does President Obama need to do to improve his image in the More »
Late last month, Israeli military planes carried out a strike on the outskirts of Damascus, targeting a convoy transporting anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah. The strike was the latest indication that Lebanon’s Party of God is not only directly involved in the violence in Syria, but will leverage the chaos there to bolster its More »
The United Nations says an international donor conference has raised about $500 million for humanitarian relief efforts inside war-ravaged Syria. Most of those funds are likely to go to aid agencies operating out of Damascus under official Syrian government supervision. But some relief workers say unofficial methods are better for reaching many Syrians in need More »
The French military’s current campaign to dislodge jihadist militants from northern Mali and the recent high-profile attack against a natural gas facility in Algeria are both directly linked to the foreign intervention in Libya that overthrew the Gadhafi regime. There is also a strong connection between these events and foreign powers’ decision not to intervene in Mali More »
Kenan Rahmani is a law student at the University of Notre Dame in the U.S. state of Indiana. He shared with us that he has traveled to Syria to assist an activist network with English-language media relations. He says he recently returned again to Syria with a small group of expatriates from the Syrian More »
Yisser Bittar, a Syrian-American, tells us that since she was a little girl she used to travel to Homs every year to visit relatives. Due to the civil war and intense fighting in the city, she was unable to visit last year, but says that she and six other Syrian-Americans managed in December to More »
On January 20, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry announced that it will evacuate approximately one hundred Russian citizens from Syria, mostly women and children. However, the ministry downplayed the importance of the evacuation, with those leaving representing a mere fraction of the many thousands of Russian citizens residing in Syria. Indeed, the hopes that More »
One hundred years after the Levant embarked on a journey to build modern political societies, our experiment has failed and we are now back to square one. Lebanon collapsed in the 1970s, Iraq disintegrated in the 1990s and 2000s, and Syria is in the process of tearing itself apart. Unlike Egypt, Tunisia, and several More »
An intrinsic component of Syria’s ongoing civil war, the control and distribution of food is becoming a multi-faceted strategic tool used not only to punish foes but also to build patronage. Just as shipments of arms and other military equipment can sway the results of a conflict, the supply of food can be just More »
The past week marked the second anniversary of the resignation of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, an event that in many ways turned unrest in Tunisia from a purely national affair to what the media dubbed the Arab Spring. That Arab Spring was seen as a broad rising of the Arab masses against aging More »
Rund, by her own account, is a citizen journalist in Izraa, Syria. In this installment of her regular posts she shares the story of a family’s daring escape from Syria into neighboring Jordan. Middle East Voices’ “Syria Witness” series features personal accounts by citizen-journalists inside Syria about the grim challenges of survival in a war More »
Amnesty International has welcomed news the United Nations is being called upon to take action on crimes committed in the Syrian conflict. The call came in a petition submitted to the U.N. Security Council by Switzerland. The document has the support of dozens of countries. VOA’s Susan Yackee spoke about Amnesty’s position with its representative More »
The Middle East in 2012 was surprising, exhilarating, depressing, and endlessly fascinating. Will it be the same in 2013? Odds are, yes, but there is really no way of providing an accurate forecast. If we’ve learned anything in the last few years, let’s try not to build scenarios – a favorite Washington, D.C., exercise. More »
At the dawn of the New Year President Bashar al-Assad and his regime remain committed to pursuing a corrosively destructive sectarian survival strategy, one enjoying a critical assist from an increasingly radicalized and politically directionless armed opposition. Left to their own devices – as both the West and Russia seemed inclined to leave them – More »
- Quick reaction to a rare address by Syria’s president - Israel to build a Syrian border fence - Ramifications of uprisings in North Africa and the Arab world - The number of Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt’s cabinet More »
As citizens across the Arab world call for better living conditions and greater personal freedoms, many countries have witnessed protests and revolutions. The year 2012 offered a clear example of how political transformations have impacted regional economies. Five Arab countries – Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon – are experiencing transitions. However, their current economic More »
- Russia’s foreign minister urges Syrian officials to open talks with the opposition - Intelligence experts worry about the use of chemical weapons in Syria - Retired Army General Norman Schwarzkopf dies in Florida - Sunni demonstrators protest alleged mistreatment by Iraq’s Shi’ite More »
- International diplomatic activity increases over the Syrian conflict - Egypt’s president faces the need to solve economic problems - Afghanistan prepares for the eventual pullout of foreign troops - Former South African President Nelson Mandela leaves a More »
Dozens of Syrian street activists met in Istanbul and other venues in Turkey in recent weeks to discuss unity within the opposition Syrian National Coalition. Their goals were to present a united front to potential donors of the Friends of the Syrian People umbrella group and to effect regime change. Gokhan Bacik, an associate professor More »
- A top Syrian official defects to the opposition - An Afghan car bomber sets off explosives near a U.S.- run military facility at the Pakistani border - The female policewoman who killed an American contractor in Kabul this week was an Iranian national - The UAE arrests several terrorist More »
